FOMO Meet Up

I just had a quick catch up session with some of my ex-colleagues from my previous job this evening and I haven't had a catch up session like this in a very long time, and by that, I mean the type where you meet up once and then tell yourself never again.

Today's meeting just reminded me why we have never ever hung out after work before, and that is because we were nothing beyond just colleagues at work. Our conversations in the past revolved purely around work related happenings and gossips, and with our common denominator out of the picture, since all of us are now working in different companies, the conversations that we had just felt empty and hollow. We spoke for the sake of speaking, to fill up the silence in between our pointless conversations, and the struggle to find new topics between conversations could be felt, it just didn't flow smoothly.

Compared to the meeting I had with another group of ex-colleague from the same company (a different clique), that was 7 hours of just talking and laughter, genuine catching up and just being around a group of people who truly enjoyed each other's company, with the meeting this evening however, I honestly didn't get the same vibe at all whatsoever.

For this meeting, I was meeting 2 of my ex-colleague for Ramen at Funan.

First we have Alan (just gonna refer to him as that) who was the reason why we were eating ramen because he loves ramen. We went to Funan because I hadn't visited the new Funan before, so this was sort of my foray into visiting the mall for the first time since their revamp from their "IT Mall" moniker days.

Just some background.

Alan was my Supervisor in the furniture store and I was lucky to have been in his good graces whilst I was working there, however, if I were to be very honest, my impression of him has never been positive because he has always generally been quite unpleasant. 

He was unceremoniously terminated during his time there because he was reported to have been verbally abusive to one of the staff, plus he also has an attitude problem that the company had been putting up with because he was efficient at doing his job, however, after they found out his attitude problem was causing a staff member a lot of distress, they could no longer put up with that and ended up firing him. 

Another ex-colleague who joined us is Ivy (just gonna refer to her as that), she is our ex- Customer Service colleague who was pretty good with her job. I will say, I was more interested in catching up with her because I did enjoy her company when we were working together. She is quite close to Alan during our time at the furniture store, and this meet up was sort of initiated by her after she came across photos of my meet up with the other group of ex-colleague on Facebook. I guess she was feeling a bit FOMO and wanted to have her own version of that with us.

The deal with Alan and Ivy is they do not like our ex-Manger, whom I am still friends with and who had been part of the the earlier meet up, because they think our ex-Manager is a very manipulative individual who got Alan and our Operations Manager; who had just joined the company for less than 2 months then, terminated.

The simple truth is Alan got himself terminated as a result of his own actions. 

The Operations Manager got terminated because he was going around character assassinating my ex-Manager whilst she was on her 3 weeks holiday in Europe and the main reason was him going on a power trip and boasting to all of us that he had the authority to get anyone terminated, including ex-Manager fired if she was not performing. 

Everyone in the company knows Alan has a horrible working attitude, and I can say with confidence that none of us really missed him and was sad that he was gone, in fact, the environment in the store improved after he was terminated, we were more concern about who would take over his responsibilities.  

The Operations Manager on the other hand, his stay was too short to really leave anyone with any lasting positive impression, and the fact that he was already going on a power trip and engaging in character assassination really didn't help the final impression he had made on everyone else, which also goes to show how dangerous he was as an individual if power had been given to him. 

So with that short background out of the way, the reason why this meet up was horrible was because I did not enjoy Alan's company, and Alan and Ivy still thinks that our ex-Manager is the villain and extremely manipulative, whilst the Operations Manager who got terminated was a poor victim of her manipulation, which is a view that I do not agree with at all whatsoever. 

Since I am still friends with my ex-Manager, and will go so far as to say that I am a lot closer to her than I am with Alan and Ivy, listening to them shit talk about her was quite an uncomfortable experience for me, and then to have them paint the Operations Manager as the innocent victim, when he, along with my Supervisor, was the one who instigated this whole thing, was the eye-roll on top of the cake.

And it's not their completely out of touch character analysis of both the managers that was bothering me, it was the way Ivy and Alan kept saying shit like...

"I am very good at judging a person's character."

"My sixth sense / perception for this kind of things is very sharp."

The both of them are so far off the mark, yet are still so confident in their judgement of somebody's character, that was what really sealed the decision for me to never want to meet up with them again. The fact that they are aware I am still friends with our ex-Manager, but then still go on this whole rant about how she is a horrible person is what really irked me. 

Alan was the one who was feeding all the negativity to the Operations Manager, and the Operations Manager was the one who then took action and began his smear campaign against her.  So for Alan to be blaming our ex-Manager for the shit he started is honestly mind-blowing.

You made the bed that you and the Operations Manager ended up laying in.

They are both in so deep in their own echo chamber of what they think happened and I am just standing from the outside peering in. I tried to pull Ivy out of the echo chamber when we were both on our way home together because I know it's pointless to talk sense into Alan, he is his own echo chamber, but Ivy just couldn't see the light as well and decided to just remain in that echo chamber as well. At some point, you just need to learn to let go, so I let her go and left her in her own delusions.

We were discussing about a situation that happened due to her resignation.

-----This how the event transpired as per my recollection----

Operations Manager joined us.

Ivy submitted her resignation letter 2 weeks later. (and proceeded to serve her 1 Month Notice)

Operations Manager and Manager started to look for new hires for the Customer Service role

Ivy's one month notice was ending soon and they still couldn't find a replacement.

Manager was going on a trip soon and needed someone to fill that role while a replacement was being looked for.

I was suddenly pulled into a meeting one day and my Manager told me as we were walking to the back office for the meeting that whatever was going to happen was not her idea, and that it was entirely the OM's idea. 

During the meeting, I was officially designated as the Temporary Customer Service personnel. I was extremely upset with this decision. 

My Manager had to leave the right after the meeting because she had to pack her luggage to go on her Europe trip the next day, so when it was just the OM, my Supervisor and myself in the meeting, the OM told me it was my Manager's idea to make me the temporary Customer Service Personnel, he told me he wanted to take on the position, but my Manager told him he shouldn't, and that he should delegate this role to someone else, that's why I was picked.

I took that as the truth because I was very upset at that point and couldn't really think straight, I just needed someone to blame, so I took what the OM said at face value and blamed it on my Manager.

My Manager then went on her 3 weeks trip, so I didn't have a chance listen to her side of the story, I believed whatever the OM was telling me, and he was feeding me a lot of  information about her that painted her in a negative light, this was when I started to look at my Manager differently.

Ivy's one month notice finally ended and she left the company. 

Prior to Ivy's last day, my Manager arranged for the 3 of us to have a Zoom meeting to run through the list of Customer Service cases, she was in Europe at that time, so she was Zoom meeting us at 2 - 3 am in the morning on her side.

Luckily Ivy was able to clear most of the outstanding Customer Service related cases, so I didn't have to do much aside from sending some follow up emails to our suppliers about missing parts and what not. I CC-ed my Manager in those emails as well so she could follow up when I went for my Taiwan trip.

I went for my Taiwan trip before my Manager came back, so I didn't get a chance to have a proper conversation with her until my own trip ended.

On the first day of work after my return from the trip, I was working the same shift as her, so during closing, I decided to clarify what exactly happened before the meeting that made me the Temporary Customer Service Personnel, I told her my OM's side of the story and that was when she started tearing up.

She got very emotional after she learned what was being told to me by the OM because according to her, she was the one who offered to take up the role temporarily, but the OM insisted that she hand it over to me, so she started crying because she felt really indignant and I felt really bad for her.

My goal was to listen to her side of the story because I think it's only fair for me to listen to both sides. I felt horrible for having this negative impression of her for the past 3 weeks she was in Europe, so I kept her up to date with what had transpired during her 3 weeks Europe trip in the company, mainly with the OM had been saying about her to everyone, and the very next day, she brought this issue up to our boss. 

The next day at work, I was suddenly pulled aside by the OM, who confronted me and asked me why I said what I said to the Manager, he told me he was very disappointed in me and I felt bad at that time because I thought I had broken his trust. But when I think about it now, if what he had been telling me was the truth, then there should have been no reason for him to worry about anything, if what he had told me was the truth, then the one who would be in trouble would have been my Manager.

He told me he will get my Manager to have a chat with all of us, including my Supervisor, and I didn't realize it at that time, but now, I come to find out he was trying to gang up on her, it would be a 2 vs 1 scenario because as I have stated, my Supervisor does not like her and they would have definitely ganged up on her. Thankfully in the end, she didn't get involved in that and waited until our boss came by.

Both my Supervisor and the Operations Manager got terminated that very day.

My Manager ended up actually taking over the Customer Service role until the new replacement was found, and her actions spoke for itself, that's why I chose to believe her and not my Operations Manager, who was really just all talk and no action.

--- this is what happened----

It is a long list of event and at that time when I was talking to Ivy in the train to try and explain that the OM was the bad guy and not our Manager, I couldn't remember the full timeline, but I essentially tried to explain to her that the decision for me to become the temporary CS was the OM's decision, she said it wasn't because the decision to make me the temporary Customer Service Personnel was decided before the OM joined us, which completely wrong.

She threw her letter AFTER the OM had been with us for 2 weeks.

 

So all that shit transpired after the OM had been with us for a little over 2 weeks, whilst she was serving her 1 month notice, and it was happening towards the end of her notice period, which meant the OM had already been with us for a month. He was still "new", sure, but he had been within the company long enough to feel comfortable flaunting his authority of what he can do to the Manager, and was comfortable enough to be painting the Manager is a very bad light.

Anyways, since I couldn't remember the exact timeline myself during our MRT ride home, I couldn't correct her but now that I have the time to sit down and recollect the events, she was wrong.

But to go back about what we did during the meet up aside from the toxic gossips and empty conversations that we were having.

We met for ramen, the ramen sucked. This was agreed amongst the 3 of us and I guess it was a sign of how the rest of the meet up would be like.

We walked around Funan to look for a place to sit and chat, most of the stores were closed by then and good thing we didn't because I literally have no idea what we would talk about. So we decided to walk to Raffles Place instead, reached there feeling a bit sweaty because it was quite a humid night and ended up not getting anything. I did takeaway a slice of chocolate brownie, but that was about it. So we essentially wasted all that energy walking to Raffles Place from Funan for nothing.

The walking dynamic was also a bit odd, because we weren't necessarily talking and walking as a group, Alan was in front, I was in the middle and Ivy was behind me, we would make passing comments once in a while, but we never really had a proper conversation. From an outsider's perspective, we probably just looked like 3 strangers walking very close to each other in a straight line, or at least that's how it felt to me.

I also really don't like the dynamic I have with Alan, and I honestly never did. Whilst I am grateful to have been in his good graces during our time as colleagues, I can tell from his body language that he has a superiority complex, so he doesn't treat me or Ivy as equals, and he was exhibiting the same attitude towards us during this meet up, which helped me realize that I never have and never will truly see him as a friend. 

When I waved goodbye to him as Ivy and I had to switch trains, he didn't even bother to look up and to say goodbye, he didn't even bother to acknowledge me at all, he was just glued to his screen, focusing on his game and that's just who he is as a person, someone who lacks the capability to be respectful to others. 

Anyways, I felt mentally drained after that, and the train ride back with Ivy was also frustrating, to listen to her just being wrong about everything and then still have the confidence to think she is right and is a good judge of character. 

The delusion is honestly quite a sad sight to behold. I am still open to meeting up with Ivy if she ever wants to have a meal together, but I am done with Alan. He radiates really negative energy, so I really do not like to be around him and I just didn't feel good after hanging out with him because of the lack of respect, he gives off the vibe like he is doing me a favor by agreeing to hang out with me, and that I should be grateful for his presence when the truth is, I would rather he not be in my presence at all.