runlikejoy

Displaced Stay At Home Californian in rural N. Carolina

The Many Faces of Joy

The Many Faces of Joy

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Karma or Chance?

I used to work for a lady we'll call Kammy. She was crazy. We worked for a small company that did Internet Banking and Bill Pay. I say small because at that time, Internet companies were small. She and another lady went through the charade of interviewing me and getting excited about me and hiring me and making me feel really important. I was given a title, a salary, employees, a badge, access codes, banking access, database access and a gym membership. It was a huge career boost for me. I was to report to her.

What I didn't know when I was hired was that she was in a relationship with her married boss who we will call Ike. He wasn't married to her, he was married to someone else. The best part was, they did nothing to hide it. She would openly pout in meetings if he didn't wink at her or flirt with her, she would spend hours in his office late into the evening, they would eat meals together and come to work together and leave together, everyone knew they were involved with each other and they did nothing to hide the fact.

Working for Kammy was a nightmare. She was foolish and petty. She once had me write someone up for offending a friend of hers. She would make mean comments about overweight people or people that she considered "ugly". She made racist comments about people of other ethnicities. I never went to lunch with her, never went to her parties and refused any invitations to socialize outside of work. I found out a week before I was to be fired that I was going to be fired and put in my notice. This was only after I had been stripped of all my access levels, had all my employees removed or reporting to someone else and had my hours changed to the worst hours possible and given more work than one person could handle.

Here's the thing, before I went to work for Kammy, I had a great job where I had tons of responsibility and loved what I did and I was secretly having an affair with my boss. I can't help but wonder if cosmically I had a debt to pay by finding a job in Internet Banking and Bill Pay and working for Kammy and Ike. And if they were part of some karmic debt that I had to pay back, what kind of karmic debt have they had to pay back?

Since that day, I have never questioned the saying, "What comes around goes around" because I know that in my case, it is true.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Happy New Year

I went to dinner last night in San Francisco. It was a friend's birthday dinner and she had made reservations at a very posh and very expensive San Francisco restaurant that featured meats as their forte. We sat under the Bay Bridge and enjoyed the lights of the bridge and the full moon that kept rising higher and higher by the minute. We sat in this beautiful restaurant for 5 hours and ate and drank and enjoyed each other's company.

My husband ordered a $26 dollar chicken leg that tasted delicious. I ordered wild mushroom risoto. We shared a $12 dollar organic iceberg lettuce salad, iceberg, yes the stuff of salad bars. I marveled at one point out loud, how fancy food becomes when you use words like confit, creme fraiche and tartare instead of words like gravy, sour cream and raw.

I and my tastebuds thoroughly enjoyed the evening and the company. I did however, feel uncomfortable and chalked it up to not being used to eating such rich foods. Right around the same time the woman to my right said, "I think Veganism is an eating disorder" I hit on it, I felt guilty. G.U.I.L.T.Y. I have not eaten in a restaurant like this for many years, mostly because I find that the food prepared in my kitchen tastes just as good and is much cheaper but also because we are in a really difficult economic time and spending lavishly on food at a trendy restaurant seems innappropriate for me and my family.

As it turned out, we didn't have to spend a penny aside from the gas money to get there and to get home. And the company and food was lovely from beginning to end. But I still feel a little twinge when I think about how much everything cost and how there are people with nothing and how far those dollars would have gone to feed the needy.

And I think about the fine line between advantaged and pretentious. Am I the only person who noticed that or did others?

Hmmmm . . . .