No Lessons Here

I like to think that good things are going to happen to me. When things that seem like they could potentially be good, I start to get worked up inside. Anxious butterflies, flapping around in my chest will start to take over everything until I can't see anything but what I'm getting excited about. In fact, I get carried away by my own excitement a lot, and it bubbles up all over everyone until my life becomes a big, soggy, soapy mess of disappointment because I couldn't hold it in long enough to avoid being sabotaged. And sabotage it is, sometimes, when someone is given a chance to show their true colors. Unfortunately, it seems that I make the fatal mistake of giving particularly damaging people the chance to show who they are inside, since I like to believe the best in folks.

So is it because I'm stupid that I trust people? I like to think not. Naive, yes; idealistic, to a point. Stupid? Well ... maybe a little.

Case in point: when I worked at Estee Lauder corporate, I completely ignored the warnings that my coworkers threw in my way almost like little flare guns. *Danger Ahead, Danger Ahead!* But, nooo ... there was no way Ginny would betray me! She was on my side. She called me sweetheart, encouraged me, told me I was fun and smart, that I was too good for the job. I reached high and overachieved, coming out with new ideas and putting in extra time without getting paid for it, even though I was told that she was easily threatened and had a habit of ousting people who outshined her. But she praised me to the skies, and so, I trusted her. I told her about an opportunity that had been offered to me that I made very clear to her I turned down in hopes of greener pastures where I was. She had known and was fully supportive of when I needed the day off to go to New York City to talk to an editor at Rodale, and told me she was glad I was staying. She then encouraged me to apply to jobs within Lauder and volunteered to be a good reference for me. It was all love and hunky dory-ness.

Then, one week before I hit the mandatory minimum three-month mark, the day I got her a lovely bottle of Valpolicella for her birthday, she fired me. She me told the day before to go for a copywriter job I was really psyched about and then, she fired me the day after I submitted my resume.

Actually ... scratch that. She didn't have the decency to fire me and give me a reason. Friday evening, out for a drink with a coworker, she had the temp agency call me on my cell and lie to me, saying that my position was eliminated due to budgeting constraints. And how did I ever find out it was a lie? Simple. My friend, who I was with, took over my job at a dollar less an hour and watched someone else fill her position.

Now, this may have been a few years ago, but that was the worst betrayal I'd ever felt. Ambushed, blindsided, and completely out of nowhere, just when I thought I'd made the right decisions, played the right cards, and talked to the right people, using honesty as my policy. I cried over that miserable $16/hour contract job, for sucking it up, driving over an hour every day to that horrible, depressing fluorescent-lit gray hole, and taking a job I didn't even necessarily want in hopes of hanging on for the carrot on the stick they promised me. It was the first time and only time I'd gotten fired, which was devastating and incomprehensible to my hard-work-is-rewarded ideology, and the first cold dose of harsh reality of pettiness in a lipstick jungle. My tears were for my shattered innocence and belief in the inherent good of people who claimed to look out for me, and for all the time I wasted on an ungratifying position that made me so depressed, I gained about 30 pounds.

However, in the long run, this was one of the best things that ever happened to me. The next job I had was for a web firm in the city, K Street Partners, a former subsidiary of MediaCatalyst., a big web agency based in the Netherlands. The pay was great, the hours were awesome, my boss was amazing, and Sara, my former supervisor (and pastry chef; now a Nomad with Cookies), is someone I am proud to count as a friend. That led to my having adequate experience to make the transition Boy's pursuit of education made necessary -- moving back to N'awlins -- and getting a job in a similar capacity, which they were kind enough to hold for a month until I got my ass down there. And so on.

What's the point in that bitchfest about Jerkface Ginny, then?

I guess there isn't one. I mean, sure, I'm still kind of bitter about it, but although horrible or bad things happen to me, I'm still convinced that really good things happen to me, too. I still get the butterflies of excitement, and I still share that enthusiasm with others.

So it's your call. Stupid or not?