Black Women – Page 2 – The Office Black Girl

Per My Previous Email…

August 19, 2019August 19, 2019by The Office Black GirlLeave a Comment

Per my previous email…

Per the previous email that you cc’d the most irrelevant people on…

Per the previous email that I ignored due to ignorance…

Per my previous email I am done putting up with your shit…

Navigating the waters of office politics is already a labor of self preservation. Dealing with the lowly drama of fellow coworkers and stroking the fragile egos of Target loving managers is enough to make anyone hate their work environment. However, successful navigation can go off track when it comes to an office email.

Prior to this job, my experience with work emails was limited. There was either no communication done by email or the few emails exchanged left little room for ignorance. However, these days I swear it is hard not to intentionally and untentionally hit the land mine of email foolishness.

My most recent travels into the land of email insensitivity involved a coworker (we will call her Pen) finding something wrong in a campaign that was being worked on. Beyond the fact that she reached out to the wrong person, she also decided to CC me on the email along with another manager.

Of course the email didn’t include sufficient information and the “wrong person” (we will call her Ms. Direction) responded with the fact that she needed more details to (not) be helpful. Then comes the direct question to me in this group email: “Can you help with this?”

Now before I continue with my story, I did recently apologize to Pen for my email (I started typing this post weeks ago). Not because I truly felt bad about it but because I know most of my response was fueled by the annoyances of the day and Pen is honestly not the type to try and be an intentional asshole about work. So I felt I should apologize out of self awareness, because I was trying to be an asshole at the time.

Now, after I was asked to help, I deleted the email because I refused to have people add on to my already full plate. In my mind, I felt if someone had the time to find mistakes that were not directly my fault, they had time to find a resolution. So the next day, Ms. Direction sent me an email asking if I had found the information. I quickly responded with “No. But I would be happy to give the spreadsheets to Pen and she can locate the products.”

Apparently, my response didn’t go over well with management. The inactive manager on the email responded that she would locate the products herself. Which I felt like she was doing it in defense of Pen and told her it was ridiculous for her to take on more work when it was not her burden.

Then when I got up and went to the breakroom, Ms. Direction decided to have a conversation with the inactive manager about my response. It appears that some people viewed my response as harsh.

The email was even brought up to the Devil herself and she talked to other people, who were not even on the email, about it. But amusingly enough she never addressed me about it and Pen never spoke about it either.

But that is the thing about emails, it is so easy to offend someone or for others to talk to you too boldly and bring witnesses to your slaughter.

One manager (we will call her Humpty Dumpty, name inspired by a coworker) in particular would send emails to me about stuff that she thought I did wrong and cc people on it like the Devil (my direct boss), Ms. Direction (former manager and usually irrelevant on any emails sent to me), and other randoms. But I keep receipts, and I enthusiastically responded to Humpty with straight facts every time.

What is funny is that Humpty would respond back with an apology and all of those CC’d people would be removed. Being the amateur petty queen that I am, I would acknowledge the apologies……after adding all of those removed CC’d people back to the email.

Emails feel like a game to me at times and a test of my patience. From people spelling my name wrong and me fighting the urge to respond back with the misspelling of their name to just blatant disrespect. I walk close to the line at times: a manager misspelled my name in multiple emails and I started to respond back with the misspelling of his name (he eventually stopped responding with my name in the greeting). But I know where the line is and where the petty has to stop.

Tomorrow is a new day and I am sure my inbox is overdue for some new foolishness. Only time will tell…

Uncategorized

Appearing Unbothered When You May Be Dead Inside

August 2, 2019by The Office Black Girl4 Comments

It has been weeks since my last post and that was not intentional. I have several posts sitting in draft status, waiting to share the depths and shallowness of my inner thoughts.

But like so many things in my life, I get overwhelmed by my own goals and dreams. Then sprinkle that with some personal drama and depression and I easily lose focus. However, it is my current dance with depression that is motivating me to blog today.

There is something about being a black woman in the world (office included) that makes you feel the need to put on any face that can’t be read as weak. Usually, many see the face of what some may deem as a bitch. But my favorite is the one that is hard to read. You can’t tell what I am thinking or feeling behind my expression and behind that face is my safe space.

After a long day of maintaining this face while on the inside I was breaking down, I am forced to put it back on despite a mini break.

I sit on the couch, alone, where the only sense of light is a lamp I am too lazy to turn off and the sound of the a/c drowns out the soft noise of my husband’s snores. But even in the near darkness and loneliness, I can’t take this mask off.

While sleep may have found him, she is somewhere beyond my current comprehension. Probably being smothered by the thoughts of my current marital and personal struggles. See I can’t go to sleep because she doesn’t want to fight hard enough to save me or herself. So I sit here typing while my thoughts turn into a poison paralyzing my body, preventing me from getting up and going to bed. A bed that tells me I am unwelcome despite the vacancy sign.

I’ve spent most of my adult life consciously and unconsciously training for this persona of unbotheredness. While depression has consumed me at times to the point of almost no return, I never let anyone see it who I didn’t want to see. My soul may have been dying, but on the outside no one knew.

I have no intention of opening myself up to strangers……well beyond the the anonymity of this blog. Or suddenly becoming a healthy, well-functioning adult, though my friends may argue my lacking in that department makes me a good story teller. But I am working on myself everyday. Baby steps.

That first step is finishing a blog post before the poison works its way down to my fingers. Because writing (blogging) is important to me. When I was young writing and reading were like my only friends. My husband used to tell me he feel in love with my words and that I was surgical with them. Though now it seems as though my precision is more of a negative in his eyes than a romantic notion these days, but that is a battle for another day.

It is almost time for bed, maybe a sleeping pill will help free sleep from its bondage. Guess we will soon find out 😉

Office Stories, Uncategorized

Smiling on Demand

July 10, 2019July 14, 2019by The Office Black Girl1 Comment

Yesterday, I meet with my manager for our weekly meeting. As always, I was expecting to be blindsided by her turn of attitude. Her persona changing from the forced smile of undersexed, dance mom to that of the Devil wears Target.

She didn’t disappoint…

I stared at this control freak of a woman, who sat across from me, with what I can only hope was a neutral expression on my face. All the while, I was already mentally checked out of the meeting when she started up with, “Now for the negative…” half way through this unproductive conversation.

As she began to relay concerns from people ranging from her boss and my coworkers in regards to my “bad attitude”, I could only think of comedians who “shucked and jived” on stage, demonstrating the joke of having to appease a white person for some sort of gain.

Then my own caricature popped in my head. An unreal version of myself that was created for the survival of being a black face in the white corporate world. Her once long straight hair, which had been slowly curling, was now natural and almost wild. The fake, broad smile that stayed plastered on her face was now gone. What remained was her full lips curled up on one side, silently making the black woman sound of disapproval, “Hmmm.”

But the most noticeable thing about my caricature, she wasn’t dancing. She was standing there with her hand at her hip looking at me. Waiting on me. Judging me.

I tuned back into the one-sided conversational assault just in time to make a small defense for myself that wasn’t worth the effort. In my mind’s eye, I could see my caricature shake her head and walk away into the darkness of my brain.

The request, demand, or statement of telling a black woman to fix her attitude feels like an attack based on a false narrative rather than constructive criticism. When I, as a black woman, sit in a department meeting full of white faces I feel like my face is the only one picked on since it sticks out. While the room is full of expressionless, somber, or focused faces, somehow only mine seems to be deemed as something different and threatening to the team dynamic.

Why is it when I speak as honestly as my white counterpart, my words are seen as laced with attitude and hostility but not hers? She is thanked for her honesty and allowed to continue on with her work while I am pulled into private meetings with management to address my attitude. Once again, I am forced to swallow my pride and who I am because something about me seems bothersome to my white superiors.

“Just Smile…”

Such a simple action. But why do I have to smile when I am not happy? Why do I have to smile when my determine expression should be all you need to know I am here to work? Why do I have to smile when no one else is?

After my meeting, I decide it is time to look for another job. It is disappointing because when I started with this company I was excited that I was joining a company where there was female leadership and a sea full of black women with natural hair. Black women who came in all shapes and sizes and seem to not put on a persona to fit some image.

But I realized, many had their own stories of being told they were “bullies” or had “negative attitudes.” They too took the beating until some left and other are left behind waiting for their exit plan to take effect as well. Now it was my turn to find some place that wouldn’t demand a smile, but would create an environment worthy of one.

As I started to think about the things I would have to do to fit in at a new company or at least to interview, my caricature started to emerge from the darkness. She was flat ironing her hair and stretching her mouth in preparation for a massive smile. But what kept me staring at her the longest were her shoes. They were tap shoes and on the side in white paint were the words “Shuck” and “Jive.”