Wonder Woman is Dead

Had lunch with my ex-boss today, at a fancy French place, the one where the waiters put on fake accents and then say things like “dude” to each other when they think the customers aren’t listening. The food is good, though. I hadn’t seen her since my last day (when she threw me a party…hey, here’s your coffee and croissants…now get out) It took me a long time to stop being angry with her, to realize that she didn’t want to fire me, it was the President’s command, and that she’s just a nice person stuck in a bad situation. When she let me go, the Director of Human Resources (Who came up with this title? Are we desks? Chairs? Computers with arms sticking out of them, drinking coffee?) by her side, I thought for sure she’d lined up someone to take my place. After all, the main gist of my ousting was that I could no longer put in the hours that she needed to get the work done, the official story that I was stepping aside to let her acquire the personnel that she required.

And with nothing to lose, I asked her over salade foue and carrot and dill soup how my replacement was doing. Why wouldn’t she have hired someone by now? I walked out of there for the last time at the beginning of October. For all I knew, someone was waiting to step behind my Mac the moment my car pulled out of the lot.

“Oh.” She looked tired as she casually buttered a slice of bread. “We haven’t hired anyone.”

Turns out she farmed out my work among various freelancers. I didn’t know whether to feel insulted that I was ditched just because management couldn’t show the board of directors that (gasp) they had essentially a part-time person on the books or flattered that it took so many people to cover my responsibilities.

But why should I be flattered? Isn’t it kind of ridiculous that any single job would require the work of three people? Why did I feel like I had to stay until all hours, when the guy down the hall, who still has a job as far as I know, felt no compunction about leaving at exactly five o’clock every single day?

And I thought I’d given up on this illusion that I was Wonder Woman. Long after the leotard began to chafe, the magic bracelets broke, the cape got stuck in the subway door, I still can’t seem give up on this idea that I could have done it all.

You know what? I can’t. I won’t. Even Wonder Woman, when she taxied the invisible jet into the hangar every night, still had to go home and make dinner and put the laundry away.

Let them fill the job any way they want. I’ve got a eulogy to write.