To Anonymous

I've had a visitor recently...to this blog, no less! I always love having visitors, even anonymous ones.

Here's what this person has had to say:

• Karma is a bitch, isn't it??? July 22, 2019 at 10:46 PM
• What goes around, comes around. Karma is a bitch, isn't it. July 22, 2019 at 10:56 PM
• Stop boasting about who you think you are. July 25, 2019 at 1:04 PM
• :( July 29, 2019 at 7:35 PM
• Your next "Happy Easter" won't be from Modesto. July 23, 2019 at 2:00 PM
• You seem to be pretty full of yourself. Boastful is not a good trait in anyone. July 23, 2019 at 1:59 PM
• Go back to Utah August 2, 2019 at 8:23 PM

I think I have a pretty good guess about who this person is given the timing of these comments. This coincides with the end of my run as HR manager with Nestle in Modesto. I know that I didn't make a ton of friends out there and as HR manager it's not uncommon to have unpleasant conversations, but it's honestly a rare thing for someone to take things so personally and I know that I don't have many enemies... 

...Except for one person, and if this person comes back I just have to say that I'm sorry that you blame me for all of your troubles. 

As I was thinking about who this person could be, it was kind of hard to pick out who it might be. It had to be someone that I came across at work. Could it be the guy that I had to terminate about 2 weeks before I put in my notice? I don't think so. He and I had a good relationship previously and judging by his reaction when I asked him to come back to the office to tell him in person he didn't seem to take it personally. He was practically bouncing out of my office when he left. Also, he just doesn't seem to care that much about me. We were friendly, but I don't see him being the type to hold onto these kinds of feelings like this and behave passive-aggressively in this manner.

Maybe it was a guy from first shift who called me smug. I couldn't ever win with him, but I'm also pretty sure he's not the type to spend time on me away from work and also not the type to be searching out a personal blog. Just not savvy in that way. 

Then I remembered. I remembered the email that came months after she had left the company blaming me and unloading on why she felt like I didn't champion her cause. She chided me for my faults, of which, there are several. I wasn't ignorant to that in my time in that role, or even now. What surprises me is that she would harbor these feelings to send me this note months after the fact, but in looking at these comments and when they came, they had to come because she had found out about my impending departure from Nestle Modesto. I put in my notice on July 16th and left the company on July 30th, and these comments started on July 22nd through August 2nd. 

First, it's sad. It's sad that this person would obsess about me, because honestly why would anyone let someone else hold that much head-space in their mind? I don't have time for that for anyone. I really can't understand it. This person came back to my personal blog to comment on my thoughts about Easter Sunday, about my memories of raising my kids to spit out vile. It's pathetic. This person came back 7 times across 5 unique visits to my website, obviously looking for some kind of update. Today is December 10th and this is the first I'm seeing it, and to do it anonymously is cowardly. If you have a problem with me, then just say it and own it. Maybe then you could at least afford to be done with it and move on in your life. 

Second, from what I understand, I'm pretty sure she still hasn't found a job since she was let go, so I get that she's maybe still stewing and having too much time to let this fester and continue to boil. 

Third, some comments for this person. You lost your job because you failed to perform. If you think it was my decision, it wasn't. The business came to me and told me that we had to reduce our headcount and told me it had to be you. I'm sorry it worked out that way, but it's the truth. You blamed me for not fighting for you, but I'm the reason that you had a job more than a year after I joined the Modesto team. It was the first thing that was brought up to me was that they were wanting to reduce your position. I made the case with my functional HR leaders and with my business leader that we needed to keep you on. I was winning that case until we got a new business leader and had a couple of bad months in the factory and I couldn't sell the case anymore. 

I was the one who made the case that they should keep you on board, that up until that time you had been doing a fine job as HR support and that you were worth keeping on to pilot the new remote HR staffing model. Once you changed positions you were no longer my employee and I didn't have any ownership over your work anymore. And from that point you declined in your performance. You stopped serving my needs, but I thought that was limited to me because I thought maybe you were just mad at me still. I came to learn later on that you also weren't meeting the needs of the other sites that you were supporting. You had a probationary period where you were being evaluated and you assumed that you would stay on after that, but you blew it. 

There may have been other things going on so I won't take all of the credit, but given the email you sent me later it seems obvious that at least some part of you let your resentment toward me affect your performance. You stopped serving your customers at my site as well as other sites, and it was bad enough that the field HR manager started hearing about it from other people beyond myself. 

And you know what else? They kept the position and filled it with someone else, so it's not like the job went away.The person who took it on knocked it out of the park. It was night and day the difference between the level of service she provided vs what you were able to offer. 

So you were exited from the company, and then you sent me the email. Somehow you thought that I would keep it private like I had some kind of obligation to you, but did you think that your email would endear me to you? Of course I was going to share it with my boss, who then ended up sharing it with others, but that didn't really concern me. You were still keeping tabs on our company, wanting to come to employee events, and I didn't think it was appropriate to keep that in the dark from him given that you still wanted to interact with our employees at our place of work. 

When I put in my notice, you raised your hand, but you had made your own bed. Omar and everyone else in the organization had seen enough and I didn't have to share my thoughts about you taking on the job. 

Flash forward to now. Karma. Things have a way of working out, huh? I couldn't be happier in Texas and in my new role. I support an HR team of 4 people, and own a site of 500+ employees. My family is thriving and I just had a check-in with my boss and she seems pretty pleased with how things are going. All while you are left reading about my life and still looking for work.

Says a lot about karma for the both of us, huh?








If it's not her, then there's one other person I could see making these comments. He's petty and vicious enough, and passive-aggressive to the point where it was in his style to make comments on my personal blog. If it's you, maybe you should go back to work. Retirement doesn't suit you, and I think you always knew that. 

Go pound sand, whoever you are.