Elizabeth Cabrera
Helen messages me at 9 a.m. asking if I “have a few minutes to chat” the next day—anytime, she’s flexible—and she sends it in the breeziest of manners, but Helen is my supervisor and sending a message like that, without a meeting agenda, without context, and making me wait twenty-four hours is just an asshole move because anyone would immediately think they’re getting fired or that some kind of proverbial axe is about to fall, but Helen frequently makes asshole moves, so frequently that one could just refer to her as an asshole, like as soon as a higher-up compliments anyone in her department, even with so much as a stray “keep up the good work,” Helen is quick to follow with a vague complaint, rebranded as “constructive criticism,” like “speak with more confidence,” even though the only fucking person who is shredding our confidence on a consistent basis is Helen, but we work at a nonprofit, allegedly trying to save the planet, so everything is couched in kindness (i.e. they make sure the knife is sourced from sustainable bamboo before stabbing you in the back with it), but now the kids coming out of college are slinging terms like revolution and intersectionality and oppression like grenades and demanding that they be treated with at least the pretense of respect and basically just not putting up with the casually insidious sexism and racism that percolates across the entire nonprofit industrial complex, and the nonprofits are getting hip and realizing they need to change their lingo—though not their practices—if they don’t want to get completely scorched on Twitter, so we’re constantly getting emails from the executives that say “you’re all rockstars” and “diversity is one of our core values,” but at the same time no one has gotten a raise in two years because “times are tough,” and we couldn’t even publicly criticize a president who is literally setting fire to the Earth because it might offend some geriatric mega donor in Florida who is also a staunch supporter of a political party that’s digging our graves to finance summer homes in Nantucket, and no one important wants to talk about the fact that there’s one Black employee out of a staff of eighty, but back to Helen’s message: when we finally do have our chat, Helen tells me that the new payroll system messed up my timesheet so I need to resubmit it, and I want to ask why she didn’t just email this yesterday, and what was with the cloak and dagger, but I know it’s futile and honestly, sometimes I feel a little sad for Helen because she’s almost sixty, and it’s her generation that completely fucked us, and things are so much worse planet-wise than when young Helen embarked on her career, so maybe she feels like she’s wasted her entire life, and if making me feel small makes her feel bigger, well, I did sign up for a life of public service.
Elizabeth Cabrera works at an animal protection nonprofit and writes at night. She lives outside of Washington, D.C. with her family. Find her on X at @CabreraHoltz.
Photo by Heather Morse on Unsplash
