Heads Should Roll

The In-Between

There's this place between presenting your case and finding out whether anyone bought it.

Salespeople must deal with this all the time. You put together the best presentation you can, choosing the information you think will be most relevant, most persuasive, and most likely to make your audience buy in. You anticipate their questions, make your case, and then you wait.

Tomorrow morning, at nine o'clock, I have a meeting. Fifteen minutes. That's all that's scheduled for an update on an investigation that began because I finally decided it was time for a reckoning.

And I have absolutely no idea what she's going to say.

I've spent nearly two years wondering what happened. What I'd done wrong. What was said about me when I wasn't in the room. How someone who had successfully done a job for years could suddenly become someone who apparently wasn't good enough to do it anymore.

Fifteen years with a company. Strong performance reviews to prove I knew what I was doing. Seven years supporting the same executive. Then someone he knew came along, and suddenly things changed. I was told I hadn't done anything wrong, but I was replaced anyway.

So what exactly was I supposed to make of that?

People told me to keep my head down. Don't make waves. Don't call anyone out. Some were genuinely worried about me and knew I needed my job. Others, I believe, benefited from what happened. Either way, I listened. For a year, I kept my mouth shut while trying to understand something that seemed so obviously unfair, orchestrated, and, in some respects, slanderous.

Meanwhile, the business was tanking. Layoffs began, and what started as a demotion ended up making me vulnerable to losing my job altogether.

Which I did.

Apparently, a supposedly unbiased panel determined that employees with two and five years of experience were more qualified to remain than someone with fifteen. And the panel included people connected to the very leadership that had pushed me aside in the first place.

Hmmm. Really?

Here's the thing. I gave one of the best interviews of my life. I knew my work, I knew my value, and I walked out believing I'd represented myself exceptionally well.

If that process was entirely fair, the Savannah Bananas are winning the World Series.

But tomorrow isn't really about an interview. It's about something much bigger. Was what happened to me simply unfair? Or was it unethical? Because there's a difference between someone making a decision that isn't particularly nice and someone abusing their authority.

Can an executive replace a highly performing employee simply because he'd rather give the job to someone he knows? Is that a legitimate business decision, or is it an abuse of power by someone who should have known better? And if it was an abuse of power, what happens next?

Because identifying wrongdoing and holding someone accountable are two entirely different things.

I know how corporations work. I spent fifteen years inside one. I've seen people lose their jobs for less, and I've seen how differently the rules can seem to apply when someone has an impressive title.

Companies love talking about ethics. Integrity. Accountability. Doing the right thing. They put those words on websites, in presentations, and in annual training. But what happens when doing the right thing means holding someone important accountable?

What happens when the person who should face consequences is someone the company would rather protect?

It's hard not to become cynical about corporate priorities. Cue a donation to a presidential ballroom while thousands of employees are being laid off.

I like the investigator. I genuinely do. She's been thoughtful, professional, and responsive, and I have reason to believe she's taken my concerns seriously. But there's a difference between trusting the person conducting an investigation and trusting the institution that employs her.

I don't know what she's found, whom she's spoken to, or whether anyone has been confronted with the things I've spent so long questioning. And I don't know how much she'll be allowed to tell me.

So here I am, somewhere between anticipation and nausea, with a subdued, anticipatory anger simmering beneath the surface.

What am I hoping for?

In all honesty, heads to roll.

I want someone fired. Maybe that's more than the findings will justify, or more than the company will ever do. But a girl can dream.

I lost my job. And part of me wants the people responsible for what happened to experience the same consequence. Is that vindictive? Maybe. But after spending so long being told to keep my head down, I'm not particularly interested in pretending I don't want accountability.

I want to know why fifteen years of strong performance could be swept aside because someone in power preferred someone else. I want to know whether the people who made those decisions were required to explain them honestly. And I want to know whether a company's ethics actually mean anything when enforcing them becomes inconvenient.

When I first submitted my complaint, I felt relief. There. Now someone knows.

But the longer I've waited, the more I've realized that knowing isn't enough. What matters is what someone is willing to do with that knowledge.

I don't expect tomorrow to give me back those two years. An apology won't undo what happened, and an investigation won't erase the humiliation of being treated as though I'd somehow become inadequate at a job I'd successfully performed for years.

And yes, I have a new job. A good one. I've moved on in ways that matter. But moving on doesn't mean what happened was acceptable. It doesn't make the questions disappear, and it certainly doesn't mean the people responsible should get a free pass.

Maybe tomorrow I'll learn that what happened was unfair but permissible. Maybe I'll learn that something unethical occurred but the consequences are confidential. Maybe I'll learn very little at all.

That's the trouble with this in-between place. You can prepare your case, tell the truth as you know it, and hand over the evidence. But you can't control what someone else decides to do with it.

Tomorrow, at nine, someone is going to tell me something. And tonight, I'm waiting to find out whether the people with the power to do something about what happened believe it matters enough to act

I'm waiting for justice.