April 13th, 2013, a Friday afternoon, I called my assistant director and informed him of something that had taken place in the office. Disturbed by the behavior of my coworker/acting manager and after waiting 4 hours I asked her why she was acting in that manner towards me and then when she shut my question down I went to my AD. I was disturbed and anxious all morning so I sought advice from my best friend who worked two floors above. Both her and my AD told me that I did the right thing, I felt that I did but my anxiety was great after speaking to my co-worker so I sought the confirmation. This episode lead to a series of meetings and ultimately to my accusing the Canada Revenue Agencys senior management of wrong doing. They went after me, it was in how they tried to bully me as they sought to dismiss the issue. One of my emails spoke about racism. I didnt suggest that it was racism, the EAP Psychologist that I saw for the stress immediately told me to see a lawyer who told me that it was...as did my now ex-wife and several others including the director for the Dalhousie University school of Social Work. On May 14th, 2013 I was put off my job without pay and I have not been back since. A day or two after I left I received notice that there were two complaints being filed against me if I didnt comply with their directives. Apparently one was from my co-worker/acting manager and another from a woman that I hardly knew and had spent no time with in the work place or outside of it. Apparently I glared at her on two occasions, one passing in the halls and the other in an elevator and she became afraid to even be in the building, her story. This ordeal, on top of others I was navigating broke me. It lead to my being broke, homeless and losing custody of my children for a time. I might add I was also going through a divorce at the time so the added stress lead to many other issues that i will detail as I go forth. The difficulty was that as I was outside of the workplace it was hard to connect with many who could verify that I had done nothing wrong. Isolation from the environment meant that I had no access to allies in the environment. I lost my voice, anxiety and panic attacks consumed me, my memory was shot as was my ability to focus, fear of retaliation and fear of losing my federal job, my children, me being homeless, broke, slandered and libeled all helped to crush my spirit. It was for me a trauma that I am only now really coming to terms with. Through it all I learned that people will treat you any way they need to in order to not take responsibility for their wrong doings. I learned that corporations and governments etc never do anything wrong and if they ever do it is almost impossible for them to acknowledge what they have done. I learned that my life didnt matter to a single person in that organisation and that I was quite naive. Ive been told that it makes sense as I was confident, black, 64 and smart...I dont think that it makes sense, none of this does and it never did...unfortunately my denial does nothing to change my circumstance and so Ive submitted. This is part of my story, why do I share it? Because I have finally found my voice, my focus and my memory and if the things I said before concerned them then they have more to worry about now as I have nothing to lose and everything to say. This is my story...this is my truth. JeanPaul M John
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 20:50:10 +0000
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