Code names are a peculiar kind of thing. There are codes in sports, government operatives and what I’ve come to recently discover special codes amongst white Corporate America. Yes, like you I was shocked. Honestly, I don’t why this has come to a surprise, when “we” too have codes of our own. The only difference is we don’t present our codes verbally. We’re more smooth and slick with ours. Peeps you know we have that glance and a few others I won’t mention; sorry White people can’t let our secret out. But your secret that’s a different story!
The code we’re going to talk about today is the new name for an Angry Black Woman which is nicely packaged as ANGST. BTW, I’m officially defining A-N-G-ST as Angry-Negro-Girl-STress. Now unlike the main character in the novel The DaVinci Code I am truly not a code cracker. Hell I can barely figure out Wheel of Fortune J But this code was not too hard to break. As a note, white people you need to step up your game! Let me tell you all how I came to decipher this code. A while back I was asked to attend one of those “The company is concerned about its employees” type of meeting. You know the one where they ask you how do you view the company? We love you! We are family (this all until budget time of course J), but you get the hint. Now mind you for the past 20 years whenever I attended one of these supposedly heartfelt HR meetings my response was always positive, you know the whole I love you back (wink, wink). But as maturity has now set in, (now I know why so many older people seem angry at work) I decided to be honest and express how I really feel. Take into consideration I’ll never forget I’m a woman of color, therefore the liberty of me acting like a fool compared to my Prozac white counterparts is something that is not afforded to me. However, I did in my corporate voice explained some discontent I had with the firm and the perception of my position. Basically, I wasn’t doing the job that I was hired to do. In the words of Malcolm X I was bamboozled and hoodwinked. I proceeded to show percentages based on their job description upon hire versus what I was actually doing. The numbers resulted in 67% of me completing tasks that I was not hired to do. Now remember my corporate voice was on. Hell I don’t know how but I even managed a smile. When all this was said and done, the Department Manager turned to me and said “I detect some ANGST”…..
First let me say the Academy for Best Actress goes to (drum roll please) ME, cause it took all of me to contain myself and not break out and display my inner Shenaynay. To try and describe this in a visual manner just think of the Nutty Professor and how Buddy tried to take over Sherman’s body, convulsions, confusion and chaos is probably what Sherman was feeling in order to keep Buddy contained. For me it was a battle in which I had to pause for what seemed like a lifetime but was only about 30 seconds and go through an internal Tourette syndrome episode of @!@#**@!@!. And with all this going on I don’t know how I kept my eyes from rolling, this is still something I’m trying to figure out. As soon as my composure returned and of course you know they were waiting for an answer, I proceeded to tell the Department Manager “Well, wouldn’t you?” It was a right back at you moment! I mean What the HELL kind of statement was “I detect some ANGST” Here you ask me for my honesty, I tell you in the most civil way as possible and I’m still perceived as the angry black woman aka ANGST! I left that meeting thinking Lord how can we ever win in these situations. The more I thought about it I couldn’t help but laugh, ANGST! Couldn’t he think of anything else? Couldn’t he do the political thing and tell me perhaps my duties need to be re-visited or something. Nope, boyfriend was too concerned with my complaining rather than the foundation of the complaint!
We know there are differences in Corporate America between persons of color vs. the typical Anglo Saxon, however, it still amazes me that they think we’re dumb. Do they think with our degrees, coupled with street sense we can’t translate the true meaning of what’s being implied. I mean look at us, we’re prone to work 20x harder (up from 10x, which was standard about 10 years ago), put on winning performances everyday and yet they don’t think we can understand what they’re really trying to say. Looking at this scenario all I can say is Corporate America is definitely a trip! Probably not much has changed since the time they allowed us to enter some of these so-called prestigious fields. But the one thing that will remain constant is these cute little code words. So my advice to our peeps is to be on your game and recognize when these Codes are being directed to you. As long as you’re in Corporate America your code cracking days will never come to an end!
