MLK DAY/ The little things...
I love Martin Luther King Day.
I will admit that I may not have always exhibited the most joyous of reactions to the day.
I don’t usually go to the church breakfast and participate in their ceremonies.
If there is a memorial or some other activities…I’ll be honest…I usually don’t go…
But I will listen to his speeches and take time to reflect on what the day means to me….
It wasn’t until the year I turned 30 …that the significance really began to hit home.
At this time I was working for a company….a Jewish company …..and I was the only black person in the department. When MLK day came…of course I asked and they said that it wasn’t celebrated in their company…I just nodded and was ok…til I got back to my desk and realized that we had in fact had Columbus Day off. Similar holiday right?
Under further investigation I saw a memo from the employee who was previously in my spot and my boss. In it, they discussed hiring me and one of the questions that came up was MLK day. The white female wrote to my boss that MLK was not a national holiday and was optional. He decided against celebrating it.
I will admit…I was actually hurt by finding this thing. Like wow…MLK is actually optional? I guess I was living under a blindfold…I had never thought that people actually discussed whether or not to do it. I always thought either it was or wasn’t done period. Maybe I was just hurt by the fact that my boss was the type of person that would think it was optional.
Needless to say…After I found that memo…I went right in there and told my boss I was taking off with pay. He didn’t argue about it…but he wasn’t happy….that was the beginning of the end for me at that place…
Fast forward to this job.
I’ve written about it before….How I felt like I was a slave on the plantation…
Note to self: Next time somebody says you will be working for X amount of people…ask to interview with all of the persons. That you know whether YOU like all of them or not.
When I took this job …I interviewed with My supervisor, a partner and a Senior Manager. I liked those people a lot! They did not include the other 3 SMs or the M…or the Managers I had to take on because of the abrupt departure of another Admin. Who has been gone since Sept and they have not replaced yet! If I had known the personalities of the others? I would have turned that job down flat…Get the hell out of here…Those people are pains in the ass….is what I would have been yelling on my way out the door!
Of course…that is a whole nother blog post…and it is also moot because I quit dis bitch….Boy I love that phrase…
One of my duties at this job is to keep a calendar of all 20 persons in the dept. I was lucky because the Admin before me had a format and I pretty much kept it. She had added little clipart and other things to the calendar …so I kept up the tradition. In Oct., I had some Columbus stuff and Halloween, In November, Thanksgiving,…In Dec, I had Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa.
This month in January…the art was pretty sparse…I had a snowman (no snow yet in NY), I had a beautiful wreath of Garnets (Jan birthstone), a spray of carnations (Jan flower)….and A small picture of MLK on his b’day with the words COMPANY HOLIDAY above it. I was actually quite tired of folks asking me if it were a holiday with it being broadcast all over the company website.
The Run It Chick….put a copy of the calendar in my inbox….completely marked up with what she thought were mistakes…and added in pencil..
“Oh and it’s a waste of time to add the clipart”
When I saw that I burst out laughing. Because I had already decided to quit…and she didn’t know it yet…. and I was like “Tell dat to the next chick, bitch! I won’t even be here for the next calendar month!”…Sorry for the cursing but that was just how I felt. She wasn’t the one to correct me on the calendar…or to even supervise that aspect of my work.
Who made her the calendar supervisor? LMAO
But then I thought about all the other things that I had placed on the calendar since March. And how no one ever said a disparaging word…and how often I received compliments on that small little duty.
Was it that she was mad that I put his face on the calendar? I mean…Again I am the only black person in this dept. Did she not need to be reminded of him?
I don’t know….but let me tell you I never changed the calendar….I made his face bigger on my version and I enlarged that bitch so every time she saw it she would be mad….She lucky I aint gonna be there for Black History Month!!!!!!!!
This may sound crazy…but I am proud of myself. I will continue to honor his memory…
Even with the small things.
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