The Altercation

Hey Bloggy Friends!

I hope you guys are having a nice day. So, I mentioned earlier in the week that I was let go from my internship. Here's how it all went down:

As a backstory, I want to mention that the lady who runs the newsroom at the station is also my radio broadcasting teacher. We'll call her Summer. She's a neat person, but has an attitude I find difficult to bare. She can be dismissive, hateful and just downright rude. Up to this point, however, I've been able to let things slide off my shoulders, but Monday my shoulders weren't quite slippery enough.

I walked into the newsroom Monday, ready to tackle a story. Usually, when we arrive there is an assignment left on a dry erase board for us to complete, but this afternoon there was nothing written next to my name. I noticed Summer was in the sound booth, so I sat down at my computer waiting for her to come out to give me some sort of direction. I was chatting with some of the other newsroom employees when she popped her head out of the sound booth. I could tell her attitude was in full force.

"If you come in and there's not a story on the board, you need to get on the Internet and find something. Did you watch the news last night? Did you watch it this morning?" she asked.

"I watched it this morning," I replied, feeling a little embarrassed that she was treating me this way in front of other people.

"What was the breaking story that happened about an hour ago?" she questioned again.

"The earthquake in Italy?"

"Nope!" she said shortly before slamming the door in my face.

I was pretty upset at this point, but I turned around slowly and hit the computer to look for stories. It wasn't long before I found three things that I thought would be relevant for the station. When she came out I asked her if she wanted to review them so I could get started.

"I have to go. Jim (the second in command) may be here in twenty minutes or so. You can ask him," she said.

Now, the whole reason she was upset before is because she walked into the room as I was sitting at the desk doing nothing, so I asked her if she really wanted me to sit there and wait for another twenty minutes for Jim to maybe or maybe not show up. At this point she breathed a loud sigh, rolled her eyes into the back of her head and snatched away the papers I had in my hands. She dismissed the first one after about five seconds and handed it back to me. I proceeded to snatch the paper from her hand just as she had done to me a few seconds earlier.

"Excuuuuse me?" she said.

"What? I just jerked the paper out of your hands like you jerked it out of mine." I said quickly.

"You know what, get out of the newsroom," she said.

She turned around to walk out of the room ahead of me, and muttered something undistinguishable under her breath.

"I think you need to learn how to respect other people," I said as I followed behind her.

"Yea? Well, I've had a busy morning," she answered.

"Well maybe we've all had a busy morning," was the last thing I said before leaving the station for good.

So there it is. I should mention that I'm not exactly proud of the way I acted. I am fully aware that the "bigger" thing to do would have been to let it go and continue on with my day. I let it get the best of me, though, and now I'm in a sticky situation.

In class the next day she avoided eye contact with me, and we finished the day without ever speaking a word. I'm still unsure about a number of things, like did she mean leave for good and never come back, or did she just mean leave for the day? And most importantly, will I still be able to use this internship as a reference on my resume.

So, I'm basically going to have to grow some balls and approach her, since it doesn't seem like she's going to say anything to me. I've put in a lot of hard work there over the course of the semester, and I would rather not see it go to waste.

Instead of approaching these types of situations with an "eye for an eye" mentality, I should start thinking more along the lines of "do unto others as you want others to do unto you." Shooting back at someone that offends you is never the best way to go. This is a problem I've been dealing with since I was a wee little kid - just ask my mom. I need to learn to let it slide. I never know where the person is coming from, and I shouldn't allow myself to take things so personally.

I'll let you know what happens. Either way, I'm going to have to take this as a learning lesson.

Have a great day!

Love, Josh