Ex-Wife's Last Call (and it wasn't in a bar)
Anyone who has read my blog knows I write about my ex-wife, Arlene, a good deal of the time. Now, before you think this is some angry ex-husband rant, you’d be wrong. We get along great; she is a wonderful mother and, how weird this may sound, she is a very good ex-wife.
She is a good sport when I write about her exploits, foibles that occurred both in and out of our marriage. With that, I feel compelled to tell you all about what recently happened.
We both worked at AT&T for years and, in the last two, were both let go (at different times). To be clear, this had nothing to do with performance. However, it had everything to do with “Hey, where can we cut cost and also not give a shit about serving our customer? Oh, I know...”
I retired, but Arlene, for some reason, refuses to stop.
She repeatedly declares, whenever retirement is mentioned, “I will not retire until I am sixty-five.”
I don’t get it, but to each their own.
Arlene has a very strong work ethic, and I know this for two reasons:
-AT&T has a system where employees can text message through their computers. More times than not, when I sent a message to someone who worked from home, their reply might come an hour or so later with, ‘oh, I just saw your message’. Whenever I sent a text to Arlene’s computer when she worked from home, I received an immediate reply.
-After our divorce, we actually worked together.
Fun fact, the same week I was let go from AT&T (the first time) my divorce was finalized – March 2002.
Arlene and I worked together for a while, me as a consultant, when Arlene told me of a job opening in her group. I was a computer programmer and they wanted to mechanized a very manual process they had.
In a very short time, I got the job.
It was a large group, and some people knew Arlene was my ex-wife, while others did not.
Which led to this exchange:
During a work presentation, my computer hooked up to an over head monitor, a screen-saver picture of my three kids flashed on the screen. Arlene, in the audience, casually mentioned, “oh, those are our kids”.
A women in attendance, a co-worker to both of us said, “Wait, what?”
I replied that, yes, those were our kids.
Literally, for the next five minutes, intermediately as I spoke, she kept saying, “Wait, what? You two were married?”
She could not wrap her head around the fact that Arlene and I were divorced and yet still worked together.
It was a fun meeting.
Now let’s jump to what just happened.
Arlene is a consultant now, several jobs removed from AT&T. The life of a consultant is basically a gunslinger, who moves from town to town, until the job is done. In her last assignment, she interviewed with, and was hired by, the CEO of the company.
Ironically, that same CEO was on this conference call with Arlene, and two other employees.
To address one of the CEO’s concerns, Arlene replied there needed to be better availability of data to the entire group. It was a simple request that the people on the call knew was the correct response.
And yet, when she expressed her concerns, the other two people on the call, did not support her opinions.
The CEO disregarded her input and then, when the call ended, thanked the two men on the call and never acknowledge Arlene’s participation.
After, a co-worker told her what a good job she was doing.
In response, Arlene told her, “I think this is my last day.”
Prophetic, since five minutes later Arlene received a call from her contract company – she was let go.
Contractor’s have no rights when it comes to being dismissed, so there is no retaliation. With that said, this CEO is an asshole. To let someone go because they don’t agree with you is petty, and a sign of poor management skills.
The two other men were you typical ‘yes men’ and still have their jobs.
Bottom line, Arlene will find another job (although I think she should retire) and will contribute to another company.
As for the CEO, I’m sure he’s safe in his position, but sadly no one will tell him why his project is failing.
The only one with the balls to do so is my ex-wife, and he just let her go...
