As a young child I thought I was gonna be a lawyer.  It was the occupation my mother picked for me and the one that she reinforced through all of my lower level academic career. I was in seventh grade I think when a teacher asked what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I told her I wanted to be on the Supreme Court of the United States, I was gonna be the first woman.  She told me that I could not be the first woman she said, Sandra D O’Connor was already the first woman.  I told her not that kind of woman.  Even before I understood the significance of my melanin I wanted to embrace it and celebrate it.

For lots of different reasons I left high school in what could have been my senior year. In hindsight, I should have powered through but in reality it would not have made an academic difference, the die was cast so to speak.

I bounced around working until my first visit to civil service.  I lied on my application and said that I was a high school graduate. I eventually went to test for my GED and stayed it on the first try but I clearly recall lying for some time about my credentials.

I didn’t make it off probation on that first civil service job. It was a tumultuous time for me, I made a lot of mistakes.

I went back to working this time waiting tables. The journey from waiting tables to almost running that restaurant was the beginning of a pattern I didn’t know was to come. I left that restaurant to take what would be my second civil service job. I didn’t make the same mistakes there, I made others.

The others I made though had the peculiar benefit of me failing upwards. Due to a series of unfortunate events I ended up on Oprah and 20/20 and that eventually landed me my job at the Union.

In theory I could still be ‘working’ at the Union. The man whose Ascension to the office I facilitated is stil the President. He campaigned on only wanting to negotiate 1 contract and said he would then make room for the next person. It’s almost 20 years later.

I failed upwards there as well. It was also where I picked up a different skill set, bouncing from departments to learn transferable skills. My youth and my pride didn’t allow me to remain at the Union, and that is ok, because other things happened.

I tried going back to my civil service position.

The old adage rang true though a mind once stretched can never return to its original form.

I’d seen and done things while at the Union which helped me understand that there was more to life than spending the next 38 years pushing the same pieces of paperwork over the same desk to the same results.

When I thought that time #3 was gonna work out with The Man I toyed with the idea of cosmetology.

I eventually got lucky and ended up working at a not for profit. That is where my case management career began. …….by accident. I was there and I was selected when restructuring and layoffs happened to led the group out of that chaos.  I mostly succeeded. I remained in variations of case management until my Bonnie’s stroke in 2007.

From 2008-2016 my work was Bonnie & Clyde.

After the incident I found myself in the undesirable position of trying to return to the workforce after almost a 10 year gap without the educational credentials to secure a position to support my lifestyle.

I could find a ‘job’ but could I find a job that would support me & Clyde.  The answer to that question is no. It’s not that I never tried it’s that so many variables were out there until things changed so drastically that I made a decision which will forever haunt me but it will also likely keep me alive.

For the last 2 years since my return to employment I’ve worked in locations where 98% of the staff were POC.  I realize it was what was needed to keep me from saying fuck this shit and checking out all together. It was hard enough to humble myself to accept the first position at greyhound, it would have been untenable if I had to do it for yt people.

As I look back, that Black woman who seemed to be so wonderful to me as a person, she is a really shitty boss. Greyhound was also a pretty shitty position, if I was going  to be stalled from movement. I knew my time was limited when they blocked my attempt to move over to operations, but I never thought they would fire me. At this point though I just chalk it up to one more employment experience that I didn’t have which I can use later.

VSA was a desperation, Hail Mary, this is the thing I have to do while I cling to this dream.

If I’ve learned nothing over the years new dreams are created when you allow the old ones to go away.

I don’t yet know what those new dreams are for me, but I did let the old ones go.

I am a week into the new gig. I’ve got binders of policy  and procedure. I have a whole desk again, with whole keys, and whole responsibilities.

By tomorrow afternoon I will have completed my ‘shadowing’ and I am off to my own cases.

My credentials are already different than my new classmates.  I have supervisor level access.  I can assign them cases. I can control my work flow.

During this first week of training when I chose to introduce myself to people I got a lot of, oh…YOURE Nicole.  I thought at first it was because I was one of the few Black women in the office.  Yeah, this position is NOT primarily POC and yes the micro aggressions have already begun. It wasn’t my skin color though.  It was the fact that our department head apparently raved about me to anyone within earshot.  It’s why even though I am still learning the process of this organization they are already giving my the ‘keys’ to run the place.

As I look around the new office, I see that none of the supervisors aside from my Asian woman department head are POC. I plan on changing that before its on to the next one.

Anyway, I’m gonna go back to my binder and getting familiar with the work process. I can’t take over a place where I don’t speak the language….yet.

 

Aphrodite Brown