Q: You say you wrote "a speech" at the Department of Commerce.

Was speech-writing one of your duties?

Why didn't you write more than one?

A: The man who hired me was hiring his replacement. He was being promoted, and world supervise me. I was doing his old job.

He continued to write the speeches for the Secretary of Commerce, who felt comfortable with him.

He assigned me to write a speech the Assistant Secretary of Commerce would deliver to a convention of black contractors on how minority set-asides were good for the state. Were good for the white contractors who were excluded. The Assistant Secretary was a black woman. The highest black in state government.

Q: How did that go?

A: I got all the old speeches out of the files, and read them, but I didn't agree with them. I couldn't write the speech. I thought minority set-asides were inefficient, and unfair to the white contractors who were excluded.

They also led to abuses, where a white contractor would hire a black figurehead to get the contract, but not really be black-owned, or black-managed, so the contract did not elevate black competence to compete on a par with whites. It was a charade.

Q: Oh, shit.

What happened.

A: My supervisor wrote the speech. He dashed it off in 30 minutes off the top of his head.

Q: Did you get a ding in your helmet?

A: The Assistant Secretary of Commerce decided I was a racist. I was anti-black.

And when my supervisor gave notice to take another job down state, and the job fell through, and he asked for his old job back, or rescinded his notice, his boss had hired a replacement, and he had three people and two slots, and he couldn't ask the woman he'd hired to ask for her old job back because her boss had hired a replacement for her, and I was still on probation, two weeks shy of becoming a permanent, Career Service employee, and could be let go for no reason, so The Old Rollback got me.

Rollback II: The Sequel, I called it.

Q: Your supervisor really fucked up his karma, being able to dash off a pro-reverse-discrimination speech and costing you your job by his act of hubris.

A: I'll say.

I felt sorry for the man.

And I cost myself my job by not getting on permanent before I started writing my own work on the job.

That was stupid.

Q: Do you wish you hadn't filed a grievance?

A: People told me I'd be cutting off my nose to spite my face.

But I had to do it to feel right about myself.

I couldn't have looked myself in the eye if I hadn't.

I'd have felt like a broke-dick dog.