This is a story of a (different) terrible past boss whose inflicted harm I’d mistakenly thought I’d fully healed but whose recent uninvited and energetically invasive return inspired the following purge.
One time, a variety of existential plot twists positioned me as the part-time office manager for a woman we’ll call Leeann O’Flanagan. We were a poor fit.
Imagine a sandwich made of metaphor and mediocrity. Nestled between hearty slices of hand-milled incompetence, boundary obliteration, and racial microaggression are thick slabs of labor devaluation, gaslighting, and tone policing, layered with crisp pieces of spiritual bypassing and weaponized vulnerability. The jus that drenches the sandwich – a decoction of white tears and white violence – is not optional and will never be on the side.
Imagine this sandwich is sentient. Imagine it regularly saying things like:
“I watched [insert INSULTINGLY stereotypical and tropey “Black” movie title here] last night and totally got in touch with my inner SISTAH!”
“Could you ask me instead of just informing me when you’ll be out of the office? Of course I’ll say yes, it’s just that I need to feel like the boss and I can’t do that if you keep reminding me that we’re equals.”
“I’m downstairs from your other (completely unrelated) job – can you come give me a hug?”
“Let’s get an RV and go to Burning Man!”
Imagine that sandwich being so generally horrendous that my predecessor at the company almost got run over by a taxi trying to avoid speaking to it, and my successor tracked me down for a professional reference a year and half after my departure (despite our overlap being a mere three days) because they felt it necessary to resign from the sandwich’s employ via Dear John letter as to avoid “emotional outbursts”.
The sandwich is reported to have “great hands”, though, so.
Now, while all the aforementioned professional abominations were adequately outrageous –
(while being nonetheless extremely common in the enwhitened Love-n-Light!! healer community, infected as it is with cultural appropriation, aspiration terrorism, and general oppression.
<LOOKS DIRECTLY AT CAMERA>)
– what got my goat on a fully individuated level was Leeann’s garbage writing.
It was the readership equivalent of talking to someone who’s already stupid and also happens to be novocaine numb and speaking around a mouthful of cotton. Wait, no – it’s like the smell of a truck stop bathroom after a busload of pink pussy hat ladies, wasted on spiked pumpkin spice lattes, white saviorism, and presentational “resistance”, have had their way with it. Wait, no … it’s both. Yes. Both.
Similes aside, I vacillated between questioning Leeann’s literacy and wondering if she was playing actual games; I imagined her cackling as she hacked away at her communiques with the swords of atrocious penmanship, offensive punctuation, and garbled concepts just to see what the staff would make of it. Just a WHOLE mess.
Of course I took over the company newsletter when she asked if I “could make it twinkly and great with your brilliance?”. And of course I jettisoned her nonsense “drafts”. And of course she “LOVED” my original work and was “SO happy to be able give [me] a platform and yada yada self-congratulations blah.” whereas I was simply problem solving because I don’t enjoy being associated with fatuity and I’d grown weary of repeatedly clarifying her incomprehensible gobbledygook for clients just looking for healthier, connected spines – but, sure Jan, thanks for the platform.
And of course my newsletters hit different. Of course client feedback changed. And, of course, Leeann took credit. And it probably says something about how marginalized people have been conditioned to pick their battles and function around clear nonsense that, for all the pre-existing pieces of dehumanizing bullshit floating around that office, it was Leeann’s creative larceny that finally made me honestly truly consider pitching that bitch out a fourth floor window.
Instead, I resigned. We did not part well. Remember the aforementioned emotional outbursts? Right.
So you can imagine my surprise when, a few days ago, out of the blue, and after approximately six YEARS of no contact, save her occasional (and consistently refuted) attempts to trespass into my digital space, she texted me the following:
Hi Ilka. How are you?
I wanted to reach out and ask you for a favor.
I was asked to reach out to people on behalf of Marianne Williamson and drum up support for a fundraiser which is August 12th. Would you be willing to help me by editing what I wrote and making it sparkle with your genius?
I hope this texts finds you happy and healthy.
Love,
Leeann [big heart/l’il heart emoji; prayer hands emoji; butterfly emoji]
I marveled at the dexterity with which Leeann proved, with this single gesture, that she remains predictably problematic and manipulative. Her audacity was almost artful. It took me moments to craft my initial response, a concise refusal that effectively ended my conversation with Leeann, but commenced an internal exchange that unfolded over the course of the next eight hours during which I grew increasingly outraged, because! What would possess Person A to contact Person B, knowing Person B unequivocally doesn’t fuck with them, and ask Person B to do the exact thing that made Person B decide to no longer fuck with Person A in the first place? Also – why was she TEXTING my personal?!?
And then the super smart version of Me reminded me that it’s not my responsibility to figure out what possessed Leeann but it is my responsibility to keep those shenanigans out of my field.
And prior Ilka(s) would have stewed and been disgusted and fired all sorts of energy bullets at Leeann, which Leeann would have sensed on some level, thus creating unwanted energy cords and mirror neuron effects and extending the whole thing for no reason. Also, given that she came for me unsent and in the highest key of Basic, she deserved words. So I fired off a set of follow up texts addressing her toxic past and present behavior, including research and program suggestions, like my very own Cultural Translation services. And here’s the gag, kids – as it was typing, I realized, in real time, that what I thought was a simple by-the-book dragging (a warranted response, TBPH) was really an assignment to simultaneously administer and receive incisive, potent medicine, the effects of which I imagine will unfold for a while and for which I really am grateful.
You better believe I blocked her number, though.
