Here I am again after many months.
Freewriting...
I have this almost uncontrollable urge to tell people exactly what is on my mind or what I am doing...or recent life news. I am not unique in this. See Facebook, instagram, twitter posts. Most people have that urge.
One of my weaknesses which I am working on to change is to tell people when they have wronged me. I am learning to hide that in order to preserve the relationship.
Anyway, I am on a mission to delete facebook friends. I had about six-hundred and something friends. I have deleted maybe 40 in the last 20 minutes. When I make a post and people I don't know, or haven't spoken in literal decades (high school mates) read it... it makes me feel weird that strangers read my thoughts, or get updates on my life. If I can delete most of them until I get to around 50, I would be a happier person. There is literally no value to me, to having over 500 people read my personal updates.
Facebook definitely exploited our natural urge to share a lot of things in the mid-2000s when social networking was burgeoning. I like that word burgeoning. It just came into my head when I started typing that sentence.
Corporate abuse
I am really sick and tired that corporate abuse has become normal. Sometimes they are subtle. Often times they are not. In one of my past jobs, someone screamed at me, at the top of their lungs in a meeting of 9. That person, white, was given a gentle warning that "this behavior would not help your career". That was it, as far as I knew. That scream bothered me. Our manager, who was there, later said we should focus on business and technology at hand. What?? We should not deal with that?
2 weeks later, separate situation, I gave a recommendation not to skip a process that my superiors wanted to skip, to deliver a fix to the client. Me and Risk Manager advised that we not skip it. After I gave that recommendation, my computer access was disabled. ?? What?? Why??
If it cannot be explained logically, it is discrimination.
I am sick and tired of discrimination. I am sick and tired of abuse.
Different company, even worse abuse
I really wanted to work at this company. I had messaged the founder/ceo a few times to show my interest. People of the same title as mine interviewed me and recommended me to the founder/ CEO for the role. When I was hired, I had lots of questions about the company and how it operated, I messaged the ceo my questions. He replied but not a lot.
1 week later, he called me to an office and said, apparently, to him, I sent too many messages. He said, "I did not want to hire you..." that's all I remember and I would never forget this.
I remember immediately, I walked outside, I sat on a bench. I looked up and wondered, what a toxic thing to say to a person that reports to you. I drove long and difficult distances to the work daily. I am showing that I want to learn as quickly as possible so that the company moves and makes money. I wanted to quit that day, but I thought to endure. After-all, that's what scripture teaches us.
Back then, I did not know how to quit. So, after a few weeks, I just stopped going to the office. I could not bear going into that very toxic and abusive environment. Then he called and let me go. What a damn relief!
Oh, I just figured out how my "fb uncontrollable urge" ties in with corporate abuse.
Normalized Nigerian/ Lagos abusive language
Part of the injustice of this world is many people abuse one another. I am originally from Nigeria. I lived in Lagos on and off for 25 years. My younger female cousin, who also grew up in Nigeria, is a family therapist. She told me Lagosians are aggressive. Not physically, but in the way we speak.
"What is wrong with you sef"
"What's your problem"
"Ah, ah, why is that bothering you so much"
"Abeg keep quiet jor"
"What is it nau?!"
What do these phrases have in common? They do not take a person's feelings into account. These are not gentle ways of speaking.
For people that are gentle like me, first of all, these kinds of talk made me stutter for 7 years, so that was horrible. Secondly, I became overly sensitive to incoming talk that starts to feel abusive.
When it would happen, I would react, tell the person, and risk ruining the relationship.
I learned in my career, that people in organizations like to pretend. When issues like the screaming incident happens, human resources have greatly disappointed me. They would rather let the person go than solve the problem, especially when they are people of color. They would rather speak to the people separately, not really solve the issue, than to come together and properly sort things as a group. Am I the only one that is sane here?
I have to adjust myself to take even more abuse from corporations in order to stay employed.
That is a very sad statement I just said.
Folarin
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