We listened to the audio book in the car a few weeks ago, so the plot was fairly fresh in my mind. They followed the book pretty closely for the first two thirds or so. Well, no black spot, and they condensed the crap of of things, but you know.
Then in the home stretch they introduced Friday from Robinson Crusoe, and just when I thought it might take three hours to get through Treasure Island at the pace they had set, a kid summarized the rest of it.
Still, fun stuff, swashbuckling fifth-graders.
The teacher gets kudos, big-time. Em tells me stories of the Feebster on a weekly basis. He really seems to know how to get the kids to ham it up.
Then, in the press of the after, trying to get to my daughter, I find myself face to face with my former employer.
I hadn't realized how much I still haven't been able to process all that. This isn't the guy who shit-canned me, it's that guy's boss. A guy I once admired and trusted. A guy I wrote a personal letter to after I was fired, not because I imagined I could unring the bell: you can't ever be un-fired and the meeting where they tell you to hit the bricks is just a way of informing you of what's already done. But the way I was let go, that wasn't right. It wasn't what I was led to expect by the decade leading up to it, and it doesn't jive with reality.
That, or I'm an incredible creep, and you probably ought to lock me up before I ooze on the world.
This is a guy who's famously generous, but I've learned his generosity is isolated to instances where he might be observed, and it's cataloged strictly as a business expense. If there's no likely profit, there's no generosity.
Which is business, I know. But for all those years, I bought the hype. For that matter, I can't recall anyone seeming to share my faith in his Baby. The Baby was born in 1998 on the heels of several genuine business successes. But it gradually became the elephant in the room everyone ignored.
Thing is, as the company's retirement plan got restructured, this Baby was required, basically, to be a legit investment. And I've hoped it would prove to be undervalued, but as the years went on, I found myself lonelier and lonelier as the guy who believed the annual appraisals of the company's stock were ignoring assets that were about to blow everyone away.
But in reality, no. After seven or eight years, this ambitious plan had completely failed. It was a system that was supposed to take the company's very good one-company system and make it work for a whole industry, yet after all those years, with increasing investments of both our retirement assets and the company's profits, it still couldn't do basic tasks accomplished in a FoxPro code written by an alcoholic Bass Master who's only real job qualification was being a drinking buddy of the owner.
So here's the guy who had every opportunity to do right by what any observer would conclude was an absurdly loyal employee and he's smiling and shaking hands with me like we're old friends. I tried. I smiled, I shook hands, I went on to find Em. Taking a swing at him and having my daughter remember her school musical as the Night Daddy Went to Jail just isn't my style.
Now I'm with the rest of the people I can recall voicing an opinion about how the ESOF was invested: a suit for fiscal malfeasance is about the only fitting approach.
And I'm struck, too, that this man seems only capable of genuine friendliness with someone who no longer works for him.
I know getting fired is an emotional area. But I've examined my behavior and actions, and the reasons that were offered for my dismissal, and I know the only thing shameful about the whole deal was how I was treated. And I'm still paying the price for my trust, and it's a steep price.
Maybe someday I'll have more grace about all this. Or maybe religion will take and I'll find I can forgive what I can't excuse.
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