Where Have I Been? Pt 2

This is a story all about how my life got twisted upside down

One thing about me, the moment anything negative happens in my life, I immediately and confidently put my trust in God. But I typically only give God about a week to make something shake before the depression and anxiety kick in full force.

This is a developing story about how God has been steering me towards a particular direction for years, but I wasn't tuned in enough with the Holy Spirit to understand that. Before I expound on this, let's continue where we left off in part 1.

I realize that I never went into detail about how The Director Who Shall Be Named, Anthony Martinez, went about breaking the news of my termination. It was a very busy work day for me. My first meeting of many was scheduled for 7 a.m. with a client in India and there were a few reports that I needed to finalize for the last phases of some other projects I was on.

At some point in the morning, Anthony had added a 1:1 meeting to my calendar. I didn't think anything of it because we would meet at least three times a week for him to literally tell me how I'm not good enough without offering any suggestions on how I can improve.

I ended up having to cancel the first meeting request because a client call was put on my calendar. Anthony sent another request. Again, an urgent client call was put on my calendar causing me to cancel Anthony's meeting. The devil wouldn't let up, and he sent me a third request, this time for towards the end of the workday.

I thought this man must get off on making me feel like shit because why was he so pressed? I was completely naive and clueless (as I, unfortunately, tend to be at times) about Anthony's agenda until the HR lady's face popped up in the video call.

Anthony began the meeting by saying how I haven't been meeting expectations. I took that opportunity to ask him what expectations he was referring to, as I had done many times before. His response was, "I can't get into that right now; you should already know." From there, the HR lady began her spiel about my severance as well as instructions for me to email them everything I'd been working on.

II'd never been fired in my life, so the whole situation threw me for a loop. Of course, being the person that I am, I cried, threatened legal action, and hung up on them before the call was officially over. Once my tears temporarily dried up, I sent over the information they asked for:

Yes, I was very dramatic, but that was just the beginning. I also decided that it was time for me to write my first ever LinkedIn post. Before I could get to drafting my diss post, I was met with a bunch of follow requests from my now former colleagues. I guess the news had dropped.

As soon as I accepted the requests, my inbox was flooded with people expressing their shock and sorrow. It wasn't just people on my level, either. There were people higher up, but on different teams who I'd had the chance to work with, apologizing for how the company treated me and offering references should I need them. None of them could understand why I was let go because they were the ones who worked with me directly. They knew I was great at what I did.

Honestly, I could dedicate all of part three of this story to the LinkedIn post that I wrote, but instead, I'll just give you the main gist of it. I essentially talked about how the corporate world has not been kind to me despite the fact that I mind my business and submit excellent work.

I brought up my first real job post-undergrad and how abusive my boss was. She would literally yell and scream at me, treat me as though I were useless, and refuse to grant me help when I was burned out. I spent three of the four years I was there looking for new employment, but I can count on one hand how many interviews I was offered during that time. Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore and I quit without a backup plan. It took me exactly a year after quitting to finally find a new job.

That job wasn't bad at all, but again my managers assumed I was an idiot. By then, I had two master's degrees under my belt and was more qualified than them, but they would never let me send out emails to clients without getting their approval first. When creating reports, I would plagiarize from one of my manager's old reports, but when it was time for her to review them, she would tear them apart thinking they were my words, not hers.

The final straw for me at that company was when everyone on my team was asked to come up with a research project, and the entire team would take on the best idea. I realized, by looking at our numbers, that the members of our site were mostly elderly white women, and that was skewing the data in the research we were conducting for our clients.

My idea won, but when it was presented to the higher-ups for a budget, the whole project was shut down. In fact, one of them said that they wouldn't be spending money on a "pet project." Yeah, well that was until George Floyd was murdered, and all of a sudden companies realized that black lives had to matter in order for them to maintain their profits. Suddenly, my idea went from a pet project to a company-wide initiative.

I summarized, in my LinkedIn post, how these experiences affected my self-esteem in the workplace. I know I'm smart, I know I'm hard-working, but I was never treated as such. I explained how the same held true for my most recent company and I was ultimately terminated.

Everyone, and I mean everyone who interacted with my post, advised me to take it down, but I refused. This was real life and I needed both previous and future employers to understand that I'm a human being and I can no longer take the mistreatment. If that meant lowering my chances of being hired, so be it, because moving forward, I was unwilling to work anywhere that planned to treat me similarly.

Apparently, the company wasn't fond of my post either, because days later I received an NDA in my email, requesting that I no longer speak about the company publicly and in return, they'll offer me additional severance pay. I didn't respond.

Okay, that was a lot, so I'll do you all a favor and stop here. Tune in next week (maybe) for part three. My life is a movie, so you absolutely can't miss the rest of this series.