A history lesson June 4, 2013

  


 

In some ways, she missed a real opportunity to trickle up in that she came during our former temporary boss’ second stint at temporary boss, when he was supposed to actually become the real boss, but management pulled the rug out from under him.

The internal politics inside our office has always been nasty, a somewhat silly concept considering just how little there was to get as far as real power.

Back in the late 1990s, one of our writers managed to undermine our long-time boss by making a deal with the original owner, using his connections to become boss. He used his clout of being close to the owner against the two minor partners.

Then, when that boss sold the company to his two minor partners, the current boss, a writer at the time, began to spy for the two new owners, eventually forcing that boss out and being named boss in his place.

Then, slightly less than a year before our poet started to work for her, our temporary boss filled in for our boss in the first of two maternity leaves. During this period, he and the owners came to an agreement that he would become boss, and the boss would be in charge of the internet.

But during the maternity leave, the boss began to sabotage our temporary boss, sending emails to management complaining about this and that in an attempt to make him look bad.

Strange items began to appear in blogs by GA, which later led me to suspect that the boss was the source feeding GA much of the dirt that went on inside our office.

It was never clear exactly why the owners rescinded their agreement with the temporary boss, but it resulted in a shift of other people, including the firing of one writer, who both owners disliked because of his tendency to do social justice reporting when they wanted him to do stories on development and business. This writer was also accused of stalking one of sales people – he apparently could not stop going to her desk and hitting on her. He became resentful of pressure being put on him about what stories he should write, and eventually he reached a tipping point and was pushed out.

I don’t know how much our boss knew about our poet or her activities inside and outside our office, but she apparently didn’t like her, and often pushed her into doing stories she didn’t particularly like, although seemed to appreciate the poet’s connection with RR and the other private detective.

Our poet arrived at the office just prior to our boss going on her second maternity leave when our temporary boss got his second stint, knowing he would not get offered the job as boss again.

Oddly enough, he also lost the opportunity to become boss of the magazines, when that boss left briefly for an internet publication. She never bothered telling him the job was open, and he didn’t find out until he saw a parade of applicants going passed his desk. This was particularly painful because he’s the one that saved her job during his first stint as boss.

In doing her research as a social engineer, our poet apparently didn’t realize the behind the scenes dynamic, how temporary our temporary boss’ job actually was, and how the boss on maternity leave – continue to spread gossip to keep management from actually considering him as her replacement.

Maybe, ultimately, it didn’t matter, since he seems to have been nothing more than a stepping stone in her trickling up to the owner. 

There was more than a little tension when the boss returned from her maternity leave, which may be why our poet, when she spung her plan to bring down the congressman, took it directly to the owner – although the boss and the former temporary boss knew about what she proposed.

The owner asked me about RR, whether I thought RR actually worked with the FBI, and I told him about what I knew, how RR had been selling this same scheme for years, including to previous bosses at our office, and also political operatives running campaigns against the congressman, and yet, in none of these cases, had he actually produced the documents he claimed to have.

I said nothing to the owner about the rumored romantic relationship between our poet and RR. That news reached him through the Small Man later and resulted in her forced resignation.

Now, six months later, all that seems moot, and she is trickling up some other power grid in government. Only I get the feeling, she is no more on a stairway to success now than she was when working in our office, and I suspect, she knows this as well, and may well be looking for another opportunity in some other organization where trickling up may get her somewhere.

We shall see. Maybe her role in the Hometown election will provide her with that opportunity.

 

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