Here in June I feel brave enough to tell the story that I couldn't tell in May. It was too fresh and too still up in the air and I was afraid to talk about it.
In May, the mis-managed company that Raleigh was working for laid of 20% of their employees because their company was losing millions of dollars thanks to Covid-19 and they needed to insure that they would be able to pay for the gigantic building that they are building up on Tech Ridge where they have no business having a building in the first place. And so they chose the highest paid people from every department and cut them. And then they asked the remaining employees to take a 20% pay cut and increased their workloads to make up for the 20% that they laid off.... and then gave the poor remaining, under paid employees NO guarantees of their futures with the company as well.
Raleigh was one of the 20% initially cut, given that he was the best performer in his department and so therefore, the highest paid. When he called to tell me, I just sat there in shock. I couldn't even respond. It was unbelievable. And yet, even though I couldn't believe it, I was in fact, hearing the words and I was processing what was to come in our future. (A future of unknowns and uncertainties globally). The realization that there was a chance that finding a job was impossible because literally NO ONE is hiring right now was slowly sinking in. And my need to go to "worse case scenario" and start preparing myself for that was raining down upon me because that is necessary for me to survive in stressful situations.
Raleigh is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me because as he has been married to me all these years, he has observed and learned all the quirks in my personality and he knew that before he could deliver this devastating news to me, he needed to have all of my fears and worse case scenarios taken care of ahead of time.
He found out at 10:00 am that he had been laid off and he didn't call to tell me until noon. So, in that two hour period he had:
1. Arranged for our mortgage and car payment to be deferred for one month
2. Cashed in a portion of our 401K
3. Filed for unemployment
4. Negotiated a nice severance package
5. Demanded that he be PAID OUT for the trip to Maui that he had earned by being the best in his department, but that we were unable to go on because of Covid
6. Negotiated health insurance for a month
7. Arranged for our mortgage company to send us the $2100 that we had over paid at the time of signing, that we were saving for a rainy day
8. Announced his lay off on his Linked-in profile
9. And he prayed that I would be able to hear the news but not be afraid
So, when he told me, my emotions were these and these only.... I was so SAD for him. So sad that he had worked SO hard for a company and had generated a fortune for them and they just threw him away. I was emotional for him and for his feelings. But I was not fearful. I couldn't be fearful even if I tried. Which I did. But, that emotion would not come. I was at complete peace as confusing as that was.
I prayed and prayed for strength and grace. I wasn't as classy through the whole thing as Raleigh was. He was amazing. He never lost his sense of humor or his positive attitude or his hope. Every time I prayed, I was instantly put at ease. The feeling would wash over me that "every thing would just work out." And I would believe it for the time. Then as quickly as the good feelings came, doubt would creep back in. I would be overcome with the feelings of "what makes you think YOUR husband will get one of the few jobs available out there when there are so many men looking for jobs right now?" "Why should YOUR family be blessed when there are so many families in need of equal or more blessings?" "What have YOU done (and even worse) what are YOU NOT DOING that is making you think you are entitled to blessings?"
Three very long and stressed filled weeks passed.
And then he began getting emails and texts from SO many people that he is connected to. Whether he had worked with them in the past or worked with them on accounts. So many wonderful people expressed willingness to get his name out there. Finally, he was contacted by a man that he had worked with a few years ago at his previous worthless company. This man asked him to come work for him in his up and coming company that had just this week received significant funding from investment bankers and he was in need of a good salesman because his company was blowing up. What does his company do? They provide an ultra secure software for companies to use because their employees work remotely. Literally hundreds of companies were just waiting in the pipeline to be called for demos. He began his new job exactly ONE MONTH after being laid off.
In the meantime, he got to work on the new back yard. In spite of the super un-coolness of it, Raleigh started with the cement path along the side of the house. He said that cement has to be the first step. You have to do cement first, so that it doesn't wreck the grass. It was 105 degrees the day the cement was poured.
My work continued to cause me mental and emotional breakdowns. I have learned so many things during the course of this stint of employment, but one thing I have never and will probably never in my lifetime learn is how to not take things that people say about my business and make them personal. Or in other words, I will never learn how to stop caring. If I could separate my emotions from work events, I would be so much more happy in life. I saw this quote and it has helped me to think a little bit before I react. Nevertheless, I sent out about 25 emails that had my resume as an attachment. And I am acting out fantasies where I violently slam my keys down on my desk and throw the contents of my office space into a cardboard box and walk out with a gigantic smile on my face. I can't see me doing this horrible job for much longer. My little soul cannot handle it.
I mean when your ridiculously careless and thoughtless guests literally cause kitchen sinks to disengage from their mounts and fall onto the floor below and then blame YOU personally for ruining their vacation because you didn't get a plumber there at 10:00 at night to re-install it...
Kinda makes you not want to do this anymore
KK is continuing to improve in her art class
She draws and paints for hours quietly in her room and then comes and shows me her masterpieces
I love her
We had to take 3 days off from working in the yard because there were hurricane like winds
so I talked Raleigh into helping me make the shelves in the upstairs living room happen.
I say this all the time, but they look SO much better in person than in pictures
I really love them
It's nice to have that room almost complete
Allie came to visit for the weekend and it was so good to have her home.
She is so funny and fun to be with
She was here for our first day back to church in several months
It was the most bizarre thing I have ever seen to look at all of the people wearing masks in church and to watch the new way they had to pass the sacrament. I never thought I'd see something like that in church of all places. It felt so weird.
It was good to sing songs and hear comforting words. But, weird nonetheless.
For Father's Day, I decided to buy Raleigh a new desk chair to celebrate his new employment.
I started looking, but felt insecure about buying it for him because a desk chair is a personal thing.
Then out of the blue he said "I think I'll get a new chair."
And I said "oh, good! Buy one and charge it on my card."
And I think he forgot to do that.
So, essentially he bought his own Father's Day present.
How lame.
But, he really likes it, that is all that matters
On Sundays, Papa and Nana come over for dessert.
We talk about work mostly and how we are so frustrated
Today, we made homemade ice cream and planned our trip that we are taking in October
It was SO delicious
Raleigh installed motion lights that light up the side yard nicely and will be super cool this summer at night when we are sitting out there.
Lights it up nicely
We were bringing on a new home out in Hurricane.
The home is beautiful and has a private pool right at the base of
Sand Hollow.
I had Raleigh bring the kids out while I worked so that they could swim.
It was so fun to have them come to work and enjoy the perks of a job that
was very quickly coming to an end.
The saga of being miserable at my job continued. The job has the potential to be the greatest job in the world, but in actuality is stressful beyond belief. The biggest source of stress comes from the owner of the company. He is an egotistical, narcissistic maniac who suffers from a wide range of mental disorders too extensive to list. He is a misogynist for starters and from there it goes into... if you do not drive a German luxury vehicle and live in a million dollar home in Draper, you are essentially worthless and so are therefore not worthy of any respect and you absolutely will not get any. He lives in another world in his head, wherein he fantasizes scenarios that literally are not occurring, but because they are occurring in his head that way, that ridiculously fantasized version is HIS truth. Naturally, he has no choice to act upon THAT truth. He then begins punishing his people for the events that happened in his made up story land and completely disregards reality even if blatant facts are presented right before his eyes. His fantasy world makes him the victim of all kinds of horrible wrongs, where he has to send vicious emails and say vile things and stir up all kinds of drama to protect himself from the made up offenses. He has never made a mistake in his entire life. If he gets called out on a mistake that he has made, he looks around for the lowest hanging fruit (his employees) to blame it on. OR he tries to pretend that he made the mistake on purpose to send passive aggressive messages to people who have done him wrong. He just may be the most mentally ill person I have ever encountered and I have put up with him for WAY TOO LONG. The saddest part of this tale is, no matter how hard I try, I am in fact, an insignificant, impoverished, female (according to him) and so will NEVER be able to win the war therefore I concluded, I MUST concede.
I applied for six jobs one night. I didn't care if they were crap jobs or for less money. I didn't care if it was in the industry or in an industry I had never worked in before. I applied to be an assistant stone mason, for crying out loud. As a result, I had several interviews and I also began to be overwhelmingly recruited by a competitor, to flattering proportions, who had been watching me for the last two years and made me feel like I was some sort of goddess of vacation rentals and acted like I would be doing them the biggest favor if I would even consider coming over to their company to teach them my ways and help them improve. Here is a nice salary, a signing bonus, a guarantee of a raise in 60 days, use of the magnificent facilities, kind managers, mentally sound company owners. I only had to think about it for about an hour.
When I called them to accept, I expressed to them that the only reason that I was reluctant to run like a mad woman over to where they were was because I felt so guilty leaving my 2 co-workers and friends behind on the sinking ship. I casually mentioned that should they ever have openings in the future, I would love to suggest these two for consideration. They went berserk. They frantically created positions and came up with more money to bring them on. They called us in for a group interview the next day and hired all three of us. So, we sent three letters of resignation within 24 hours of each other. Our office of three, went to an office of NONE in 2 weeks. Nothing screams "you are an insane ass clown with endless amounts of unspeakable problems" more than an entire staff walking out on you. With each resignation that dropped, the frantic anger increased and the texts and emails started to flow. An interesting side note I must add is that we are only three of eight employees that have left the company in the last four months. And we are not talking "low man on the totem pole" employees here. We are talking about accountants, heads of maintenance, managers and marketing directors. This story is SO unbelievable.
What does all of this do to a mentally ill narcissist? It turns him into a horrible, rotten individual. It makes him say despicable things. It makes him behave in unbelievable ways. Instead of turning inward and asking what could I have possibly done to contribute to this catastrophe, he became the victim and blamed us for destroying his business and therefore the livelihood of his family. He told us that he had single-handedly made us who we were today. We owed every success that we had ever experienced to him. WE owed HIM. How dare we? Who did we think we were? And so on.
I have NO IDEA how he is going to spin this little conundrum to our homeowners, who have grown accustomed to me and who like (and in some cases) love me. But, I take comfort in knowing that he replaced us with an interesting foursome of 24 year old baseball players. I love young men, but young men in most cases, lack attention to detail, cannot multi-task, have little to no decorating sense, don't typically demonstrate compassionate customer service or don't really care too much if the homes are beautifully clean or just so-so clean. Can you imagine the second baseman and the right fielder of the Dixie St. baseball team setting up a home for a photo shoot or making a bed with perfect hospital corners? Well, I can and it looks ridiculous!!
The four of them were trapped in my office with him with the door closed for over FOUR hours (a four hour interview?) He never stopped talking the entire time while at the same time drawing a graph of all of the company's earnings and projections as well as company plans and strategies all over my white board. He may as well have written his bank account passwords and social security number up there for the to jot down. Keep in mind these were just interviewees, NOT employees. Line level employees should never be privy to this type of information, much less people who haven't even committed to the job yet. But nevertheless, they now know the innermost company secrets. (Not that they were listening, mind you. I am sure they were about to pass out from hunger and fatigue and extreme boredom instead). Surely, they thought on at least one or two occasions "is it me, or is this guy a complete whack-a-doo?" Surely, one of them was thinking.... "if I run out while his back is turned, will he even notice I am gone?" Whether or not they thought those things is irrelevant... they signed new hire paperwork.
He then continued schooling the entire group on what type of people they would need to be if they were going to work for this "amazing company". They would need to read the book that he patterns his life after (SMH) and adopt the following four attributes to their own lives because our company culture was centered around them..... WOW, WHAT???! THAT IS NEWS TO ME!
1. Be impeccable with your word
2. Don't make assumptions
3. Always do your best
4. Don't take things personally
We very nearly felt sorry for them, but kind of couldn't because it's not like he tried to hide his stupidity from them. NO!!! He laid it all out there right in front of them. He literally modeled every psychotic behavior he has for them for 240 painful minutes. They saw it happening. Each one of them had a choice. Each one of them chose to walk into the fire. So, we had two days to get them trained up to do a job that we had been slowly perfecting for three years. They did end up being very nice people. I liked them a lot when we finally left.
Our cute inspectors threw a going away party for us with the BEST food!! They invited the cleaners and maintenance team to come say good-bye to us. This day was bitter-sweet.
Enough about that...
The back yard continues to change ever so slowly. It is simply too hot to be out there. We cannot even imagine asking newly planted grass to even try and survive and thrive in 115 degree weather.
This super cute man turned 40 on the 26th
We bought a delicious cake and HUGE balloons for him
Kami and Brent came to town to help us celebrate him as well. Kami was feeling some work stress too and Brent said "let's go to St. George, so you can be with some people who really love you". What a great idea.
We "masked up" and went to dinner.
Actually, it was really a joke.
Raleigh and I were waiting in the car for them to arrive at the restaurant and our costco masks were on the dashboard, so as a joke we put them on, so it would look like we had turned paranoid.
They drove up and shook their heads at us like we were losers. And they parked.
When they got out of their car they were wearing masks and Brent started flossing. It was SO funny.
Unfortunately, I look 1000% better in a mask.
They hide nearly all of my flaws
We ended the month with Allie's 18th birthday.
The Young Women decorated our front yard for her.
She went shopping and no doubt bought shoes.
I cannot believe she is 18. She is such a joy to me.
I cannot believe she is 18. She is such a joy to me.
I have learned so much from this craziness. But the biggest lesson is just to let go and trust and watch things unfold just as they are supposed to. It's the hardest thing in the world for me. Luckily for me, I have wonderful people all around me. That is the best. I just love my family. I will continue to pray daily for good health and take each day as they come. Super scary and maybe a little bit exciting.
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