Well, a lot of weird things have happened to careers since this thread first ran. (Hello, Tiger Woods, are you home yet?)

Someone suggested I tell this story. And it's all true-- it happened to me.

For a time I managed a local Red Cross chapter. I had been brought in to straighten out a few things left over from my predecessor's very long tenure. The local board had hired me despite-- I learned later-- not getting an OK from the national governing org to hire a new manager. (I didn't find THAT out till I'd been in place 6 months!) It seems the financial and other situations were more dire than I was told, and National had thought they would just close our little chapter up-- making everything neat and tidy (tho non-functional due to geographic constraints here in these mountains).

Well, I set to work to rebuild the chapter from the ground up. There were funds to raise (I tripled them), new board members to recruit (I worked local and parish contacts to do that), and administrative irregularities to make right (I did that and then called in the national auditor for a report card).

One of the new board members had.... issues..... some of them medical.... some of them medicated.... self-admittedly over-medicated.... and, well, ISSUES. I began to regret recruiting her, but.... in Red Cross you never, ever "fire" people if you can avoid it, and the chapter board chair agreed with me that her term should go ahead and run. She never attended meetings, so I figured she was just an inactive member whose term would run out. [shrug] We needed a working board (not a titular board), so I just thought she would take up space another active board member might have done well with... whatever!


Well, one day... another board member came in when no one else was in the office. She blindsided me with a question. She said later she had done that on purpose to see how I took it.

She asked me if it was true that National had made it a condition of our rechartering, that I resign immediately. I had just talked to Regional's manager that DAY (my immed. supervisor), and he had said that the only reason he would recommend our recharter was that I was there! I had made a lot of changes I can't go into here, but he knew them all, because he had helped coach me thru the toughtest ones.

And he had helped me keep the good name of the Red Cross out of the mud in the way I did it, because he agreed with me that we could certainly not raise funds for disaster relief if we made the name of the chapter into MUD! :~)

So I replied, startled by her question out of left field, "No! Why would you think that?"

She then quoted the story she had been told, all about the evil chapter manager who had done this, and that, and more... according to the storyteller's "secret contact at National."

I about died laughing, and said, "She must have an out of date contact. That was my predecessor her contact was talking about, who has been gone now for about 2 years. Would you like to talk to my contact people at National and Regional? and Disaster Services, the Blood Services folks, and the Military Communications people at National-- some of whom have tried to HIRE me?"

"No, she said, "I don't think I need to."

===

Well, the board member with old contacts who had (I guess) been confused-- eventually left the org. Later she mounted an interesting attack on me in the parish, as well. That one was similarly from skewed "information," to be kind about it.


I stayed in the chapter as long as I cared to, continued to raise the chapter's ability to serve the county it served, continued to deliver many of the services personally because in tiny chapters that's how it goes-- and never forgot how ICKY a few confused people can make things-- if no one checks out their icky tale of woe.

And that ability to laugh my ass off when warranted has served me well in Church work, where people can mount attacks for all kinds of reasons, sometimes with the best of intentions.

An early-learned lesson Hardi and I reflect on, often, is that "They know who to call." As long as people who are nearby-enough to know you continue to ask for assistance, quietly, when THEY are under some icky stuff-- you have to remnind yourself that you are probably doing OK no matter how deep your own icky stuff gets.

If the phone is still ringing, if most dogs like you, and if you still win more Solitaire games than the odds say you should-- you are probably not yet the pond scum someone makes you out to be.

But I also learned, long ago, to cover my ass. Because sometimes people stay icky no matter what the reality may be.

And that is one way (a small part) of keeping a career from going "dead." Depends on the career, of course, but another BIG part is doing the WORK, and doing it well.

They have a nifty saying, some of the Black grandmothers I work with. "Check yourself." I'd always thought it meant "hold yourself in check." Naw, they explained, it just means check yourself out, check up on yourself, check over your [whatever], and then git ON with things. Jes' check yourseff girl and boogie on.

~Susan