Who Gave Comey a Copy of the PWSG™?

Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel to oversee the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. This comes days after currently unemployed head wiretapper James Comey revealed he recorded in a memo a conversation where #45 tried to coerce him into dropping that Russian interference probe. That was a week after #45 fired Comey for whatever reason you wish to think. First it was that the Attorney Klansman Assistant suggested it. Then it was because he was mean to Hillary Clinton during the election...which would mean that everyone in the executive branch, including #45, should also resign. Then it was that he just “wasn't doing a good job”. Biggest (most likely) rumored reason is that he asked for more funds for the Russian Probe, and #45 didn't like that.

Regardless, the Russian investigation will continue, and Comey is about to make bank on a book deal. Most importantly, though, I want to know who gave Comey a copy of the PoC Workplace Survival Guide™, because HE KEPT THE RECEIPTS!

Every woman, person of color, queer-identified, and/or disabled individual who has worked in a corporate (or any) environment is given a manual for surviving a potentially hostile environment, in order to keep their sanity at their jobs. Everything from low-key micro aggressions to blatant bigoted witch hunts can happen on the job, and a brother needs to maintain for 8 hours for 5 days without choking somebody or getting himself fired. The rules are nuanced. Maybe you don't want to go to your supervisor when Dave mistakes you for the janitor or accidentally calls you Jamal. Did Steven just poo-poo your idea and then repeat it word for word as it was his? How do you deal with Shawn, who keeps saying you look angry, when you're just trying to work? Is a goddamn smile required to do intricate circuit design, Shawn? Someone put watermelon in the break room...is this a fucking trap?

The flippant response to guidelines in that the office has an HR department or that we should go to our bosses with our grievances. That sounds so easy to do, and it’s cute that you didn’t think we thought about that sooner, Trevor. Sometimes, HR can help you, but sometimes going to HR can brand you a troublemaker, and even more subversive adverse consequences can come about. A colleague of mine went to HR regarding a complaint that his immediate supervisor kept making terrorist/suicide bomb jokes at him when he learned he is Iranian. He would even do this in front of customers. When he went to HR, the supervisor was fired on the spot, but life for my colleague got worse. The supervisor had been at the company for quite a while, and besides, he was “just kidding around”. All of a sudden my colleague’s pristine work was not good enough. His new supervisor, and everyone on the team, resented his existence. Then one day, two weeks later, the fired supervisor was re-hired as if nothing had happened. My colleague is no longer my colleague. He moved back with his parents and tried to figure out what to do with his life. Beside that story, if you are the only person of color in the office, and you make even an anonymous complaint to your HR department, it is not difficult to determine who made the complaint.

The PWSG™ is not written in a published book. It’s a collection of anecdotes and suggestions from experience, passed down orally like an old folk legend, eventually distributed in emails and instant messages. Were it not for the PWSG™, I may have had some words for the co-worker who couldn’t fathom that I went to college, and I wouldn’t have had the sense test to see if my previous boss had a negative bias toward me by swapping the name credits of two projects my colleague and I did. I know that I should dress just a little bit nicer than others in my office so that I’m not mistaken for the caterer, a guest, housekeeping, someone’s adopted son, or any other ridiculous thing for which I’ve been mistaken, but it was too hard a leap of logic that a black man with a company ID badge and security credentials is an engineer, on par with everyone else in the office. One of the most important pieces of advice from the PWSG™ is to keep records. Keep the receipts! It’s just like being a teenager in a mall with a nice shirt! You have to keep your receipt on you in case someone claims you stole the shirt, but this time, it’s a matter of employment survival. Keep the emails, document testy interactions, and if you can, keep a recorder handy! Whenever you feel like something is fishy at work, and you might wind up being the target of something based on who you are, you HAVE to keep record of everything you did, because you can’t go straight to HR or anyone saying you have a “hunch”. Quantify that shit!

My guess is that perhaps one of Comey’s black or brown FBI agents gave him a heads up when #45 was elected. Maybe it was both of them. I assume there are only two: one black man and one Arab-American from Jersey whose name is Ahmad, but everyone calls him Admiral Akbar. Between them and Carol in the forensics lab, they hired them so that they can claim that they’re “diverse”, which is why they’re on every EOE brochure photo. Ahmad and Blackman both told Comey to wiretap himself for a change…just in case...and that is what he did, and that is why we are here now.

This will all come out in testimony that I hope will be on C-SPAN, because I can’t wait to find out his receipt-keeping methods. Good on Comey for doing so. I’ll bet he expects his friends to call him Puff Daddy Comey now. Well that’s not happening. We remember how you handled the Clinton case -_-.

Oh, and by the way, the watermelon in the break room is ALWAYS a trap.