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This post isn't friends-locked. Fingers crossed, eh?
The situation with my husband's ex-employer still isn't fully resolved. Bearing in mind that this is all my opinion, that it's what I have inferred from dealing with them, and I could be wrong, yada yada... They appear to have made up their minds from the very start that he must have colluded with a supplier to overcharge the company on certain things, despite his having no sign-off authority on purchases and despite there being absolutely nothing to substantiate this belief. I suspect they also think that the medical note from the GP, the letter from the solicitor, the letters and phone calls from me, all requesting that they have no contact with my husband because of his state of health, are simply a ploy for my husband to avoid talking with them.
The truth, while complicated, comes down to this. Over the last couple of years or so, he was placed under increasing pressure, ending up working what should be around 3 or 4 full-time jobs. He was increasingly isolated within the company, with a fundamental lack of support for what he did and a lack of respect for the job(s) and his abilities. He was given impossible deadlines, among other things, and, rather than turning round and telling them no, ended up doing a few stupid things in order to meet them, because he was gradually worn down into a mindset where he bought into the need to fulfill expectations, to achieve those impossible things. Arguably, he should have left, found a job elsewhere, but he didn't.
Something had to give, and that was his paperwork. He's dyslexic, he's very practical, and he'd rather spend his time getting things done, keeping things running, rather than doing paperwork. Which is fine, right up until the point at which it's the complete and utter lack of paperwork that lands him in trouble and allows people to draw the conclusions given above.
They don't seem to understand, either, that he's worked for companies far larger than they will ever be, with huge potential for outright fraud with absolutely no possibility of getting caught (trust me on this - if anyone wants details, there's a great story, but not one I should really share here), were he so inclined, on a far larger scale than they allege here. He's not inclined that way, or, to be honest, we wouldn't be living in a small mid-terrace house which doesn't even have central heating and I certainly wouldn't still be commuting to work in Sheffield after all this time.
There's no way to prove things on either side, short of showing them our private finances. Which - had they been in the least sympathetic (or if we trusted the people involved, but we don't, with good reason) - we'd have no problem doing. But from my perspective, they tried to kill my husband (more than once) and they came damn close to succeeding and without a court order, I don't trust them with a single piece of paper. Had it not been for the GP and York Hospital (back in November when my husband developed a quinsy and couldn't get to the GP for an extra 24 hours thanks to certain people at his work contacting him by phone, then when he couldn't actually speak, by email, insisting on needing something fixed, which made the quinsy much, much worse) and thanks immensely to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alasdair1076 and York's Home Treatment Team (mental health crisis intervention, coming out every day, bringing medication and support), I honestly don't think my husband would have seen the start of this year.
I can't imagine living without him. I can't imagine wanting to live without him.
I won't lie: it's been incredibly hard these past few months. I've been kept going by the support of friends and family, by the knowledge that all I have to do is pick up the phone and call and the crisis team will be right there, the support line will be right there, my family and friends will be right there. And things are improving, my husband is improving, but I'm aware of how easily that could fall apart.
To that end, given that it's going to be a while before he's up to chasing jobs with any serious intent, things are going to have to change.
Our mortgage is big - I cannot pay it by myself and cover all the bills, let alone have anything left over with which to buy, ooh, luxuries like food. York's not a cheap city to live in and while we have the savings to keep on paying the mortgage for a little while longer, the house is going to have to go up for sale pretty soon. Fortunately, we have A PlanTM.
We're moving to Northern Ireland at the end of February. After that, I hope to get someone in to slap a coat of paint on the house while it's empty, and then it can go on the market. If anyone can recommend a decorator, or fancies the job, or fancies giving me a hand, let me know - if enough people are up for it, I can always fly back for a long weekend to have a painting party (complete with wine and beer and pizza, hurrah!). We'll be moving into rented accomodation which is much, much cheaper than the mortgage is, and conversely (or is that perversely?) has much more storage space so we should actually have guest rooms that can, yanno, fit beds in them rather than piles of books and knitting wool and cloth and so on and so forth.
I'm not putting the address up here; if you want it, email me and I'll give it to you. Likewise, a phone number (not that I have the faintest idea what the number is yet). I only ask that you don't let my husband's ex-employer know that we are moving, nor pass the address along. I fully intend to have my mail redirected, and they have my mobile number, which after 10 years of keeping it through different phones and different phone companies, I'm certainly not changing, so anything they wish to communicate, they'll be able to. I just don't want to go back to the situation we've had, where every phone call, every knock at the door, has precipitated a panic attack because my husband can't take any more of being screamed at. Literally. I want him to have the space to recover, to get over all this, to get back to being the amazing man I know.
I'm going to miss York. It's a wonderful city. I'm going to miss having my friends close by. But right now, thanks to my health, I don't see you. I don't come out to parties, I don't make it to my writing group, I don't even, most weeks, make it to VJ's on a Saturday lunchtime. I keep in touch online, and that won't change. I think pretty much everyone has my mobile number, too. There's Gmail's chat function (I nattered withpalmersperry and skicyclehike, who are in Austria, over video chat and voice chat last night), there's Skype (and yes, I only have the one username for *everything*, but hey, it makes finding me easy). And I'll be back, probably once a month, so I'll actually see some of you a heck of a lot more often than at present (which has made my parents happy).
Because my employers, who are wonderful, have said yes to a trial of remote working. I'll be able to work from home in Northern Ireland rather than having to commute into Sheffield every day from York. Which means I get back around 4 hours a day and huge amounts of energy (not to mention the exorbitant cost of the annual train ticket). I'll be able to start work earlier, do more, and still not be exhausted. Hurrah! I'm really hoping that works out well for us both - I do love working for them and I hope I can do a better job. Plus, my absence record should be a whole heap better - there's no excuse for not turning up to work in my own home!
I'm looking forward to the move. What's happened has been immensely awful, but it's given us the impetus to make changes we wouldn't otherwise have done. We can get a dog, a cat. I can get some writing done with an eye to, finally, getting my first novel out to agents, put all that short story practise from writing fanfic into actually writing my own original fiction. I can keep on proofreading, maybe get back to doing some free work for Hub, maybe even (if they'll have me back) for Pseudopod. And my husband can recover and find something he really wants to do, almost certainly not back in IT. Something that won't try to kill him, even by degrees, won't leave him soul-weary and disenchanted. Something that will let him make a difference, help people.
And you're all very welcome to come and visit. My house is open to you.
So what does this mean for you and me right now? It means I'm throwing one last party, a farewell to York.
For obvious reasons, it won't be at my house, so it will be at VJ's, on the evening of the 21st of February. It's a Sunday, yes, because they're booked already for the Saturday, but they're going to open up especially for us. So please do come along, even if it's only for an hour. I'll post times when I've talked with the manager on Saturday. If you can make it, please let me know, either in comments here or drop me an email, so that I can let them know this Saturday roughly how many people should be turning up.
Please come, so I can say thank you for being a part of my life for so long, for being amazing, wonderful, incredible friends, for letting me love you (that won't change). And if not for that, come because I'll raid my laughable savings account and hopefully have munchies and booze available for a while at least, until it all gets eaten and drank and you have to buy your own drinks.
Oh, and if I've borrowed anything of yours, now is a really, really good opportunity to remind me so I can give it back. Just saying.
The best of luck to you all, and may this year turn out to be a good one for you all.
The situation with my husband's ex-employer still isn't fully resolved. Bearing in mind that this is all my opinion, that it's what I have inferred from dealing with them, and I could be wrong, yada yada... They appear to have made up their minds from the very start that he must have colluded with a supplier to overcharge the company on certain things, despite his having no sign-off authority on purchases and despite there being absolutely nothing to substantiate this belief. I suspect they also think that the medical note from the GP, the letter from the solicitor, the letters and phone calls from me, all requesting that they have no contact with my husband because of his state of health, are simply a ploy for my husband to avoid talking with them.
The truth, while complicated, comes down to this. Over the last couple of years or so, he was placed under increasing pressure, ending up working what should be around 3 or 4 full-time jobs. He was increasingly isolated within the company, with a fundamental lack of support for what he did and a lack of respect for the job(s) and his abilities. He was given impossible deadlines, among other things, and, rather than turning round and telling them no, ended up doing a few stupid things in order to meet them, because he was gradually worn down into a mindset where he bought into the need to fulfill expectations, to achieve those impossible things. Arguably, he should have left, found a job elsewhere, but he didn't.
Something had to give, and that was his paperwork. He's dyslexic, he's very practical, and he'd rather spend his time getting things done, keeping things running, rather than doing paperwork. Which is fine, right up until the point at which it's the complete and utter lack of paperwork that lands him in trouble and allows people to draw the conclusions given above.
They don't seem to understand, either, that he's worked for companies far larger than they will ever be, with huge potential for outright fraud with absolutely no possibility of getting caught (trust me on this - if anyone wants details, there's a great story, but not one I should really share here), were he so inclined, on a far larger scale than they allege here. He's not inclined that way, or, to be honest, we wouldn't be living in a small mid-terrace house which doesn't even have central heating and I certainly wouldn't still be commuting to work in Sheffield after all this time.
There's no way to prove things on either side, short of showing them our private finances. Which - had they been in the least sympathetic (or if we trusted the people involved, but we don't, with good reason) - we'd have no problem doing. But from my perspective, they tried to kill my husband (more than once) and they came damn close to succeeding and without a court order, I don't trust them with a single piece of paper. Had it not been for the GP and York Hospital (back in November when my husband developed a quinsy and couldn't get to the GP for an extra 24 hours thanks to certain people at his work contacting him by phone, then when he couldn't actually speak, by email, insisting on needing something fixed, which made the quinsy much, much worse) and thanks immensely to
alasdair1076 and York's Home Treatment Team (mental health crisis intervention, coming out every day, bringing medication and support), I honestly don't think my husband would have seen the start of this year. I can't imagine living without him. I can't imagine wanting to live without him.
I won't lie: it's been incredibly hard these past few months. I've been kept going by the support of friends and family, by the knowledge that all I have to do is pick up the phone and call and the crisis team will be right there, the support line will be right there, my family and friends will be right there. And things are improving, my husband is improving, but I'm aware of how easily that could fall apart.
To that end, given that it's going to be a while before he's up to chasing jobs with any serious intent, things are going to have to change.
Our mortgage is big - I cannot pay it by myself and cover all the bills, let alone have anything left over with which to buy, ooh, luxuries like food. York's not a cheap city to live in and while we have the savings to keep on paying the mortgage for a little while longer, the house is going to have to go up for sale pretty soon. Fortunately, we have A PlanTM.
We're moving to Northern Ireland at the end of February. After that, I hope to get someone in to slap a coat of paint on the house while it's empty, and then it can go on the market. If anyone can recommend a decorator, or fancies the job, or fancies giving me a hand, let me know - if enough people are up for it, I can always fly back for a long weekend to have a painting party (complete with wine and beer and pizza, hurrah!). We'll be moving into rented accomodation which is much, much cheaper than the mortgage is, and conversely (or is that perversely?) has much more storage space so we should actually have guest rooms that can, yanno, fit beds in them rather than piles of books and knitting wool and cloth and so on and so forth.
I'm not putting the address up here; if you want it, email me and I'll give it to you. Likewise, a phone number (not that I have the faintest idea what the number is yet). I only ask that you don't let my husband's ex-employer know that we are moving, nor pass the address along. I fully intend to have my mail redirected, and they have my mobile number, which after 10 years of keeping it through different phones and different phone companies, I'm certainly not changing, so anything they wish to communicate, they'll be able to. I just don't want to go back to the situation we've had, where every phone call, every knock at the door, has precipitated a panic attack because my husband can't take any more of being screamed at. Literally. I want him to have the space to recover, to get over all this, to get back to being the amazing man I know.
I'm going to miss York. It's a wonderful city. I'm going to miss having my friends close by. But right now, thanks to my health, I don't see you. I don't come out to parties, I don't make it to my writing group, I don't even, most weeks, make it to VJ's on a Saturday lunchtime. I keep in touch online, and that won't change. I think pretty much everyone has my mobile number, too. There's Gmail's chat function (I nattered with
palmersperry and skicyclehike, who are in Austria, over video chat and voice chat last night), there's Skype (and yes, I only have the one username for *everything*, but hey, it makes finding me easy). And I'll be back, probably once a month, so I'll actually see some of you a heck of a lot more often than at present (which has made my parents happy).Because my employers, who are wonderful, have said yes to a trial of remote working. I'll be able to work from home in Northern Ireland rather than having to commute into Sheffield every day from York. Which means I get back around 4 hours a day and huge amounts of energy (not to mention the exorbitant cost of the annual train ticket). I'll be able to start work earlier, do more, and still not be exhausted. Hurrah! I'm really hoping that works out well for us both - I do love working for them and I hope I can do a better job. Plus, my absence record should be a whole heap better - there's no excuse for not turning up to work in my own home!
I'm looking forward to the move. What's happened has been immensely awful, but it's given us the impetus to make changes we wouldn't otherwise have done. We can get a dog, a cat. I can get some writing done with an eye to, finally, getting my first novel out to agents, put all that short story practise from writing fanfic into actually writing my own original fiction. I can keep on proofreading, maybe get back to doing some free work for Hub, maybe even (if they'll have me back) for Pseudopod. And my husband can recover and find something he really wants to do, almost certainly not back in IT. Something that won't try to kill him, even by degrees, won't leave him soul-weary and disenchanted. Something that will let him make a difference, help people.
And you're all very welcome to come and visit. My house is open to you.
So what does this mean for you and me right now? It means I'm throwing one last party, a farewell to York.
For obvious reasons, it won't be at my house, so it will be at VJ's, on the evening of the 21st of February. It's a Sunday, yes, because they're booked already for the Saturday, but they're going to open up especially for us. So please do come along, even if it's only for an hour. I'll post times when I've talked with the manager on Saturday. If you can make it, please let me know, either in comments here or drop me an email, so that I can let them know this Saturday roughly how many people should be turning up.
Please come, so I can say thank you for being a part of my life for so long, for being amazing, wonderful, incredible friends, for letting me love you (that won't change). And if not for that, come because I'll raid my laughable savings account and hopefully have munchies and booze available for a while at least, until it all gets eaten and drank and you have to buy your own drinks.
Oh, and if I've borrowed anything of yours, now is a really, really good opportunity to remind me so I can give it back. Just saying.
The best of luck to you all, and may this year turn out to be a good one for you all.
