The Intricacies of Dealing with the Devil

I decided to take a risk on you.

After I had saved my job, I had to start being visible at work.  This didn't mean that I wasn't working hard in the past; it is just that when I started working there, we had a smaller department, and everyone knew what I was doing, so there was no need to make sure that I was seen.  Also, growing up as a Presbyterian, you have that typical protestant background of working hard and being humble.  My first assignment was taking over the preparation all of Keith’s presentations and reviewing and editing all of his reports.  Before I took over, his presentations usually had one or two typos in them, and considering he was already not liked by a lot of his peers it wasn't helping his reputation.  So, improving the look of the presentations and status reports made me a little more noticeable and it improved his reputation a little bit.  

However, a change did not really occur until I was asked to scribe in our war room when our department had to assist a project resolve some of their issues that caused a work stoppage.  The current war room scribe was one of the managers, however, when the tension in the room got high, an argument ensued and he threw the marker on the floor and stormed out.  So I got called in to scribe.  I had not been asked to scribe before, because (unknown to me) management thought that I would not be able to handle the responsibility.  Other managers for various reasons described me to my director as your “typical angry black woman” who wouldn't be able to handle myself in a stressful situation, nor would I understand anything that was going on. Essentially, I would embarrass the department in this high visibility role. Therefore, I had never been asked to scribe.  However, this time, there was no one else to come in and scribe.  When I walked in the room, the tension was high and there were executives coming through the room and checking the status of the issues; however, it wasn't anything different than what I had handled in the commercial industry.  The issue lasted about 3 days, before they resolved it and the project could continue.  After that, I was put on the alternate scribe list.  This made me more visible to management and executives outside my department.  Also, after being on the list for a few months, I became the person, that war room teams looked forward to having as a scribe, sometimes, I was the person that they requested.  Keith also began to notice me too, because he saw how I worked in teams as well as one on one, so my job was no longer in jeopardy.  This should have been a good thing, but it became a double- edge sword.