Career Manslaughter

I'm the moron with no sense who thought it was no big deal to ask one of the big bosses if I could sit with him. That's the reason he felt weirdly comfortable with me. 

... had I stayed at Aflac, the man in question would have proven to be an ally helping further my career -- so long as his wife didn't die or divorce him, in which case I suspect he would have asked me out and then the whole thing would have fallen apart.

I encourage you to read both of those posts plus A Tale of Two Men. I wasn't really crushing on this guy but I thought a lot about this situation and to this day I have absolutely no idea what I could have possibly done different to not end up feeling like I was staring down the barrel of a gun and wondering how to dodge a bullet. 

I was not trying to network. I happened to pass him in the hall regularly because my desk was near his office and we are both polite, chatty people so we both did what polite, chatty people do and made polite noises at each other.

I was deathly ill and getting divorced and it was my first full-time job and he had "a corner office" but it was in a block of internal offices in the middle of the department and somehow with being very sick and it not being an external corner of the building with WINDOWS making it all special, I just absolutely missed the fact for the longest time that he was Somebody. 

For the longest time. I was certain he was like a tech specialist who made good money but wasn't part of the heirarchy in the department. That he had some weirdo anomalous position that was important to the department but he wasn't in charge of anyone. 

Yes. I'm amazingly stupid sometimes.  It's a TALENT. 

I was weirded out when it finally clicked in my little pea brain "He's in charge of HALF the department, just THE OTHER HALF, not mine. OMG. I'm stupid."

I didn't seek him out. I didn't think he was important and a means to social climb and get promotions. I sat with him on a Saturday because there weren't any other open chairs at all and I was hungry and it's not like I had a single friend in the department who would have been a natural person to ask anyway. 

So Mr. Polite and Cordial made sense to me to ask. Everyone else probably hates me and I don't know why I get that so much but I do.

So no matter how much I mentally reviewed it WHILE I had the job or since leaving for purposes of blogging about it, for the life of me, I don't know "where I went wrong" or what I could have possibly done different to somehow avoid waking up one day and realizing "I'm completely accidentally on friendly terms with one of the big bosses in my department and if his wife dies, my career is in deep doo doo and the only solution I can come up with is Please lord, don't let his wife die!" 

And I'm not even religious, okay?

My ex-husband comes from Barefoot and Pregnant culture. My in laws make my backwards family look like ardent futuristic feminists.

I would have never married the ex had I realized his family was so extremely cringe worthy while he talked a good game about being pro women's lib while expecting me to have dinner on the table waiting for him. It took me eons to realize "I don't have a career in spite of a spiffy educational background because I married this cave dweller. LOOK at what is being done to his sisters!"

So when he casually mentioned he -- as The Big Boss making enough money to own a little homemaker wifey AND he's Christian -- eats microwave meals when his wife travels it was a little like being told "Unlike you in your marriage, my wife isn't literally chained to the stove in shackles and we don't beat and rape our women while telling them to stop whining and crying, you got fed this week and I LET you take a month off before knocking you up again, you ingrate!"

I don't know what his wife thought of him but after telling me he feeds himself when she travels, if his next words had been "She died recently. Would you like to get married?" I probably would have said "Um, maybe. Can we have dinner first once?"

Okay, I'm trying to be funny. Clearly, that would not be an appropriate question. I'm just trying to say I'm absolutely certain he didn't say that to try to impress me about what a catch he was and angling to date me, but my reaction was "Okay, if he wants a date, THAT is enough for ME to say yes."

So I wasn't crushing on this man but I also knew like I don't have a leg to stand on if someone wants to be an ass at work and razz me about being sweet on him or something. And no answer to that works and the more you talk, the deeper you dig your grave.

So I was shooting for "This needs to just never come up in conversation." And I somehow pulled that off. 

AND I was deathly ill and celibate for medical reasons. So if he had gotten divorced imagining I'm his backup plan, AWKWARD. Because I need to say no, sorry.

So if he asks me out and I say no, I should probably start looking for a job elsewhere. And if he asks me out and I say yes, the company probably needs to quietly move me to another department immediately. 

Because he has done absolutely nothing wrong and neither have I, but I have an entry level job in his department. So even though he's not in my chain of command, now everyone is going to be on pins and needles about how to interact with me lest they inadvertently offend one of the big bosses.

I don't have any answers here. I tell the story because he was a nice guy I respected and would have dated if he asked and I wasn't deathly ill and celibate for medical reasons. 

I left the company shortly after some other man with high rank in a different department asked me for a date making me feel like "Welp, there goes any hope of transferring to his department."

That's not why I left. That tale is told elsewhere. 

All I'm saying is when Bill Gates asked his future ex for a date, her career at Microsoft was effectively over no matter her reply and I was potentially facing a similar situation and hoping desperately to dodge that bullet in part because I liked and respected this man and we were on friendly terms through no one's fault, so it would have sucked if he was suddenly single and asked me for a date.

It would be a little like career manslaughter. And I have to wonder how common this is.

I don't have solutions but I think we aren't even really discussing this. I think we should.