Of Flowers and Shit

Aren't you grateful yet, you asshole?

I’ve mentioned the Dalai Llama’s quote before:

You can’t have the flowers without the manure they grow on.

But what if it is all shit? You have to take stock of any connection and decide if it is serving you any longer. Basically, is it worth it to hang on? It’s the kind of analysis we need to assess everything from a relationship to a job.

If you don’t stop from time to time, you won’t see what’s there!

We always need to evaluate our relationships and whether or not they are what we signed up for - or not. Every true crime story starts with romantic love. But bit by bit, the agency and choices of the target are reduced. A lot of that process relies on controlling perceptions, and through that, beliefs and choices.

For years I worked as a document review attorney from time to time after my husband got sick. It was a whole new experience in being treated like a disposable widget. We were crammed into either a small basement room, seated so closely our elbows almost touched and exhaust from the garage would come in through the air vent; or an open office space that formerly housed a failed retail business - but still sitting us cheek to jowl.

Not only were we disposable, any overhead costs we generated were fiercely resented. At one location, we had to share a bathroom with a sports bar that used the same back hallway as our “office,” but which was more like a human storage facility. Another project was in a large, open space and filled with about one hundred people. With two bathrooms for all of us. As in, two little rooms with only one hopper in each. Justin worked at a place like that too. It is a management trick to keep people from wasting too much time relieving themselves. The idea is that you will hold it and continue working.

Yet another project sat young law firm associates at a desk at the entrance to the office to time and record our bathroom breaks. Yes, you read right. You may not be familiar with the nuts and bolts of law firm practices, so let’s review the practicalities:

• someone had to tell the young, bright, ambitious law associate from an Ivy League school and a lifetime of success that they had to time the defecation of other lawyers

• someone had to decide the billable rate for such timekeeping

• a partner at a law firm management meeting had to decide that shit-timing was a great productivity tool

• the other partners had to agree

• lawyers being lawyers, somebody probably asked about unscheduled vomiting

• a decision had to be made about unscheduled vomiting.

The natural question is going to be: “But Christine, why did you still do it?” I had a sick husband and needed a great deal of flexibility for his medical appointments. I needed to leave work and not have deadlines hanging over my head. The money was enough for us to live on with his other income.

The Good Old Days

When getting pulled into a coercive control relationship - either with a person or a group - the tactics of the controller prevents honest appraisal.

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