I'm too old to be bullied...

My mind is working over time again tonight... I know this is not good for my bp... but somehow I dont have enough control on this... I really get worked up over what happened this week...

Was I too soft? What made them step over my head? Is it because I always gave in to them? Or is it because I never answered them back? (sebab kecik2 mak dah ajar, "jangan menjwab"... hehe)

My mind went through the meeting on Tuesday evening over and over again... thinking what I should have said... what should hv been my answer or my reaction...

My memory went back to so many occasions where I helped save her butt... and how many times she humiliated me in front of other people... Why did I ever let her do that...

I also cant stop thinking the statement that she always said to me "Ani, aku kagum dengan kau... macam mana kau boleh buat bodoh je..." And I always said to her... "ala... tu small matter je... aku tak luak pun..."

I think she has said that statement to me so many times she is beginning to believe what she said.. that I am really stupid... Actually I would really like to say to her face that she is the one with the SPM gred 3 mentality... who thinks quantity is better than quality.... who thinks that auditors would be impressed with decorative tagging rather the contents of the file...

Oh God... I have lost count on how many times I have let her get away with her defamation remarks to me... Actually I know why... I didnt want to stoop to her level (of SPM gred 3) to argue on things which I considered as small matter or petty because I believe when tiime comes the evidence or the output will speak for itself...

But was I wrong... I dont know what mandram she used because she has managed to make the big boss with a PhD to bow to her command... she has succeeded to make the big boss look at the picture from her SPM gred 3 angle...

Ok, let me start from the beginning... we (me and her) are heads of parallel departments. And both our departments were audited (well, mine is still as I have more projects than her, while hers finished yesterday) this week. The audit exercise of 2 of my programs and 2 of her programs finished yesterday afternoon and the auditors gave two thumbs up to my programs - my programs complied to all special conditions (syarat khusus) with additional 2 recommendations for improvement (cadangan penambahbaikan). All in all the auditors said that they will write a favourable review about my programs.

Unfortunately, her programs was badly reviewed. The auditors claimed that they failed to find the evidences that are crucial to her programs.

As soon as the exit meeting was over, the CEO called for a post mortem... and all of the sudden, the post mortem was all about the badly reviewed programs, the meeting was all about finding who should be the black goat (kambing hitam) to put at the stake...my immediate boss suddenly brought out issues that the CEO conclusively accepted as the reasons for the failure of the other 2 programs. And the reason was ME...

I was blamed to be not cooperative with her in preparing the documentations and the evidences... hello... we were both put to be audited on the same dates... I had my own set of documentations and evidences to collect, accumulate, filed, labeled...

Actually, they were evidences that were common to our programs but she insisted on preparing those evidences themselves... and her mistake was that she was not looking into the content, all the time she was verbally abusively harassing people of my department on the tagging of the files. She was more concern over the decorative tagging rather than the contents of the file. I did try to offer my 2 cents worth of opinion to her and what she did was she got up, bang a file on her table and stormed out...

And somehow... when her programs were badly reviewed, she put the blame on me... everyone in the exit meeting (including the CEO and our immediate boss) heard the comment was not at all about the unstandadized tagging or the uneven size and colour of the front cover of the files.. in fact there was no mention on whether the auditors were impressed with the decorative file tagging (hahahaI just have to laugh here... because it was really silly)...

Anyway... the main comments were on insufficient evidences... insufficient activities conducted... the lack of knowledge of the people in her own department about their own programs...

Actually the evidences for our programs are of the same nature, except that her evidences should be related to her programs and mine related to my programs. So, when I commented that I had all those evidences, she made a comment that "kenapa tak buat copies of the evidences for me too?" OMG... I think that statement was too much...I mean, who am I to her? her secretary? her maid? And what was worse, the bosses agreed with her... hello.... what just happened? semua org dah dibodohkan ke?

It was very sad to me when the immediate boss and the CEO seemed to side with her...

Even sadder, when I tried to defend myself and my team, the CEO shut me up... she said "I dont want to hear any more explanations from you... " imagine that... in front of about 25 staffs from many supporting departments...

And even more pathetic than that, the success of the audit of my programs was not mentioned at all in the post mortem. No "good job Ani, keep up the good work"... or "congratulations to you and your team Ani"... Nope... none whatsoever...

All the other staff from the other departments (HR, maintenance, resource center, etc) looked at me with pitiful eyes... in fact as soon as the meeting was over, some of them did come to me and said "sabar la kak... kami faham apa akak rasa"...

Once I was back in my room I just could not contain my composure any more... I cried like a little girl whose barbie doll house just got destroyed by her stepmother... my staff tried to console me... but I just could not take it... suddenly my immediate boss came in and added salt to my wound... she continued her lecture by saying that I should thank my lucky star because my programs received good review because she helped me a lot... I was "Ha?!?"...

I thought and thought hard... why? even people of the CEO's office were flabbergasted by the conclusion that their boss made...

Needless to say, the reason why my mind refuses to allow me to catch some zzzz is because it wants me to think of what to say to those "straw women" the next time I see them... many dialogues come and go in my mind on what I would say the next time she asks help from me (she often did that especially in preparing reports)... or the next time she asks me to go out to lunch.. because I know her well enough that after this, she will just carry on like nothing happened... selalunya macam tu lah,,,, and I would just go along with her... That's why she made the statement "You boleh je buat bodoh ya Ani..."

Well, not this time bum... not anymore... in fact the next time i see her i'm going to ask her to think hard on who is the stupid one... budak gred 3 SPM yg keje operator telefon lepas SPM lepas tu belajar luar kampus ke... or budak gred 1 yg terus pegi US for 6 years after SPM...

Lesson to learn here... no matter how high you study (in her case sampai Master) tapi kalau tahap mentalnya tahap SPM gred 3, maka itu lah level of thinking nya sampai bila2...

I'm going to hold my head high this time and not let her ever say that statement to my face again... the statement of "u boleh je buat bodoh ya Ani..." I owe this to myself... Eh, dah macam movie "I'm not stupid" pulak.... hahaha...

Seriously, I'm just too old to be bullied... pelik betul... tak malu langsung perempuan tu... u dah failed dah lah... try to improve next time... what did she hope to accomplish by doing what she did? would it change the auditors' report? betul2 mentality SPM gred 3...

Ok lah... dah start nak ngantuk dah ni... good night people... thanks for reading the thoughts that crossed my mind tonight... :)