Insert "That Face" Here

You know That Face...the one where you take your hands and put them over your eyes and rub til you see white spots behind your lids, and then you pull your cheeks down with the flat of your palms til you're stretched out like the guy in "Scream". It's the one you make when you can't quite tell for sure who is the source of the latest cataclysmic fuckup, and you're pretty sure you bear some responsibility in there SOMEWHERE but you know it wasn't ALL you...this time.

So remember this brouhaha? How I defended myself for speaking out in a team meeting about the existence of a medical problem, and when asked to explain myself, cited an incident where someone changed my job title in the department software to "professional sleeper"? Which launched a huge investigation and blah, blah, blah...?

Today I found out who did it.

One of my buddies, trying to be funny. And the hell of it is, she was one of only two people I'd mentioned it to when it actually HAPPENED, and she didn't speak up and say "oh, yeah, that was me." And she had plenty of opportunity to do so--at least three weeks elapsed between when it happened and when I mentioned it to anyone else.

So when I told her last week about the conversation in HR, and how I'd been forced to bring up that incident to explain why I'd felt the need to pre-emptively mention the problem in a team meeting, she went directly to the boss and told him that she was the one who'd done it. And today, ImmediateBoss took the two of us into a meeting and she told me she was the one who'd done it, and she was incredibly sorry and she was just trying to be funny, and she'd felt horrendously guilty ever since I mentioned it in the first place.

I'm not mad at her--my immediate reaction was something along the lines of "Way to go, dumbass..."--but I'm having a very hard time not feeling guilty about it, too, and I know I have nothing at all to feel guilty about. I wasn't the one who did anything wrong....but then again, I didn't do much RIGHT, either.

I mean, I didn't tell either of my bosses when it happened, and then I DID mention it within earshot of H.R.Chick; had I known who'd done it, OBVIOUSLY I wouldn't have said anything to EITHER of them. It would have been just one of those things between co-workers, where the end result is a laughing "fuck you very much" and a possible retaliatory prank somewhere down the line. Instead, I'm sure it's in HER H.R. file now, and I'm pretty sure UberBoss has probably given her some degree of hell for it, and of course that wasn't what I would have wanted to happen, had I known who the perpetrator was. Or as I said to her, "I would have been way more pissed if it had been certain other people."

I also told her "No hard feelings," and that's actually the truth; I don't think she was being malicious, and this was before anyone knew it was medical--which actually speaks more FOR what I did in the staff meeting than AGAINST it.

So the only reaction I can manage here is That Face, along with a shaking of the head and a clear understanding that just about EVERYBODY blew it on this one, including me.