A friend on Facebook sent me a private message today asking me if she could give her boss my email so he could ask me if I wanted to apply for a part-time job with that organization. I don’t know her boss, but someone else suggested my name to replace the current position holder.
Allow me to be perfectly clear on this point. This is the organization that cancelled the grant that funded my old job. This is the organization that I left as a contractor and that I’ve had a love/hate relationship with since 1998 (mostly hate, honestly). When I told another friend about it, she said why would you give the requester permission. I replied with a snark–something about how smug I’d feel when officially turning them down–but the truth is I gave my friend permission because her boss asked her to get in touch. I didn’t want to make it weird for her and for her to have to smooth over a conversation with her boss about how there’s no way in Hell that I’d ever work with them again.
In fact, this organization could be standing in a lake of fire and I wouldn’t do a thing to put the fire out. I’d flip the bird and walk away. That’s the organization as a whole. Now, the friend who sent me a message on Facebook? I’d throw her a rope. And, the person who is leaving the part-time job? She’d get a rope too.
So part of me wanted to and did the right thing and the other part of me wanted to feel smug and superior. I knew from the moment we heard the grant was going to be revoked that I’d never work with that organization again. I actually knew it way before that time, but the idea was cemented then. I do think how funny it is that almost two years ago no one from the organization really approached me to find out if I was interested in joining them. It’s also funny now that they are in a bind, I’m one of the first people they think of. I guess I left a good impression. Apparently, they never knew my solution for them standing in a lake of fire.