WHAT?!

I took a mental health day today. Rather than spending another day moping at work looking all sad, I decided to take a day to do some of my lactation studies, prepare myself for the workshop I’ll be participating in this weekend, and just reset my brain and attitude into a place that wasn’t weepy or self-pitying. I wanted to be able to go to work Monday feeling more like my usual self.

I just got a call from my would-have-been boss. She apparently set up a meeting with Human Resources and her own boss, and they all worked out a solution that benefits everyone and still [mostly] abides by the rules. They’re going to repost the job under a different job title, and HR has said that as long as I apply for it, it’s mine – I don’t even have to interview again. My future boss is going to be calling my current boss on Monday to give her a heads-up and let her know that I’ll be leaving my current team.

I am absolutely fucking floored that this has happened, and I feel awesome about the fact that my future boss fought for me long after I thought that everything was done.

I was not expecting such good news late on a Friday. What an emotionally exhausting fucking week. How has everyone else’s week been?

Mumbling and Grumbling

Today, a white coworker, R, was griping to me about L, another coworker, who is black. L really doesn’t like R and doesn’t try to hide it. When R asked her a question about something work-related, L kept mumbling the response and forcing R to repeat the question. Every time R repeated herself, L got more and more agitated and continued to mumble the answer. It was an understandably irritating situation.

When R told me about this, she added, “I was tempted to tell her to stop pulling that black shit on me.”

I honestly thought that I hadn’t heard her correctly, and in response to my confused look, she added, “Black people do that shit on purpose. They mumble. You know how you can’t understand what they’re saying when you go through the drive-through? A janitor told my mom that they mumble that shit on purpose.”

I really really wish that white people would stop thinking of me as their Honorary So-Intelligent-That-She’s-Not-Really-Black-So-I-Can-Unload-All-My-Racist-Bullshit-And-She-Will-Agree-With-Me Negro Friend. She talked to me, a black woman that she has known for years, about black people and what “they” do and why “they” do it, as if I weren’t actually a part of the group that she is stereotyping and disparaging.

I am not white. I am NOT white. I AM NOT WHITE. So don’t fucking pull that shit on me!

Oh, and to state the obvious: When a black person does something obnoxious, it’s because they’re black and they’re just pulling “that black shit.” It’s never because they, as an individual, are obnoxious. It’s because black people do shit that is obnoxious (and she knows! because a janitor somewhere told her mom! so it must be true!).

I’m fucking ready for my vacation.