Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Blaming the Victim

Ok, first of all. I am not mad at any person.
Second, I am mad as hell at people.
I am tired of defending my actions.

"Wow, what a tail of woe. But Josh is a reasonably intelligent person, and he is working at a company that has been doing this for over 20 years, this must be one of those unfortunate incidences that are why insurance was invented."

Not
"Josh, you dumbass, this is what you should have done."

I have had to defend my actions far to often. Every TSA person on the phone, JetBlue on the phone and in person. Now my Friends and family.

This is the last time, after this you will either assume that I acted reasonably, or you won't. But I will not defend my actions any more.




Monday, I left on a plain back to NY to to the job that I already did.
I landed at JFK at 10:00 PM
Got to my hotel at 12:00 AM
Left my hotel at 8:00 AM
Got to the job site at 8:30 AM
Worked till 3:00 PM :(
Got to JFK at 4:30 in time for the early flight :), but it was full :(
Got to OAK at 12:00 AM
Got back to work at 1:00 AM
Got the data off of the laptop and the equipment ready for a coworker to use today 1:30 AM
Got to bet 2:00 AM

Now, where was I supposed to wait for a FedEx Shipment? Like the one that had my repair part in it?


That is all, I will not spend anymore time defending the victim.

Yeah, I know, I am tired and cranky and need my napies. But I don't get them I have to go to work and rush out this report that is now 5 days behind.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, I didn't mean it like that! I meant "wait, i don't get it" NOT "you dumbass" ... cuz, you know, I've done some doozies in my time. Fairly high up on the d'oh scale too. Hell, I clipped the side of the house backing out of the damn driveway ... (long story) so I'm hardly one to talk about dumbass.

I'm just glad it wasn't your personal laptop, cuz that would've sucked ass.

jwfbean said...

Sorry if you took anything I wrote as "blaming the victim." Shit happens. I never intended to place blame.

I had a similar thing happen once: I had to do presentations in Chicago, Boston, New York, and DC. I carried along a laptop and a projector. On the short hop from NY to DC, I checked the projector as baggage, it was such a small, short flight, and I was so early for the flight, I thought it would be no problem.

It was a problem: the bag got lost between the check-in and the plane, along with the projector which was valued at $1000 or so. I was in DC for a day, I had to rent a projector with my own funds, I had to delay my flight for a day to wait for them to find the baggage.

All the while, I had to get chewed out at work, by friends and family, and by the airline for checking it in the first place. This after my coworker (who later chewed me out) was the guy who suggested I check it.

Only in hindsight do I have the realization that I contributed to my own victimhood. I signed up for the whirlwind trip. I agreed to a tight schedule that did not allow for error. I checked the projector. And I got chewed out because I blamed other people before acknowledging my own contribution to the problem.

It sucks for you, and I'm sorry about what happened. But dude. Come on. Are you really saying you were 100% blameless?