...and i am telling you

yes, i AM telling you.. well not YOU you, but a particular guy in our office. i'll paint the history for you so it all makes sense...

this co-director person was hired and he's not exactly fitting in well with ANYONE in this department, let alone his team. he's pushy, negative, and worst of all, doesn't have much respect for women. meaning, he has a man validate anything he's heard from a woman. which really pisses me off, but whatever. i don't work for him.. just WITH him - which is bad enough.

so after he started, he made his rounds taking out various people to lunch. members of his team, other random folks he thought would benefit him and what not. now, these weren't GROUP lunches, they were one on one lunches. he had asked me once and i brushed it off by saying that it wasn't necessary but thank you. apparently that only bought me another couple weeks...

he asked again, 'you need to decide on a day when i can take you to lunch.' i said, 'really, it's not necessary thank you.' and he said, 'i know is not necessary, just pick a day that works.' i said, 'i'll get back to you.' not my best response but again, it bought me another couple weeks. so when i got my promotion he emailed me congratulations and said, 'we need to celebrate with lunch.' i chose not to respond. then two weeks ago.. he brought it up again. i said again, thank you but not necessary. his response this time was, 'i'm giving you the option to pick the day if you don't, i'll pick it.' i laughed and said, 'good luck with that.' and that was the end of it... until yesterday.

we had to meet to prepare for a meeting tomorrow and during that meeting, i disagreed with things he told me, all about how he wanted me to send things to certain people who had no business getting the information... blah blah blah - typical work stuff, but i made it clear i didn't agree with it... at the end of the meeting here's how it went down:

dude: 'so you never selected a day for me to take you to lunch so i'm going to do it.'
me: 'you know, about lunch, i'm just going to say thank you, but no thank you. my lunch is my personal time away from work with friends or to run errands. i don't even go to lunch with my boss so please don't be offended. so i'm going to say thank you, but no thank you. is that okay?'
(side note: as soon as i said, 'is that okay?' i wanted to shoot myself, but it was too late.)

dude:' no, it's not okay.'
me: 'well it's going to have to be. are we thru here?'
dude: 'yes. i think so.'
me: 'okay.'

after hearing his 'no, it's not okay.' i was sooo glad i said it. so, i confided in another manager here who is sort of a mentor for me, who advised i create a log about all these incidents just in case it gets worse. apparently this guy is under close watch due to lack of performance and he's on a short leash with the big boss.

i was pretty proud of myself for standing up and not letting this moron bully me. i've said yes when i meant no far too many times in my life and i'm not doing it anymore. 11 years was enough.

... and i am telling you... i am NOT going!' the rest of this song does NOT apply but that bit certainly does!

girl power! rock on! NEVER say 'yes' if you really mean 'no!' the only one who suffers is you.

it's a hard lesson to learn, but a good one.