Since our company was official bought out by our Swiss overseers we’ve gotten merger/reorganization emails on a regular basis. For instance, we’ve had three CEOs since the beginning of the year. Sometimes they show our division as working along side our Swiss counterparts, sometimes halfway merged, sometimes fully merged, sometimes they show new org structures, more often they send big long descriptions of things I don’t understand, anyway there’s plenty of emails.
So today at our department lunch meeting the presenter ended early and our director solemnly asked us if we had any questions about the big important reorg email our VP had sent earlier in the week.
Deafening silence.
The hamster wheel in my head is spinning. Oh crap, there was a big reorg thing and I didn’t even notice? I’ve been glossing over all the emails that don’t pertain to my insane project for months now. Uhhh, was it that one this morning I barely looked at about how we have to take some new online training? Oh crap, I have to take that online training. This is so major everyone is being quiet about it?
Perhaps to fill the silence, perhaps out of the sheer curiosity I asked, “Which email was this, specifically?”
To which the director replied, “Abby P, bless your heart” and then went on to address the department, “Abby’s been very busy with Project X for the past while so she has a good reason for not paying close attention to all this.” And then he said it was the VP’s email Tuesday that said our division is splitting into different sections one of which is US Biologics, at which point I remembered I had actually seen that email and I had ignored it because the revelation that we’re going to be considered “US Biologics” isn’t shocking considering we’re in the US, and we do biologics.
So that was definitely the first time I’ve been told “bless your heart” outside of church, and outside the South. And it was from my director. In front of the entire department. Hm.
