An irrational paranoia

Okay, I’ll tell you what’s not cool? Not firing an employee but deleting their email address associated with the company. As my phone and mail clients are set up with all my email addresses (yeah, I have a few, so shoot me…), when I get some error about an email address not being able to connect, or my password being wrong, then I go and check the address with an email verifying tool and find that it doesn’t exist, I go and trace my mind back to the blog post I wrote two days ago.

I said it was uncool to beat around the bush and not fire an employee, just leave them hanging. If you seriously take pride in what you do, and don’t want to be seen as selfish, then you do the right thing and say, “sorry Barry, I’ve got to let you go”. What I did not appreciate was my employer saying he’d let me know if they had any work come in, then me seeing that they had a new staff member, then having my email address deleted without a word. Maybe they had reasoning, like they didn’t want to hurt my feelings? That’s lame. They probably hurt my feelings more by giving me false hope. I am severely disappointed.

Well, not anymore though, because I love my current job. /bounce

Since it’s been keeping me busy, I honestly look forward to the weekends. I managed to read some blogs today and respond to some comments – finally! :) I’ve also started using Google Reader to keep up with my favourite blogs. It’s a bit like subscriptions on YouTube for me – except this time I’m more drawn to them because I prefer reading to watching. I’m telling you, I haven’t watched any of my YouTube subscriptions since November. Pretty atrocious.

Along with that, I have changed my Gravatar and started commenting under “Georgie” instead of “Georgina”. I updated my Gravatar to reflect how much the front of my hair has grown out and how I often wear it in a ponytail because the style is getting uneven. I can’t wait to get a haircut in the next couple of months. I am positive I will be colouring my hair red. /eee

I managed to clean some of my room today and throw out some old worksheets and books from high school and my bachelor’s degree. During the week I also found some old personal diaries from when I was younger, right through to high school. I decided that it was time to let go of them. After flicking through some of the embarrassing, horrific things I wrote, I knew I wouldn’t look at them again and they wouldn’t serve much purpose, so I started to tear the pages of one of the diaries to shreds and put them in the recycling bin.

I hate putting paper in the bin without completely destroying it. I just can’t do it. With my envelopes and old mail, I have to tear them to shreds and even scribble or mutilate any financially sensitive information or passwords sent through the mail for my bank accounts. Maybe that makes sense, but I have to do it for everything. With my diaries, I don’t want anyone to read them. I don’t care if the person doesn’t know me – I don’t want anyone reading it. I get paranoid that someone will intercept my trash and come across all my rubbish, especially those printed on paper, and somehow piece them together and decipher it to find out about me. I don’t know why this bothers me when anyone can Google my name and find my blog. I can’t put anything in my trash without thinking that some lonely person who works for the council will discover it and it will tickle their curiosity while they’re on the job operating the machinery.

If it’s a subject outline from school, or an old maths worksheet, or even sheet music that I no longer want, I have to tear it to shreds. I don’t have a paper shredder, but I know there’s one at work. Even if I tear it I have this sinking feeling in my gut that someone is going to spot one strip of it, one piece of it, and start reading what’s on it, and try to find the other pieces. I feel like someone out there might find out that I’m G__rg_na L__ur, a girl who wrote in spiral notebooks about her unrequited love for someone called Matt in 2005, and swore about someone who said she loved her and she seemed to not love that person back, who studied Information Discovery and A_a__sis, who played either the piano, clarinet or violin and possibly liked Naruto or just Japanese music in general, who ate Weet Bix bites and drank skim milk and knew someone born on the 12th December 1990…

A long time ago I tore a letter to shreds; it was from someone who I was no longer on good terms with. Following a huge dispute I chose to dispose of the letter by mutilating it into tiny pieces, drenching it in water, and throwing a small amount of pieces into several different garbage bins scattered around the area.

I’m that paranoid. I think it’s irrational; heck – I fully acknowledge it’s a problem, but I get the shivers leaving something in the bin without having it destroyed. I like to recycle. My dad told me off earlier this afternoon when he saw me doing it; he told me that the council wasn’t going to be too happy with the way we were treating our garbage. After all, it’s a rule that you should bundle up newspapers; I suppose it’s the same with other paper. He said that if I wanted to tear things, I might as well put them in the normal garbage.

Is there less chance of someone looking through it then? Among squashed grapes and meat cuts and rotten apples? I wouldn’t know. 😰 I’m being silly.

Comments on this post

finally corrected my blog url. I have to remember to do that, it’s saved on everyone’s blogs.

wait, so you just threw away your diary??? I could never do that. I love reading the stuff I wrote when I was young an immature. Reminds me of how much I’ve grown up and gotten better at spelling :P

I don’t think destroying things when you throw them away is a bad thing. Better safe than sorry. Especially financial stuff.

That sucks about your work email! I wonder if that’s just a standard thing they do. I know our IT team has a list of things to do whenever someone leaves the company, which includes disabling the email address.

Your entry reminds me that I’m not sure where my old diary is. If I found it, I think I’d want to rip it up too. My old entries are probably really embarrassing /sweat

I think it’s good to rip up paper before recycling or trashing it. I use a paper shredder for sensitive stuff and then trash it. For other stuff, I’ll rip off the address portion and recycle the rest. I’ve never dispersed them in different trash cans though!

I actually can’t believe they deleted your work email address without telling you. What if you had had something important there that you had wanted to save? They should have alerted you to the fact that they were going to delete it and given you the option to take a couple days to import anything you may still need into another email account. If you ever come across a place online where you can leave the workplace or your boss bad feedback, I say go for it. Go for it hardcore, girl.

Forgive me that I don’t have anything else to say because we already talked about the rest of this post in MSN. /bash

:X

Wow, actually, you’re right. I didn’t think of that at all. I might have had some payslips in there that I didn’t even save. I don’t think I can leave bad feedback, but if that the end of the financial year I find that I have that problem – well.

That’s an interesting fear you have there. |D I understand it though. I still don’t exactly see how it could freak you out that much though.

Oh gosh, sorry about the tumblr URL thing. I did change it. It’s “arlocryingalonewithvodka” |D I will follow you!

I hate it when people beat around the bush, but sometimes I am a bit too direct. Ahh, it’s hard to find the right balance. At least you don’t need them :D

I always knew your name was “Georgina” but my mind always reads “Georgie” lol I don’t know why, I guess it’s faster and easier to say.

I am the same with destroying all papers before tossing them out. I have to make sure that my name and info is teared into pieces before I recycle. I get paranoid when it isn’t. And yes, I remember doing the exact same thing with shredding, water, etc and disposing of the “bodies” in different places.

As long as it gives me peace, I’ll continue shredding. haha

I think that people are much less likely to read trash than recycling. In my own experience, people don’t really even look through the recycling, especially something that is shredded. Some paper shredders even have confetti-style shredding (shredding along both dimensions) so that the paper is nearly impossible to piece together again.

Dude, your old employer sounds like a terrible person/place to work for/at now. I’m glad that you’re not there anymore. The last time someone hurt my feelings in that manner was when the guy I liked in high school started dating one of my friends, and she decided that it’d be best to keep the relationship a secret so that my feelings wouldn’t be hurt. And then I spend a chunk of the year speculating whether they were together or not. Durr…

I like your new Gravatar! It’s cute, just like the name Georgie! I love the big headphones.

I think that was cowardly of your former employer. It’s good that you have managed to move on with a job that you love! :D

Unlike you, I find it hard tearing stuff. Even old letters or journal pages. I can’t even throw them away. I swear I have a pile of paper under my bed and I don’t even need any of them anymore. I do throw some away after a few years, and I destroy stuff only when they contain stuff I don’t want anyone else to see. XD

I don’t think that’s silly at all. I have a paper shredder in my house that shreds documents in two directions so it would be hard to tape it back together. I had an identity theft issue some time ago that I caught before anything terrible could happen and since then all I do is shred almost everything. To be honest, you just never know who will snoop through your things and use certain information in different ways. Some people think it’s paranoid to think about things like this but people can be crazy enough to get into your things. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting your thoughts to remain simply YOUR thoughts, that no one else can or should read.

Wow, that was like of an asinine thing to do as far as your prior employer was concerned. How childish. Though it is good that you really enjoy your current job. I think that you are quite a bit more likely to succeed if you actually enjoy your job.

Your new gravatar is adorable xD I rather like it. And dying your hair red might be fun, though my hair is naturally so, and I cannot seem to get it to dye any other colour. Actually it just doesn’t stick, not even dark brown. No matter what I try the red never completely disappears, haha. I ended up just giving up the idea of another hair colour. So it is just red again xD

Aw, that is flat out rude and disrespectful of them. As an employee (or ex-employee, for this matter) you have the right to be notified about the goings-on, whether or not it isn’t good news. And if they had the intention of not wanting to hurt you, they failed terribly.

But it’s good to know that you’re loving your new(?) job. ;)

I did notice the change you made to your name. First thing that came to my mind was “oooh lovely Georgie from Gossip Girl”. And now it stuck ;O lol

I do find it refreshing though.

I’ve been meaning to use Google Reader for awhile now, but I fell off the radar in terms of blogging. Hahaha. I need to get back into it again.

That job just needs to let you go formally. Is there something on the legal side of things that prevents them from letting you go? My old boss wanted to get my friend fired, but couldn’t do so legally so she sabotaged my friend and laid her off instead. Gotta love unprofessional adults >_<

I do the same as you. Identity theft is a problem so we always shred any document containing sensitive or personal information. Everything else gets recycled. I don't think it's paranoia. You're being careful. Good job!

That was really bad the way your last employer fired you without even telling you or warning you. It was really insulting…but I glad you found a better job! :D /rose
I don’t think it’s bad in tearing paper into bits or scratching away the things you don’t want people to know before disposing off….it’s better than to learn it in the hard way! It has happened with me before so I can tell… how are you doing, Georgie?