A union worker's ongoing tale of a white man who failed upward
they're still dealing with this today
The following post is by anonymous, who will go by the initial R.
It was hard for me to sit down and write this partially because I’m not much of a writer but mostly because my complaint is ongoing.
Ongoing to the point that I’m still reeling from an issue that occurred yesterday morning.
I’m a union worker. I started my career as an apprentice, the lowest of the low. Luckily for me, I had worked under a man whose idiosyncrasies matched mine and I began to flourish. But it didn’t take long for workplace politics to change that so, I decided to forge myself a different path with a cross country move.
Upon my arrival in a new city, I put my talents on display. My teachers quickly took notice. Soon one of them promised me a steady and in-demand role at his place of work in the future. Fast forward to today, I’m working that job. It comes with paid time off, insurance, and even a pension. Getting fired is an absolute rarity and those who get tired only leave when they retired—it’s any boomers’ dream.
But now I have landed in the cesspool of older white mens’ mess, with my former teacher-turned-supervisor at the helm.
My biggest issue is that I work for a white man who has failed upwards.
Due to changes in management someone needed to replace his supervisor. He happened to be the lesser of two evils and got the job.
“The lesser of two evils” is what they said but it’s not what I’m experiencing. I’ve struggled for the past week to write this post because on a daily basis I am subject to his inadequacies as a leader. I am tasked to maintain some semblance of order as his second in command.
Throughout my working years I’ve been lucky enough to work under people who established structure and routine in our work environments. Unbeknownst to me at the time these are things I had no idea I needed as a neurodivergent person. I took these teachings and even began to let them seep into my adult life. I had to.
As a Black AFAB person in my field, the saying “work twice as hard to get half” has never been more true. I knew that would be the case so I did everything I could do to excel. My supervisor, on the other hand, had none of the adversity and or luck that I did but he got double the success.
So here I sit as I have been for the last week toiling about where to begin with my complaint. Is it the issue weeks ago where I had to take him to HR for verbally accosting one of our coworkers, to which I have subsequently been iced out for? Or is it the lack of communication established on a daily basis leading to many assignments being mishandled to which my colleagues turn to me to assist in rectifying?
My complaint is that I’m working under an awkward, friendless white man on his fourth marriage, with poor communication and management skills who took a job he couldn't handle simply for the paycheck and the glory.
He took this job without any proper training. He took the job completely lacking the emotional intelligence (that should be) required when responsible for managing other people's jobs. Yet he runs away from confrontation and any suggestion of exercising empathy. He took the job without having anyone else to lean on outside of the workplace and has begun to create gossip within our shop. He took the job without thinking critically about whether this was the correct, longterm choice.
I wish this was a complaint from an issue that had been resolved but unfortunately this is my life everyday. I’ve tried my best to keep this from affecting my mental health but unfortunately it has. It’s made its way into ruining my evenings and taking over conversations with loved ones. I’ve been trying my best to take this in stride and as a mission to find peace even in the most stressful situations.
But most importantly a mission on how to get this man fired.
Stay tuned.
R.