{"id":847,"date":"2026-10-26T05:42:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T10:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/?p=847"},"modified":"2026-10-26T05:42:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T10:42:20","slug":"the-nickname-in-the-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/2026\/10\/26\/the-nickname-in-the-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nickname in the Meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!-- POST TITLE: The Nickname in the Meeting -->\n<style>@import url('https:\/\/fonts.googleapis.com\/css2?family=Oswald:wght@400;500;700&family=Literata:ital,wght@0,400;0,500;1,400&display=swap');\n.byn{--bg:#F1EDE4;--darkest:#1C1F2B;--mid:#2E3F7A;--heading:#C8862A;--cool:#5F7F7A;--light:#F2CF5B;--surface-verse:#F9F6EF;--surface-deep:#E2E5EC;font-family:'Literata',Georgia,serif;color:var(--darkest);background:var(--bg);max-width:720px;margin:2em auto;padding:2.5em 2em;line-height:1.7;font-size:1.05em}\n.byn .eyebrow{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-size:.85em;letter-spacing:.18em;text-transform:uppercase;color:var(--mid);font-weight:500;margin:0 0 .4em}\n.byn h2{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.3em;letter-spacing:.08em;text-transform:uppercase;color:var(--mid);margin:2em 0 .7em;border-bottom:1px solid var(--heading);padding-bottom:.3em}\n.byn .verse{font-family:'Literata',Georgia,serif;font-style:italic;font-size:1.08em;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:normal;background:var(--surface-verse);border-left:4px solid var(--heading);padding:1.1em 1.4em;margin:1.4em 0;color:var(--darkest)}\n.byn .verse-cite{display:block;font-style:normal;font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-size:.82em;letter-spacing:.1em;color:var(--mid);margin-top:.6em;text-transform:uppercase}\n.byn .divider{border:none;border-top:1px solid var(--heading);margin:2em auto;width:80px}\n.byn p{margin:0 0 1.1em}\n.byn .pull{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.15em;letter-spacing:.04em;color:var(--darkest);border-top:1px solid var(--heading);border-bottom:1px solid var(--heading);padding:1em 0;margin:1.6em 0;text-align:center;line-height:1.4}\n.byn .byn-deep{background:var(--surface-deep);border-left:4px solid var(--cool);padding:1.1em 1.4em;margin:1.4em 0}\n@media (max-width:600px){.byn{padding:1.6em 1.2em}}<\/style>\n<div class=\"byn\">\n<p class=\"eyebrow\">By Name \u00b7 Week 2 \u00b7 Monday \u00b7 BULLIES<\/p>\n<p>Every Monday at ten, her team meets in the same glass room, and every Monday her manager finds a way to use the nickname.<\/p>\n<p>It started her first month. She asked a question in a meeting that he thought was obvious, and he called her the Professor, and people laughed, and it stuck. Now it comes with a little eye-roll before she has even opened her mouth. Let&#8217;s hear what the Professor has this time.<\/p>\n<p>She is in her thirties. She is good at her job and her numbers say so. And she has started rehearsing comebacks in the car on the way in.<\/p>\n<h2>She had a good one ready<\/h2>\n<p>This Monday she had a really good one. Short, a little cutting, the kind that would get a laugh at his expense for a change. She could feel it sitting right behind her teeth while he did the bit.<\/p>\n<p>She did not use it.<\/p>\n<p>Not because she was being the bigger person. Because she had been reading about Nehemiah, of all people, and she noticed that when they mocked him, the first thing he did was talk to God about it instead of talking back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">Hear us, O God, for we are despised. Turn their scorn back upon their own heads, and let them be taken as plunder to a land of captivity.<span class=\"verse-cite\">Nehemiah 4:4 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>That is not a tidy prayer. It is honest. He is hurt and he says so, and then he leaves the scorn with God instead of throwing it back himself.<\/p>\n<p>So after the meeting she stood on the stairwell landing and did roughly that. Not very politely. She told God she was tired of being the joke, and that she did not know how to make it stop, and that she was handing Him the part she could not fix.<\/p>\n<h2>Then she posted a guard<\/h2>\n<p class=\"verse\">So we prayed to our God and posted a guard against them day and night.<span class=\"verse-cite\">Nehemiah 4:9 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Praying was not the whole thing. There was a practical part too.<\/p>\n<p>There is an older man on her team who has been there for most of these meetings. Once, walking out, he said quietly, that&#8217;s not okay. That was all. She went and found him and asked if he would go with her to HR.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor.<span class=\"verse-cite\">Ecclesiastes 4:9 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">For if one falls down, his companion can lift him up; but pity the one who falls without another to help him up!<span class=\"verse-cite\">Ecclesiastes 4:10 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>He said yes. He sat beside her. She told it plainly, with dates, without adjectives.<\/p>\n<div class=\"byn-deep\">\n<p>What it cost: HR thanked her and said they would look into it. Nothing visible happened for a while. The meetings did not get kinder; they got colder. He stopped using the nickname and started not calling on her at all.<\/p>\n<p>And now there is a new thing people know about her. She is the one who reported.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"pull\">She did not answer him. She answered God, and then she stopped standing there alone.<\/p>\n<p>I do not know how her story ends. I do know it is a different story than the one where she spent another year rehearsing in the car.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Name \u00b7 Week 2 \u00b7 Monday \u00b7 BULLIES Every Monday at ten, her team meets in the same glass room, and every Monday her manager finds a way to use the nickname. It started her first month. She asked&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-called-by-name"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SU_20261026_BLOG.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":849,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions\/849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}