After the meeting My Boss and I went downstairs to work on a problem with a Super Secure Vital Application. Then he mentioned an important lunch meeting he had and we both went back upstairs. I quickly got the impression that he was trying to ditch me.
After I went back to my cubical I heard My Attractive Female Coworker asking My Coworker, who sits in the cube next to me, where My Boss was. She was his 'very important lunch meeting.' She half-heartedly invited My Coworker to come along to lunch with them. He hemmed and hawed and very wisely declined, clearly knowing that My Boss did not want any other company for this particular lunch date.
By this time I was standing right behind her. She did not ask me if I wanted to go. I suspect Rutger's Women's Leadership Institute might consider this to be one of their 'microinequities' that feminist leaders are encouraged to get upset about, but of course only when it happens to women. Anyway, it was just as well that she was snubbing me, as I was preparing to send out an email informing My Team that I was going home sick.
If I hadn't felt crummy enough before I certainly did by then.
And it reenforces what I already knew. The first time I went to lunch with My Attractive Female Coworker she made a point of inviting My Former Boss to come, too. All the women love him and aren't shy about making it known (One girl tried to climb him in the elevator.) I could easily tell she really only wanted him to come, not me at all even though I was the one needing to talk to her about work. I had only asked her to lunch for that specific purpose and never asked again.
Each time I've had lunch with her it has only been because My Boss, former or current, was along. She'll only come for them.
Add to all this the fact that My Boss has formed a tight clique with my two coworkers who smoke with him, growing more and more distant from me and My Bitter Female Coworker who also doesn't smoke, and I'm just chopped liver in a cubical, shit on a stick, gum on his shoe, an updated resume on Monster.com.
Several times since becoming My Boss, he and My Coworker have begun playing a game where at lunchtime they'll wait for me to leave for the bathroom or the printer or most any reason, just for a moment, and then they'll race to lunch without me. If I go downstairs and see them there My Boss will make this stupid face at me, as if I'm the one who ditched him.
Kiss my ass!
Too bad there are no good IT jobs in the United States anymore. I'd like to find something more worthwhile, preferably far away from Memphis.
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