It’s Like Rubber-Necking on a Tragic Car Accident

The City newsletter went out and with it a contest we are running. It is a request for the citizens to draft a motto using the adopted Vision Statement. Ideas started rolling in one by one, some good, some questionable, and some that showed a darker side.

I was to be the contact for the submitted word-crafts.

We received one from an angry business owner that had, apparently, just gone out of business-- or, at least chosen to move elsewhere. It was an angry motto that he chose to end with the following:

"Also, everyone in the company that had the misfortune to work with Melody thought she was the rudest public official they have ever met."

The "sent" line indicated that it had also been delivered to my boss, the Mayor, the President of the City Council, and the Chairman of the Planning Commission.

I sat shocked, stunned by the angry outburst from someone whose name was completely unfamiliar to me, wondering what I could have done that would make EVERYONE in his company think that. Trying to reconcile what I think of myself with the word rude and mentally denying it, while also questioning it.

I admit, I am not the most socially-perfected person in the world. I cannot sit in front of someone and smile and chit-chat about every day stuff easily. I find it difficult to "strike up" conversations with people I don't know. And yes, if you are rude to me on the phone, chances are I am going to be rude back. Sometimes, I can catch myself, but most times I'm stunned into a stupor and the reaction is foundational.

I printed off the email and took it home to LJS to see what he thought. His reaction was swift and immediate and in the way of a bunch of swear words directed at the person that wrote the message. His take is that my name was most convenient.

The next day, when I got back to the office, I did some research to try and find out who the person was, which I did. He was the owner (may still be the owner) of a local winery. A company that I'd worked with on a sign permit. A company I had FOUGHT for, spending way too much time arguing with my boss and the powers that be to look for a way around the code that would enable them to keep the sign they proposed.

I fought FOR them. And this is the return for that?

Even if at one point I had been rude, it would only have been a sign of my anger that I couldn't get anything to work for them. And even then, rude is not something I am normally prone too.

I keep looking at the email. Obsessing over it.

It's like rubber-necking at a car accident, both out of curiosity and out of a sense of shock at what the world can deliver. Only this time, I'm the one sitting in the wreckage.

I'm angry and humiliated, stunned and sick.

And it ticks me off that, if this was just a random name pull, they scored accurately in choosing me, because I have let it get to me. My OCD-perfectionist ways making it a struggle to release the attack and move on.

*sigh*

In the end, I think I'll just keep in mind how my friend Kim reacted when I text-messaged her the contents. She said, and I quote, "BULLSHIT! They obviously don't know you at all." A comfort, since when it comes down to the bare bones of what matters, I will choose the people that build the foundation and walls of the world I live in as a gauge of how I left my mark. Not the ramblings of someone looking to burn one on me.