We wish you only the best

I was fired from my writing course. Before it had even begun.

A writing course to help me with my research, to give me the tools to craft an authentic and meaningful narrative - I was excited, in fact so keen I had registered four months before.

So there I was the Friday prior to this week-long writing immersive and about to get the nod on a significant piece of work… very happy.. this was quickly matched by panic when I am told by the prospective client to attend a kick off meeting that is the morning of the second day of the course.

I feel a bit deflated but I know I desperately need the work and I don’t really have an option so I send a jaunty little email to the facilitator to say unfortunately super late notice but I will be unable to attend 2.5 hours on the Tuesday.

I get a lukewarm reply asking me to ring her and that she doesn’t like people wandering in and out of session, I think we can all agree with that.  But I know she is all about female empowerment and supporting older women and I figure with a conversation she will be supportive and perhaps not delighted but supportive.

How wrong am I.

I get what feels like an almost comic response which I quickly realise is a verbal bashing, about the time and effort she has put in, about her painful back and how she’s still running the workshop, that I am just in my head and way too cerebral (something I have never been accused of … in fact part of me wants to jump with glee as I have finally found my Sage), and she has to think about all the other participants and the overwhelming impact of my not being there and the diatribe is pretty brutal.  I share with her that I too facilitate and run workshops and am very much aware of the power of group and the energy that is created. In retrospect I never thought to say what about the way you are treating me now, with disdain and not much care or compassion or respect and I am still one of your supposedly beloved participants.

I say I will double check with one of the Directors…  To be honest I know what the answer is and more important I know what my answer is.   So, now with a slightly quivering lip, I stand at the Director’s door and ask her thoughts if I don’t attend – she’s kind and also pretty clear as I knew she would be.  It is important – it is the kick-off meeting for the single biggest event that has happened in their business for a decade.

I ring the Valkyrie back, all my courage is disappearing and actually what I want from her is to mollycoddle me and say all is good, we want you there and we (read her) will make it work.  Well given I started this piece with I was fired, you kind of know that’s not exactly what happened.  In fact the second conversation I think all I hear is “La La La” but I am aware that I am being berated for not being committed, for not understanding what’s expected, basically for being a naughty girl.  For someone as verbal as me, I seem to have lost any ability to put together pithy and brave sentences, instead I apologise, desperate to get off the call.  Oh here’s another little titbit that might give some colour to her ludicrous response – 50 people have just been massacred in Christchurch – a 2.5 hour meeting in a 40 or 50 hour course really seems an almost stupid, self-indulgent thing to be talking about.

But who am I this cerebral uncommitted fly-by-night.  She finally lets me go with a single comment – you cannot attend the workshop. Period. Full Stop.

Phone down, tears pour down my cheeks, she was brutal and somewhere I feel relieved that I wouldn’t have to deal with her overbearing self-important energy for one whole lengthy week.  And the other side was this huge deflation that something I had been committed to do for five months was now removed from me and I had no voice to stand up for myself.

I am so well behaved I wait until the writing immersive has finished and add an extra day so the prima donna can recuperate and drop her an email to check in with the hope that it had gone well and now my 6000 dollars needed to be returned.

 And then like magic, this woman all about empowering women and helping them find their voices, dramatically loses hers, and instead her husband materializes and says that the diva was still recuperating and that from the bottom of their boundless hearts they were willing to give me 50% of my payment even though I had been an uber late cancellation and they don’t refund these. A cancellation! Me, a cancellation. NO, I was removed from the course for asking to have 2.5 hours off so that I could earn a living.  Well this was not going to fly with our well-meaning thieves and after several pointed emails I decided that I had been brutalized by them for the third time – two calls and a flurry of emails and that I would turn this event into a story so that perhaps me and others could learn from it.  And it got me thinking that one of the key themes from my research is authenticity and instead of having some half-baked ho hum story… here is a real one.

Your actions speak volumes. Your words hum with meaning.  And platitudes have no place so after thieving the money that is rightfully mine, after brutalizing me with your lack of care and compassion, you simply cannot write “We only have your best interest at heart”.  Truth is you only have your best interest at heart.