The Teachings of Shan Yu

You can know someone all your life, work with the person, live with the person, eat with them, share stories, have children with them, laugh and cry, share your deepest secrets and disappointments, but even through all that you may not meet the real person. But then if you take that person, restrain them, and hold them over an active volcano, only then will you meet the true person inside. Such are the teachings of Shan Yu.

I thought of breaking this one into a couple different posts, but I think it'll work as one piece. Maybe, maybe not. We shall find out.

The screening department could not be in greater disarray. Jennifer and I were out Thursday. Starr was out Friday. It's chaos--complete and total chaos. Sue is becoming more and more desperate as the situation continues to unravel. The hold she used to have over me slips further and further from her grasp. As much as she used to scare and intimidate me, now I hold her in barely concealed contempt. Where she used to be able to push me around at will, now that train has completely jumped it's tracks, and while I still work hard and maintain my professionalism, the wheels have completely come off the bus as far as her pushing me around.

I've found my Angry Place, thanks to Jennifer, and I'm stoking the fires of it to keep me focused. I let Sue turn me into such a wimpified bitch that I'm embarassed by it. I let her bully me right into a near nervous breakdown, for fuck's sake. I let her push me into near anxiety attacks on Sunday nights because the thought of going to work was so stressful. I lost myself into that stress and became someone else, and I'm not proud of that. I haven't been the same Shaun from the hospital or even from second shift at this same company. And I hate that.

Sue and I got into it a little bit during the afternoon. She, Jen, Stacy (the girl from the other department), and I were gathered under the hood of Liberty 3, which up until lately was my press, while I was helping Jen with a job, and Sue started talking and I ended up shooting on her. And the conversation got heavier and more heated than I think she was expecting from me, similar to how it had the other afternoon when she made her first attack. I didn't lay it all out there, not yet, but I was fierce enough to fluster her. For all her supposed fearsomeness, when I start standing up for myself Sue doesn't weather it nearly as well as Karen used to. I should thank Karen for helping toughen me up, huh?

Sue returned a bit later with more of a counter-attack, which I ferociously rebutted, and she got even more flustered. She even made a couple of cracks towards Jen, which I didn't appreciate, especially in light of the mucking about that Sue has already attempted in my personal life, and I let her know it. She was so flustered that I saw her immediately run over and talk to Bob, who I'd already let her know wanted to have a meeting with me about certain things. She came back and told me that Bob wanted to see me NOW. I don't know if I was supposed to be threatened by that or not, but I wasn't. I was looking forward to it.

That meeting lasted a good 75 minutes, at least. It was just me and Bob, and I opened the floodgates to Hell. Everything that was on my mind, every problem I have with the company, every time that I left angry or stressed out, every single issue was addressed and laid out on the table, including my exact thoughts on Sue and what kind of team leader she is, how none of us feel comfortable coming to Bob about things because it'll end up being taken out on us later, how I don't appreciate being treated like shit anytime I try to better myself by bidding out on another job, how I don't appreciate my personal life being thrown into the mix and having to put up with snarky remarks by my team leader, and in general how I don't relish the thought of being a screen printer stuck at that same dead end for the rest of my life.

For his part, Bob was very receptive to everything I had to say. I don't know what, if anything, he'll do with what he's heard from me (and already from Jen), but it does seem as though his heart is in the right place, and he will be sorry to see me go ... even though I told him that I hadn't inked any deal in blood yet. He even went so far as to say he could move me to another part of the building, as he doesn't want to lose a good worker like me. I let him know how skeptical I was about that, too. I can't stay there and do that forever. I have my destiny to consider, and the more my soul gets eaten by that company the harder it is to get there. But I digress.

While I was gone, Jen laid even more track on the knife-twisting thing. This was an ad-lib of her own, not something we worked out, which just goes to show that a good Partner-in-Crime is nothing to sneeze at. Sue mentioned to her that I was at a meeting with Bob and it might take a while. Apparently, there was some air of superiority in her voice, too, like I'd been sent to the principal's office or something.

Jen: "Oh yeah. I know all about that. I even know everything he wants to talk about." And then she shot Sue a look so vicious that when she described it to me later she felt a little bad about it. Yes, the girl who paints herself as evil felt a little bad about it, so I can just imagine what that look was like.

It felt good to let those things out, but this is really only the beginning. I think Sue and I need to have a private meeting, too, because eventually I'm going to end up going for the jugular for keeps if she makes too many snarky remarks. There's only so much I'm willing to take.

You want to meet the real me now?