And they conjured spirits to make you smile

Near the end of the day yesterday, Therese stood next to me and whispered, "Jeff just came in and yelled at me." I didn't need her to elaborate to know that Jeff did not yell at her and was probably justified in scolding her. Therese has been in trouble before, usually because of her abuse of Jeff's email and cell phone use policy, which, I'll get to later.

"What happened?", I asked. I barely caught myself from adding the word "now" to the question. Make no mistake, Therese is a sweet, thoughtful, woman, but she's also her own worst enemy. She sometimes reminds me of Fredo from The Godfather.

"I was drafting a letter to Home Depot and Jeff caught me", she said.

"What did he say?"

"He told me to stop. I said I never do anything like this."

"How did he respond?"

"He said, 'Yes, you do' and left the room. I'm still in shock; I can't believe he spoke to me like that."

I thought back to the multiple times she's been spoken to about this type of thing and, though I knew she was hoping for me to say something like, "What an asshole, yelling at you over nothing!", all I cold muster was "Guess you'll have to keep your nose clean for awhile until this blows over."

"I guess. I don't know, I think he overreacted. "

I don't think so. Jeff has been explicit about not wanting his employees to be using their cell phones or reading and writing personal emails, unless there was an emergency. He's expressed this verbally and through e-mails. In my opinion, it's not too much to ask. I had to deal with that nonsense when I was managing at Taylor. How hard is it to stay away from your cell phone and not write e-mails for several hours a day?

Jeff called Therese into his office this morning. I was at the printer when she came out a few minutes later. She hurried to her desk and muttered something about being fired over an e-mail, that she had done it to herself." She shut her computer down, collected some things, and proceeded to leave, not before stopping in to see Jeff for a few more minutes.

While she was with him, Ellen and I exchanged confused glances, though, as I was about to find out, Ellen knew a lot more about what just happened than I did. "I told her not to write that e-mail", she said.

"The Home Depot one?"

"No, after Jeff spoke to her yesterday, she sent Diane (a coworker) and e-mail about the incident."

"Right after?"

"About twenty minutes after. I told her not to do it, that she'd get caught, but she went ahead and did it, anyway."

"She was going to see Diane today; couldn't she have waited?"

"Or she could have just called her or e-mailed her after work."

"Shit. So, obviously Jeff saw the e-mail."

"Yup, and poor Diane is caught in the middle of it", she said.

Therese exited Jeff's office and left without saying a word to anyone. I found out from Ellen that she was told not to come back until next Wednesday. Jeff must have softened his stance when she met up with him the second time. We'll see what happens. Therese was right about one thing: she did it to herself.
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It feels like multiple aspects of my life are set to crumble. The question is, which aspect will crumble first? Or will it happen all at once? Ah, who knows what will happen.
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There's more to say, but I'll have to get to it another time. I'm wiped .