A lot of people have wondered why or if it was Covid that led to something. Maybe within me or with others? Did I become antisocial, or what was it?

One of my first jobs upon returning from abroad was for The Great Courses, and this was as a call center representative. Sure, I was not speaking Chinese or German, but I was leading the company forward as well as its customers, and I was getting promoted as such. My only concern was -- am I going to learn anything answering only calls, but, in fact, The Great Courses provided all of my scholastic needs, and for free. 

The Call Center / Customer Care Center / Contact Center a la...what have you...was fine and dandy, but serious developmental issues on my behalf began when I moved to Marketing and started working under one Lisa Simpson. The woman and her department were paid and talking fools I soon learned, and I thus spent 5 of my life wondering when they would stop gossiping and notice me.

I guess I should have taken the bait when Lisa threatenly asked me if I had applied for Lindsey Olson's old job. I guess I should have turned the other check when Allison Lesson (of Virginia Tech and therefore good at Finance? and also my boss's same age) went and whispered in my bosses ear in a very assuming way. I mean, there was a meeting, but could have The Secrets of The Old Testament course timeline been changed to that of Calculus? I didn't get what was so funny.

Apparantly neither did their data. For neither Allison Lessor nor Lisa Simpson nor anyone in the Marketing Department provide so much as a snitpit of information that would improve my life. Not once. I guess if I learned anything, it's that getting a degree in Business or Finance leads to such snobbery. I've learned that many times hence.

I can get into the philosophical qualms of all that later. But the matter at hand is my lay-off and how unjust it was.

First and foremost, 

 If I had my old work PC, then I could delineate the many reasons whereon and how this role was stupid as fuck. It was gaslighting at its finest, and not to mention the most fine-tuned sexism, because of Lisa Simpson. 

I had strike marks on this woman. I had asked to learn HTML from Abdallah, who claimed I was fully capable of writing these emails, but because she was a woman and she didn't like my degree of knowledge above hers, she went ahead and hired a "SHYAM" Shyam, that is right, a gentleman who quickly quit and could show neither the acumen nor degree of devotion to The Great Courses (AKA...YOU GET IT) that I did. I was there and ready to learn.

Later, I had to leave Lisa Simpson's sexist ways to go to another aspect of the department, and this time under another dumb-ass BRAD BROWN. He didn't realize I already knew everything about the company's pricing, matrices, and that I had studied up on virtually everything. Both he and Toya were virtual dumbasses, yet because I was their junior, I had to bow down and do their job for them. AKA - they couldn't get the 'complex' catalogs we had versus the offers we had on such catalogs, so I served as a mediator and said virtually nothing during our meetings aside from key words so that these dumb fucks could finally understand what we are trying to achieve.

In the meantime, they downplayed me as a dumbass. And taught me little to nothing.

Finally, I got laid off after training a new Email Marketing person after I had had enough with Lisa Simpson's idiocy. I taught her everything I knew so that she need not ask anyone anything, and her boss knew nothing anyway. Brad and Toya also had things squared away, because of my tutelage. I was left with nothing to do, but look like an idiot in front of the rest of the company. And boy oh boy, did they make me do that.

In the meantime, I was trying to make our Bill Gates' Documentary more market-worthy, and not filled with fluff. My boss Chris Raedel wasted my time day after day, and they laid me off. What a fucking waste. 

---- 

First and foremost, after a couple weeks of studying the shit out of it, I got it down pat, and by October after a Summber hiring, I was left wondering what was next. What was next? Well, that would be inner-office politics. But being the savvy young woman that I was, I knew what skills I needed to obtain in order to get to where I wanted to go in life (without the BS mumbo jumbo). I needed to learn HTML/CSS and web-coding, and I needed to learn it quick.

However, said boss Lisa Simpson was the silliest of bitches, and didn't allow me to do things she couldn't fathom. I was here to make a company run seamlessly and flawlessly, and with the help of Abdallah Aqel. I was ready for challenge. I had my notes, and I was at the ready.

Stay tuned for how The Great Courses a la Wondrium / aka The Teaching Company AKA The Great Courses Plus screwed over a multi-lingual NERD for GenX Office Politics when it came time for COVID. 

The only reason I don't still have my job is because I didn't speak up against the system. I didn't speak up against their idiocy. They talked and talked and talked anyone's ear off for non HTML-related (NOR COMPUTER-PROGRAMMING related) quandaries. These are things I already knew. Because I chose to not call them out on their trifling bullshit, I got laid off. 

Anyone who asks, what I did was this (and I could have done a shit-ton more):

I wrote their email copy and their website copy to kingdom come

I repriced  matrices and 

My only issue with them during COVID was that after I had given all I had to give to Tier I and to the News meetings and to much avail, I was getting individuals I did not even know asking me for meetings. What are they producing? What are their ideas? And yet, they weren't even asking me these questions. They were asking me basic zero questions that make me think they weren't people to converse with. I wanted to ask them what they had edited lately, and why? What had not fit, and for what reason?

If your department would have asked me specific questions about content or editing, I would have been happily provided. Instead, I was stuck in front of a camera in front of some PD person who claimed to have been insterested in me. NO. Let's reverse that. WHY AM I INTERESTED IN YOU? That is what I wanted to ask. I answered questions, and tried to rearrange the convo, but the end was fucking neigh. 

 If you would have even give me a chance to prove myself as an editor, I would have provided, but it was the under-handed things you were throwing at me. There were producers wanting to have meetings with me wanting to discuss things that I felt were irrelevant. GIVE ME A TOPIC. For instance, we have done a topic o 

The main thing for me isn't even that I got laid off from my job by lacklusters under COVID who know more about working things than actual working. It's more that I lost a lot by not having left the company after Lisa Simpson played her sexist card and declared I was not a computer programmer as a woman. I feel I would have left the company in due time, and in that regard, I should *i guess* thank TGC for having employed me during COVID. But they did me no favors by making me deal with Chris Raedel, Brad Brown, and Toya Turner, all of whom I could have expent with (for 3 days' worth of training time in some regards). But I was dealing with petty-petty people, all 3 of whom were getting paid over 80k a year versus my ~60. 

And yet I could have done their jobs. The point wasn't that, at that point, and as is the point of this essay. It's people's bullshit, and I hope The Teaching Company LLC AKA The Great Courses AKA Wondrium have learned from that. You laid off a key player, and she's never really recovered. In fact, she's making half what she used to. But, hey, you are the ones who know best and who named your company WONDRIUM.