fed up

I'm so fed-up today, so frustrated. The boss tells me I should be the bigger person, I should start the conversation with rude woman. That it was all just a miscommunication, she thought I meant something I didn't mean, I thought she was saying something she wasn't saying. Fine, got it, I fully recognize and take responsibility for my part in that. I did not, however, blow up, send a nasty email, and then never try to apologize for it. I have never and would never do that, not to the degree she did.

This is not to say I don't get mad. That same day I raised my voice to an employee who screwed something up, but I never ventured into personal territory, I never insulted him, and a few moments after raising my voice I returned and apologized for my manner. We laughed about it. And that's the way it should be-- we're all going to get fed up and frustrated from time to time, but her reaction was WAY out of line, and her lack of an apology is just as bad.

All I get are excuses from the boss. She was tired, she was stressed out, she was trying to protect a fellow worker (who is a gay man) because he was stressed out, and she feels a natural tendency to protect men like him. BLAH BLAH BLAH. I've worked hard for this company for two years, killing myself, stressing myself out, because I believe in what we're doing and I believe in our people. She's been around a few months and she thinks she gets to talk to me about stress? About staying up all night working? She thinks her relationship with our boss is more important than mine?

He says she feels like we don't respect her, that we don't take her seriously. What does he expect when we've never seen her resume, know nothing about her, and she gets dropped on us to manage, makes more money than most of us, and the first thing she produces for us is crap. Crap. So he gives her a different project. Now this one she is running with, she's good at this. But ultimately we don't totally trust her, and I certainly don't trust her professionalism (who writes 'hahahahhaaha" all the way across the line of an email to a client, anyway?), plus the part of the project that led to the blow up was about money, and that's my domain around here. She wants to spend our money, I'm going to prod and ask questions. It's my job. We're broke.

So we're all feeling a little like he's brought her in because she's his friend, she lost her job, and now he's paying her more than the rest of us, and her output is questionable. Then she insults me. I'm just at a total loss as to how I'm supposed to find my way to being the "bigger person" here.

Don't get me wrong, I love my boss. He's the best boss I've ever had and probably ever will. But he's fallible, and I think this whole thing was a mistake. I just have to get him to see it, and I don't know how.

I go back and forth. One minute I think, "I have got to let this go. I will let this go." And I feel better. Then I think, "No one talks to me that way. As much as my grandfather told me that nothing worth doing was easy, he also would never have let anyone talk to him that way." And I want to have a very frank conversation with my boss.

I know you're all sick of hearing about this. I'm really struggling here, though. I'm trying to get it out of my head. I worked myself up to tears this morning thinking about it. She's not just going to go away after a week-- he's talking about keeping her on full time. I'm so frustrated.