Do you have a Macho Grande that you can't get over?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’m still pissed over a company I used to work for (and has since went out of business, ha ha ha).

I was a phone op taking merchandise orders. Nothing too strenuous, and I did well in my reviews.

One lunch break I was browsing in the storefront downstairs. I heard a security guard (hanging out up front with one of the cashiers) say softly “Check this out.”

He walked over to me and asked me what I thought I was doing. I told him I was just looking around. He looks me up and down and I told him I had to go back upstairs for the rest of my shift.

I got to my desk and immediately an HR employee walks up and tells me I have to go with her to the HR office. I get there and the head of HR, my direct supervisor, and the call center supervisor are in there.

They made me empty out my pockets, my jacket and my backback because the security guard said he saw me swipe…

wait for it…
*
a ten cent roll of labels. *

I didn’t even get an apology. I did get a stern warning to keep my backpack out of the store, and an inferred order to just stay out of the store entirely.

I knew I wasn’t well liked there. But goddamn, these people had nothing better to do than just try to humiliate me?

I ended up getting canned about 6 months later, but didn’t feel too bad about it since they had been screwing me out of benefits (like sick time and holidays) for the last three of those months.

22

Two things…

First, my daughter’s first grade teacher told me during the first parent/teacher conference that my daughter was too “slow” to pass first grade, and wasn’t “smart enough” to keep up with the class. Bitch. I took my daughter out of the school, and into another one a few weeks later. Twelve years later, my daughter (who, incidentally DID pass first grade) graduated from high school, with *H[*I]ONORS * and is now ready to graduate from college. She’ll be teaching high school, so that nasty bitch of a first grade teacher can put that in her pipe and smoke it.
Second, I was a non-traditional college student (ie. adult) and had finished my Associate’s degree at a small community college, then transfered to a large state college. My very first semester, I had taken a Jewish Literature studies class, where we were all assigned a book to read, then to present to the class. The professor, who I suspected wasn’t very crazy about me (not sure why), on the day I was to give my presentation, stood in front of the class, and for 35 minutes proceeded to give a detailed report on the book I was to present! (And, yes, he knew which book I was to present, since he had assigned it!) Of course, I got up next, and basically repeated every single thing the professor had just said. I don’t know what I got in the class as a final grade, but I was so pissed as he stood there giving “my” book report right before I was scheduled to do so.

As a side note, he’s running for some type of local office now. I see his signs posted all over the city, and every time I see one, I just want to rip it out of the ground (but, I don’t). There’s no way I’ll be voting for him.

23

I’d worked two years on a “novel” during high school and when I’d finished, I had three 70 page notebooks full of handwritten chapters–certainly not the next great American novel but it was something I was very proud of at the time. Right after high school when I went through a rough time, I moved in with my best friend’s parents for awhile. After I moved out I realized I’d left my story there in a desk drawer. When I went back to get it, she informed me she’d thrown it out because it had been taking up too much space in her desk. :frowning:

That was 10 years ago and it still hurts whenever I think about it.

24

She must take after her father. :smiley:

Don’t hurt me.

25

I’m pissed that I didn’t get on the Little League All-Star team in town. Each manager sent 2 players to the team. Just a coincidence that one player was the coaches kid and one was the manager’s kid. Back then we didn’t get trophies for just participating in Little League, you had to get in the playoffs or get on the All-Star Team. I got screwed out of a trophy.
Yes I’m 37, why do you ask?

26

I don’t EVEN get me started on that ball of worthless ear wax of a man…

…I never said my typing was great…

27

My Jeopardy! tryout was a bloody fiasco. I don’t even want to talk about it.

28

Rudy stole my Wonder Woman book in the 7th grade.

My grandmother gave me that book.

I’m still not over that one.

Wendy’s constantly is messing up my order.
The last time they didn’t give me my chicken fingers.
I refuse to go back to that location.

I’m not over that one, either.

29

This isn’t a wrong that was done to me over which I’m still bitter, as it seems most of these stories are, but it’s still something I haven’t gotten past: When I was eleven, I came very close to drowning in a dramatic and traumatizing accident. Ever since, I’ve never been comfortable in the water; I can barely dog-paddle, and that’s under duress.

Oh, and re this:

On the up side, now you have several thousand Dopers helping to share the burden of your blind rage.

30

I’m still pissed, and I guess I always will be, at one of my bosses at the first company I worked at in California. I was a huge fan of his before I got the job; in fact, his projects were most of the reason I wanted to move cross-country and work at the company in the first place. The first project I worked on there, he wasn’t my boss, but we hung out a good bit and I had thought we were getting to be really good friends.

Over the course of the year, I gradually started to realize what his “friendship” is worth, as he revealed himself to be more and more of a dick. Really dismissive and smug, gossipy, and two-faced. One of those personalities that just preys on people with low self-esteem. Never would address it; if you called him on it, he’d just laugh it off and say he was kidding, or that you were over-reacting – it was always your fault, and the worst part is that he was always really convincing about its being your fault, so you’d walk away thinking everything was settled. And then get pissed off again, and go slowly insane.

We were already on very shaky ground by the time I actually did have to work for him on a project. Worst year of my life to date. All the personal stuff to piss me off, plus the fact that he’s a piss-poor manager and a complete egomaniac. Always being dismisive or brow-beating, doing stuff like coming in my office and calling me a retard, and then trying to laugh it off when I took offense. And people still just adore the guy.

I’ve gotten a lot, lot better at relaxing about the whole thing. But still, as is obvious, as soon as I think about it, I just get rage again and just go off.

31

I got fired from my first job ever (I was 18–my folks wouldn’t let me have a job in high school) for something I didn’t do. My dad worked at the same place and was the Union Shop Steward–pretty much bullet proof. I was a summer temp employee. I was as close as they could get to my old man. I totaly knew the score later that day when dad got home, and that there was nothing I could have done about it.

But to this day I have a psychotic work ethic born out of fear of being fired due to a misunderstanding. Bosses love the work prouct, but it beats me up.

32

When I was applying for admission to grad school in astronomy, I got into all but one of the (too many) schools I applied to. At the one where I didn’t get in, the professor said it was because of my low physics GRE score. So far, OK, but he went on to say that a really good grad school wouldn’t accept someone with my low GRE score. Never mind that I had gotten into some of the top grad schools in astronomy- they evidently aren’t “really good” schools :mad:

33

In 2001, my best friend – a woman I’d been friends with for 16 years – went kind of crazy and tried to take me with her. To this day I have no idea what happened: all I know is that she suddenly became angry, spiteful, unreasonable, and uncommunicative. Things started going downhill in early June, and by the end of September our friendship was over. I have never been so hurt, angry, and bewildered in my entire life. I am one of those “many acquaintances, few close friends” people, and it’s been incredibly difficult adjusting to not having a best friend anymore. Even harder, though, and less expected, has been adjusting to not being anyone’s best friend anymore.

Anyway, three years later I have still not forgiven her, and when I think about it I still feel much of the same hurt, anger, and bewilderment, but I hope that someday I will be able to let it go. It’s not my style to stay hurt or angry, hold a grudge, etc., and it annoys me that I’m not over what happened yet.

34

I’m with matt_mcl (well, except I don’t do drama queen very well). While there’s been no shortage of humiliations, frustrations and ego spikes (negative polarity) in my life, I’ve learned how to let them go, to pursue more fruitful pastures.

Many long-ago injustices color my past, as they do yours, but you can’t let those evil buggers from then drive your life now. I let them go and concentrate on what can be turned to the good.

Could I go on with a list that inspires naught but despair? Sure. But I choose not to look at it that way. Only recently my evil office manager (who is my corporate equal) moved me from a larger office (I’m a District head) to a smaller office. He did it out of spite, and because he could. It pissed me off, but I’m just not going to let him get a dime back on a nickel. I don’t really care.

And that’s nothing compared to what the history holds, if I compare my experience to what is bared here. Let it go, folks, the future is what counts.

A tip of the hat to ya’, matt.

35

Don’t get me wrong. I could work up a congenial bitterness over the kid who cheered when he found out I would be leaving the elementary school…

…or the kids who mocked my breasts in gym class while we were playing shirts and skins…

…or the teacher who wheeled on me with no warning whatsoever and bellowed “GO!!!”, and when I looked at him dumbstruck, screamed “GO!!!,” so that I bolted from the room in tears, to general merriment, and then called me back to explain he was giving an example of an imperative verb…

…or the teacher who intentionally humiliated me, twice, by picking up my desk and pouring it all over the floor…

…or the people who intentionally harassed and excluded me all the way through middle school…

…or the chemistry teacher who made me sweep up mercury with a broom and tried to get me to drink hydrochloric acid…

…or the kid who laughed when I burned myself on a piece of hot glass tubing…

…or the kid in the same crew as the above kid who shoved me as I came out of the bathroom where I had been pouring cold water on the burn…

…or the kids who kept flexing forks at lunch to make them hot, then pressing them against my skin…

…or my dad’s constant alteration of the rules with no warning whatsoever, his violent outbursts and screaming at us, his humiliation, insults, and unreasonable expectations…

…or the gorgeous boy in grade 11 who came on to me in order to try to make me respond so they would be able to mock me for being queer.

All this to say that I may have gotten over these things… but I haven’t exactly let them go.

36

Well matt, I’m sure you appreciatte that there’s little to nothing I could do about your upbringing.

I’m just trying to communicate with you. Good luuck, good fellow.

37

blinkblink* I’m sorry, you seem to have taken offence at something I said and I’m afraid I don’t understand. I certainly wasn’t criticizing your position or sniping at you in any way. I’m very sorry if I offended you.

38

No problem, pal.

39

I can’t believe I didn’t include the follow up to my story. Like anyone who feels they have been wronged I fantasized about revenge for months afterward. I plotted what I would say if I ever saw this girl again, in my fantasies my tongue lashing would have her quivering like jello with shame.

Unlike most people in this situation I had my chance. On one of the coldest winter days I had to schlep my daughter away from campus to the seedy laundromat in one of the many bad sections of Worcester, MA. As I was finishing up, she walked in. I know she wouldn’t recognize me, but I sure as hell recognized her.

She looked awful. She had an tiny infant bundled up and was dragging a bag of laundry. She was with an elderly woman that I assume was her grandmother. I have never cared for confrontation anyway, and I couldn’t bring myself to get into a confrontation with two young children, a harried mother, and an old lady present. I just left.

To this day I am torn over whether I was a puss for not saying anything, or if I should have said something. I was so angry that there was no chance that I was going to say anything calm and reasonable. It was either let her have it, or leave.

40

I, ladies and gentlemen, am an idiot. I simply will tell you what I think if you ask me. I just can’t remember that there are some people who you should never tell the truth.

Way back in the dark ages, I worked as a landfill inspector. Not a glamorous job, mind you, but I liked it. Lots of travel, lots of time outdoors, with occasional nastiness. But as a young state employee, I felt I was making a difference[sup]tm[/sup].

Then I got a new boss. A nasty little toad of a man who, although married, began taking an untoward interest in my office mate. Said office mate was a very bitter, angry single mother who always seemed to be in crisis mode and had to spend vast quantities of time in Toad’s office to keep her facilities in line. As people began to spread tales of impropriety, I defended my office mate. She was far too smart to get involved with a married man. Soon after, I got a new office mate and she got a private office. But she had been there 9 months longer than I so she deserved it, right?

Well in a few months rumors begat official inquiries, and Toad called all his flock in to his office, privately, to explain the situation. He explained to me that he was in no way involved with Her and was not sneaking around on his current wife. I responded, “Good. I’m glad to hear that you two aren’t involved. She deserves better than to have to sneak around with someone. She deserves someone who will be proud to be seen with her.” Did I mention that I am an idiot?

Toad didn’t take my comments well (as they were having an illicit affair - She was soon transferred to another supervisor) and he began to take his anger out on me. Public humiliation. Telling facilities to just ignore me. Refusing me access to computers. Screaming at me in meetings. It was not pleasant so I found another job, one where I have been trapped in the office and will never see a promotion. And I haven’t spoken to the Toad in over 10 years. He lost his wife and dumped the office mate, who has never gotten over him. She keeps telling people that I started all the rumors, it’s through my interferance that she has never been promoted and how I should never be trusted.

I actually feel sorry for her, living in a bitter nasty dark little world of her own making. But him? Although I do not wish Toad dead, I do wish him to have a prostate the size of a canteloupe so he will know painful urination for a very long time.