Day +78: A Visit from Aunty Caitlin!

Sean and I had the most lovely visit from our gorgeous friend Caitlin today!

It was so lovely to see Caitlin. It had been months and months and months since we had seen Caitlin. The last time we saw Caitlin was when I still owned the apartment in St Leonards, when she was still working for the concierge service contracted to the building. Caitlin had left that job shortly after I sold the apartment, after securing an amazing job designing high end carpets and rugs for the rich and famous.

For the past year, Caitlin had been working hard at her job, and with everyone being busy with various things, we had not been able to catch up for a very long time. The last time Caitlin saw Sean was when he was a few months old and a little lump. Caitlin had very much wanted to see Sean again, and late last week contacted us to see if we could meet up for a play date.

I had been following Caitlin's adventures on Facebook, and had seen in recent weeks that she had left the amazing job designing high end carpets and rugs for the rich and famous. Caitlin had some time on her hands at the moment, so we arranged to have her drop in for lunch and a good catch up today.

Caitlin arrived just before 11am, and was treated to a happy active Sean, busy racing around the house. Sean was always at his most active and cute just as he was getting tired, and he gave his best "cute" to Aunty Caitlin. Caitlin came bearing gifts - gorgeous tops and pants and the cutest robe. Sean was going to be the best dressed toddler in town!

Sean continued to play for a little while, but soon tired and wanted his nap. The little show off was asleep within a minute of laying down in his cot, allowing Caitlin and I to catch up.

Over tea and quiche, Caitlin told me about her foray into the wonderful world of design, and how she learned very quickly that all that sparkles was not always gold. What was to have been a dream job turned nasty almost right from the start, when her manager T decided to systematically target Caitlin's self esteem on a daily basis.

Caitlin worked long hours without much recognition, and was constantly belittled by her passive-aggressive manager. The bullying was relentless, but Caitlin endured the stupidity in order to stay with the job that was providing her with a lot of opportunities and exposure to the design business. In her short time at the job, she was designing rugs and carpets for the hotel suites at the recently opened 5-star hotel in The Star, and boasted a list of high profile clients including John Symond, founder of Aussie Home Loans.

During her time with the company, Caitlin was forbidden by T from having any contact with the head of her department. T felt that as the manager of the team, she was best placed to take everything to the director and no one else in the team should bother the director with queries and such. Pretty soon, it was evident that T was taking credit for a lot of Caitlin's designs and ideas, but since the embargo was in place, Caitlin sucked it up and did her work.

T subjected Caitlin to a mountain of office gossip, talking trash about Caitlin to all her co-workers and making sure Caitlin was off-side with all of them. The lies and innuendo worked, and no one seemed to want to work with Caitlin based on what T had told them. Of course, this reflected badly on Caitlin, with T accusing Caitlin of not being a team player or willing to work within a team environment.

The straw that broke the camel's back was when T unreasonably demanded to know why Caitlin needed some time off (an hour) to attend to personal business. When Caitlin told T that the matter was personal, T then insisted that she be told exactly what the matter was, as well as broadcast the personal matter to the entire team. When Caitlin refused, T accused of being disloyal the organisation and conducting underhanded business behind T's back. Enough was enough, and while Caitlin loved her job, she hated the office politics. Caitlin went directly to the director of her department and quit on the spot.

It came to light in that meeting that T had been feeding the director a bunch of lies about Caitlin's work and capabilities. The director had no idea of the extent of the bullying that had been going on, and was quite surprised to hear the other side of the story from Caitlin. While Caitlin was happy to forfeit all her entitlements to walk away from her job immediately, the director did not want the relationship to end in that way, and gave Caitlin all her entitlements plus a small severance.

What was worse was the fact that Caitlin's manager (who also hired Caitlin) was once a university friend. This friend was very keen to have Caitlin work with her, and offered Caitlin the position with enticements and incentives to work with her. Once hired, this friend went about tearing Caitlin down. I guess there is a lot of truth in the saying "keep your friends close and your enemies closer". It would have been nice for Caitlin to know that this friend had actually considered Caitlin more an enemy than a friend.

Since the walk out, Caitlin had been actively looking for something new, and with any luck, one of the many opportunities on the horizon will hopefully come off for her soon.

It was a lovely afternoon spent with Caitlin. We relaxed and chatted the hours away, and after his afternoon sleep, Sean joined us as well. Sean ate his lunch a little bit faster than usual - must have been trying to impress a pretty lady.

Time ticked away, and although she would have loved to have stayed for dinner, Caitlin had to drive to Brookvale to pick up her puppies from Puppy Day Care. I didn't want Caitlin to leave either, but we promised to catch up again very soon. It was such a lovely visit with Caitlin. Thank you for spending the day with us!

There was certainly plenty of food for dinner, as I'd cooked a huge pot of Massaman Beef Curry for Jonathan and me. And it was delicious. We love our slow cooker!

We have our weekly visit to the hospital for Clinic tomorrow. I hope Dr Trahair is on time and we don't have to hang around forever waiting for him.