I was born and raised in Columbus, Georgia. I graduated high school with some of the same people I went to kindergarten with and in my teens I couldn't go anywhere in town without running into people I knew, even though it's not a small town.
After two decades traveling the world as a military wife, I got divorced and went home to Columbus and got my first full-time job at like age 41 at the largest civilian employer in town, Aflac. They were founded in Columbus, Georgia by three brothers a decade before I was born and touring the Aflac Tower was a standard school field trip when I was a kid. (It's the only skyscraper in town.)
In Orientation at my new job, one of the presenters was someone I went to high school with. Not long after I started working, the company Newsletter or something congratulated a childhood friend of mine for 25 years service and I emailed her and we caught up. At some point, the boss of my boss's boss was a gal I went to high school with.
So I generally felt "at home" socially at Aflac. I was also probably oblivious to some of the ways I didn't really fit into corporate culture, having been a full-time homemaker for two decades.
It's also The Deep South, famous for Southern Hospitality, and so when we got a new big boss and some manager went around telling people "Say hi to the new boss and make her feel welcomed!" that made sense to me.
Why wouldn't I?
So I emailed her. And I was the ONLY one who did in a department of probably nearly 500 people.
This is how I unfortunately made her radar while generally trying to go unnoticed at work because I have a serious medical condition and I'm a chatty Cathy and prone to over sharing and was trying to not tell everyone at work about my medical situation.
It's a private matter and when I tell people my diagnosis they think I'm imminently DYING and when I say "No, no, getting diagnosed late in life was very empowering and I'm actually doing really well." then everyone thinks I'm telling tall tales or if they believe me it turns into a circus. There's just no good way to handle it, so I just didn't want to tell people.
I was also really really sick at the time and it was very socially impairing. Work is not the appropriate place to dump on people and expect them to understand your chronic foot in mouth disease or whatever, so I was generally trying to keep to myself, do my job, collect my paycheck and go the fuck home.
I was one of the top three students of my graduating high school class and won a National Merit Scholarship and had the highest SAT score of my graduating high school class, among other spiffy academic achievements. She most likely was initially impressed with some smart, aggressive, ambitious go-getter and making plans for me or something and then kept running into evidence I was a loser who couldn't get myself promoted.
So we had some personal friction and that's really awkward to have an entry level job and have personal friction for completely innocent reasons with one of the top three people in your department.
I wasn't important enough to feel I should impose on her time and explain my situation. I also soon realized I was unlikely to climb the corporate ladder, so I didn't feel I really needed to sort things out with her.
My goal was to leave at a time of my choosing and not, oopsie!, get fired. So I basically tried to avoid her.
She didn't handle everything exactly according to policy. I don't know why and it's really not hugely important.
But I don't talk about her as often as I do to malign her. I talk about her because this completely innocent, unfortunate social entanglement was extremely enlightening for me.
I spent two decades as a homemaker, had an entry level corporate job for five years and I've been a freelancer ever since. My interactions with her cast light on various things, like the fact that even very successful women in America typically still do most of the women's work at home, even if they have unusually supportive husbands and very serious careers.
They also struggle with issues like how to shop for clothes. Having a good income isn't a magic cure for that.
I'm not interested in white washing what happened because the friction we had is precisely what made certain things clear to me. But me describing the situation is not intended to drag her or blame her.
For the record.