Jobs of the Damned

It's Not the Kids Who Are Childish

MusicTeacher — 2010-02-08T00:00:00

Early Childhood is a relatively modern invention. In former times, young children were put to good use in their tribes or on the farm. Now they’re in preschool … and so am I, their music teacher.
I’ve made the rounds teaching guitar, recorder and musical games. Children are not easy to handle, now that Early Childhood exists. But they are a picnic compared to my employers and supervisors.
In some schools I had to wear shoes with at least a strap on the heel, and could not show my knees. (Don’t think that stopped one teacher from wearing a jean skirt split up to her thigh, and a pink thong that stuck out of it.) In other schools I could not sing “Michael Row the Boat Ashore;” Saint Michael “wasn’t for them.”
But Ellen, the ‘politically correct’ teacher I assist at a nondenominational preschool in Brooklyn, is by far the toughest customer. For Ellen, gender does not exist: I am not allowed to say “Fishermen” or “Firemen” to the class. They are now Fisherpeople or Firepeople. As I type this out I see that even Word does not recognize these terms. If we sing “Where Is Thumbkin?” we must replace “How are you today, Sir?” with, “how are you today, Friend?”
It has often struck me that I’m the only female member of a bluegrass band in which I play bass. No fishermen or firemen stopped me from doing what I wanted, even though my instrument isn’t typically played by a woman.
In addition to sacrificing gender references, Ellen has also put Christmas out of business: We now celebrate “winter holidays.” Except when she leaves the room and the kids beg for their favorite Christmas songs. Or they want me to draw pictures. Ellen doesn’t allow me to draw pictures because she’s afraid that the boys and girls might feel badly about themselves since they don’t draw as well as I do. Perhaps they won’t be allowed to watch the Olympics or see a ballet. After all, the world is full of people who do things better than 4-year-olds.
I’ve been careful to not let Ellen see that I find her requests excessive. I “kill” her with kindness. I hang up her coat, I smile, I do what she says; she’s the boss.
Still, it is clear that I make her very uncomfortable. She sulks and snaps at me, shakes her head as though I am “clueless.” Her hatred of me is a bit of a mystery — especially since she “doesn’t believe in” hating anyone.
But any time I slip up and say, “Pardon me a moment, I’m going to the Ladies Room,” instead of “the Bathroom,” she shows me fangs that make Maurice Sendak’s “wild things” look tame…

The Sun Also Rises at Six a.m.

Boris Molotov — 2010-02-08T00:00:00

I knew I was walking into hell the moment I started my interview. The position was account manager at a small California firm that makes cosmetics. The woman in HR asked me three times how I handed stress. No cute euphemisms like “It’s a challenging job” or “You have to be entrepreneurial.” She flat out said, “It’s stressful. Very stressful.”

Deadlines, meetings, demanding boss. I was used to stressful jobs. Or so I thought.

I met with my direct report, a woman I’ll call “Mary Kay.” She seemed to use more make-up than the company produced in a day. She smiled a lot during the interview, but it was anything but a friendly smile. It was a smile a cheetah gives an impala moments before the kill.

I got the job.

I was ready to dismiss my first week as the standard frenzy that comes with new jobs — but once I settled in, I saw that frenzy was not even the norm. The norm was worse.

One Monday morning I got a call at 6:30 a.m. on my cell. Fortunately, I was awake. It was May Kay. “Where are you?” she asked.

“At home,” I said.

“Why are you at home?”

“Because it’s 6:30 a.m.,” I said.

I was late, she told me. “We have status with the East Coast office every Monday morning,” she said. “You have to be here.”

I skipped the shower and raced to the office. I got there at 7:20 a.m. only to find that the meeting was over.

“Miss another one and you can sleep in all you want,” Mary Kay said.

The following Monday, I was at the office at 6:20 a.m. I was the only one. 6:30 rolled into 7 then 8 then 9 a.m. Mary Kay got the office at 9:15.

“What happened to the status meeting?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said, “don’t you read your email? It was canceled.”

There was no email. When I pointed out that fact to Mary Kay, she simply said, “I guess I forgot to send it.”

The following Monday, I was there again at 6:20. The meeting was in full swing. “We status at six,” Mary Kay said. “We always status at six.”

After a month of fluctuating times and cancellations, I confronted Mary Kay. “While I appreciate the need for the weekly status meeting with the East Coast,” I said, “we need to work out a better way of having them.”

Mary Kay was a stonewall. “If you think you can run this company better—”

“I don’t. I just think I can do my job better,” I said.

Then I proposed to call-in from home for the Monday morning status meetings. “That way, if there’s a change in time, I won’t have raced in for nothing.”

The idea took some getting used to, but ultimately, Mary Kay came around.

She even started calling in from home herself.

She Took The Shirt Off My Back

Boris Molotov — 2010-02-08T00:00:00

My boss stole. Okay, maybe not stole, but she’d permanently borrowed. Whether a pen, a notepad, my laptop, she stopped by my cubical and said, “Hey, could I borrow this?”

Technically, it was all hers to begin with. She owned the company, a seven-person PR firm. But that didn’t make it any better.

Being the only male in the office didn’t make it any better either. Working such long hours together, the entire office—save me, of course—started having their menstrual cycles at the same time. How did I know? Because it was all the talk of the office the middle of every month.

In addition to being the go-to for any office supplies, my boss came to me for advice on all things male. I’d get text from her over the weekend; she’d want to know if she should go home with a guy she’d just met or what my thoughts were on dating a married man.

Needing the job, I took it all in stride.

The last straw, though, came on a Friday morning. She popped into my cubical a harried mess. She had a big client meeting in five minutes and had just spilled coffee on her white blouse. “I need to borrow your shirt,” she said.

I had an A-shirt, commonly known as a wife beater, I’d worn to the gym that morning, but nothing else. Still, I offered it to her.

“No, I mean the one you’re wearing.”

I was wearing a light blue button down Oxford. I tried to object, saying it was far too large.

“I’ll make it work.”

“What about the other women in the office?” I said. “Don’t they have something you can borrow?”

“They have no style. Plus,” she said, “blue is my color. It matches my eyes.”

I conceded, undressing in front of her.

All day, I hid at my desk, wearing my wife beater.

All day, I placed calls to my boss, getting her voicemail each time. I didn’t see her the rest of the day, nor did I get my shirt back.

At least not that day.

Heading home in my wife beater, I determined to put in my notice Monday morning.

Saturday, eight a.m., I got a call from her. She was in the neighborhood, wanted to drop off my shirt.

She came by. She brought bagels and coffee. She’d cleaned and pressed the shirt.

Coffee and bagels and talk. Quickly enough, I found myself fending off an advance from her.

But ultimately, I conceded to her kisses.

Now I had even more reason to quit.

My boss beat me to the punch.

Monday, she called me into her office. “Our relationship has changed,” she said.

I agreed.

“I like you,” she went on. “I want to give our romance”—she air-quoted the word romance—“the best possible chance. That’s why I have to let you go.”

I argued, though weakly. This was my way out. But I did demand a hefty severance.

I got one.

I demanded a glowing reference letter.

I got one.

I’d like to say that was the last I saw of my old boss.

It wasn’t.

"Big Brother" is Watching YOU

lynxes5 — 2010-02-08T00:00:00

The day my supervisor fired me he told me I had been “helpful to him” and had “taken the training well.”
Then why fire me?
Some of my friends felt he’d been harassing me.
I wasn’t sure.
Of course in hindsight I recognize the “textbook harassment case.” But as it was happening the lines were blurry.
I had been hired to fill in for the head of the department, who was on a 3-month maternity leave. This man didn’t get along with her. I had the impression that he wanted to make me his ally, as there was a chance of my continuing to work for them once she returned.
We were the typesetters and compositors of standardized tests for schoolchildren. It seemed, from the look of their vast file archives, that standardized testing had taken off in leaps and bounds since my own school days.
Still, work trickled into our department and was rapidly completed. This left me uncomfortable hours of sitting around doing nothing but trying to look busy … and awake.
During those long, drab hours, my supervisor – whom I’ll call Clyde – asked me numerous questions: What did I like doing on weekends? What had I done last weekend? What were my hobbies? How was I able to teach classes without getting stage fright? How did I like compositing tests?
And the grand finale, posed with starry-eyed affection as I sat at my cubicle, eating a turkey sandwich: “What are you thinking?”
(I don’t believe I’ve been asked, “what are you thinking?” since I started dating at age 15).
One co-worker left the job during my tenure. But his ‘Jeff Goldblum is Watching You Poop’ poster remained taped up in our cubicle. I was tired of seeing it every day.
“Can we take this down?” I had finally asked Clyde.
He grinned fiendishly at me and whispered: “Jeff Goldblum is watching you masturbate.”
I said nothing in reply. Of course it was fine for him to say such things. It was fine to keep a poster like that on the cubicle. It was fine for him to grill me about my personal life. Hey, it was only an office. And we’re cool, progressive New Yorkers.
And it was just fine for them to botch the paper work for my paycheck and not pay me for six weeks! It was fine for their computers to be perpetually on the fritz, to volley me around from computer station to computer station, and to not have enough work to keep me busy anyway.
But when I printed one or two Teacher’s Editions rather than student tests from their tome of files, I was canned. As a friend who runs a law office told me: “If we fired people for reasons like that we’d have no employees.” It was clearly a ruse.
I hadn’t made waves at all when my paycheck was late — but I had a meltdown when I was fired for this senseless reason, and not even paid.
I pointed out that delaying payment is illegal in New York State.
Human Resources leapt into gear, hoping to pacify me. My paycheck was coming — just not through direct deposit this time. Since it was my last one from this company the check would be mailed to me; oh they had forgotten to mention that. And you know how the mail is — so don’t expect it any time soon.
When I told the HR rep that Clyde had used foul language with me, she said, “Thanks for the feedback,” as though I were complimenting her hairstyle. She didn’t ask for details. She didn’t appear to care. It was a foregone conclusion that I was “over-reacting,” and that Clyde perfectly justified in dumping me.
“He had some problems with your performance,” she said.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Er, um, oh, let’s see, gee … I can’t think of it right now.”
I wondered if it were as serious as sexual harassment or delaying payment. I doubted it — because I knew I had spent most of my time there “looking busy,” and as far as that went, I was a sublime performer. I used to say I had a paid acting role: to look busy in front of a computer for 8 hours a day.
Interestingly, I learned that Clyde was fired three months after that.
Maybe it took his harassing another woman to snap that HR hussy into some semblance of competence.
I could and probably should have said more at the time. But I’m glad I opened my mouth and at least said something — perhaps I planted a deserved seed of mistrust. Even when we think our words are falling on deaf ears, it is always worth our saying them.

Hold the Waterworks!

lynxes5 — 2010-02-08T00:00:00

Back in the ‘60s, when I was a sweet young thing, I was hired to sit alone at a bar to lure in customers. My boss had opened an establishment in Greenwich Village, and during business hours he planted at least one gal by the window to sit around drinking lemonade or grape juice in a wine glass. We were instructed to give the impression that we were hoping a handsome stranger might buy us a drink.
You would think this would not be a terribly stressful job: No college degree required, no previous experience, no IQ even necessary. But the boss didn’t let us use the bathroom. So we had to sit there drinking glass after glass of juice and hold the waterworks … for hours. Try looking like you’re chasing a date with a bladder doing double duty. It was agony. Especially because most customers had no intention of buying us drinks; they wanted their own. They were with friends, or they were typical bar flies that wanted to sit by themselves. So it wasn’t like we could distract ourselves by chatting with them. We could only sit and think about how madly, miserably uncomfortable we felt — for something like 50 cents an hour.
Finally I got up and headed to the Ladies Room. The boss was at my heels. I slammed the door in his face. Must have tinkled a gallon or two. Once I was blissfully relieved I climbed out the window … and never came back. Jobs that prohibit you from performing the most basic of human functions are not worth the pittance. And bosses who don’t get that … never will.

Sandwich Board Memos

Anonymous — 2010-02-08T00:00:00

I am a junior partner in an international law firm.

My boss, a senior and rain-making partner who speaks many languages fluently, went through employees so quickly that secretaries needed special training in order to work for him.

Five lawyers quit in a year, explicitly because of his arrogance and nastiness towards them. Each replacement was found by a recruiter who took a 60K commission.

I was among those.

Often, when I came into the office to tell my boss about a meeting or conference call, he would just wave me away. He didn’t appear to read my emails or memos.

Then he would scream at me when he missed out on the conferences.

Why hadn’t I let him know about them? How incompetent was I? He needed a “real employee!”

“I’m sorry but you can’t have it both ways,” I told him. “I come in person to let you know about these conferences and you blow me off. You ignore my written communications. If you want to be informed, you’ve got to listen.”

But listening was a foreign concept to him.

Finally I’ve taken to marching around his office with giant signs written in magic marker: “Conference Call in 10 minutes!”

Generally I write them in English but now and then I use one of the many other languages he speaks.

And this does the trick…

I Used to be a Secretary…

Linda Linguvic — 2010-02-08T00:00:00

But now I’m an administrative assistant. Or was, until I retired last month. When I was a secretary, in 1958 to be exact, there were no of course no electronic files or back-up drives or pdfs or laser printers. This was even before Xerox or mimeograph technology. The only way to copy correspondences was to use carbon paper.

For anyone who doesn’t remember it, carbon paper was the same size as regular typewriter paper, coated on one side with ink or pigment. We sandwiched it between our sheets of paper in order to duplicate what we were typing. The whole technique seems awfully primitive, but that’s what we did. We couldn’t use “whiteout” to correct an error on a carbon copy, so we had to type perfectly. No mistakes. But look … even Venus or Serena Williams hits a net ball. There is no such thing as perfect. You hear that, you bosses of the damned?

When I did mistype a letter I did the logical thing: started over. Usually by the end of the week I had 6 or 8 sheets of company letterhead crumpled in my wastebasket. And every week, unbeknownst to me, my boss collected them. After five weeks he confronted me with his find. Didn’t I see how much company letterhead I was wasting?

Mind you, they had boxes of stationary to the ceiling. And I’ve always been a good typist. That’s what we learned to be, when we were secretaries.

After that I brought a big purse in to work — big enough to store my crumpled sheets of company letterhead those inevitable times I made errors.

Reporting to the Chief Executive Egomaniac

niceguyeddy — 2010-02-15T00:00:00

Some years ago, I walked into a job as the first junior salesperson on a team which was tasked with opening up a brand new category of clientele for our company. In the company's many years of doing business, this was viewed as a pretty bold move -- so of course the sales director would need to be a pretty bold individual. If that alone were the job description, we'd have nailed it right on the head.

He had some of the other assets. He had a ton of contacts in the industry, had exposure from everything to marketing to R&D to sales, talked the talk very well, and was generally a very business-savvy individual. Unfortunately, he also was well-aware of his gifts, and thus had an epic case of egocentrism.

When we would work the booth at trade shows, he would talk and talk and talk and talk and talk, about how good he was at sports, how well-respected he was in the industry, how many dates he used to go on during his swingin' bachelor days. And of course he'd tell me why I was doing everything all wrong when I went out on my own dates. What else. I'd hear about all the job offers he was getting, and how badly our CEO was running the company. If I ever tried to add color to any of his commentary, I was summarily greeted with, “It’s not that, instead it’s --” and another onslaught of hot air. It was like standing in front of a space heater.

This husband and father of two even bragged to me about an *almost* threesome between him and two lab partners while in graduate school. I guess the one atom of tact coursing through his veins kicked in at that moment, because I never actually got to hear the gory details.

Around the office, it was even worse. Whenever he got off the phone, he'd walk the hallways announcing his latest conquest, no matter how inconsequential. When he was within the confines of someone's office, he'd instead turn to bad-mouthing people and illustrating how all his success came in spite of these people. Basically, he was the best at his job, and the best at everyone else's, too.

His reviews of my performance were generally positive, though on occasion he’d tell me that I needed to work on my listening skills.

Here's my favorite:

When one of the employees suffered a devastating loss in the family and divulged the news to coworkers, he could barely utter a word of condolence before blurting out how he'd gotten through to the VP of whatever and was ready to pitch him the presentation of a lifetime. We were left standing around, staring in disbelief.

Of course, all this begs the question, "why did the guy get to keep his job?" Really, I'm not entirely sure. I think he really managed to work the system pretty well. His performance, though underwhelming, was probably just good enough to keep him on the right side of shakeouts. He was jolly enough that people still wanted to be on his good side. And above all, he was surrounded by a very decent and qualified group of individuals who supported him in every way they knew how.

As far as I know, this guy is still at the same job, so I’m assuming he’s either met some degree of success, or cleaned up his act. People can change, and I’d be delighted to hear that he mellowed out and made life a little easier on my ex-coworkers. Hopefully that would also usher in for him a new awareness of the wonders of dental floss. His breath always challenged “dead deer in July” for worst smell burned into my memory. But in actuality, it should own that distinction all by itself, because at least vultures would pick at a dead deer. THIS -- this was in a class all its own. I can only assume it derailed many a threesome.

Special Projects

FreddyJackson — 2010-02-15T00:00:00

As a young man, I had my own lawn and garden business. I used to clip grass and spread mulch and do much bigger jobs like chop down acres of out-of-control blackberry bushes. Some jobs were easy and some had more thorns than I could handle.

It was hard work and I got dirty and I loved it; partly because a physical job was a perfect opportunity for me to get out of my head, where I spent too much time already. I had started my business as a sophomore in high school. At 15 this was my second season and I was proud to be making money and building muscles.

One customer was a local doctor, called “Dr. Friendly” by the kids in my neighborhood. I knew him as a nice man who involved himself in various religious youth programs in the community, who had offered me a job cleaning out the blackberry bushes that surrounded his office. In the Northwest, wild blackberries were the bane of property owners and one of my best sources of business. Dr. Friendly’s blackberries had been neglected for years and they had taken advantage of that time to grow two inches thick at the base and over seven feet tall. The quarter acre patch around his office grew close together with wicked thorns. Even when cut back yearly they were almost impossible to get rid of. They started re-growing almost as soon as they were cut down.

The standard removal practice was to “poison them” and then cut down the dead stalks. But no matter how you went at it, you were sure to get dirty and stuck and frustrated… because nature always fought back, and you always paid a price when you took on the blackberries.

When Dr. Friendly hired me, he let me know that on top of the blackberry clean-up, part of my job would be to do some special projects he wanted me to complete inside his office. When we shook on the job, he looked me in the eye and reminded me to check in with him every day. I wondered why he would hire a lawn and garden worker to do “inside” work for him… it was confusing and a little funny and I forgot all about it as I got caught up in poisoning and cutting.

I also quickly forgot I was supposed to check-in with Dr. Friendly. About a week into the blackberry battle, the doctor stopped me outside and reminded me about his special projects. He said again that part of my job was spending some part of every day checking in with him and he asked me to be sure and remember. It wasn’t like me to forget this simple request and I promised I’d see him the following day.

The next day I cautiously entered the office.. I felt embarrassed to be in this beautiful office all covered with blackberry juice, dirt and leaves, but I was damn well keeping my promise. Since there was no one up front at the end of the day, I wandered back towards the offices calling out quietly. I will never forget seeing one of my friends from school sitting high up on an examining table, all alone. I felt scared and embarrassed, like I had caught him naked. And he was naked, but only from the waist up. He saw me at the same time as I saw him… we were both startled as he was shirtless and he seemed strangely lost. I will never forget his face, he looked so sad and resigned…and he blushed. I thought, like me, he was embarrassed to be seen.

In my confusion I thought, “why is he here, the office is clearly closed?” And then I wondered, ”why is he alone… and why is he blushing?” And then I remember the rush of heat on my skin as I was embarrassed, confused and afraid all at the same time. The feelings stopped cold when I felt Dr. Friendly’s hand on my shoulder. Distracted and abrupt, he thanked me for coming while turning me around and ushering me towards the front. I remember his hands, slightly damp, as he pushed me quickly forward.

“I have nothing special today Freddy, but don’t forget to check again tomorrow.”

We both looked back to see my friend sitting on the examining table, uncomfortable and alone. Reluctant to just leave, I felt like a traitor. Maybe even a coward. Those damp hands pushed me again and he reminded me to return, and I remember distinctly thinking, knowing, that I wouldn’t be coming back.

I didn’t forget… and I never told anyone about my friend and “Dr. Friendly.” I often think about those blackberries and I know, in the end, they probably grew back. Despite the poison and the cutting, they almost always grow back.

Get your wife to clean it!

NELoop820 — 2010-02-15T00:00:00

Working for a non-profit will sometimes have great benefits. One of the perks my organization received was a building. Yes, an entire building for our new offices. It wasn’t huge; just a little over 800 square feet (three rooms, one small conference room, a supply closet and a bathroom). This was a welcomed change to the windowless hostile that was being utilized by five people - one manager’s office, one outer office with two desks – not fun, especially with the bathroom being in another building.

When we received the go ahead to take over the new space we knew we had lots of work to do. After all, it had been recently gutted out due to Asbestos’s and it had to be up to OSHA standards before we could occupy it.

My manager offered absolutely no input on what to do with this building. When the Executive Director asked him how to proceed he said, “I don’t know. I guess we need to hire a decorator.”

Again, we are a non-profit. And since our salaries are based on donations and grants, I volunteered my services to draw the plans for the office, purchase the furniture and decorate the entire building. We had received a grant to fund this process. So I would get extra pay and the opportunity to do something I loved doing: decorate. I did have a professional organizing business prior to this opportunity. So I was more than qualified for this task.
During the entire six month process I continued to ask my manager for his input. He had no response. He said he didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I didn’t argue with him, mainly because he works better alone and his personality is quite off-putting. Once the office had walls and the furniture was ordered, the fun began.

“Gail, I surely would hate to have to come into my office and have to throw my coat on the floor. Shouldn’t we have door hangers?” he said.

As I stood looking at this man, I resisted the need to cuss him out. “I’ve already ordered those,” I said with a look that would make Medusa turn to stone!

Finally, the project was done, furniture was in place and it was time to get settled in t
he office. My manager casually mentioned to me that I would have to continue working at the other office due to the stipulations of the grant assigned to my duties. I was floored! He could have mentioned this during the onset of this project. But he never even hinted that I would not be in the new office I had just designed, furnished and set up.

As we got deeper into the project we began consolidating the old office and moving files and supplies to the new office. Since my office space was shared with four other people I did not have to move my files (most of which were in my car anyway). But my manager’s office would have to be relocated.

Three months after the move he still had not lifted one finger to move his things out of the old office. Finally, our bookkeeper (who was now occupying the office that I had assumed would be mine) had come to the old office and tasked herself to clean his office, move his things to the new office and organize them.

I was floored and outraged that this man (who I now fondly refer to as the Lazy Fat Bastard) would have the BOOKKEEPER do his dirty work!

One month into the new space I was back and forth between the offices since we do not have an office manager and supplies needed to be ordered and received. I noticed that the area (with exception to the front office) was starting to look like a pigs' sty. I brought the mess to my manager’s attention. My main concern was that the bathroom was looking like a bio-hazard. I had sent out an email specifically stating that we had to collectively clean the office and to make sure we pick up after ourselves.

One day while visiting I realized that the bathroom had gotten totally out of control. The trash was overflowing, there was urine and feces on the toilet seat and somehow, someone had managed to urinate down the front of the toilet. I told my manager that it was not acceptable that people were not cleaning up after themselves. And that I was not going to be responsible for cleaning up after grown people. By this time two other agencies had moved into one of the offices in the building. So there were only men there at this time. When I decorated the bathroom I made certain that there were seat covers supplied. So whoever was leaving the bathroom like that was not just lazy; he was nasty.

As I stood in the doorway of the bathroom pointing out what needed to be taken care of, my manager, with a crap-eating grin on his face said, “Well you have to realize that men really don’t think about things like that. You’re just going to have to deal with it.”

I could feel the steam coming out of my ears. I looked him directly in the eyes and said, “Well, due to the fact that I do not have a husband, dog or kids at my home, you may want to call your wife or daughters to come in here and clean up after you because I’m not doing it!” He laughed and walked away.

After I took my concerns to the Executive Director she finally spoke with the board of directors and somehow we found the money to hire a cleaning lady. I thought this was odd since my manager (who also handles our budget) claims, almost weekly, that funding will be ending and we’ll all be out of jobs.

Dead deadline!

NELoop820 — 2010-02-15T00:00:00

After two and half years of unemployment, I was so happy to have found a job. I had worked in a corporate position as a Business Planner for five years. So accepting the entry level administrative role was a minor blow to the ego. But the bills had to be paid.

Allyson, our department head, knew my skill set far surpassed answering phones and making copies. But I reassured her that I was a hard worker. And with a military background, I would not jump ship.

Working at one of the most prestigious private universities in Dallas, Texas was a great opportunity. I mean, the growth potential alone was phenomenal. Not to mention the benefits; great medical, a new state of the art gym, personal trainer and a free degree. Plus this was a new department and our efforts would lay the foundation for how the department would progress.
Since we both were new it was sort of a blind leading the blind scenario. Most of our policies and procedures were still in the planning stages. But we were encouraged by tenured professors and other department heads to glean from other departments.

As we neared the beginning of the semester I was tasked with pulling together a rather lengthy project that required a budget analyst. Since we were a new department our projections would not meet the required 5 year requirement for the proposal. Therefore I had to get budget numbers of the entire division from our accounting department.

Jill and Katy were the head administrators for the accounting department. Jill had been with the institution for 23 years and Katy 17. They were experts on all things financial for that department and the two whom I was directed to go to for our budget inquiry.

As I spoke with Jill she seemed a bit agitated, “You’ll have to get that information from Katy when she returns!” she barked. “Okay” Is all I could manage to say. I wasn’t sure why Jill was perturbed but I decided to wait to see if Katy would be able to answer my questions. Again, a semester was beginning. So I figured that was the source of her frustration; there was a lot to do.

A couple of hours had passed so I decided to give Katy a call. My deadline was in two days and I needed to get those budget numbers into the proposal.

“Hi Katy!” I said in my best – please help me with this before I lose my job voice. “Yeah”, she replied.

I was a bit taken aback but continued “Okay. I was wondering if Jill had mentioned those budget numbers I was looking for. Allyson needs this report in two days. I’d appreciate any help you can offer.”

CLICK . . . she hung up.

As I sat holding the phone, totally out done that she had hung up on me, I realized that I did not have those numbers. And whatever was eating these two women was going to sideline our efforts. I had to take this to Allyson to see if she could intervene with Jill and Katy’s managers.

I stood patiently at Allyson’s door waiting for her to end her phone conversation; knowing she would not be very happy about this. As she wrapped up her call she signaled me into her office. I hadn’t put away my military mindset so I was still in the mode of making sure I did not over step my bounds with my superiors.

I took a deep breath as I sat on the ottoman in Allyson’s office. “We are not going to make our deadline.” I said in a not so confident voice. “Neither Jill nor Katy will assist with the budget and both of them hung up on me when I tried to explain what we needed.”

As I took another breath and waited for her to snap (as she had more than once in the past 5 months that I had worked there) she looked me directly in the eyes with a smirk on her face and said, “Here’s what you need to know. Jill can’t get you fired. But Katy can. Any questions?”
I was floored. Here I was working myself into a frenzy to get her report together and I was rewarded with threats.

“Well that’s all good and well” I replied – totally forgetting my military barring because I realized I was being hung out to dry.

“The reality is that this is your report and you need those numbers for this proposal. Are you going to get them because they are not being helpful?” I was infuriated.

And as if talking to a three year old she replied “Did they hoit yo wittle feeween’s?”
As she sat giggling I thought, “This witch has lost her darn mind!” But, again, military bearing took over.

“No, no one hurt my feelings. But you’re going to have to figure out how to get the numbers for this report.” I stood up, walked out of her office, sat down at my computer and began updating my resume.

Allyson finally got Jill and Katy’s manager to help her with the budget numbers. Why she felt a need to talk down to me in that manner is still a mystery and still leaves a tinge of venom in my throat when I think about it.

I’m not certain why managers feel an obligation to use their staff as doorsteps. But no one should have to tolerate being talked to like a child in any office setting.

I did not leave that job angry. But I did leave; the first day of classes. When I turned in my letter of resignation Allyson was actually baffled. She did not ask for an explanation. Her only comment was, “Can I legally hire a single mother with three kids? I know she won’t leave.” And that spoke volumes about her character.

Are You So Stupid?

BLH — 2010-02-15T00:00:00

For thirty-six years I was employed within a huge Social Service bureaucracy. Sometime during the mid 1980s I was yanked from a unit where I’d supervised five caseworkers who checked up on drug addicts to determine whether they were enrolled in an acceptable treatment program.

My staff of five was required to verify treatment status before giving out Welfare checks. This was not as easy as it sounds, since many addicts were considerably more devious and clever than their caseworkers. They frequently invented fake programs with imaginative names like “Hope Hacienda”, or “Project Oasis.” And a few discovered how to forge their caseworkers’ names on the little cards that eligible clients were required to present at the disbursement window in exchange for funds.

I was not entirely unhappy, therefore to be transferred to the Fair Hearings Unit, the unit called Fear Hearings by some of the clerical staff, who imagined that our job consisted of berating those convicted of Welfare fraud.

Every day we interviewed clients who came sobbing to our desks, claiming that they had lost their checks or had been unfairly terminated. Often the problem lay in the huge web of bureaucracy. It would turn out that the termination resulted from failure to document proof of pregnancy, job termination, rent payment, etc.

Although this assignment was often frustrating, the tasks were straightforward and easy to perform. The only unbearable aspect of it was the team supervisor’s hatred of me. She hated me more than any client did!

I had never especially given her reason to hate me; I was friendly and reliable. But one of my co-workers suggested that I reminded her of her sister. Apparently she was viciously jealous of her sister. Maybe I looked like her sister or sounded like her sister. And what could I do about that?

This supervisor had a habit of creeping up on me to accuse me of mysterious infractions of bureaucratic protocol that I was certain I had not committed.

“What have you done about the Thompson case?” she charged one afternoon, sneaking up behind me as I was unlocking the door to the employees’ rest room.

“Wha…wha…what Thompson case?” I stammered. I had at least six Thompson cases in my caseload, and I hadn’t a clue which one she meant or what was the matter.

“You mean you’re not familiar with your own caseload?”

My hand began to shake and I couldn’t get the key into the lock.

“Are you so stupid,” the supervisor hissed in triumph, “that you can’t even manage to unlock a door?”

Taking steps to protect myself against personal slights like this were unlikely to produce positive results in this agency. Fortunately transfers and promotions were routine. My hateful supervisor was eventually transferred and I passed a Civil Service exam and was promoted to an assignment where my skills were acknowledged and appreciated.

I was left only with the bitter residue of memory I still find painful.

You With the Tears in Your Eyes

Mara — 2010-02-15T00:00:00

I loved him as only the very young, the very old or the very lucky can love.

I was very young.

When my brilliant, handsome European professor sauntered into the ice cream shoppe where I worked one summer when I was in art school, he brought the sun’s radiance through that creaky door. Nonchalantly quoting Hegel or Heidegger or perfectly mimicking Bob Dylan as he stood at the counter watching me race around to serve customers, he sweetened my time there more than the ice cream.

He wasn’t the only regular customer who knew me. Pals from the neighborhood or art school came in to say hello — and get a cone or a scoop. Friends of my parents who were in town for a Broadway show made it their business to stop by for dessert. My employer, who was Japanese, commented with a smile: “Never so busy without you.”

I took that as a sign of job security.

By August my ice cream counter was “the place to be.” And it was the place my favorite professor often was, since he lived a block away and loved pistachio cones. I had other fans, mind you … but I only had eyes for him.

Then one afternoon he mentioned he was leaving for a vacation in Greece.

Many years later, he told me “I took your face with me.”

I have no idea how my face looked — stricken, crushed.

When he walked out the door I shed tears, perhaps not tears anyone else could see.

But someone must have because several days later my boss told me: “Take a week off for vacation.” I drove to the Adirondack Mountains to paint and dream. When I came back to the city, my boss refused to look me in the eye and just muttered that I should take another week off.

It slowly dawned on me that I was being fired.

“Why did you whack her?” another employee asked him. “We had twice as much business when she was here.”

“She talked too much to customers,” the boss said.

“But that’s what you’re supposed to do…”

Apparently not there. My boss’s concept of volume business entailed shoving as many cones into as many hands as possible, as quickly as possible. Which is a logical premise, I suppose, except for one problem: where do those hands come from in the first place? Who brings in all this business and keeps people coming back? What makes your ice cream more appealing than Ben and Jerry’s or Tasti D-Lite?

It’s no surprise that I’m still in the neighborhood, but the ice cream shoppe is not.

Bronze Brassiere

DSW — 2010-02-15T00:00:00

Have you ever seen a bronze brassiere?

I saw my first, and last, on the desk of a brassiere manufacturer directly across from a gold-plated pen and pencil set.

The sculpture was full-bodied, rounded out by the torso of an imaginary woman. Its shoulder straps stretched upward, empty, supported by nothing but the strength of the metal itself. I found it hard to look at anything in the room except the bronze brassiere.

I was trying to land a job as research director for this brassiere manufacturer. He wanted to determine the most important factors for women who were contemplating a purchase. Frankly, I had no interest in this problem. It was a way to earn some money. But I wanted to do a good job, to demonstrate my competence. Having been trained in the construction of interview schedules as part of my doctoral study at Columbia, I was eager to prove to myself that I could do a professional job.

From the start the manufacturer and I never hit it off. I didn't even like the way he dressed — his white-on-white shirts with the heavy gold cuff links, the expensive tie with its floral pattern, and the shiny Italian suit all were chosen by him to announce: “I'm successful! I'm rich! I’m more important than you!”

More importantly, he knew in advance the answers he wanted the survey to confirm. He had framed the questions leading the interviewee to speak the answers he wanted to obtain. In short, he didn't need me to conduct the survey. All he wanted from me — and he was willing to pay for them — were my credentials and my affiliation with Columbia.

During the interview I listened to him politely. He assumed my silence indicated agreement. What was I supposed to do — argue with the guy I hoped would hire me? Well, he hired me, but I knew there was trouble ahead.

My survey was designed to elicit honest answers from the respondents, my goal to learn which aspect of brassieres were most important to the purchasers. As expected, my boss was far from pleased with my effort to conduct an honest study. He didn’t want his customers to identify comfort and cost as their prime reasons for buying one brassiere instead of another — he wanted them to rave about “quality workmanship” and “fine materials.”

At our last meeting the survey rested on the top of his desk, overshadowed by the bronze brassiere. “I hired you to do a job.” His contempt for me showed in his voice. “I paid you to do it. What's this nonsense you’ve turned in?”

I responded with a simple defense that I tried to convey without showing my anger: “I’ve demonstrated a trend here. It’s a good piece of work. I’m proud of it.”

“You're a two-bit schmuck. I never should have hired you. I won't make that mistake again!”

“You won’t have to — because I won’t make the mistake of working for you again!”

“Get out!” he cried, flinging the pages of the survey at me, “and take this drivel with you.”

With one last look at the bronze brassiere, I left the office knowing my integrity could not be bought and sold as readily as a sack of potatoes.

Calling in Well

Celeste Leibowitz — 2010-02-22T00:00:00

My first job out of law school was with a small, three-partner firm almost at the lower tip of Broadway. Even at the start, the head partner showed his true colors. Mr. BigBucks subjected me to the classic hostile interview.

“Why didn’t you get better grades?” he asked, when my transcript showed that I graduated with honors.

“Why didn’t you go to school in New York City?” Was it appropriate to explain that I wanted the experience of living away from home more than I wanted the prestige of a New York City law school?

I was convinced that he was going to reject me, and was completely shocked when he asked if I could start the next day.

Soon enough, I saw that working in his office was no pleasure. He barked at everyone: the associate attorneys, the secretaries, even his co-partners. When a client called and asked if he was in, I took the call. It was after six and the secretaries were gone. Lacking secretarial training, I saw nothing wrong with telling the client that Mr. BigBucks had left for the day.

The next morning I found a memo on my desk, which had been circulated to the entire staff. “No one is to inform a client of my whereabouts when I am out of the office. It is pathetic that some people do not have better sense than to blurt these things out.”

Mr. BigBucks had a second business going, some kind of trade with China. He hired Chinese immigrants who depended on him for their green cards. These unfortunate young women had no choice but to put up with his screaming, and would do anything he asked. He kept up his fluent Chinese by chattering away with them in the office, in front of people who did not understand a word of what they were saying. I found this rude and exclusionary.

The only time Mr. BigBucks was sweet and charming was when he was drunk. He sometimes came back from lunch in an inebriated state, and didn’t yell at a soul for the entire afternoon. The rest of the time, however, he had the kind of hair trigger temper that has a staff walking on eggs.

One partner left him during the four months I worked there. I had no idea of what transpired but it was clear they were not on good terms. The remaining partner, a genial, fortyish fellow named Harold, played “good cop” to Mr. BigBucks’ “bad cop.” When I was frustrated and upset, Harold would encourage me to keep trying.

BigBucks fired people on a moment’s notice. I became nervous and timid, expecting to be canned every time he raised his voice at me. Even though I hated tobacco, I took up smoking cigarlets in an attempt to quell my nerves. One afternoon, as I took lunch at my desk, I read a passage in Tom Robbins’ “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.” To paraphrase, it said something like, “You’ve called in sick many times, but did you ever think of calling in well? It goes like this: you get the boss on the phone and you say, “Boss, I’ve been sick ever since I’ve been working for you, but today I’m well and I won’t be back.”

This fit my feelings about the job so perfectly that I nearly fell out of my ergonomic chair laughing. I determined that when the time came, I was indeed going to “call in well.”

I was sworn in as an attorney in the First Department, and the very next day, now that I no longer needed his reference, I went into Mr. BigBucks’ office and resigned. He asked for two weeks notice and wanted the project I was working on completed. He wanted it written on letter size paper rather than legal size because the legal size paper cost more. I pointed to the regulation showing that it was required to be printed on legal size paper, but he dismissed my concern with a contemptuous wave of his hand. So, with misgivings, I had the secretaries type it up on letter size paper.

The assignment took three and a half weeks to complete, and because copy machines did not collate at that time, I did most of the collating of the required original and 25 copies all by myself. Then I was given cab fare and rode off with the 26 documents in two huge shopping bags. I delivered them to the appropriate office and called my job from the phone booth. We’d understood that this was to be my last task at the firm.

Harold answered the phone, and I told him the documents were delivered and I was heading back to the office to get my last paycheck. Harold sounded embarrassed.

“We had a call.. the documents have to be submitted on legal size paper.”

“I know! I told him that!”

“Well…” Harold cleared his throat. “Could you come back here and help us get them recopied? The secretary is retyping it now.”

“Listen,” I answered, “I gave Mr. Bigbucks two weeks notice three and a half weeks ago. You don’t need to pay me a lawyer’s salary to stand there and Xerox papers. I’m coming to the office, collecting my check, and as far as I am concerned, as of this moment, I am unemployed!”

That’s how I made my escape from the Law Firm from Hell.

All The Signs

Courtney — 2010-02-22T00:00:00

When I was laid off for the very first time, I was still living in San Francisco. I rarely talk about it, but I remember it well. It was the morning following a Jurassic Five concert. The concert itself was not memorable, but being one of the only people at the concert over the age of 30 was. The only two people older than me at the concert were two people of the people I was with. I was there with my friend Tess, her husband, and our 23-year-old coworker Jim, who I decided to stand closer to so that I could pretend to be, well, his older sister.

Being uncomfortable with my age, I drank a lot. I mean, I drank at least enough that I could no longer remember who was performing. Nor did I remember that I had a meeting scheduled for the next morning. By the time I went home, I got maybe two hours of sleep before the alarm went off. Looking like hell and feeling ten times worse, I managed to arrive at the office in advance of most of my co-workers. As I entered, I noticed the stacks of cardboard boxes in the conference room. Though I had not yet experienced one, I recognized the signs of a lay-off. An all-staff meeting was one sign. Cardboard boxes were another.

I wasn’t sure if this would be company-wide or a selective dismissal, but I didn’t wait around to find out. I decided to play defense to the company’s offense and adopted a new motto: They can’t fire you if they can’t find you. I went home and waited.

Later, I received calls from former coworkers telling me the agency had been closed. They were pissed that I hadn’t warned them, but mostly they were just surprised.

In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to any of us. The writing on the wall at the agency, which I’ll call Ludicrous.com, ranged from blatant warnings like “our general manager has no prior experience managing people” to the not-so-obvious. One one week after I started there, I ran into my boss at a party. Drunk and drugged, Michael passed out into a flower box and broke two of his ribs. I could have considered that a sign.

Then there was my first solo sales call, when Michael asked me at the last minute to replace him. He’d “forgotten” to tell me that this client had been our former creative director, who halfway through my presentation of the portfolio, would stop me to ask if I had anything to show him that he had not personally designed.

Eventually, the signs grew larger, more vibrant, like the weekly new or, rather, no new business announcements, the stock price falling at avalanche speed, and more and more employees occasionally going into 5:00 pm meetings with human resources and not returning the day. However, while the downfall.com was not surprising, it was confusing. How could we go from $11 million in new business in the first quarter of the year to closing shop in the fourth?
There is an old adage that says: “Don’t sell what you can’t do.” At Ludicrous, our rule as more like “Sell whatever you can.” It didn’t matter that we didn’t have the people, the experience or the knowledge, we told clients we could do whatever we wanted. My boss told me, “Just get the revenue. If we don’t have the revenue, we don’t have a company.”

Another problem was that Ludicrous.com was made up of smaller, previously independent agencies that had been bought and spot-welded into an organization that supposed to be a cohesive business entity but, instead, seemed more like a high school full of cliques. The cultural clashes only added fuel to the fires sparked by overworked tensions. For example, our two Web engineers were staffed on three different projects, each of which should have been staffed by teams of six to eight people – or at least according to the client contracts. Those two engineers never slept, never ate, and never talked to anyone. Eventually, we forgot we had engineers, until someone mentioned that they had been laid off.

“Did you hear about Bob and Joe?”

“Bob and Joe who?”

“You know. Bob and Joe, the engineers. They were let go.”

“We have engineers?”

“Not anymore.”

Our own Web site, full of dot-com lingo and buzzwords, further illustrated our issues. Our values section read like a Letterman-quality, top-twenty list of bullshit, but the real highlight was what should have been called the Mismanagement Bios section. The executive team meant nothing to us but a revolving list of names; the most accurate description provided for any of them was the word “acting.” Every time we met a new one, we would leave the meeting with personal agendas to circulate our resumes as soon as possible.

On the way home from my last minutes at Ludicrous, I stopped into the bank next door. A homeless man standing in front of me in line smelled terrible, like he had just shit his pants. As the stain started to appear, I backed away and left the line.

As I left, I looked back over at him, and he stood perfectly still, as if this was a normal occurrence, shitting oneself. Maybe that’s what you have to do – accept that there’s shit to deal with every day, and just keep going.

Or, maybe this was just another sign.

Are you going to swallow that?

Swirler — 2010-02-22T00:00:00

I don't like spit. I have an equal aversion to my own and other people's, which presents practical problems when I brush my teeth, but that's another story altogether. Before taking a position at a wine retailer, I should have considered my hate-hate relationship with spit, but I was young and foolish and I learned soon enough. My boss was obsessed with tasting every bottle of wine that crossed our threshold, and that meant he tasted wine all day long. Nearly every area of our office was appointed with a spit bucket, from the conference room table to the lunchroom table. Even the vast majority of our office meetings involved wine tasting — but not swallowing. People were constantly spitting around me, and leaving spit in spit buckets. The worst were the pizza party/wine tasting lunches, when chunks of pizza slid down the sides of the spit buckets. My boss, wanting to include me in the oenophilic experience, would say, "I have the perfect little Pinot for you to try!" and he'd hand me a glass with a tasting amount of wine, swirl it for me, and then thrust a well used spit bucket under my nose to be extra helpful. I endured this spit exposure for months until my gag reflex weakened, forcing me to quit. Of course, at my going away party, my boss and colleagues toasted my departure with a "stunning Sauvignon Blanc" that not one of us swallowed.

Politics in the Workplace

stranger03 — 2010-02-22T00:00:00

Having been in middle management pretty much from the first job I got right out of college, I got to be the boss and the employee simultaneously. As a result, I became one of those middle of the road, please-all, your friend and your superior, life is what you make of it, kind of laissez-faire bosses that was able to command, but optimistically hoped that everyone knew what their role was and in turn would not have to be spurned to work harder. I always wanted to be the cool boss that was often younger than his employees yet respected for offering a mutual respect to his subordinates. Having this outlook led me to believe that there were no bad bosses, just cynics who were sour at the fact that their incompetence was finally called out and then let go. Boy was I wrong.

I was recently laid off over the phone…on my day off. There is nothing worse than telling your department head which people need to get the axe, just to have your name added to the bunch. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. After a rather tumultuous and under-funded 35 million dollar renovation (under-funded only because those who planned it were unable to keep the reins on their spending), I was brought on board to help manage the food and beverage department of a boutique hotel in a very beautiful portion of sunny southern California. Despite the fact that I had had a fair amount of experience and was actually referred by the head of the department as a trustworthy and stalwart enforcer of policy, I worked 6 months on a day rate before I was offered a salary with benefits. “No problem.” I said. “I would just like an offer letter stating that I will receive retroactive vacation time accrued for the last six months that I have worked here (50+ hours a week mind you).” Sure sure, was the response I received from the then recently declared COO of the hotel that we began to affectionately term as the coup of the hotel. This woman had been brought on board to assist the hotel’s GM, but later was promoted to the director of Sales and Marketing and Media relations when she became buddy-buddy with the owner and President of the hotel. Feeling quite empowered, she began whispering in the Owner’s ear that the current GM was incapable of doing his job and that he was making bad decisions regarding sales and management. After a few evenings of food and drink with her new best friend and confidant, the owner began to believe what this woman was saying, however, much to the chagrin of her lawyer could not fire the GM for his contract was iron clad. So, to disgruntle the man, the owner promoted the Director of Sales and Marketing to Chief Operating Officer of the hotel where he would be humbled and have to answer to his former assistant. She immediately began dismantling the team formerly assembled for the GM.

Assistant GM, gone. Girls that had snickered at the former assistant, gone. Servers that leaned too much, gone. It got to the point where there was no one left to fire and we were running on a severe skeleton crew in the hotel. Finally she made her way to the food and beverage department where I had been unsuspectingly trying to improve the department by implementing some systems. As a result of our recently removed Maitre d’, a void had been left where he was supposed to write a Service Manual. So I took it upon myself to write one only after I had written a New Hire Employee Manual that should have been in place prior to the opening of the entire hotel (if that doesn’t give you some perspective then the rest of the story will). Long story short, after cannibalizing half the hotel’s staff and redistributing everyone’s responsibilities among the remaining few, she made her way toward the food and beverage department. And only after we fired half our staff, did I get the call from home.

“No problem,” I thought to myself I have plenty of marketable skills and experience, finding a job where I can be appreciated won’t be a problem. Well, when I went back to my office to reclaim some of my property and get some files off my computer, I was escorted off property by security telling me that I was considered a threat to the hotel and that the Human Resources department had sent out a memo stating that I was no longer allowed on property.

So when I am asked about the worst boss that I have ever had, I think back to the worst experience I have had. I guess the old adage about keeping your enemies closer is true, however when they pose as friends, it is quite often hard to tell. I was let go, and even demonized, when all I was trying to do was make the place successful. It’s a damn shame if you ask me, and now I am not even sure they are going to give me unemployment insurance. Tough gig. In retrospect, I now see that they were purposely trying to make the place fail so that they could sell the place whole. Far be it for me to impose on anyone’s grandiose schemes and maneuvers. I can wait until she applies for another job because her responsibilities were relegated to firing anyone around here with half a brain to make herself look good. Oh and the worst part…she took credit for writing MY manuals!

I Feel Like Firing Somebody Today!

neatly categorized neuroses — 2010-02-22T00:00:00

Back in a previous life, I was a Floridian. For a time, I even lived in Miami and worked for a small mail order company that shipped contact lenses. It was a good gig for a time — of course, that time was all of five minutes. The details of my position are rather uninteresting, aside from my coked-up coworker that seriously gave Jerry Blank a run for her money. It was the owner of this company that has scarred me for life. I will never wear contact lenses.

I was told early on, to beware of the bossman. He was an intimidating 6'5"ish character with long dreadlocks and a forceful gait. His voice boomed over the partitions as if the sound barrier would be permanently cracked henceforth; worst of all, he was a genius. The first time I recall hearing his voice was shortly after the company move to a larger building. We brought on more salespeople as business was accelerating. One of the new ladies approached him kindly: "Hi, how are you?" she inquired. "Great, how about you?" he replied in a deceptively cheerful tone. "Can I ask you something?" "Sure!" he said — no doubt waiting for an opportunity to display his genius at whatever her inquiry. "The ladies room is out of toilet paper, do you know where that is?" For a moment he paused, then let out a tense "Do you know who I am?" loud enough for everyone to hear and with enough warning in his tone to foreshadow the coming onslaught for those of us in the know. "Yeah... do you know where the toilet paper is?" (Poor girl, she clearly wasn't warned, or she had serious moxie.) "You're going to ask me where the toilet paper is?!?!" All customers are now put on hold... "Yeah..." "You're fired!" This was no shock.

It was routine that every so often, the boss would enter the building with an immediate: "I feel like firing somebody today!!! Who's gonna f#@$ up?! Who's gonna f#@$ up?! Go on and f#@$ up 'cause I'm gonna fire somebody today!!!!" Now this would put everyone on edge and there was no way of knowing who would be the unlucky receiver of the pink slip. His mother and sister both had their days of humiliation and I narrowly escaped my own because, in his own words, he "liked me." The pressure was so high, I started smoking to take extra breaks and eventually quit with little notice. My manager neglected to tell the bossman, however.

A day after I quit, I was chatting long-distance with an old friend at my apartment. One of my roommates was the General manager of the contact lens company. Due to stress, he would routinely be MIA until the boss could coax him back with gifts like a free laptop and the like. This was one of those weekends. The boss called and called and I kept clicking over to let him know my roommate was not home and that I'd give him a message. After about five times in a row, I just let him go to voicemail. My other roommate heard this when she checked our messages: " Oh yeah, you don't want to answer the phone? Don't bother coming in to work Monday, you're fired!"

The Wrong Job

jomo33 — 2010-02-22T00:00:00

I was thrilled beyond belief. For the past year and a half I had been in a job that was comfortable, but monotonous. Now I had a new one that promised to teach me new things and allowed me to move back to my old and beloved neighborhood. I even moved back into the same house. What’s more, I would be working for a popular institution that I had some connections with. The only reservation I had was that I wasn’t entirely sure that I was qualified for the job. I had applied, almost tongue-in-cheek, for the job, and was delighted when I learned I would be considered for it. My responsibility would be to assist with the organization and processing of complicated research grants and contracts. I was to be a glorified administrative assistant, but doing much more than answering phones and taking meeting notes.
In the personal interview, I made it clear to my future boss and her cohorts that while I had some experience in grant writing - most of my work had focused on the arts and attaining grants for my own, personal work on the side. Not wanting to jeopardize my chances at the job, I also wanted to be honest that I hadn’t had much experience with grants and contracts in the sciences and related fields, which would comprise the bulk of my work. But “Sarah,” my future supervisor and the assistant director of the department, reassured me that she felt I was the right one for the job and promised to train me, teaching me everything that I would need to know. She also dangled the opportunity for advancement in front of me, telling me that should I perform well, I would have a chance of being promoted and advancing up the ladder. She was ecstatic that I had applied and thought I would be a great addition to the team. My first mistake was to believe her – and accepting the job.
Once on board, I was stuck in a cubicle and in a matter of days I realized that I was in over my head. One, the phone rang off the hook with people from other agencies and institutions that asked me questions about things that I had no clue about. Two, Sarah wasn’t living up to her promise of training me. My “training” consisted of being allowed to come over to her office each afternoon and ask questions. But I didn’t know where to begin. I knew almost nothing about what I was supposed to do. People dropped files off at my desk when I wasn’t looking and when I tried to find out what I needed to do with them, I was looked at like I was an idiot. I quickly realized this was not the job for me. Each afternoon when I would earnestly try to ask Sarah questions about exactly how I was supposed to do specific tasks, she appeared frustrated with me and her answers just confused me more. I would ask – so, how do I do so-and-so? She would then tell me, but her response would include at least three other things that I had no idea of what they were. I explained to her that she would have to start from the beginning, and train me like I didn’t know anything – because I didn’t. She continued to be courteous but seemed to be less and less eager to help me. Some days she wouldn’t be there at all. Other days she was simply too busy. But she was never too busy in the mornings to make her rounds to all of the female employees, gossiping and frowning and taking way too long to talk about personal affairs.
To make matters worse, Sarah would sometimes be late for work and call me to tell me why. She would rant on and on about having to deposit a check, but the bank wasn’t open yet and she was sitting in the parking lot. She would be there soon! I didn’t care. After a few weeks on the job, I would have preferred that she not come in at all.
Things reached a head one Friday afternoon when she and I had a meeting. Sad thing is, I cannot remember who called the meeting – me or her. It’s probably because my memory is muddled from the whole mess. I sat in a cold, sterile conference room and listened to her tell me that I wasn’t up to snuff. I verbalized my unhappiness with her so-called “training program” and my overall disappointment with the job. I stood up to her and I held my ground. I didn’t hold back – but in a professional tone. I readily admitted that my performance had not been good. I silently admitted to myself that she should never have hired me.
Toward the end of the conversation, Sarah suggested that I give it another month, and then, if things hadn’t improved, perhaps I “should start looking for another job.” I was stunned. Not because I felt like I was doing a great job. I wasn’t. But because I had tried hard to learn what I was supposed to and she hadn’t held up her end of the deal. I mumbled an agreement and left the room. Over the weekend, I decided that trying to keep the job would be a futility and that I would most likely be fired. So on Monday morning I submitted my resignation and gave a week’s notice. Valerie never spoke to me once during that week and I was later told that she was surprised I quit. The following Friday I went to say goodbye, but she had already gone. I left the key to the office on her chair. Sarah and I share the blame for this fiasco. I shouldn’t have applied and she shouldn’t have hired me.
She is now head of the department. Good for her.

Dirt Diggler

Kristina — 2010-02-22T00:00:00

My senior year of high school was going to be amazing. I qualified for “short day” which meant that I only needed four classes to graduate. Given our modular schedule, that equated to four hours of class on Monday and Tuesday and three the rest of the week. I told my parents about this and my mom said I must find a job before she would sign the permission slip. I agreed with her, but since I would be off most of the day, I did not want to work nights. I immediately set out to find a retail job. I grew up in a small bedroom community outside New Orleans, so there were only a handful of options. The closest store to me sold gifts, custom framing and music. I wanted to work in the music department, but was told that I needed to start off in gifts before getting “promoted” to music. I didn’t mind-the gift shop closed early and filled my days.
At 17, I was at least 20 years younger than everyone else, but they had all been working at the store for years. The owner, Patti, was the type of woman my mom referred to as “trash with cash”. A lifelong smoker, she had a raspy voice and deep wrinkles which made her appear considerably older than her fifty five years. Patti was a former Miss Georgia and had framed pictures of herself before she wrecked her looks all over the store. Patti had been married twice and was open about the affairs she had had with married men in our community. It constantly baffled me that she was able to land men, but I guess if you will settle for anything, it’s not really that complicated. Both of her ex husbands showed up at the store constantly. One was a Baptist minister who had left her for his current wife, but now regretted it and wanted to win her back. It was always super awkward when both former husbands showed up at the same time.
The man who managed the music department, Dirk, had an interesting relationship with Patti. Though they purported to not be lovers, he lived in her house and she docked his pay for rent. I was only making minimum wage, so I doubt he could have been making much. He was about ten years younger than her and had no money, so I assumed he wasn’t part of her harem, but still couldn’t figure out why she’d allow him to live with her. He always smelled faintly of Cool Ranch Doritos.
I was told to always look busy, so during down time, I would dust the displays. One afternoon, I was dusting the Precious Moments figurines which were close to the music department. I was on the floor, so Dirk couldn’t see me. While sitting there, I heard his phone ring. It was clearly a personal call; I continued dusting. As I was finishing up, I heard him say, “You should see the girl that works here. She’s only 17 and her dad is an FBI agent, so I’d better contain myself, but her body is incredible.” Feeling every bit the independent woman, I stood up and said, “I heard that!” Dirk ignored me, but walked into his office. That night I told my parents about it. My father was incredulous and wanted to come to the store with me and confront the pervert. He now referred to Dirk as “Dirt”. I told him I would handle it.
The next time I saw the work schedule, I noticed that I had been “promoted” to the music department. Unfortunately, I was now totally uncomfortable, so I was not psyched. I couldn’t tell Patti about it, so I told our bookkeeper about what I had overheard and that my parents would not approve of Dirk being my new supervisor. She told me that the same day I stood up for myself, Dirk came into her office and demanded that she speak to me about eavesdropping on his conversations. I was flabbergasted. I asked her to keep this confidential. Of course she did not and when Patti arrived at the store, I was called in to her office.
Patti asked me what happened and I repeated the story. She looked at me and said, “Kristina, you are a very beautiful girl with a very mature figure and you should not be surprised when men look at you. I understand what it’s like to be gorgeous. Men are going to look. It’s just something you have to deal with. If you want, I will talk to your parents, but you really should understand what it’s like for a man to have to look at a body like yours all day and not be able to do anything about it. You need to forget about this and just move on. We will no longer schedule you in the music department.”
Somehow, that witch made me feel like the entire incident was my fault. I knew my dad with his explosive temper would have eaten her alive, so I let it go. I only had a few more months until graduation. I still regret not suing her. Today I am an HR Generalist; I would never let this happen to any of my employees.

Teaching Yoga... How Fun!

jenny ann — 2010-02-22T00:00:00

I climbed the long flight stairs to a yoga studio in New York City. I was greeted by a small man who identified himself as a single letter – we’ll call him ‘Y’. He said he was the owner of the studio and directed me to a large room to my left. I was there for a teacher audition. Upon entering the room, I was met by about thirty other perspective teachers. We sat on the floor, waiting as more eager-faced freshly trained teachers arrived.

Finally Y entered and immediately pointed me out. He turned to the group and announced, ‘now this is a real adult’. Everyone half-heartedly laughed. Apparently they were as confused as I was. Y proceeded to call each of us to the front of the room. He yelled out the names of yoga poses he wanted us to role-play as though we were teaching different levels of students. All the while he blasted music and screamed for us to speak louder. I left humiliated, with a soar throat and sure this was an anomaly. My experience with yoga had been physically and philosophically challenging, however I was sure that it was a practice focused on compassion. I was certain this would be a one-time experience.

My next interview for a yoga-teaching job at a very prestigious international center consisted of an Indian man, a self-identified yogi, sitting cross-legged in a corner. He never stood up, just told me to stand in the center of the open room. After a few minutes of watching me stand still, he began rapidly firing the names of poses he wanted me to demonstrate for him. I did as he asked, yelling out, as he had instructed me to do, how I would teach each pose to individuals living with various conditions: cancer, diabetes, or hypertension. He then asked my about my training and when I identified a very respected yogini from Kashmir, a woman, he told me to find a male teacher and come back in two years.

Several rejections later, I decided to take the job with Y and was offered several classes to teach. He warned me that he kept tabs on his teachers and handed me the rules for teaching in his studio. The pay was very fare and I figured I could put up with just about anything. After my first class I received an e-mail that stated ‘I only counted four breaths in your forth round of Vinyasa (a sequence of poses) in your 8 AM class today.’

After that I found several e-mails a day in my in-box, some were directed to me and others were mass e-mails sent to all of the teachers. My job was threatened because I had the students of one class face a different direction. The group e-mails ranged from long diatribes on yogic philosophy that he would randomly pull me aside to discuss after my classes to videos of Japanese men singing karaoke.

As if this wasn’t enough, Y shifted my class schedule several times a month. He would call me into his office hand me a class as though he was trusting my with his first born and then two weeks later take my other classes away, only to have me substitute teach other teachers classes. This would not be an issue if yoga teachers didn’t make their money the way we do: we are generally paid per student and so you need to have regular classes to build regular students and fill your classes. Finally he gave the majority of my classes to his girlfriend and handed my five classes to teach on Sunday. I taught for Y for two years, all the while watching my fellow teachers endure similar or worst treatment. He kept us there by throwing us bones – paying half our salaries in cash and sending private clients our way. But in the end, it wasn’t enough to keep many of us there.

In my seven years of teaching yoga, I have learned that most studios do not practice what yoga teaches. There are truly crazy bosses in every line of work.

Bacon and Eggs

jenny ann — 2010-02-22T00:00:00

We called them “bacon and eggs”. It was the astonishing stealth and viciousness of the life/business partners that necessitated the use of code words. Somehow, in spite of their ample shapes, loudness, and capacity for shame, they were able to park their matching scooters, enter the cafe with their giant matching helmets (which had walkie-talkies so that they could fight while driving), and sneak, unbeknownst to the staff, into the ever-present lengthy queue. In line they would clock the amount of time it took to get their lattes.

Neither one was bacon or eggs. They composed a single terrorizing entity. Apart, they were bearable, occasionally amusing; together, they were an absurd disaster. They hated each other with such a passionately co-dependent loneliness that they were inextricably drawn together, like two black holes making out. They fought openly and often. They fought in my interview. Unfortunately, they couldn’t keep all of their malice to themselves.

One of their strategies for optimizing employee performance was to make it clear that everyone was expendable. They explicitly told me to relay that message to my coworkers, although that would have been redundant. On a daily basis people were pulled aside for long, rambling talks about what they were doing wrong. Never knowing whether your shifts would be drastically cut or if you would be fired drove people mad with anxiety. In addition, “Bacon and eggs”, also known as “the ladies”, would always have one person that they’d really focus on bullying, and that person would come to work every day, sometimes for months at a time, having been told that they were probably going to be fired. New hires were often fired after their first day. Sometimes they would be let go on their first day, just sent home early, never to return. Most people were fired because “the ladies”, thought they were “too slow” or “too stupid”.

Their villainous managerial style culminated in their plan for an upcoming staff meeting: the staff of eight would write down their two favorite and their two least favorite people to work with, and then each would stand up and read their choices aloud. I’m not sure where they expected the meeting to go from there. Fortunately, soon to be demoted manager talked them out of it.

It was not uncommon for “the ladies” to make the well educated, generally sane, adult staff cry. They told one indispensable employee that, “Even a retard could do your job”. (When said employee quit, bacon and eggs took over her responsibilities and failed miserably.) They told another girl, “You look like you just got shot in the face”. They expressed their resentment for another soft-spoken, wholesome girl not by firing her, as they would typically do, but by sadistically assigning her alone to the most demeaning tasks that they could think of including cleaning the floor molding, inside trashcans, under sinks, etc.

One day, one of “the ladies” looked at me and said, “Sometimes you look like you want to punch me in the face.” It was true.

SAVE A LIFE ON TUESDAY

Marylou — 2010-02-22T00:00:00

I took a sip of my coffee, and glanced over at my boss’s office. The door was still closed. That meant the young slim man in the dark suit applying for one of those coveted law associate positions was still there. I had shown him into Mr. McFarland’s office a while ago and, since then had been intent on transcribing my shorthand notes. It took every bit of my attention.

Just then, I heard the harsh sound of the buzzer.

My first thought was that I was glad to be sitting there. My boss would get incensed if I happened to step away for a moment and I’m not there to answer his buzz.

I pushed the intercom button on my phone. “Yes, Mr. McFarland.
There was a nervous quality to his voice which was unusual for him.

"Marylou," he said, "can you come in here and do something. This young man appears to be ill."

When I went into his office I saw that the young man who had come in for the interview was lying on the coach, taking short scary breaths. He was struggling to loosen his tie, and I could see sweat wetting the inside collar of his stark white shirt. His narrow face was pale and he was shivering.

"Someone should call Personnel," said Mr. McFarland.

"No," I said. "Someone should call 911."

I don't remember who made that phone call but I know it wasn't me. Mr. McFarland didn’t want me to leave the room after I blurted out that I knew CPR. And so I stayed there, hoping the young man would keep breathing and trying to remember everything I learned about CPR. He was scared and I wanted to help him. And so I pulled up a chair and sat next to him.

“Don’t worry,” I said, the ambulance is on the way.

I also told him I knew CPR but I was sure I wouldn’t have to use it because he was doing just fine. I really didn’t believe that though.

His breathing seemed funny, short breaths and long gulps of air. But he did keep breathing. And then the EMTs showed up. What a relief. They gave him oxygen and put him on a stretcher and were soon wheeling him out.

"Go with him in the ambulance,” Mr. McFarland said. "I'll see you get overtime."

I rode with the young man to the hospital and waited with him until his wife got there. We had some light conversation and I know he was glad I was there for him.

The next day a couple of people said some nice things to me about doing a good deed. I felt on top of the world.

And then my boss pressed his buzzer to call me in for dictation and it was business as usual. I almost saved a life on Tuesday.

But it was now Wednesday.

LADY WRESTLERS IN LEATHER JACKETS

DSW — 2010-02-22T00:00:00

It all started with my falling for another student in my freshman Physics class at NYU. Much of the time I spent looking at her large, light- blue eyes and her ink-black hair — always a fatal combination for me — instead of listening to the professor’s puzzling explanation of “Force up equals Force down.” I managed to sidle up to her at the end of class and asked if she were as puzzled as I was by the supposedly transparent workings of the natural world around us. We wound up eating lunch at the school cafeteria, trading information about ourselves.

Her name was Lenore, named after her father Leon. Somehow one thing led to another and I learned that her uncle Morris owned a dry goods store on Orchard Street. I needed a job and before I knew what was happening, she said she’d tell him about me and wrote out the address of her uncle’s store.

Me, a salesman! A guy who always hated being hustled. A guy anxious to let people decide what they liked without any input from me. Yet there I was, at 9:30 AM on a Saturday morning being interviewed by Uncle Morris because I was enchanted with his niece.

Morris told me he expected his employees to carry out two responsibilities: “Number 1. Keep your eyes open. Don’t let nobody steal from me. I’m not running a charity here. Number 2. Anyone walks in, I want him to walk out a customer. We make money from selling. No sale is a no-no.”

The first customer who asked for help was an old man wearing an overcoat much too big for him. My guess was he bought it at a thrift shop, or he got it as a hand-me-down from a friend who could see the guy needed help. The old man was fingering a cheap pair of socks, paper thin, without anything to recommend them except a 50-cent price tag. “Do you think they’ll last a long time?” he asked.

I didn’t know what to say. What did he expect for 50 cents? A thick pair of Brooks Brothers 100% wool stockings reinforced at the toes and heel? My mumbled response was that I supposed the sock would wear well. The old man thought about his decision, still fingering the socks and finally walked away without buying the socks. No sale. Uncle Morris was unhappy as he watched the old man leave the shop empty handed.

My second customer was a burly, middle-aged woman whom I judged to be Porto Rican. She wanted to buy a black leather jacket that was probably the most expensive item for sale in the shop. After learning her size, I helped her put on a jacket. To me she appeared even more burly wearing the jacket than the first time I saw her.. It was not at all becoming. Looking in the mirror, moving around from side to side for a better view, she asked, “How do I look? What do you think?”

How did she look? She looked like a lady wrestler. What could I say? With no conviction, with no enthusiasm, I said, “You look fine.” Rack up another no sale for me.

Soon after she left the store, Uncle Morris sauntered over to say that business was slow today. I was told to pick up my wages and take the rest of the day off. Uncle Morris let me off easy. He said he’d get in touch with me when business was better. I was fired.

Next week Lenore, understandably, avoided me at the end of class. She left the lecture hall quickly. I couldn’t blame her.

I toted up my score. Two quick strikes against me, but I wasn’t out. I was still alive in the batter’s cage.

Martinet in High Heels

Anonymous — 2010-02-22T00:00:00

A martinet in high heels. Petite and coyly seductive, Lena ran a department of six middle-aged men and women in an academic institution. The six of us all had advanced degrees and were established educators. Our assignments in Lena's department were clearly defined and needed little supervision.

But the department was “Lena’s Fiefdom.” She had created it, like a work of art.

And she didn't trust us to function autonomously within it. Talk about micro-managing thin air! Her oversight was so oppressive that everyone simply tried to avoid her. Nevertheless, she popped into our offices many times a day to bombard us with long, picky, indecipherable memos (in the days before email). One man collected his in a large cardboard box and presented them to Lena when he retired.

Even the dean couldn't manage Lena and urged us to “fend for ourselves.” For example, we met with outside agencies to set up internships for students. Because Lena always wanted to be present, we went out of our way to schedule meetings far from the office. And we’d try to schedule them simultaneously … even she couldn’t be in two places at once.

When she was finally removed from her position in ripe old age, Lena continued to micromanage from the sidelines. She complained to the dean about the actions of her successor (who was me). Only her death finally ended the tyranny.

What did I learn from this experience? A sure way reduce responsible adults to incompetent automatons is to micromanage their every move.

Legally wrong

maryjoy1104 — 2010-03-01T00:00:00

In today's very hard economic times, I was ecstatic to accept a job offer for a position I had interviewed for earlier in the day.
It was for a legal assistant position, and as a future law student, I was confident that this job would only assist in my future career.
I was looking forward to a good experience, incredible mentors, and an excellent letter of recommendation from one of the lead attorneys.
Boy, was I wrong.

My project leader was a tall skinny, soft-spoken woman who had graduated from law school, but hasn't passed the bar. She had worked as a server through undergrad and law school, and though knowledgeable about legal arguments, had no concept nor desire to know legal procedures. She also made careless errors on legal documents that were submitted to the court, and always returned rejected.

My department manager was a small-framed ex-cop who ran around in sneakers, sports jacket, and a buzzed cut. She was a riot on the phone when she argued with opposing counsels on the phone, but swears she is a caring supervisor who always looked out for her department.

The senior partner of the firm was a math and statistics-oriented man who looked at numbers to evaluate everybody's work.

I am a hardworking young professional who wanted to keep my job. That job was to make sure our motions are heard in court and to obtain judgment on all the hearings. Unfortunately, either the motions are rejected prior to the hearing because the project lead neglected to go over her own work prior to submission to make sure all the information is accurate, or the legal argument was weak to begin with. I told the project lead to check her work because of all the rejected motions we've been receiving and all the hearings had to be pushed back. She got defensive. Girl, clean up your mess!

When it became apparent that the project lead was the source of the problem and was unwilling to work on it, another coworker and I went to the supervisor to ask for help. Our manager didn't do anything about it.
The problem continued. The senior partner never talked to me directly, but he told the supervisors that he has been very disappointed with the outcome, which the supervisors in turn told me. What the heck? I'm not the cause of the problem! No one is listening to me!

We asked to speak to the partner directly since the problem hasn't been fixed, but were told by our manager that the senior partner hated people barging into his office for miniscule problems and preferred that we follow the chain of command.

Hmmm...

Now that sucks, doesn't it?
What do you tell the project lead who has been messing up? I told her she's been messing up -- but she still doesn't correct her work.
What more do you tell the department manager if she refuses to fix the problem?
What do you tell the senior manager who doesn't even know your name, wouldn't look you in the eye, and prefer that you follow the chain of command of unfit supervisors?

Nothing.
And within three weeks, I was let go due to "downsizing."

Namaste’ Becomes Catastrophe

Siddhartha — 2010-03-01T00:00:00

Bamboo floors, statues of Buddha and Ganesh, Ting-sha bells, burning candles, sounds of flowing fountains and scents of warm tea filled the corporate office of a yoga company whose owner, my boss, is by all accounts the ‘Queen of the Damned’ jobs. Yoga is a way of life but it also an industry and in an environment within that industry, you might expect to find peace, patience, love, compassion, empathy, honesty, and true spirituality. And, you would be wrong! You would find none of these demonstrated toward we pawns (oh, that’s me and my co-workers) by our boss.

In Yoga, there are five very well-known universal vows or guidelines for how we interact with the world and others. They are called Yamas (i.e., restraints) and several examples of these include Ahimsa (i.e., non-violence), Satya (i.e., truthfulness) and Asteya (i.e., non-stealing). I witnessed the shattering of these Yamas on a regular basis and after quitting, I continue to be a direct victim of these anti-yogic actions by my former boss. I cannot think of a company that is in greater need of a human resources manager.

Once, in an effort to improve the communication between myself and my boss, I was summoned to a meeting in the boss’s office. The meeting participants included me, my boss, and a woman on speaker phone who I would soon learn was my boss’s personal therapist! Questions were presented to me pertaining to why I seemed not to be able to communicate well, did I understand my boss’s personality and how my style just doesn’t work, would I be able to adapt, etc. Meanwhile, my boss was busy disrespectfully texting and emailing, as was always done in most any business meeting. But hey, I was getting a free therapy session, courtesy of my boss, and I didn’t even know this a benefit in my compensation plan. Where is HR?

Speaking of my compensation plan, it also loosely included a year-end bonus, not tied to any objective financial performance measures but rather, sort of a subjective gift bestowed upon. I and my colleagues understandably worked our behinds off all year long and come the fourth quarter, our boss began to teach a yoga class at a local health club after the close of business hours. This class was experiencing some low attendance so in order to fill the class, employees were informed they could take the class for free, apparently another nice benefit. Except that as it turned out, not taking advantage of this benefit was considered a sign of disloyalty and therefore, if I didn’t show up to this after hours yoga class, I could kiss my year-end bonus goodbye. I went.

And, my boss had an insatiable need for the display of gratitude by those who received gifts like these and others. A simple “thank you” was not enough. A follow-up “thank you” was often necessary and when I or anyone in the office failed to prostrate ourselves and pay homage to our fear-inducing leader, we suffered by having things like our mandatory corporate retreats dissolved. Oh, and let me delve further into some of the gifts I received from my boss: A partially used gift card; a re-gifted book with a thank you letter to my boss from some organization forgotten and left inside the cover; teeth whitener (two years in a row); and the best, a combination gift of sleeping pills from a foreign country paired with a bathtub plug - I wasn’t sure if the message was to relax or to kill myself!

I was, however, given the gift of company stock one year, making me a minority shareholder, but at the time the miniscule amount of shares I received seemed worthless to me. Since my quiet and professional departure, my name has been repeatedly slandered with false accusations of negligence, stealing and, most recently, sending pictures of my genitalia all over the internet. I really don’t think that’s how one owner of a corporation ought to treat another owner and I am certain there is something in our State’s Corporations Codes that frowns upon this. So, I now plan to be an active owner, with my less than one half of one percent ownership, and as I sip my tea and look around my own living quarters, I see my mini-Buddha, I hear my bubbling fountain, I smell my burning sandalwood incense, and revel in the fact that I am no pawn but a true warrior, defender the yogic path and protector of my interests.

Freakshow

Angela — 2010-03-01T00:00:00

Recalling this story is already having an effect on my sanity. But if you wanna talk about crazy bosses, have I got a story for you. Please keep in mind that I’m a Human Resources professional and my role at the time was to coordinate an Associate program for one of the big banks in our city. Elite College graduates and MBAs from all over the globe were being recruited and receiving sign-on bonuses to be a part of this two year banking program, so most of the eyes inside the company were on us.
I worked really closely with one training specialist to organize and logistically plan out the year for these Associates, so as you can imagine; corporate housing, training venues, banking curriculums, event planning, dinners, speakers, field study, and the kitchen sink…. Is what it took to pull this thing off and still have these kids actually learn something?
Well my manager was this silver-spoon daddy’s girl, who inherited his legacy at the bank. Not really qualified, but dressed the part, so the older colleagues respected that, and there you have it…Manager with an AVP title. Mind you, I’m an African–American, as was my training specialist colleague. My manager however – let’s call her “Freakshow” was a WASP and as far as she was concerned, nothing was off-limits. My colleague and I decided to come in a little early one day to get a head start on the events that were going to take place over the weekend — so we went to grab a little breakfast and bring it back to our desks, so that we could multi-task. I came back with some grits, eggs, bacon, and juice, and my co-worker got a sausage egg and cheese croissant. When we arrived back at our desks, Freakshow was there. Ugh! She peaked around the corner and greeted us by saying, “Oh my God — what are you guys eating, Collard greens?” I looked at her with disgust as I always did and simply asked her, “Do YOU eat collard greens for breakfast?” Seriously, Freakshow was probably the most inappropriate leader I’ve ever encountered. She had no regard for her audience and she certainly didn’t have a clue about decorum. I remember telling her one day in my one-on-one when she asked if I was posting out for other jobs. I leaned into her and said, “Yes I am! And the sooner I can get from underneath your thumb — the better!” The look on her face was sweet satisfaction! That Freakshow got promoted after I left. Don’t they all?

Who's in Charge Here?

Bep Kororoti — 2010-03-01T00:00:00

I began working at L's Deli in February of 2007. Having worked in a bagel cafe in my teens and a few odd years in a supermarket deli, I had more than enough training for the clerk position I had applied for. My duties were simple: ask customers what I could get them, oblige with a smile, ring them up giving them the right change, thank them for their patronage, and when there were no customers, see to it the deli was clean and presentable.

The cleaning part was no problem. It was, after all, a food establishment and I certainly would never patronize an establishment who's cleanliness was to be questioned. “There’s always something to do” was the philosophy of any deli I’d worked in. At least you could always find something to pretend to do.

The customers were mostly bearable but as the deli was situated in an affluent town there would be the occasion I’d have to bite my tongue before correcting some haughty class elitist for their lack of and blatant disregard of commonly accepted manners. Apparently my assumption that everyone is brought up to use good manners, to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, was just that, an assumption and you know what they say about assumptions.

The Ls, Ken and Katie, were your typical well-off, greedy business owners. Both were involved in personal business affairs, Ken owning a trash removal company and Katie, a so called interior decorator though her eye for decorating seemed to me to be greatly compromised. I’d heard many a story from dissatisfied customers of hers that confirmed my opinion.

After they put their kids through college, it came time for the Ls to sell their deli. I had been in their employment for just nearly two years.

Between the economy failing and their already infamously dubious business practices it was quite difficult for the Ls to find a buyer. Concerned for his own pocket depletion in such an economy, Ken eventually settled on selling to his loud, short statured , alcoholic cousin, Jack. The “sell” took longer than expected and from what I understand was never financially settled.

Jack spent a couple months in the slammer after wrapping his brand new sports car around a telephone pole. He had the bright idea to take it for a cruise after downing a twelve pack or so. By the time Jack came to claim his new business the cook, myself and two other clerks were the remnants of his cousins seven person crew. One of the remaining clerks put his two weeks in shortly after Jack made his appearance. I should have acknowledged all the signs. Curse my loyalty and hard work ethic!

Jack gave the other remaining clerk and myself hefty raises and promised many policy changes. He seemed to be a decent willing individual and I’ve got nothing against a man who enjoys his drink, particularly if he’s paying me well. Knowing my brother, Matt’s, strong work ethic and his recently being laid off I recruited him to work at the deli. Here we were, three clerks and a cook, Jack’ crew.

At first Jack was sincere and appearing to make an effort with his new business. I guess that was all just smoke and mirrors though. Only a few weeks into owning the deli and Jack began showing up more infrequently. He’d call my brother or me at 4 a.m. to ask if we’d open up for him. He would claim he was sick and spent the entire night in the bathroom. Drink too much? He’d finally come in around three or four in the afternoon to count out the registers. Looking at the tape he’d groan over the numbers. “This isn’t good.” He’d say, “We’re getting killed.” Then he’d grab a handful of $20’s or a $100 if one was in the drawer and be out the door and off to the bar.

Vendors began dropping in on an almost daily basis asking if Jack had their pay out. We’d call him up but get no answer. Finally we resorted to scrounging up what we could out of the drawer to cut down the out-standing bills, being careful to leave enough for our own pay. We needed product to sell after all. Jack soon told me he’d have to cut back my hourly wage until he got on his feet. He still didn’t manage to get up.

The Vendors got fed up and held their drop offs. Products dwindled. We’d have to turn down catering orders we couldn’t fulfill. There were times we’d have to go across to the supermarket and pick up cold cuts for hero orders Jack had taken on his rare appearances. The customer was expecting a hero.

The point came where we were paying ourselves. We’d calculate what we’d earned for our 65+ hour week and take it from the register. Jack tried to get mad but he really had no authority. The other clerk found work elsewhere, leaving my brother, the cook with nothing to cook, and I.

Finally Jack came in one afternoon as my brother and I were closing up and informed us someone else would be taking over the deli. He said to finish up and come in next morning to work things out with the new owner. At 6 a.m. on a Saturday my brother and I arrived ready to work. We went to the new owner. “Oh yeah,” he said, “I’ve got my own crew so I’m not gonna need you guys. Sorry.” We assumed we’d still have jobs. You know what they say about assumptions. I’m still waiting for my last $800 check.

41st Floor

Still and Assistant — 2010-03-01T00:00:00

Three assistants mulled the positioning of his daily vitamins, anti depressants and Swarovski crystal glass of tepid water on the large executive desk in the wood paneled office overlooking Central Park. Were they in the right place? Should we use the template and what kind of mood is he in today? If anything was out of place someone was bound to be punished.

At 9:15am the driver entered the offices and a booming voice of an angered CEO shook the double paned windows of the 41st Floor. His voice was distinctly of Bostonian old money upper class having been born and bred in Brooklyn. The voice so tall in stature gave way to a tiny white haired man at the office door bearing a similarity to that of the smallest of a set of nesting dolls.

His assistants scurried, toiled and sweated as they each took a corner of the first morning’s fax in to him to be read. He never smiled, he never complimented – he just demanded. The entire company feared him as no one ever knew when their last day would be. One could be fired for entering the same elevator as him, or looking at him from the right instead of the left or maybe even for not accepting his advances. What 23 year old in their right mind would not want the hand of a 70 year old man up their dress. It should be thought of as a privilege. If ‘no’ was in the cards the job was eliminated hence the company being light on young girls in their 20’s.

Staff meetings became unbearable as varying department directors would pop Xanax at their desks before entering the boardroom inquisition. The table long and rectangular housed the small being at the very end. Sometimes a telescope or binoculars being necessary for those who chose out of fear to sit at the very opposite end. One by one each director stood to report on their department and one by one each director was picked off in one way or another even when the news was good. The boardroom table could sometime seem to be transformed into a vast ping pong table with people being hit by flying spittle, a heel of bread, a number 2 pencil or a derogatory remark. No one was safe and everyone had to fend for themselves.

Yes this was life in the first few hours of the morning at a well known children’s entertainment company in New York. The first few hours could sometimes compare to a war torn frontline in the 1940’s where countries shook and bowed on the very words of a single pint sized leader. A fear that was rampant then in the bunkers and in the streets was emulated today in the cubicles and in the halls. Everyone a victim of a small man’s regime on the 41st floor.

Talk to the Hand

RaineF — 2010-03-01T00:00:00

It was kind of a “Talk to the hand” gesture, but what it really meant was “Stop talking and shut up.”

This was at my introductory staff meeting. I had been careful to let other staff speak before me and to note what kinds of reports they gave before I gave mine. After all, this would be the first time most of the team would see me at work. When I started to talk, though, the hand came up, the palm facing me like a stop sign.

“You only need to address topics that are of interest to the entire group, not all the details of your project.”

Pause. And a bit of confusion. The other guys had given very detailed reports on all kinds of things, including technical issues, resource issues, scheduling issues, and even some personal issues unrelated to work at all. But they didn’t get the hand.

I don’t remember what I said after that, if anything. It wasn’t just uncomfortable, it was insidious. People learn more from observing actions than from listening to words. So while the employee handbook may say “XYZ Corporation strives to maintain a courteous and professional work environment,” if your manager treats you like dirt, your colleagues will take their cue from that and feel empowered to do the same.

The dismissive behavior spread and snowballed. As Project Manager (PM) for a software vendor, I was in charge of working with clients who purchased our products to successfully install what they bought. I created project plans, called staff meetings, reported progress to clients and Manager. I had been told my client was one of the most important the company had ever had. Again, what was done spoke volumes more than what was said. Staff assigned to my projects was consistently reassigned to work on other projects. People blew off my staff meetings. I was often the only one there. And all the while, I was getting more and more flak from my client, who continued to feel that as PM, I was ultimately responsible for everything that happened with their deliverables.

This was a small company. There was no HR “department” to take complaints, just some people who shuffled the forms. Well, like any dysfunctional family, someone is often assigned the role of scapegoat. It took a little over a month for that marvelous Bogart line at the end of The Maltese Falcon to start running through my head: “Don’t be silly, you’re taking the fall.” When that piece of dialog starts to become the mantra of your life, it’s time to look for another job.

I was in this place for a total of four months. For those thinking of putting a good spin on the experience along the lines of “Well, at least you learned something,” forget it. There was nothing good about the experience. I didn’t learn anything new. I already knew that it’s important to have supportive friends and family to help you through bad times, and I’m grateful to those who helped me get out of the resulting scapegoat’s depression. As for my co-workers, if I were to bump into any them in, say, a book store, I would probably pretend not to know them.

Dear Consumer Affairs,

JakeoftheFoliage — 2010-03-01T00:00:00

One of the most deranged men I've ever met was a pizzeria owner in San Francisco. We'll call him Sam. Sam hired me as a waiter under the caveat that I would help him write a movie script: the inspiring true story of his emigration to the coast of California, where he married, opened a restaurant, and discovered the American dream.
Fresh out of college, I jumped at the gig with the tenacity of 23 year-old living on a steady diet of Ramen and whiskey.
This initial enthusiasm served to blind me from fully appreciating how creepy my new boss was. You see, Sam had recently undergone surgery to reduce the size of his nose, so for most of the time I knew him half his face was wrapped up in bandages. In effect, it was hard to talk to him without feeling like I was a mobster in some violent street gang. Additionally, Sam liked to show me pictures of all the teenage girls he had slept with, which he stored in his cell phone by the dozens. Both jealous and disgusted, I nonetheless massaged his ego with approving grunts and comments like, "Oh, she's smoking. Sam, you dog, you!"
That the pizzeria itself was but a front for one of Sam's sordid, clandestine operations did not occur to me at first, though it should have. The restaurant had no appreciable clientele to speak of and Sam paid all his employees in cash, including his bitter-beyond-words chef and the restaurant's head waiter, an ex-wrestler who checked his hair in the mirror and winked at himself every ten seconds. Also, the pizzeria was next door to a strip club called Cherries, and the dancers frequently popped in between shifts, disappearing into Sam's downstairs office and re-emerging a few minutes later stuffing small mysterious packages into their purses.
One day Sam's wife came in to the restaurant, looking grim and suspicious. She approached the counter and asked where Sam was. Sam, of course, was in his office with a stripper, but I decided this probably wasn't the best thing to tell his wife.
The phone rang. It was Sam, who was watching us on surveillance monitors.
"Jake!" he said, "Pretend it's not me, act like I'm a customer."
"Why, yes sir, we do have pepperoni."
"Tell my wife I went down the street to get a cigar."
"Yep, we're open all afternoon. Okay, ba-bye." I hung up.
"Where's Sam?" His wife asked.
"Sam went down the street to get a cigar."
Behind her, on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, a stripper ran by, looking every bit as awkward as a latex and fishnets-clad girl in full sprint should. A few moments later, Sam came strutting into the restaurant, a cigar in his mouth.
"Hey, baby," he said to his wife, feigning pleasant surprise.
Later, Sam explained to me that he had an emergency trap door exit in the ventilation ducts of his office for just such occasions. He also informed me that I had passed "the first test" and had, by deceiving his wife, earned his trust.
For the rest of the afternoon he outlined the scenes from his adolescence and early adulthood that he wanted included in the movie script. As we walked the streets of North Beach I took notes, about Sam's repressed sexuality in his native country, his first unrequited love, the loss of his virginity to a gypsy. I'll never know how much of it was true, or whether the stories were in fact largely shaped by the storyteller's pathologically romanticized interpretation of his own life. Either way, I was charged with the duty of translating these memories into screenplay form over the following weeks.
In the meantime, I continued to work in the restaurant during the day, tending to the bedraggled customers who for some inexplicable reason chose Sam's pizzeria for their lunchtime destination.
A week to the day after the imbroglio with his wife, a young woman about my age came into the restaurant looking for Sam. To say nothing of the general feeling of emotional chaos and gloom she cast upon me, the walls, and the cheese and tomato sauce in the kitchen behind me, the young woman was crying, her tears muddied by onyx eyeliner.
Also, she was pregnant. Late term.
"Where's Sam?"
The phone rang.
It was a similar canard as last week only this time the woman knew the drill.
"Just tell him my lawyers are still waiting for an offer, otherwise we go back to court." She turned to leave, then stopped and looked back at me. "You know about the surveillance cameras, right?"
I nodded.
She shook her head and left. Sam came out and slapped me on the back.
"Who's she?"
"Ah, just an ex-girlfriend," he said, dismissively.
After a few more inquiries, I learned the woman used to be a waitress in the restaurant, before Sam got her pregnant and fired her.
"Is that going in the movie?" I asked.
He looked at me, curiously. "Of course not!"
A week later I tendered my resignation, citing irreconcilable moral differences. I like to think I quit because of the ex-girlfriend, but in reality it had more to do with what I found in Sam's office. One day I'd gone looking for him, to discuss the $100 he'd shorted me on my first payday, and found the door to his office slightly ajar, with no Sam inside. What was inside was a wall of surveillance monitors, covering several dozen angles in the dining room. Among them, the undersides of the tables, which afforded a great many remarkable views of the guests' crotches.
As Sam explained when I confronted him on it, "Up-skirt shots are big money on the Internet!"
I got a kick out of this quote, so I included it in this, my anonymous letter to the Department of Consumer Affairs.

The Tree Man

August — 2010-03-08T00:00:00

It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I was working at a continuing care retirement community in northwestern Vermont. The department was Environmental Services. My job was pretty much all data entry all the time and I was data-entried out. I had taken the job to get my foot in the door, but had not been able to move up, down or sideways in the three years I was there.
My pal and office mate, Paula, gave her notice and I felt I should be able to move right into her job. No, I was informed, “you have to apply like everyone else.” Even though I could do her job blindfolded, had gotten consistently excellent reviews, knew everyone, fit into the corporate climate, was liked by the staff and the residents alike.
It wasn’t fair. My feelings were hurt, my ego was bruised, and I wasn’t going to tolerate it.
I took my complaint to the top and was shot down. I took it to one of my fellow employees who knew of a “great guy” who was looking for an office manager immediately. The "great guy” was a tree service contractor working on our site. We had a quick interview, an offer was made and accepted, and I gave my notice. It seemed like a match made in heaven. Trees. What’s not to like?
The new boss wanted me to spend at least one day working with his current office manager, so I made arrangements to cut my notice short and start work on a Friday morning.
I walked into the “office” in the run-down industrial complex and couldn’t believe my eyes. The décor in this “office” corner of a huge uninsulated garage was one beaded curtain short of a brothel. The walls were covered in a loud green Italianate paper with golden borders.
The Office Manager greeted me enthusiastically. Too enthusiastically, I would later reflect. She was alone in the office and would show me the main stuff then she had to leave—to pick up one of the crew at the airport. We started in at 7:00 a.m. She gave me the keys and left at 10. She called at noon: the plane was delayed. Then she had to drive him home. At 4:30 I left. She had not returned.
On Monday morning, I arrived to find a madhouse. The crews were getting ready to go out: filling gas tanks, finding tools, loading up their gallon water jugs from the cooler, looking for job tickets. The boss, a very large man in his late 40s, was barking orders in a voice that seemed to come out of the clouds like thunder. When he spoke, you jumped. I figured that was his outside voice.
He didn’t have an inside voice.
I worked from 7:00 a.m. to 4:30 with a half-hour for lunch. There was a small refrigerator (full of beer) in the shop if I wanted to keep anything cold.
Every morning after the crews left, the boss would sit across from me in the other desk and recite his general philosophy and anything out of the ordinary he wanted done that day. Then he was gone and I was on my own. I was not allowed to write down anything he said.
My duties included answering the constantly ringing phone, opening the mail, entering the checks into Quicken, photocopying the checks, making up the deposit and taking the checks to the bank. I was also responsible for getting timesheets from the workers (by any method that worked), and preparing the payroll hours for the bank. I made deposits, picked up the checks once a week, and logged payments into the computer.
Every job had a quote, in theory. The boss did the estimates on three-part forms. I filled out the top when the customer called with a general description of the job, customer name, telephone numbers, address, and directions. I gave the completed forms to the boss.
The customer received the top copy. If they chose to go ahead with the job, the workers received the bottom copy and I got the middle copy for tracking purposes. Sometimes the boss forgot to take the completed quotes out of the truck. Then he left that particular truck at the other warehouse, 60 miles away. He owned vehicles of every shape and size--he could drive a different one each day of the week. And often did.
He insisted that I schedule his route for estimating jobs so he traveled the least amount of miles between destinations. He was adamant that I call the people he was supposed to see each morning and verify they would be home. Then he would decide to slip in an errand of his own between stops and arrive after the homeowner had given up on him. For some reason it was MY fault if the homeowner was not there, in the driveway, waiting for the Almighty Tree Guy.
An intercom was set up behind my desk. I would be on the phone with a customer, and, without warning, a voice would be shouting behind me, demanding my immediate attention. While he DEMANDED that customers be given every courtesy, he then made it impossible to give them even the basic right to have my full attention during a phone call.
The trucks idled in the garage on the other side of the wall. Exhaust came into the office. My desk, computer, and papers were covered in fine silt every morning.
A previous office manager embezzled money from him, and left him with a huge case of paranoia. He suspected every thing I did—particularly when I didn’t join in the Friday night beerfests in the garage.
I never had to solve my conflict with this Boss from Hell. One morning, I came to work and found his prodigal son sitting in my chair. In front of my desk was an enormous German Shepherd. I was informed I was no longer needed.

Gulag

Actor212 — 2010-03-08T00:00:00

Your day begins with a bus ride over a dreary low concrete bridge with a view of the end of a runway at LaGuardia. You pull up to the administration building and exit, picking your way through visitors with packages and strollers, weeping grandmothers and babies too young to understand the environment daddy or uncle, or mommy or aunt, is in.

You walk to a gate. A uniformed guard eyes your identification, and opens your briefcase. You shift uncomfortably as he picks up your ham sandwich, piece of pound cake, and can of soda.

"Cans aren't allowed. You know the rules," he intones as he sets it aside on the counter. You know he's going to stick it in a fridge somewhere.

He clears you, and the turnstile unlocks with a noticeable click. You hurry through, grateful he didn't confiscate your cell phone.

You stand and wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, it hoves into view.

You board a Bluebird bus, the kind they use for school trips, only it's painted blue and white and is mandated to only go thirty miles an hour to prevent escapes, and the driver, another uniformed guard, is not cheery like Driver Bob that you remember from kindergarten. The ride is bumpy. For security reasons, the DOT is not allowed to fix potholes on these roads, even if they are classified "public streets".

These are addresses you never want to visit.

After a half hour of kidney-rattling bouncing euphemistically called "a ride," you disembark your bus, and walk to the double-wide trailer on stilts, because this particular island is prone to flooding in anything more intense than a garden sprinkler. You glance over your shoulder at Brother Island, about a hundred yards off shore from your location.

You remember Brother Island was the last home Typhoid Mary ever had. You wonder how lavish her life was compared to what you're about to go through.

You climb the short flight of stairs. Yet another man in uniform...sometimes it's a woman, but usually not...inspects your ID once more, takes it, turns around and exchanges it for your facility ID which you must clip onto the outermost layer of clothes at all times. Fortunately, you are never naked in this place.

You clomp down the stairs, and turn towards the double-gated fence to your left. Another uniformed guard spots you, if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, the night shift is getting off and you have to wait for the doctors who drive to pass through the gate coming out.

Finally, the first gate opens. You and a herd of co-workers hoof it through as quickly as possible to the next gate. It's nearly eight. The facility bus runs once every fifteen minutes. It's nearly eight. You're nearly late.

Twenty people line up just inside the trailer door. You're stuck yet again on the short flight of stairs, because you're polite and you grew up believing "ladies first," only here, most of your co-workers are women. Finally, you reach the sign-in book. You clock in, punching your time card and signing the book. Your sign-in time must match the card precisely. Why?

Because your boss has already lectured you on this. You can't drop your coat off in your office and come back out and sign yourself in. You can't sign anyone else in. You must sign in the first thing you arrive, no matter how cold or miserable it is out.

You've come to work at a place where no matter how beautiful the weather, the sun high in the sky, the wind a soft warm June zephyr, it is always a slow January Sunday in Siberia.

And now the worst of your day is to come. You work for the administration of a prison hospital. You have to deal with your boss's moods.

Be My Mommy?

gyps808 — 2010-03-08T00:00:00

My boss was the CEO of a mortgage company that he built with money earned from years in the subprime mortgage industry. He loved to drink, party, spend money and do drugs. He had no problem blaming me for his behavior, including missing an AM appointment after boozing the night before, picking up a girl at the bar and sleeping in until 11am.

“Can I ask what exactly do you want from me in this position as your Executive Assistant?” I asked.

“I need you to be my mommy. I want you to remind me to wipe my butt after I use the bathroom. I’m too busy to remember any of that stuff,” he said in all seriousness.

This was my 3rd month of employment. Until then I had no idea of the rampant drug use until my coworker came running into my office one day with a baggie full of coke that had fallen out of our boss’s pocket. The drugs and the alcohol abuse would only get worse.

He would threaten to fire me if I lost at drinking games. I was expected to show up at every company drinking event and I got in trouble if I ever left early. I picked up more beer and alcohol for company events than I ever had in my previous job as a bartender. He wrote off trips to strip clubs with the loan officers as a business expense. As the subprime market crashed, everyone in the company were denied raises due to money issues – while he bought a three million dollar house and wrote it off as a business expense. The loan officers were on the verge of losing their houses, and he was spending tens of thousands (of company money) on lighting for his theatre room.

Finally, one night all the managers went out for a going-away party. My boss showed up late, drunk, screaming, and flying high as a kite. I was waiting for my husband to pick me up when he started in on me, screaming about what a terrible job I was doing, how disappointed he was with me. I tried to back away and excuse myself, but he kept following me, cussing, yelling and screaming. Finally my husband showed up and escorted me out the door. My boss followed us into the parking lot, alternately cussing me out for being a horrible person, then trying to hug me and tell me how much he appreciated me. By the time we left, I was sobbing.

The next day, his coke-high had crashed and he was groveling. He texted me twenty times saying how sorry he was and would I ever forgive him. My husband even got a phone call from him, apologizing for his conduct the night before. When I told him I was putting my two week notice in, he began crying and asking me to stay. He tried to hug me, wiped tears from his eyes, and groveled some more. I told him I was firm in my decision, and he flipped out again and yelled at me that I was fired and to get the hell out of the building. Before he could hit me or hug me or whatever his crazy mood told him to do, I ran out of there and never looked back.

Maybe She's Manic

nkoehler — 2010-03-08T00:00:00

“Who told you to do that?” My boss, whom I’ll refer to as Michelle, screamed.

“You did. It’s number three on your list” I said with trepidation, holding the sheet she authored and gave explicit instruction to follow without question.
She said nothing, huffed and walked away.

I had been a Supplier Integrations Manager for an eRetail company for two weeks. My job entailed acquiring supplier data and integrating it into our system for customer order fulfillment. Michelle was Director of Supplier Integrations. I immediately found her exciting and dynamic. Also, the business was thriving. I’d landed my dream job and couldn’t wait to work for this company and for her.

However, Michelle’s personality had multiple sides. She scheduled meetings that filled entire days. An 8:00 am meeting planned our day. At 9:00 we discussed other departments. The 10:30 involved supplier communications. At noon, we recapped our progress. We determined our focus at 1:30. Another recap occurred at 3:00. At 4:00 we planned the next day, making the 8:00 meeting redundant.

Per Michelle, the meetings kept other departments from stealing her team. I told her the meeting preparations hindered our performance. We had goals and were behind. She maintained her stance. Further, she insisted her best work occurred after hours and suggested we follow her example. She was not open to opposition.

We received constant cancelation notices or re-schedules. Michelle frequently arrived late due to emergencies. Her pipes burst, car broke down, electricity was out or the spring on her garage door broke, trapping her inside. Once, she drove aimlessly for two hours, convinced a man was following her in his car. I asked why she didn’t drive to the nearest police station. She rebutted, “How would I know where that is?” I replied with, “Oh,” but was thinking “cell phone?”

Our CEO scolded us for missing our goals. Michelle was flustered and could not address him. I don’t remember my actions. The CEO was an intimidating man. His looks and demeanor could render an assassin helpless.

He was upset because vendors were not set up on time. The websites were non-functional. An item may appear available, but no orders processed. Other departments’ work was then useless. The Order Processing Department had nothing to do. No orders for our clients meant they received no income. No client income translated to no company income. We weren’t doing our job.
We spoke after the meeting. I told Michelle our reaction was more important than our mistakes. We needed to take his feedback and produce. She said, “OK. I’m learning from you; instead of you from me.” She looked relieved as if she believed I was right. Then, she looked crushed, possibly because she believed I was right. She wanted to be the one people looked up to. In this instance, she looked up to me.

Approaching anyone for help was difficult. The company was small. The HR department consisted of one person. I was uncomfortable asking her for help. The CEO was impossible. The CFO was a tough, but supportive, man. I decided to try him. Unfortunately, Michelle was a family friend and had known him for a decade. She spent holidays at his house. He specifically recruited her to work with him. I explained my situation. He replied, “She can be difficult. However, she is your supervisor; you have to deal with her.” My heart sank.

Family may well have been an expletive to Michelle. I asked to be late to take my son to the first day of Kindergarten. She said, “Make sure you know work is priority.” I laughed thinking she was joking. She went back to her computer without smiling. My son caught the flu and missed a week of school. My husband stayed with him for two days; I stayed home three days. Michelle insisted I provide a doctor’s note stating he must stay home. I’ve never been questioned when my child was ill. I asked if she was serious. Michelle replied, “You can’t expect to be out this long without something in writing.” I was dumbfounded. What if he was a baby and got sick constantly? Would she fire me? I thought, “I hope so.”

Our company hosted a Christmas party at the zoo. Michelle asked who planned to attend. She worried about our department image if we had a poor showing. I did not want to be around her, but we went to the party. Michelle was absent as some friends called unexpectedly. She decided to be with them, noting we should keep friends and family as priorities in our lives.
One rainy afternoon, during a break between meetings, Michelle got something from her car. She returned soaked, explaining her embarrassment because she wasn’t wearing underwear. She said she rarely wore underwear. We were speechless. No one needed to know her choice of undergarments or lack thereof.

I described these scenarios to my mother-in-law during a weekend visit. She went from gaping jaw, to slight giggle to outburst of laughter. She thought for a moment and said, “Maybe she’s manic.”

She definitely was not sane.

Days later, Michelle became hostile because a meeting started without her. She was ninety minutes late. She burst into the room demanding, “How dare you begin without me?” The meeting organizer said, “Look, we had to start.” Shaking and trying to control her volume, she insisted nothing involving her staff proceed without her.

I put my notice in afterward. Something was wrong with Michelle. I was not interested in maneuvering through her craziness. Michelle became angry toward me. I suggested leaving immediately. She blurted, “I think that would be good.” She clearly exploded inside. Her face was red and her hands shook as she perspired. She was either mad simply because I was leaving or worried how my resignation reflected on her performance.

It took less than 5 minutes to gather my things, hand in my laptop and sign all paperwork. I’d never been so happy to be unemployed.

Spanking the Monkey

MrKidRay — 2010-03-08T00:00:00

I was a “carry-out,” a seventeen-year-old kid that bagged groceries and carried them out to a customer’s car with an optional smile; I also responded with mop and bucket to those loudspeaker announcements of “clean-up in aisle-whatever.” The job was easy, and the only trouble I had in two years was a write-up for tardiness; that changed however when my cool boss was replaced by an uptight, by-the-book prick that equated management of a grocery store to being warden at a Gulag labor camp. Now that’s arguably an exaggeration, and whether or not the guy was a communist is debatable; but the new boss was certainly someone who sought to punish and make examples out of everyone. He didn’t hesitate to write you up if your shirt was untucked or if you were chewing gum. I suddenly had to be very vigilant, and for the first few months of the new regime I successfully avoided confrontation. But based on the rapidly growing record of employee write-ups it was only a matter of time before the new boss would have me in a cage.
While bagging one day I was approached by one of the middle-aged carry-outs. Occasionally the store would hire one or two baggers that were middle-aged instead of teenagers, and in addition to an overall air of creepiness these individuals typically suffered from one or a combination of the following traits: a severe psychosocial dysfunction, speech impediment, lack of work ethic, or unholy body order. This middle-aged bagger lady, who incidentally scored a perfect on the trait checklist, asked me the whereabouts of another middle-aged bagger who just happened to be working on the same night. The reason for her question was never revealed, but it is highly doubtful that the two of them wanted to share résumé tips. I responded: “He’s probably in back spanking his monkey.” I don’t know why I chose that phrase; I knew it was slang for “masturbation,” but it was really more my smart kid way of telling her “I don’t know.” Plus I doubted she’d interpret “spanking the monkey” to mean anything more than my inability to answer the question; a doubt I felt was confirmed by her confused expression and then sudden departure. After she left I thought nothing of the exchange and continued to do my job. In about ten minutes I heard my name announced over the loud speaker; I was to immediately report to the main office for questioning. I assumed I was needed for some standard work order.
The main office was located upstairs in a dark, forsaken area of the store: an ideal location for intimidation and exploiting mental weakness. The boss sat at his desk under a single set of flickering florescent lights, the limited brightness highlighted his greasy slicked back hair and permanent scowl. Next to him stood my union steward, which was an odd sight; five dollars a week came out of my paycheck for this guy’s “protection” but his vulnerable stature seemed to offer very little. I still didn’t know exactly why I was in the office, but the boss then got right to the point: “What does spanking the monkey mean?”
The minute I heard the question I knew what this was about. I studied his black eyes to see if he was sincere. I was unaware of what information he had on me, or if the situation was explained to him in detail. Did he really not know what it meant? Was he setting me up? Seriously? He got me on this? I hesitated; didn’t really know what to say. “Well, you know…uhh…it means, messing around.” That was the only thing I could think of, and besides that’s what I really meant when I said it earlier.
The steward uncomfortably chuckled. “Come on…you know,” he said to the boss who remained unmoved in his chair.
“Yeah, you know,” I said in agreement. Then the steward and I both made those awkward smirks, shoulder shrugs, and head nods one makes when they’re trying to say something without saying it. I really couldn’t believe that anyone wouldn’t understand the ubiquitous nature of the phrase. Sure, it meant “masturbation” in a colloquial sense, but it also held so many other expressive capabilities.
The boss then proceeded to lay it all out for me. Ironically it was the middle-aged bagger lady’s inability to interpret “spanking the monkey” that made her ask a cashier what it meant. After revealing that my response was a possible allusion towards the pleasuring of one’s self, the offended cashier immediately suggested that I be reported to the warden - our new uptight boss who was just dying for an opportunity to bust me on something, anything. His secret grocery store police squad sold me out.
A write up sheet was slid before me on the desk. “Sexual misconduct” was written in the “employee offense” section. Sexual misconduct? If there was one word that I would never associate with the middle-aged bagger lady it was “sexual”- misconduct, yes, sexual, no. The boss explained that this was just a warning and the next time I did anything similar I would be terminated. I’m sure he would have loved to fire me on the spot, but in order to be a by-the-book type of boss even he had to follow some rules. Regardless I realized that my days as a carry-out were now few, especially while this guy was in charge. I signed the write-up without dispute.
“Do you understand what’s going on here?” The union steward asked me.
“Yes,” I said. “I understand.” Then in the comments section of the write-up I wrote, “I wish, I were a fish.” I must’ve been the youngest person in company history to be disciplined for sexual harassment. I put my two-week notice in shortly after the incident; I just wanted to find a job where I could spank the monkey in peace.

Training Stupid

Avi — 2010-03-08T00:00:00

After graduation, my law school put me in contact with a firm where an alumnus was partner. I set up the meeting and put on my Sunday best. I was given the job as a favor to the school and assigned to the senior partner for training.
Mike was older, in his mid-fifties. He was built like a high school football coach; short, fat and sturdy.

“Hi Stupid.” Mike greeted me sardonically. “It’s time to get down to the business of turning you into an attorney. When do you get your bar card?”

“As soon as my moral character application clears.”

“Well,” A long pause. “You are absolutely useless until it does. Scratch that, less than useless. I can’t even send you to court. What’s wrong with you?”

“I didn’t send it in because…”

“You didn’t send it in because you’re stupid. I am going to let you write trial declaration. Think you can handle it?”

Mike instructed me to fill out the declaration by hand. I was responsible for listing the relevant medical reports and witnesses. The files were poorly organized, everything out of order. I spent half the day compiling the list before presenting the finished product for review.

“I can’t use this. You write like two old people fornicating. Do it again.”

It took hours to recopy. When I found the form online, a form that could be completed electronically, Mike told me that’s not how we do things.

I was instructed to meet Mike at court the next day. We went from office to office picking fights. He failed to explain a single procedure, law, or outcome. It was expected that I learn litigation through osmosis.

Mike would call out for Stupid when summoning me to his office. The support staff quickly got wind of this. They lost respect for me. They refused to work at my direction leaving me the added burden of preparing correspondence, pulling files, and making copies.

All my work was scrutinized.

“Stupid,” Mike would start. “This is crap. When I look at you I feel like I am flushing money down the toilet.”

Mike took on the role of an abusive father. I rationalized his behavior blaming my incompetence on inexperience and lack of ability. I was unable to produce, paralyzed by fear of the inevitable lashing. I would begin a project, complete it, review it and destroy it. It took days to complete tasks that should have taken hours.

I was told to prepare to administer a deposition, that I would be conducting it on my own. Mike’s car was in the parking lot when I arrived. The sight of his white Lexus sent a wave of terror rippling down my spine. I tore at the pages of my yellow pad discarding the line of questions I had worked on the night before. Better to appear unprepared than subject myself to further ridicule and embarrassment.

One afternoon, over lunch, Mike gave me an assignment.

“Hey Stupid, I need a brief for my settlement conference tomorrow morning. Look at one of our old cases to see how it’s done.”

I spent an hour digging up a sample. I reviewed the file indentifying key elements for a rough outline. I opened a blank pleading document in Word and got to work.

Mike came by to check my progress. He looked at the outline on my desk and the blank template on the screen. He assumed I was going to write the brief from scratch.

Mike’s face contorted as his blue eyes boiled. Veins jutted from underneath his collar. His skin trans-mutated to a dark purple.

“I told you how to do this, goddamn it.” He screamed. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Mike leaned over my desk, spittle seeping from the corners of his mouth, pressing so close I could feel his hot breath on my face, smell the patty melt he’d had for lunch.

“Are you a goddamn retard? I have to go to court tomorrow completely unprepared. I have more important crap going on. I can’t stay here and fix your mess. I’m screwed.”

I thought that he might have a stroke. Die right in my office. The longer he went on the smaller I felt, like I was on the business end of a b-movie shrink ray.

Mike stomped out of my office, hurling obscenities in my direction as he made his way toward the exit. It fell quiet, the only sound, the soft laughter of one of the support staff ringing in my ears.

I sat dazed, quietly absorbing the beating. I gathered my resolve and went to work. I finished the assignment, left it on Mike’s desk and went home.

Mike had a successful settlement conference using my brief. The case paid thirty percent more than expected. He mentioned the incident a few weeks later over hotdogs at Costco.

“Hey Stupid, you aren’t still upset about that blow up?”

I hung my head low, averting my eyes.

“No, I’m fine.”

“Good.” It was as close as he came to an apology.

Later that week the partner who hired me took me to lunch. I needed reassurance. I doubted myself and the job.

“Daniel, I don’t think I’m doing good work.”

“Stop being a baby.”

After the abuse, the insecurity, getting called a baby put me over the edge. That afternoon I walked into Daniel’s office and gave notice. He told me to sleep on it.
Mike came by my office to ask if I was okay.

“I don’t think I have what it takes to work here.”

Mike looked as though he had been punched.

“Is this about that thing? I don’t even remember what it was about.”

“No. It’s clear that I’m not good enough for this firm. It’s time for us to move on.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

I was free. Mike never spoke to me again. I spent my last two weeks quietly tying up loose ends.

The Hide Secret

Jenny Franquiz — 2010-03-15T00:00:00

Michael, a young man who finished high school, says goodbye to his father from this small town in Alabama. As he gets on the bus, he says, "Father, I'm going to miss you so much." His father replies, "We have a good son and we want you to reach your goal of becoming a lawyer." Michael weeps as his father says, "Don't worry. We will be together again very soon." "Dad, you have given me everything in my life. Now it's time for me to give you everything that you don't have." Julian was crying too. "Michael, I love you so much,I don't want to loose you." "All you folks don't worry so much about me. I will be alright; beside I'm a good man and grown up now. I'm not a kid anymore. I know how to defend myself in the real world."
He gets on the bus crying; Julian and his mother can't stop crying. Michael says a final goodbye from the window of the bus. He sits thinking, I will succeed. I'll continue my legal studies. He has saved some money for college until he finds a good job.
In the big city of Alabama he buys a newspaper, looking for a job. "It's my lucky day," he thinks. Michael is happy, jumping, he finds a job ad and says to himself: Tomorrow morning. He goes to a law office and meets Frank, the supervisor and lawyer of the office. Michael says,"hello". What a surprise to Frank. He opens his hazel eyes wide open. He says, "I'm here about the post from the newspaper...." "What it's about,well it all depends on you. I might hire you if you give me something also, young man." Michael says, "Please tell me what."
"Has anyone ever told you that have a athletic body? Oh! Oh! You got muscle..." touching him in his private parts.
The young man starts to scream, "I'm not gay."
"But I can show you how to be!" Frank laughs aloud. "We can do it right now in my offices."
Michael runs out the back door. This would be the hide secret.
Michael goes to his hometown in Alabama, never telling anything.

Send Me Home Please!

Chinadoll — 2010-03-15T00:00:00

Initially, I was not sure where my specialty in nursing would take me. This hospital was a challenge and certainly an eye-opener to people who were different. After taking three years to complete this program, I found myself leaning towards HIV/AIDS. The dean of the school was able to find me a job in the AIDS UNIT one year before graduating. Can you imagine what a thrill this was for a single mother of two to accomplish? For four and a half years this place became my lifeline. I learned about the meaning of truly living. One day, one of the very affluent doctors offered me a proposal to start an evening clinic to serve the newly diagnosed professionals and of course to deliver the message of yea or nay. Somehow, I fit right in with love, compassion, spiritual guidance, and education. My boss at the time was the best; I cared so much for her. She was fair, straight forward, and gave us constructive criticism. I accepted it and learned, it was great. However, times changed and my boss had to leave. In fact all the nurses left except me, and that's how I got my seniority. This is when hell stepped through the doors. The next set of nurses cared about some patients in the clinic, but absolutely inhumane to others. Truth be told, I was the loner and I maintained a civil relationship for the sake of my family and the patients. As time went on, I brought in food to share with my coworkers, but they started bringing food and eating in front of me without sharing. Parties were set up and I was always asked by every discipline to bring in food, so it was not that. As time went on, I noticed more favoritism with the other nurses. I had seniority and schedules were not always approved according to that perspective. I would listen to my boss clearly approve someone taking a sick day with a vacation day -- but I was not given approval. I was on medication that was affecting my leg muscles and making them very weak. I fell on the job, she put me in a room, cleaned me up and put me back to work. I needed surgery a week later. Being diabetic, I was hypoglycemic (low sugar) she put me in a room and gave me juice, put me to work. The worst was yet to come: a serious illness in 2000 left me with an ileostomy (a bag in which to defecate). That day I came in and my bag was feeling strange and cold. I always make several stops to the bathroom before I left for work. Anyway, I got to work in a panic because I knew that the wafer had separated from my skin and it was leaking. At the time, I was working in New York City and living in New Jersey. To this day it brings tears to my eyes: Seeing me, my boss ran past me with these words from her mouth, not to mention the look of disgust. "Let me get an air freshener to spray you,"she cried. I thought that I was going to pass out from fear and embarrassment. I sprayed myself so that no one could smell me, and my boss sent me to the main hospital to get a new apparatus ... and did not send me home. A nurses aide from another unit spent her money to buy me a pair of pants and a top. God Bless her. I had to work for 8 hours mortified, hurt, embarrassed, and crying my eyes out. Other times, mu boss excused the other nurses for nausea or headaches, or even a cold.
TELL ME IF THIS IS WAS NOT THE WORST BOSS!
I ACKNOWLEDGE ALL THOSE NURSES AND NURSES AIDES WHO MAKE US PROUD AND HAVE HELPED SO MANY.

Dried Up

Harper Crane — 2010-03-15T00:00:00

I worked eight long months as a sales and use tax associate at an overnight delivery company. There were three managers in our department. Each manager oversaw two employees. My manager wasn’t qualified to do the grunt work, much less lead. She didn’t know a thing about taxes. She didn’t even know how to run the copier. Rumors spread that she did a favor for a V-P and that was why she was there torturing us.

She said I should look busy even if I wasn’t. When I asked her for more work, she punished me. She asked me to copy 50 pages from the tax rate book and highlight every other line. She explained that her eyes were aging and this would help her see the small numbers.

During meetings she would lay her head on the conference table and moan if the director said something she didn’t like. She tried to balance her shoe on her big toe. When it fell, she pointed at me as if I did it.

On her 38th birthday, she called in sick. We knew she was an alcoholic so a hangover was the consensus. She called me weeping about her lost youth, dried-up ovaries and man-less bed. I guess she regretted confiding in me because when I told her that I needed new challenges she said, “I accept your resignation.”

She hounded me all day about the resignation letter. I made her wait until 4:59 P.M., marched past her office and gave the letter to the director. I told him about all her antics and her deficiencies.

My co-workers told me that she decided to move on to a director level position at a home improvement store. She washed out after a few months, lost her house and moved back to Texas.

MY NUMBER WAS UP

Gloriaggm — 2010-03-15T00:00:00

MY NUMBER WAS UP

Numbers are not my forte. Perhaps because I’m a bit dyslexic and digits, invariably, become transposed. Whatever the reason I certainly didn’t belong in an accounting firm entering data. But it was the only job I could get after my unemployment ran out. Submissively, I let myself be hi-jacked by that little band of mathematical demons.
My boss was one of the most unsightly of persons. Missing one tooth, her hair was a murky brown, tinged with mouse gray and hung in strands that resembled an unwashed mop. Probably tipping the scales at three hundred (just a guess), she had breasts large enough to shoot a missile from. Her face and arms were speckled with assorted brown freckles that were not in any way adorable, but more like some pigmentation defect. She wore fake red nails tipped with white moon halves, which would sometimes come off and lay on the carpet. In comparison, her toenails were a tinge of yellow and curled around the soles of her sandals.
Well, appearances aren’t everything they say, but combined with that was the most offensive body odor you could imagine. She ate greedily, food oozing around her mouth. Her favorite was Chinese and it smelled up the whole office, yet when I’d toast an onion bagel, she’d say: “What’s that awful smell?”
She gloated with criticism of my mistakes (which I must admit were ample enough). “Can’t you do anything right?” And it was sort of true; totals never totaled the first time around. I’d spend hours trying to find one little devil that had snuck in front of another just to freak me out. The filing cabinets were 7 feet high so I’d have to stand on a shaky stool to reach the top and stacked so full I couldn’t get one more file in. “We need more space,” I’d tell her and she’d answer with: “Stuff harder, I bet I can get more in.” But she would never try, probably for fear of breaking one of those nails, or even the stool.
I wasn’t sure how much more I could stand. I had gone through three cans of air freshener in almost a year. Finally, fate forced my hand. One day she called me on her cell and I could barely hear her. “I can’t hear you!” I told her. “Are you deaf?” she shouted, which I heard very clearly. I ignored her comment and asked if she needed me to do anything there in the office. “Get a message to Mr. M. (The head accountant) and tell him I’m with a client and will be in later. He can call my cell if he needs me.”
I told her: "All right but he’s not in yet.” “WHAT?” she shouted. “NOT IN YET,” I tried to speak louder, then heard a click.
When she finally returned, she asked if I had given Mr M. the message. “I never heard from him,” I answered. “You were supposed to call and give him the message.” “But you didn’t tell me that,” I whined like the bad little girl I was. It was summer and the sweat under her bare arms had turned really putrid. I gagged a little. “I certainly did!” she insisted and stormed out of my office with her containers of Chinese. Then said to me: “What’s that awful smell? Are you toasting one of those bagels again?”
“No, it’s you,” I whispered under my breath. Her hearing suddenly perked up. “What did you say?” “Nothing,” I muttered, not caring if she had heard.
When I left that afternoon, I knew I wasn’t long for that job. As a matter of fact, she phoned early the next morning and told me not to come back. Well, I was free, unemployed and broke; but hey, the air smelled so damn good!

The Lunch Rush

ChristopherJCollins — 2010-03-15T00:00:00

It all started last September after I got my DUI. I lost my license, and then my job, and I was forced to move back in with my disappointed mom and dad. I was a full time student, and I was still attending college classes regularly, a 44 mile-a-day round-trip bike ride, three days a week. Because I’m a chubby kid, this experience was all the more sufferable. Anyways, I was desperate for a job – I had my legal fees to pay.
Across the street from my parent’s nice home in suburbia, there was a pizza place that I worked at some years earlier when I was 17. This DUI of mine had effectively traveled me back in time, four years earlier. The pizza place was the same, however it was under new management: a tiny, grey Italian man probably well into his 60s. I’ll admit, for a guy his age, he had some pep.
After three weeks of begging him to give me a job (commuting to-and-from on my Trek 18-speed) he finally caved, and told me to come in on some weekday for the lunch hour rush. I said okay with confidence, bid him adieu, and gallantly mounted my Trek 18-speed and journeyed home.
The day came and I showed up fifteen minutes early like any good first-day employee does. I walked in and saw this little old fellow hunched over a prep table in the kitchen with a pizza in front of him. He cheesed the thing and threw it into the oven. When he looked over and saw me, I could see his face crunch into an embittered smirk; he carried on in the kitchen laughing at me with some other employees as my dignity began to swell.
I took initiative and walked into the kitchen and said my hellos. Accompanying my new boss was a skinny little guy with a black goatee and mustache, which immediately reminded me of the Adventures of Don Quixote, and a really buff Mexican dude who stood in at about five feet tall – a smidgen shorter than my new boss. They said nothing. They stared, and then waited. The mood was incredibly tense and awkward.
Things would get worse. For one, Spanish was the only language my little, really buff Mexican coworker could speak, and secondly, I didn’t know how to speak bat-shit crazy Italian, which was one of three languages my new boss effectively butchered on a daily basis – the other two being Spanish and English. I don’t speak Spanish, but from look of the little, really buff Mexican dude, my new boss wasn’t speaking it either. Other than cooking, this would be the only thing me and the little, really buff Mexican dude would ever share in common.
The skinny dark-haired guy never talked to me. In the first 30 minutes I was there, he asked me to make a pizza as fast as I could for a customer who had been waiting for 45 minutes. When the customer asked what the hell took so long, the word ‘retard’ was said; laughter ensued; I would not partake. Maybe it was the smell of booze on his breath, or the overly apathetic inflection in his voice when he chose to speak, but I could tell this skinny dark- haired guy hated his life.
When things started getting busy, and the destitute dining room lit up like Christmas lights, my new boss started taking orders and yelling nonsensical banter into the kitchen. His accent was so incomprehensible I didn’t know which one of the three languages he was bastardizing. My new boss caught me standing by the pizza prep table doing nothing and yelled, “Four-Cheese pizza! Four-Cheese pizza! Four-Cheese pizza! Four-Cheese pizza!” Although I found this repetition helpful, it quickly dawned on me that very he was being incredibly condescending.
Ordered to make a Four-Cheese pizza; I thought, easy, no problem. I kneaded a dough ball into a flat circle, slapped it out to size, and spun into the air three feet over my head, and caught it like a pro. I sauced it, and applied the first cheese – mozzarella. I started to look around for other cheeses, but found nothing, except for a shaker of parmesan and a bowl of sour feta. I was familiar with this kitchen when I worked here before, and I was still stumped. I had to ask for help…
I couldn’t ask the little, really buff Mexican dude because of our obvious language barriers. I couldn’t ask the skinny dark-haired dude because he hated me more than he hated his life. So, my new boss it was. I asked him, “Where are the other three cheeses for the four-cheese pizza?!” I practically screamed it as loud as I could.
When his furry little grey head swiveled around and looked into my eyes, I could smell my soul burning. He took a moment to observe my fear, then, he opened his eyes really wide and said, “Four cheese pizza!” like it was the last time he was going to say it.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying!” I said. “Where are the other three cheeses?!”
“You don’t understand me?” Ironically I could finally comprehend him. “I don’t understand you! Are you stupid or something!” he said.
“I heard you! But where are the other three cheeses!? And where can I find them!?” I demanded.
The skinny dark-haired guy turned around, and with all his emptiness, he said, “Four cheese pizzas.”

At that moment, I felt pretty sheepish. My new boss dropped his chin to his chest and shook his head. After the lunch rush, I was sent home and asked not to come back. Honestly, I thought I did quite well. A week later, I showcased my pizza skills at another neighborhood pizza place. They hired me on the spot. I now manage, and train new recruits during the lunch rush.

Working for the Happy COW

virgomomwriter — 2010-03-22T00:00:00

I was thrilled when I was hired to work for one of my heroines, though more than one person told me she was impossible. I ignored them, as well as the uneasiness I felt when I realized, after starting the job, that I had been lied to about office facilities, benefits, salary, and staff turnover. I was working for someone to whom I was personally grateful, a pioneer in her field, a heroine to hundreds. I heard it from members and I heard it from her, every day.

As time went by, I began to realize, however, that her motivation for seeking publicity had more to do with her own ego than advocating for patients. Welcome to the world of Cindy Lou Mushberger, founder and CEO of Celebrants of Women (COW.) Cindy Lou believes she is COW. Welcome to an alternative universe. Welcome to COW.

Cindy Lou is a true believer. She is a friend of women, a champion of girls, a defender of the environment. She has the cure to several female diseases, and if you will order her complete set of tapes, she will share it with you. Cindy Lou has single-handedly changed women’s health and is also in the latest edition of Who’s Who in American Women, so she’s obviously important. Like Jesus, she once remarked, she is the prophet with honor except in her hometown. Just ask her.

Bring a notebook, as she’s already planned to dictate her memoirs, dictate being the operating verb. She has lots of dusty, itchy newspaper clippings to show you. Glowing biographies. Letters of recommendation from strangers crediting her with the saving of several lives. Bring your camera (but not one of those disposable ones, please, they’re bad for the environment and she will disapprove of you using it unless you write her a check immediately afterwards)—did you know Cindy Lou used to be a model?—and plan to stay a while.

I warn you, don’t ask her former partner or former coworkers or former board members or former hired guns or former editors or anyone in the ocean of former employees. They will tell you a different story.

The devil doesn’t wear Prada. She wears 40-year-old pilled sweaters because she hasn’t (yet) figured out how to creatively name a clothing allowance so COW pays for it.

What finally did it for me was 9/11, of all things. The way Cindy Lou reacted to it drove me right out the door.

Like millions of others, I was at work when it happened. I had, in fact, just sent a boatload of COW brochures, signs, and merchandise to the World Trade Center the previous week, in anticipation of a big women’s conference. Part of my job was to package all this stuff up and send it to various big events around the country, then call COW members in whatever city it was being held and gently browbeat them into voluntarily unpacking, displaying, selling, and repacking it. Another part of my job was negotiating with the sponsors of said events to reduce or waive any fees, especially if Cindy Lou would be attending.

So I was trying to make the most of my hour of internet access—despite the fact that the COW was an international organization with members in 33 countries, Cindy Lou would not allow individual email accounts, and insisted that staff members “share” the one online computer—when I received the strangest email from Nina, our COW rep in Argentina.

Please to tell me you are all okay. The news say the president is
at your airport. I am so afraid for my womens friends.

Huh? Nina wasn’t afraid of anything, so the message mystified me. I clicked over to a news site, but before I could read anything Beryl, the administrative gal, came charging up the stairs. All three phone lines lit up. Dina, who was always flustered was trying to juggle them without cutting anyone off.

“Oh, my God, I heard it on the radio, and then turned on the tv. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

We all went downstairs where the television played, just in time to see the first tower disintegrate live.

Ethan, my son, I thought. I hope they don’t have this on at his school. How am I going to explain this to Ethan? Then I remembered everyone I knew in New York. Julia is supposed to set up for the conference, but I can’t remember when. Please let it not be today…Isn’t Ari living in Manhattan these days? I’ve got to email him, and call Julia…I don’t even know who to call to find out…

Beryl was sobbing and shaking. Dina had simply dropped the phone receiver, and a disembodied voice was coming out of it. Another line kept ringing and ringing and ringing. Colleen’s mouth was hanging open and Harry was blowing his nose. The data entry gals had their arms around each other, and were weeping quietly. I’ve got to call the school, I thought, but my feet wouldn’t move. We all turned to Cindy Lou as she entered the room.

Cindy Lou paused for a moment to take in the second tower collapsing. She then turned her cool blue eyes to us.

“Well, back to work everyone. We’ve got a newsletter to get out.”

Huh?

“I have a feeling no one’s going to care about the newsletter this month, “said Colleen, as the rest of us looked at each other in disbelief. God bless Colleen, she folded her arms as the tears ran down her cheeks and stayed put. Her stance said, “Try to make me.”

I remain convinced—five years later—that the thing that upset Cindy Lou most about 9/11 was the total loss of all those brochures.

Where Have all the Profits Gone?

MusicTeacher — 2010-03-15T00:00:00

Chat at a party with a friend: "No surprise that people write about their drunk bosses. Nearly all my bosses were drunks -- at every Wall Street firm where I worked in the '80s. They'd take lunch breaks, knock back three martinis in the first fifteen minutes and come back good for nothing.
"Half the work day they were wasted. Literally."
"How did you handle that?"
"I developed good judgement. I realized I could rely on myself more than on them. I suppose that's why I started my own brokerage and haven't looked back for 25 years. I figured, why should I listen to someone who can't keep it straight?"
"The frightening question is, why should their clients listen to them?"
"And the even more frightening question is, why did they?"

So not appropriate

Claudia.arevalo — 2010-03-22T00:00:00

So not appropriate
When I met my former boss, I was working at a childcare center, my own version of hell on earth. There’s nothing as mind-numbing as taking care of 23 four-year-olds. Serving breakfast, making sure they eat it, cleaning up the mess, taking them out to the park, and making sure they don’t kill each other. This place was so bad that teachers could not even take a coffee or lunch break. Supplies were limited to say the least.
One night, there was a conference at the center about children with emotional and behavioral problems. I decided to attend. I ended up being both lucky and terribly unlucky to meet her.
She attended because her child had biting problems, he bit all the kids in his class, and that was a problem.
When the presentation was over we ended up talking. She told me she was in charge of hiring teachers for an after-school program that was part of Title I, No child left behind. I told her I was interested in the position. She asked me to fill out an application.
The next morning, she called me up for an interview. At first, she seemed very professional and organized. She hired me and I was very grateful. I had been feeling totally trapped at the center. Life for me was about to change. No more smelly classrooms, no more screaming kids…
Little did I know that soon enough she would start showing her claws. If something seems too good to be true, sometimes it is. Just thinking about her, two and a half years later, still makes me feel all queasy inside.
I had to work after school hours, at four different schools, located in tough neighborhoods. The students in our program had all kinds of problems: behavioral, emotional, cognitive… it could have been better than working at a daycare center, believe me, but not with her as my supervisor.
She would stomp in like an elephant destroying all sense of well being and laughter in her wake. Everything about her was loud, her cell’s ring tone, her tone of voice, her attitude. She was abusive while pretending to be caring.
All I can say in my defense is that I took it all in because I really needed the job, and she knew it.
One Friday afternoon, she wanted me to drive across the city to meet with her. We did not really need to meet face to face; we could have discussed lesson plans over the phone. I told her it did not make sense for me to drive all the way to her place. So what did she do? She took my paycheck from my office and took it to her home. Then she called me and told me she had been nice enough to pick up my check. If I wanted it, I had to go to her house to pick it up. I was so mad, I was livid, I cried. She knew I really needed it, she was blackmailing me, it was late, it was Friday, and I had to run. I had to drive like crazy to get there in time to talk with her and then drive to the bank to cash my check. Bills and groceries were at stake.
I told her I was going to call HR and tell them about what she had done. She begged me not to. She had done it as a “favor”. She convinced me, I did not file a complaint. I wish I had.
In the following weeks, she called me at home at 6:30 a.m. just to wake me up, to make sure I was ready to go to work. She called me all day long wanting to know my whereabouts and what I was doing.
As program supervisor she was supposed to visit school principals. I had to talk to them almost daily. When I filled out my follow up sheet on my conversations with them, she used the information to fill out her own report to management as if the conversations were hers. Later on when we were visiting schools with a regional supervisor the guards at the entrance did not recognize her. The principals did not recognize her either. Did the regional supervisor wonder why?
When she got married she was a size 8. After just 4 years of marriage and one baby, she was a size 20. I was a size 8. She did not seem happy about it, so she would say “You thin people make me sick”. She criticized the clothes I wore, the way I looked. At one of our staff meetings she went so far as to make me go home and change because she did not think the skirt I was wearing was “appropriate.”
She tried to copy my hair style. She claimed to be a bohemian at heart, like me. She bought bags and necklaces that were similar to mine. Our assistant told me that he wondered if she had a weird thing for me. And so did I. She would tell me about lesbian experiences she had when she was younger, she would ask me if I had had any lesbian fantasies. And this was “appropriate”?
To top it all up she offered me a full body massage for my birthday. Talk about sexual and emotional harassment at work.
After many complaints, she was demoted. Last year, she finally quit.
A month ago, I spoke to our former assistant. He told me he had seen her and she had asked him about me. She asked him to tell me that I could always come back to work for her. I wonder, is she completely insane?
She is.

Bunny of Death

What Deadline? — 2010-03-22T00:00:00

There is stupid, and there is epically stupid. It appears to me that the closer to the top of this ignorance mountain you climb, the more likely and qualified you are to be promoted in an organization.
For seven years, I covered school board and city council meetings for a small daily newspaper in the Midwest, which alone can be its own circle of hell. My editor was a man that not only enjoyed, but also reveled, in standing against anything that could be considered good and holy – and he was an idiot to boot. Chalk it up to years of cynicism or the trauma of being a complete moron, but management was not his forte.
A perfect example occurred during the height of the dreaded West Nile Disease outbreak. Everyone and their grandmother was scared to death of mosquitoes and dead birds. My editor pulled me aside one morning and said that he noticed a baby rabbit acting strangely near his home, and he was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that this unfortunate beast had been afflicted with the deadly disease.
Despite my lack of an advanced degree in biology, I was pretty sure that cute and fuzzy bunnies were not listed as possible carriers, a thought that was summarily dismissed by my editor who obviously knew more than the health department, Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. Being a dutiful reporter, I set about tracking down the elusive truth. My inquiries about bunny patient zero were met with raucous laughter and more than a fair share of derision. Ultimately, I was forced to write the truth and crafted a story, which revealed that rabbits – drum roll please -- could not catch or carry West Nile.
When Darth Editor read my story, he stormed over to my desk and thrust the paper down with all the hatred he could muster. Enraged by my obvious defiance, he stated that “this” was not what he had asked for. When I tried to explain that not one source or piece of literature could back up his obviously keen observation, he stomped away and killed my story.
The next day, he apologized and admitted that the rabbit’s unusual behavior may not have been a symptom of the dangerous disease, but instead may have stemmed from the fact that in his haste to leave, he accidentally stepped on the cuddly creature. When the paper rearranged schedules for printing and required me to spend several hours a week alone with this psychologically unbalanced tyrant, I decided it would be best if I moved on.

To The Elevator Shaft You Go

Fall4U — 2010-03-22T00:00:00

Heading towards the end of my work day and as the clock neared 3 a.m., my heart started beating faster. I felt a cold sweat coming on. I listened intently for the sounds of footsteps or the drumming of fingers on my office wall. Was I to make it safely through the dark, winding tunnel and down to the security office? Was my imagination on overdrive, or was there someone lurking outside my office? As I made my quick dash out the door, always subconsciously on the lookout for the boogey man, I cursed my boss to the bowels of the underworld.
My first and last experience in management was like a journey to Hell. First, the enticement of power by way of influencing or implementing changes. Then the reality check of 50-60 hour work weeks with on-call status for weekends and holidays sunk in. Finally, my tumultuous journey ended in the elevator shaft.
As the Assistant Manager for a busy hospital Emergency Department, I felt powerless and replaceable in the hierarchy of managers and directors. My director seemed like a typical grandma -- a warm caring smile, gave good hugs. However, looks are deceiving. Underneath the grandmother guise, she was the calculating Wicked Witch of the West. Unfortunately, wishful thinking couldn’t materialize Dorothy’s killer house. Three other managers had failed before me.
I endured hours of brainwashing about being transparent and empathetic to the staff, only to realize it was all talk and no show from the preaching boss. Sitting in her office one day, upset about another manager’s back stabbing behavior, I lamented that I had lost face with my direct reports. “Losing face doesn’t happen in America,” she replied. I took her response as an ominous sign forewarning me of worse things to come.
After two months of faithfully showing up for work, even when nearly on my deathbed from pneumonia, I called in sick. I sent an email to my manager explaining that my sick husband was unable to take care of himself and my sick kids while I managed the swing/night shift. I needed the time off to take care of my family.
The next day, haggard and sleep deprived, I signed on to my work email. Words such as “burden” and “resign” popped out at me. Was I still asleep and having a terrible nightmare? Slowly, I reread the message. Without even a courtesy phone call, my boss had sent an email (an email!) stating that I should resign my management position because my family life was obviously a burden to the department! I cried and cried until my eyes were red and puffy. My body went numb and a sense of panic soon took over. I was supposed to face her and the rest of the management team later that day. What was I going to do? Was I going to be a no show? There was no way I was going to let her get away with this. I was going to that meeting!
But first, I sent an email back to her (no courtesy phone call from me) saying that I wasn’t resigning. I cc’d Human Resources and the Vice President. The email trail began. As I walked into the meeting, my boss approached me, obviously flustered. The email trail started with my first email regarding my family’s sickness, followed by her email of my family being “a burden.” The correspondence had the appearance of an HR nightmare with the email implying impropriety. After speaking with the VP, my boss knew she was in the wrong. As she later said defensively, “I didn’t know you would be in such a rage,” referencing the email I sent to HR and the VP. “I thought you would call me and we would talk about it.” We managed to hash things out at the meeting, but work was never the same. Again, a sense of foreboding swept through me.
My boss’s constant avoidance of me and the other managers’ distancing behavior foretold my demise. Two weeks later, I was banished to an office in a tunnel far, far away from everyone else, an office that was previously occupied by the former secretary and the three managers before me. In the old days, it was an elevator shaft in an older part of the hospital and was rumored to be haunted. I guess you can say I got shafted.

Dream Job or Nightmare?

Mukta — 2010-03-22T00:00:00

I sat in the van and cried. It was the only place I could find to be alone, away from both group members and mosquitoes. It was one of those this-can’t-really-be-happening moments.
Leading cross-country bicycle tours had been my dream job, but my dream had turned into a nightmare. Hours earlier, my boss Ellen had told me to fire our errant support vehicle driver, Rachel, who wasn’t willing to speak with me about her repeated irresponsible behavior -- which included appropriating the support vehicle for her personal use and speeding to an extent that group members were scared she’d drive off the road.
Despite all the complaints we’d gotten about Rachel, when I told the group at that evening’s map meeting that she was no longer with us, things got tense. Some in the group pressured me for details, details I felt it would be inappropriate for me to talk about. Finally, one group member spoke in support of me, agreeing that it was personnel decision that I couldn’t really discuss. Someone else cracked a joke, and we moved on. After the meeting, our cook told me she thought it had ended well.
Then I saw the message on our cell phone: Ellen saying she’d changed her mind, talked with Rachel, and told her to stay. This can’t be happening, I thought, not after everything we’ve been through.
Part of a leader’s job is handling any situation that comes up. But on this trip, I’d been in crisis management mode practically from day one, or at least from day two when a snowstorm closed a highway on that day’s route. Another storm of mostly cold, cold rain mixed with some snow led to another day of shuttling riders. And on various days, our cue sheets led us onto a limited access road that didn’t allow bikes and another that prohibited bikes during the current shoulder reconstruction, and were off by as much as ten miles. It hadn’t been an easy trip. And then the ultimate crisis: a rider’s death, less than a week ago. Today was a scheduled layover day, and I’d thought I was going to spend a big chunk of it resting and getting my energy back up but instead I was spending it dealing with the latest crisis.

I went to the van to call Ellen because it was the only place I could be sure of privacy, away from group ears.
“It’s too late,” I said, “I already told the group at dinner that she’s not with us anymore and we’ve started to move on.”
“I thought that might be the case,” she said, “but I want to give Rachel another chance, to empower her.”
“It’s really not best for the group,” I explained, “not after all we’ve been through. People are still getting over Ann’s death and just starting to have fun again. Bringing Rachel back could add too much tension.” Ann had been hit by a car and killed.
“I still want to give her another chance. I believe in second chances.”
“That’s nice of you, but what about the group? How could you ever justify bringing back a dangerous driver if anything ever happened?”
“It won’t. I talked to her, and she’ll be more careful.”
“It’s just too late. It’s too much, too much for the group, too much tension for me.”
And so it went. Over the course of about an hour, I explained, reasoned, then begged. She asked If we could compromise, but there was no real compromise, either Rachel came back or she didn’t. The cell phone cut us off. When I called back, Ellen said she thought I’d hung up on her. I never hang up on people, and I knew then that she didn’t really know me. And the conversation we’d just had told me that she didn’t trust my judgment. She’d hired me based largely on my experience as a cross-country tour leader, experience of which she herself had none. Yet she was adamant that she somehow knew best, and she was just too into being the boss. Earlier in the trip, I’d asked her why she had left her previous job to run this company, and she’d replied, “to be the boss.” And everyone else, be damned. Oppressive humidity stifled my body while her refusal to trust my judgment stifled my soul.
As the boss, she got her way but lost the enthusiasm of her leader. I’d later wish that I’d thought to ask her what about empowering her leader rather than her support vehicle driver. Instead I sat in the van and cried, my little remaining reserves of energy draining away.
I’d gotten the group through so much, the whole time remaining loyal to the company and never complaining about the wrong cue sheets or anything else I thought the company could do better to the group. I hadn’t told the group that the first time I’d ever driven a van with a trailer attached was with three of them in the van with me and the rest of them of the road I was driving on, though it had wrecked my nerves that day. Perhaps I’d been loyal to a fault. The company certainly wasn’t loyal to me.
Nonetheless, I remained professional, holding the door for Rachel when I saw her at the next day’s hotel. She walked by without a word.
Somehow I got through the last 2½ weeks of the tour, doing what needed to be done. But I was also done, and I never led for that company again.

Dumb, Dumber & Clueless

Harper Crane — 2010-03-22T00:00:00

I worked as a paralegal for a real estate development company. The partners were three rednecks who did work hard but mostly, tripped over dumb luck. They couldn’t go to the restroom without each other. This isn’t an exaggeration. I guess someone had to pass out the toilet paper. I have affectionately named them Dumb, Dumber and Clueless.

DUMB

The reason why I ended up at this company was because my roommate dated Dumb. He was 35 years old and she was 22 years old. He told her what to think, what to wear and what to eat. He treated the employees that way as well.

He would show up at my house to show her how to properly fold her laundry. One Sunday, I found him sitting in his boxer shorts in front of the dryer. Without embarrassment, he started talking about the bank reconciliation. He didn’t know how much money he had so I had to go to the office to print out the balances.

We did mix business and pleasure because of our mutual friend. My roommate invited me to Dumb’s Christmas party so I could meet some of his friends. Unfortunately for me, birds of a feather flock together. And the most unfortunate thing was that I was invited because Dumb needed help arranging his children’s Christmas presents.

He directed us to take all the toys out of the plastic packaging. He didn’t want the children to hurt themselves or waste time doing this. He said that they were rich children and they shouldn’t be bothered. The gifts were to be arranged by child and then by height. The smaller presents were set in front of the taller ones so all the gifts could be seen at a glance. He wanted it to look like a Barney’s window display.

Later, I was invited to an Easter brunch but I declined. I imagined myself in a bunny costume hiding eggs.

My roommate and Dumb eventually broke up and he started dating a 21 year old. After all, my roommate was turning 25 and beginning to grow her own brain. He offered to marry me after he sowed his wild oats. He said I would be a great asset to his business and a good mother to his children. I told him there wasn’t enough disinfectant in the world to let me entertain that thought.

DUMBER

Dumb’s mentor was Dumber. He had plucked Dumb out of the trailer park in their hometown. Dumb was selling porn out of the back of his video rental store. Because of his religious beliefs, Dumber had to save Dumb’s soul. We still question how he discovered Dumb’s extracurricular activities.

On my first day of work, he greeted me by saying, “This is a fine Christian organization. We value God, family and business -- in that order.”

That should have been my first clue. Dumber was a deacon at his church. He gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to make sure the addition of the church had a plaque with his name on it. Prayer meetings at work were mandatory -- well, for men. Every Wednesday, his “girls” (as we were affectionately called) ordered lunch then the men went down to the conference room to pray. This was a men’s only group because the girls would only distract them.

He cried so much after seeing The Last Temptation of Christ that he had to be carried to the car. He couldn’t do business with the Jews or Muslims because that just wouldn’t be right. But he asked me to lie to his business partners, change terms on contracts without their knowledge and falsify testimony during a deposition.

He transferred some assets into his wife’s name for tax and liability reasons. He said she would take the fall if any of his deals went bad. She was a simple girl from Alabama and didn’t question anything. When the time came, he would trade her in for two twenty-year-olds.

CLUELESS

The third partner was Clueless. Dumber and Clueless joined forces to develop a large tract of property. They weren’t friends before the deal and aren’t friends to this day. I had hoped that he was the rational one out of the group. I was wrong.

Rumors flew. He had closed his first big deal right before I arrived. I soon found out that he screwed over his mentor and stole the deal. That’s when he brought in Dumber so that he could secure a construction loan.

One day, he called me into his office to discuss my future with the company.

“We’d love to have you as a partner someday.”

I beamed and thought, “Finally, they are realizing my potential.”

“Yes, if we ever need a minority partner, you’d be it. You can fill out the paperwork and we can get all those government contracts. All those blacks, Mexicans, and Orientals are getting all the good deals. Of course, we’d cut you in. You’d get something, maybe 2%.”

What Clueless didn’t realize was that a “minority” partner must own a majority of the deal and control the company. I didn’t tell him. It wasn’t worth it. He was always right. Who cared what the law said?

In the end, I couldn’t perform any more personal chores for Dumb, adapt to Dumber’s Christian ways or become a Caucasian for Clueless. I started my own consulting business and gave them one month’s notice.

After one day, my replacement quit. She couldn’t deal with them. Of course, they accused me of poisoning her mind. I lost it and told them off. I never went back. They did apologize to me later (via email) but it was too late.

Lesson learned: Money does not buy brains, class or a clue.

Be a tool;not a fool

penn — 2010-03-29T00:00:00

I have never been lucky with bosses. I have had two bosses, the first nearly drove me to an early grave, and the other almost made me resign. Sometimes I still hear the voice of my very first boss in my head.
Having a job in Nigeria, Africa can be very desirable since the unemployment rate is so high. Every year about 50,000 graduates leaving the mandatory one year youth service after college have to contend with the less than 10,000 corporate jobs available in the labor market so it was a great privilege to have a job to call one's own. My bosses seem have known that as well as I did. My job search success was further facilitated by the possession of a master’s degree in Petroleum Geology and a referral. It was really exhilarating when I finally picked up this job as a graduate in training at this company, an oil and gas servicing company in Lagos, Nigeria, a privately owned company. And the problem was, it was privately owned — by my boss. The company rendered both consultancy and technical off shore services to the oil companies. It took me over a month to get my salary schedule after my employment letter was drafted and to discover that my pay was about $300 a month. My job was to prepare tenders for the services we rendered for the oil companies and I being a fast learner, learned fast.
My first day at work was met with a warm welcome by my boss, a tall skinny, dark-complexioned man in his early fifties. He quickly introduced me to everyone, who all didn’t seem to be interested in meeting me and rather looked at me with questions like “What are you doing here?” I cared less about their reaction as I was happy to finally get a job related to my field of study. He then told me to get to work and left into his adjoining office. I took a seat then watched as everyone seemed not to notice me; I decided to ask a few questions that were met with sharp answers from the lady who doubled as a receptionist and office secretary.
Half an hour later, my boss stepped out of his office and looked at me and hollered the oddest words ever: ‘’Get to work: be a tool, not a fool, that’s how we work here!" I had not been given any assignment and I was actually trying to get someone to tell me what next to do. I asked the secretary what he meant by that; she smiled: welcome to the company, sat with someone in the other office and looked into a monitor.
My co-workers only smiled that day when their cheques were handed to them, I had resumed at the middle of a month and I could only help but wonder what month they were being paid for. The comments they made were stunning and quite confusing but most of all, I was glad to have a job. Those were early signs I was blinded to.
Working conditions, especially staffing, were abysmal; resources and equipments were not readily available and working in the most populated, traffic-plagued city in Africa was also a minus. But all that were just a piece of cake compared to the real issue, my boss.
He seemed to have broken even on the business and was now diverting money into other businesses, leaving the office with little running cost. His stubborn cost cutting measures made our work easily the equivalent of jobs worth between $250,000 and $1,000,000,00. The office was being run by the settlements of the oil companies for which we were rendering services. We were paid a minute fraction of the company’s settlement, when the company was settled. Worst of all, my boss had the slave-master mentality, asking for out-of -job favours which turned out to be instructions — such as picking his kids from school, booking his wife at the spa and buying him lunch. These requests were stylishly wrapped in submitting proposal and tenders on behalf of the company. I also learned that my job included arranging call-girls for him on a Friday night. As he was extremely difficult to satisfy, he would scream at any slightest opportunity, virtually starting a war. “My office air conditioner is not working!" “You didn’t pick my kids from school!” "This office is too rowdy!” "Your tenders are sloppy!” “You're a jerk!" “Don’t act like a fool, be a tool! “ ”Do you think this is how I ran the business for years till I broke even?"
‘’You are not working for the progress of the company!” "You are an enemy of the company!” ”I’ll throw you back to the streets before you ruin my business!“ And he then threatened to hit an employee.
The real job was staying in that job and keeping a happy face, living on my stipend like this was the last because the date of the next one was never clear. Sometimes people talk about suing the boss for delaying salaries, but where is the money to hire a lawyer going to come from? And we have the option of quitting.
So I always made sure I had something to smile about. And my smile was pretty soon contagious, and the atmosphere at work changed.
My resolution was to leave the troubles of work at work, make sure I learned something each day and could leave the job soon, knowing all there was to know, and having kept out of the line of fire with the boss, as much as possible. Then I'd look for another job with my new experience. And that was what I did, after nine months on the job and two months of unpaid salaries. I left for a job in a bank where my knowledge of the oil and gas business and proposal writing gave me an edge. My resignation letter was in a text message to my boss: ”I’m out sir, thank you so much for everything.”

He taught me how not to ever expect the words “thank you” or "well done.” And I made sure that he would miss me because I was the only one who offered him a hand of friendship irrespective of his many flaws, who overworked myself to please him, sleeping in the office in a non-paying job to prepare papers to be submitted the next day. And yes he confessed to missing me and offered me a raise if I came back. But of course it was too late.
In a country like Nigeria where the jobs are scarce, I am sure that getting people would not be a problem for him. He just might not find the ones that can adapt easily.
The only thing my present boss does is come to work, take lunch breaks and go back home. I handle everything. He always says, “You know you know what to do,” and yes he is right. I know what to do ... apply for his position, which I just did.

A Job Made In Heaven?

hlavine — 2010-03-29T00:00:00

Who would believe that working for a church could ever turn into the job from Hell? For four long months I worked in a position as secretary for the Pastor of a church with over 150 members. At the time I took the job, I was best friends with the Pastor's wife — which in hindsight, should have been Clue Number One that the job was not a good idea. You don't mix business with pleasure!

Within the first week in my new position I found out that a church office is like any other American office. There are good points and there are bad points. There is also a boss from Hell! From now on we are going to call my boss Pastor X. Pastor X has a temper. I had heard rumors of his temper, but had never actually seen it. I had found some problems with the checking account from the previous secretary — an entire deposit was missing. Pastor X gave me a look that would have scared Satan himself, and ordered me to find the mistake. As I tried explaining that I had found the mistake, a missing deposit, I was cut off and told to forget about it. Forget about $400 cash that is missing and another $1000+ in checks? Not only did I work at that church, but I was a member too; a portion of that missing money was mine!

I tried not to sweat the small stuff and just do my job, which worked well for a while. Then the annual budget meetings started. Pastor X wanted to buy a new truck for the church and we just didn't have the funds. Of the six people on the budget team, only one voted with Pastor X. The rest were given the wrath of X-man until the vote was passed and Pastor X got the new truck — which he promptly drove to his house; it became his personal vehicle.

Pastor X and I finally had it out one day when I was attempting to explain the accounting procedure to him. He just could not grasp it. I said to him, "You're not listening! Look, this column is for ---" He interrupted me, "NO! You're not listening! I think you just need to go home for the day, but leave the key on your desk." One hour later the phone rang with Pastor X telling me my services were no longer needed. Shortly after that I left the church membership list and my post as his wife's best friend.

Rumble On The Waterfront

bigm10981 — 2010-03-29T00:00:00

A friend got me as a server for the restaurant he had been working for. It was seasonal summer employment in a bustling seaport town and I was eager to make some cash before I went back to school.
The restaurant was a charming, authentic place with a deck that stretched along the waterfront, covered by a large tarpauline, as well as a fine indoor dining area, decorated with historical artwork.
The owner was an old, fat, short guy, who boasted loudly, of his lineage, which was questionable at best. His wife, a quiet and — it came to be seen — infinitely patient woman, was the co-manager. His son seemed to be a weird case . I am no one to judge, but the child was 13 years old, very intelligent, and worked full time, even over-time, under the urging and even demand of his father. This little boy acted as host, cook, and assistant manager up to 6 days a week. When I was 13 I wanted to ride my bike and hang out with my friends and do kid things ... but that is just me.
This is one example of his fathers manner: "Boss," we'll call him. Boss was an old army veteran. He told us that he acquired the restaurant from a man he'd grown up with who was retiring. The restaurant was wildly successful and the Boss thought that he would just keep a good thing going. I came to learn, however, that the former owner sold it very reluctantly to him, after constant pestering.
Now, I understand why. Boss was one of the rudest, crudest, and all together angriest people that I have ever met. I spoke earlier of his wife's infinite patience with her husband's inconceivably abrasive manner to his employees as well as the occasional patron.
When greeting his staff never would he utter anything other than “lazy sons of b—ches!” I never heard him once praise the work of anyone of his staff. The only difference between older and newer employees was the degree of berating that they would have to endure.
In Boss’s eyes, as he mentioned everyday, sitting his short fat frame as he did all day, on the hosts bench:
“You are all worthless f—kers. Lazy, just f—king sitting around all day. I’m gonna get rid of all of ya soon and get me some people who aren’t f—king retarded.”
As I was a new member, I received a lot of harassment. My friend had warned me that this might happen. Constant berating became the norm. He would swear in my face, calling me “useless” as the spit dripped down his face.
One trick that he would like to play goes as follows: As a server, I was required to carry a buzzer that would be signaled by the kitchen when the food was ready. Boss would often oversee the preparation and use the buzzers when he saw the food was ready.
Often, he would hit the buzzer rapidly, 3 to 5 times. Returning immediately to the kitchen to pick up my food, despite being only several strides away, I was chastised for "letting the food get cold." Even though it would only take a second to hit the buzzer five times, Boss would yell
“I hit that buzzer 5 f—kin times! Lazy F—k!” as if after each time he had hit it, he had waited for a while and then hit it again, 5 times, instead rapidly firing 100/second.
Over the course of my time there, I saw 2 servers leave in tears, after being subject to a horrific barrage of foul English that I will not mention here.
Eventually I became tired of the constant berating. I became tired of Boss swearing at me. I became tired of him calling me useless.
One day he asked me to do something and, as I did it, he said:
“Do it faster, you lazy f—ker!” That’s when I finally had it. Although I had never been anything but respectful towards him, never even swearing in his presence, I said, calmly:
“Maybe I would be more inclined if you weren’t such an a—hole.”
He twirled on me.
“No one calls me an a—hole in my place.” And then, this 78 year-old, short, fat man who had a strong voice but whose body was so weak that he was barely able to stand, started hobbling toward me. As he hobbled, he raised his fists. He wanted to fight me. A weak, short, fat 80 year-old man against a tall lean and strong 25 year-old, essentially in his prime. It did not seem a fair fight to me so, as he hobbled forward, I deftly moved around him, just out of range of his swing, and walked out the front door and out onto the street. I never returned but I wonder, if he had hit me, wouldn’t he have been in a load of trouble?

Is That The Sun?

Cheryl P. — 2010-03-29T00:00:00

From March 1998 to January 1, 2002, I worked for the most impossibly difficult human being who ever walked the planet. His name was Bob. Bob owned and ran a small (only about seven employees) entertainment marketing research firm. I was one of three harried staff writers whose job it was to write focus group questionnaires and then make some semblance out of disorganized and pitiful responses regarding new and ongoing television shows.

When I got the job with Bob, I figured (as a single mom) that I had pretty much won the logistics lottery; that is, I lived only 5 minutes away and Bob’s office was sandwiched between my sons’ schools: one, three blocks to the east and the other three blocks to the west. To his credit, Bob did allow my kids to meet me at the office and to drive them home; whereas their dad would then pick them up around 5 pm.

Our hours were supposed to be from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm. However, on most evenings Bob would either call from the underground parking garage or come tearing through the hallway at 5:29 pm shouting, “Nobody leave! We’re working late tonight!”

When he would call from the garage, it was to the office manager, Jeff, who would sheepishly announce the bad news to us. If Bob chose not to call ahead, we would hear the front door slam followed by the hellish sound of his nylon pants rapidly brushing together as he pounded along the bleak gray corridor – it was a crinkly effect – like fire. He’d then torture us with waiting until he’d buzz Mary Ann to which she’d inform us that “we’re going in” (to Bob’s office) in a very somber tone like we’d just learned that we’d been chosen as sacrificial lambs — ready to leap to our deaths — from some long-ago primitive ritual ceremony. He’d keep us in the office until the sun rose the following day, expecting us back at our desks again promptly at 9:30 am. Since we were all staff, we earned no overtime pay whatsoever. At least he’d order in dinner. Normally allowing us to choose off California Pizza Kitchen’s “to go” menu.

Bob liked his coffee brewed half-and-half. That is half-regular and half decaf and in his own individual pot. It was my job (he said it was because I was the last hire) to meticulously create this concoction every morning and make sure the pot was full throughout the day, regardless of the fact that Bob’s usual hours were from 5:29 pm to 6:00 am. On the off times when he’d actually show up during normal business hours, (his excuse for always arriving so late was that he had “swimming pool” and other hillside estate issues to deal with during the day) he’d complain about the coffee, making me brew it repeatedly until I got it just right. I can still hear his blowing and sipping in my nightmares. He told me one of my duties was to wash the pot and his cup in the dishwasher separately from the staff. I had to run a full-cycle-- its only contents being that of one coffee pot and one mug with Bob’s name on it.

Bob did not spare us our weekends either. There was more Saturday and Sunday work than I care to remember. At least he didn’t make us stay overnight, because Bob would never come in on the weekends, he’d simply bark instructions (poolside) to us over the loudspeaker. So there we sat…in Mary Ann’s office…my fellow employees and I listening to Bob’s disembodied bellowing rearranging the words “the” and “at” over-and-over-and-over again until one Saturday afternoon I became totally unglued, stood up and yelled into the loudspeaker that “you are driving me crazy!” and “how many times can one person obsess over the words ‘the’ and ‘at’!” Bob screamed back that I was fired. But no sooner home, the phone rang -- Bob had Mary Ann call me to report back to work immediately. So I got in my car and returned to work and Bob’s booming voice from the netherworld until eight o’clock that Saturday night.

Around the end of November 2001, Bob summoned us into the conference room. There was one really sad-looking ficus to witness the event. We were all giggling and jumping up and down like little kids because we thought we were getting richly deserved raises. Not on the agenda. It turned out that Bob’s announcement was that he was closing his office come January 1, 2002. He also insisted that we take our vacation time immediately, as he didn’t want to be stuck paying for any unused time later. Yes, we were a fairly stupid bunch to work for this man as long as we did, but not that dumb to take vacation time a month before we lost our jobs.

I’m still friends with Mary Ann. The experience at Bob’s has bonded us forever. We both wonder if it truly happened: Did we actually work until one of us spotted the sun? #

Hell In Any Language

poodlepup — 2010-03-29T00:00:00

In my 35 years in the workforce I’ve had many, many jobs from hell, but this one may take the cake. I met Gus when he was a customer of mine at a wholesale electronics company. He was a small retailer selling cellular phones in Atlanta in the 1990s. As a customer he was pleasant, congenial, and paid on time. Working on commission at this place nearly caused a breakdown, so when Gus offered me a position as a manager of one of his stores, I jumped at the chance.

In the beginning, Gus was charming and showed me the ropes of his business. Since I had experience in both the cellular phone business and retail, it was a very short learning curve. I was off and running a one-person retail location responsible for opening, closing, selling, controlling inventory and more. I thoroughly enjoyed working alone, greeting customers, selling products and handling the money.

After a year at three different locations, Gus determined that he needed my services at the “corporate” office…and that’s when the fun began. Gus was a good looking, albeit short, educated man, originally from The Middle East. His family must have had money and influence because he had an air of entitlement about him. He also felt entitled to date his tall, blonde office manager, Sherry. However, after several years, Sherry figured out that there would be no marriage, or family, and their personal relationship went south quickly.

Unbeknownst to me when I accepted the office position, the two of them fought often, loudly, bitterly and in front of anyone in the way. Another difficulty was that the “office” consisted of a retail front, a single restroom and a 14-by-20 space that held four file cabinets and two desks with assorted computers and printers. So when Gus and Sherry were arguing, not only were tempers flaring, but so were temperatures.

Gus was so tight with money that he refused to run the air conditioning and by noon, it got ugly. Then, in his infinite wisdom, he added a new desk and brought in another woman. So, three women, a controlling, entitled man, four file cabinets, three desks and assorted office equipment in a stuffy 280 square foot space. Hot doesn’t begin to describe the room, or the tempers.

The final straw was the day Sherry came in to work late, obviously hung-over and in the same clothes as the day before. She acted like nothing was wrong and Gus went berserk. There was screaming; the guy was fluent in American cuss words. Linda, the new girl, and I tried subtly to go for a walk but Sherry followed us and Gus followed her. I can’t remember the fight because I’ve tried to block out all negative energy over the past decade, but I know it was so ugly I gave my notice that day.

Unemployment hell was better than staying in that job. I never went back and I don’t know what happened to Sherry, but I still pass his retail locations from time to time so I know that Gus is alive and well.

The View

lindacw — 2010-03-29T00:00:00

“Mr. Markham wants to see you in his office.”
“Me? Now?” I asked.
“Yes, you. Now,” his secretary admonished.
Mr. Markham was a repulsive, elfish looking man with a huge pot-belly and comb over hair. The length of his nose could rival Pinocchio’s. I think he had some Napoleon in him too. As the vice president of the department store, he made sure everyone knew he was in charge. Scooting around the sales floor, shouting orders at the lowly assistants made us all fear him. I’d learned to stay as far away as possible.
As a fresh-out-of-college young assistant buyer trying to please everyone in my first real job, I was immediately overtaken by panic when I was summoned to the boss’ office. My skin crawled at the thought of it. The hair on my arms stood straight up.
His office was at the end of a long, narrow hallway. I slowly made my death march toward what I assumed to be my demise. I had absolutely no clue what he wanted from me. I’d done my best to stay off his radar screen.
“Come in.” Mr. Markham stood and adjusted his pants before closing the door behind me. He wore expensive, finely tailored suits; why he needed to adjust his pants so often mystified me.
“Have a seat.” He waved his hand towards two guest chairs.
I sat in a very low and uncomfortable one in front of a huge mahogany desk. I wiped my sweaty palms on my skirt.
He returned to his large leather executive chair, slouching down into the seat. With his hands folded across his large extending stomach, he slowly raised his left foot from the floor, resting the soul of his shoe on the edge of the desk. Then the right foot came up. He placed it in a similar position on the desk about two feet away. He began to speak.
About what, I can’t remember. All I could see was his crotch. Staring me right in the face. He rubbed his hands together as they lay across his lap. My eyes almost popped out of my head. I shifted my gaze to a far corner of the room only to be called back to his crotch each time he asked a question. I was young and naïve but I wasn’t that naïve. I felt nauseous.
He spoke and I heard nothing.
“Thank you,” he said as he got out of his position.
Jolted out of my state of shock, I realized that was my cue to leave. I walked back down the long hall to my desk. He hadn’t fired me but had somehow gotten his jollies that day, I’m sure.
That night at home, I got out my resume and started freshening it up. I didn’t have the stomach for Mr. Markham but I was too inexperienced to know that someone even more obnoxious waited for me at my next job down the road.

Hookers Anonymous

Kate Simmons — 2010-04-05T00:00:00

Hello, my name is Kate, and I'm a prostitute.
--Hi, Kate.--
Recovering prostitute, I should say.
Straight out of school and scared of the streets, I took the first and only job offer that came my way: an ever shriveling title with an ever swelling list of responsibilities.
I had graduated with the last wave of idealistic print journalists. Even my college advisor tried to dissuade me: "You realize you’ll never make any money, right?"
Determined to alter reality by wielding the written word, I was prepared to sacrifice the lush life. What I didn't anticipate was the daily degradation that began the instant I signed on the dotted line.
I should have known this church communication department was no place for me when my boss, a 6-ft-6 spineless wonder, mincingly told me to leave my already-minimal jewelry at home. I would also have to accept payroll under the title of Secretary (22 years old + female = Secretary) but do the combined work of a writer, proofreader, video editor and graphic designer, and attend at least two worship and prayer sessions each day. And to make things especially awkward, my boss took pains to remind me almost daily that I was his subordinate, that I was too young to understand the intricate workings of office politics, and that he felt like I was a sort of daughter to him.
I found I could be fired for drinking alcohol and possibly even caffeine, buying so much as a lottery ticket (lottery = gambling = fun = vice), being involved in a homosexual relationship, being involved in a heterosexual but unmarried relationship, or failing to pay 10% of my paycheck back to the Church--a.k.a. my pimp.
Within this barbed-wire cage, I was expected to operate. For $11 an hour. And I tried. I had sacrificed the lush life, perhaps I could sacrifice personal boundaries too--but I would wield the written word, damn it!
As part of my duties, I commissioned a youth counselor to write an article on the under-addressed issues of sexual abuse. It was one of my single-digit list of tasks I was proud of. Yet as I proofread the copy, I noticed the Spineless Wonder had changed the author’s perfectly professional reference to the female sex organ from "vagina" to "private parts."
Private parts.
Whisky, Tango, Foxtrot.
I crossed that out and restored "vagina."
And so began a week-long fight and one of the many times I cursed my lack of savings for keeping me in this paradox of a Godforsaken religious organization.
The Spineless Wonder could scarcely pronounce the word vagina. It came out as three distinct words: vah gine uh. (Vagina = female = run for hills, clutching balls.)
I worked the word into every sentence of my argument: Vagina is not a dirty word. Vagina is the proper term. Doctors say vagina. Vagina, vagina, vagina.
He retorted, "We’re not publishing a medical journal."
Oh, Sherlock, your powers of observation are truly staggering.
His logic thinning, he finally broke eye contact, lifted his nose and played the ever-ready trump card: he was the boss. The article must be spayed.
While my ideals and good intentions were stubbed at every turn (assisting the blind at sister organization = not answering office-wide phones = screw the blind, that's why God invented Braille), my skills were exploited. The silver-haired, empty-headed organization president, who regularly regaled us with photos of his grandchildren while forgetting our names, and once compared one of his meager good deeds to the crucified Christ, made me scan, edit and lay out photos for his personal Christmas letter because he was too lazy and stupid to use his own software.
I protested that though I was admittedly a maddening amalgam of secretary, receptionist, writer, proofreader, video editor and graphic designer, I was not the president's Photoshop whore.
The Spineless Wonder said, "Well, that Christmas letter will probably go out to someone in our magazine audience too, so . . ."
Stroke, suck and swallow.
Once while digging around with him in the musty basement for photography equipment, I literally crossed my fingers that the Spineless Wonder would try something.
I mean really try something.
I was fairly confident I could fend him off. As tall as he was, he had to weigh all of 12 pounds; he was a suited tight ass on stilts. But even if I misjudged my scrappiness--even so! A modest "PLEASE don’t tell, we don’t want to look like the Catholics" settlement would get me hastily the hell out of Dodge. And it would be worth it.
That's when it hit me.
Sex = money.
This church had turned me into a prostitute.
I fantasized for months about suing for age and gender discrimination, or at least securing a higher-paying job, waiting for the perfect, misogynistic moment, and storming out in a flurry of profanity.
But this was Nebraska, and after months of dead-end interviews, I simply married out. My then-fiancé got a job in the Twin Cities and I used that as a don't-ask-don't-tell excuse for exodus.
To bring the cliché full circle, my replacement was a male who was fawned over and worriedly asked if he, having a penis, would mind being called Secretary. He entered at the pay bracket I had begged, threatened and clawed to work up to.
I’ve been in recovery ever since. I still wake up screaming, but the shakes are subsiding. One day at a time, I guess.
Thanks for letting me share.
--Thanks for sharing.--

The Amazing Race

loislane7 — 2010-04-05T00:00:00

During my first year as a reporter at a daily newspaper in the Corn Belt, life was good. My editor was warm and caring, someone who urged reporters to never compromise their personal happiness for the job. When she took her own advice and left the paper, a new editor was selected from another department in the building. That’s when my life began to play out like a bad movie of the week.
Her replacement lived only for his job. Anyone who wanted an outside life was a slacker, in his eyes. He made it his personal mission to ferret out these so-called slackers and punish them.
My job reviews had always been sterling. Covering local meetings and the court system might not have been glamorous, but I always sought to do my best. No one, however, could do enough to please the master. Like a modern-day witch hunt, he accused reporters of laziness and demanded they prove their innocence.
Within days of his promotion, I began hyperventilating every time my home phone rang. He delighted in calling me at home several times a week, once even shortly before midnight on a Saturday of a holiday weekend. Fighting off the shaking rage I felt during work hours was bad enough. Now, even my fortress of solitude had been infiltrated.
After one of his phone calls, my night would be ruined. I’d relive the horrors of the work day, and sleep, when it finally found me, was interrupted by nightmares.
No one was immune from his evil eye. He jumped to wild conclusions about public officials and police officers -- even though he had never met them. I became convinced this guy had been stuffed in a locker one too many times in high school and had vowed to someday exact his revenge on society.
One day, he called to tell me there was an automobile accident in the county I cover.
The word “accident” often triggered a panic attack, simply because my editor was never content to let emergency personnel do their jobs. In his mind, their first allegiance was to the newspaper. After forking over all the information they had, then, and only then, could they race the injured party to the hospital. If they didn’t give me immediate attention, then clearly they were “hiding the truth” and another ludicrous conspiracy theory would ensue.
On this particular day, he didn’t know where the accident had occurred. All he knew was that it was on a county road and a medical helicopter was summoned. Since I covered a strong agricultural area, nearly all the roads were county roads, many of them gravel.
His instruction to me? Go find it, and bring your camera.
I explained to him that I could drive for hours on county roads in my territory and still not find the scene.
He spat out each word of his reply, slowly as if talking to the village idiot: “Follow the helicopter and you’ll find it.”
For the first time in my life, I had been rendered speechless.
After a few seconds, I said, with a bewildered voice, “What do you mean?”
“Follow the helicopter,” he repeated, just as condescending as the first time.
“I can’t do that. I have a car. How can I follow a helicopter in a car?” I asked.
By this point, my whole body had begun to shake. I could barely hold the phone to my ear.
The line went silent for about 10 or 15 seconds. It was so quiet I could almost hear the crickets outside.
“Are you refusing to go?” he asked in a controlled, though clearly angry, voice.
“I’m not refusing,” I said. “It’s just not possible. My car can’t keep up with a helicopter. There’s no way I’ll be able to follow it.”
I spent a minute practically begging him to go against character and show some mercy and understanding. It was futile, and I knew it. You couldn’t reason with a control freak like him, and if you tried, you were labeled insubordinate.
The heart-stopping sounds of a helicopter thundered in the distance and I knew, as a wage slave, I had to try to chase that copter. I ran out to my car, hopped in, buckled my seat belt and took off. I had made it out to the main highway by the time the helicopter roared overhead. Two minutes later, I lost it. Literally and figuratively. Wiping tears away, I drove back to the office for the unpleasant task of telling my editor my suspicions were correct -- the average car was not faster than a helicopter.
He had calmed down a little by the time I talked to him. Turns out, when the dust settled, we learned the accident wasn’t that big of a deal after all.
I’d like to say that was the point I hightailed it out of Dodge. That I’d told off my psychopath of an editor in front of the other reporters and they rewarded me with a slow clap like in some of those cheesy movies from the 1980’s. That my self-respect and dignity was more important than a paycheck.
The depressing truth, however, is that 10 years later, I’m still working at that same newspaper with that same editor. Legions of reporters have quit since then. I have more seniority than anyone who works with him. Mostly, he leaves me alone and picks on the new reporters. I feel bad for them and give them advice on how to deal with it -- lottery tickets and copious amounts of alcohol -- but I’m glad these days I manage to fly under his radar.

Off With My Head!

lynxes5 — 2010-04-05T00:00:00

When I took this job even the doorman of her building warned me that nobody lasted three months with this Deluxe Control Freak, and that I should keep my resume circulating.

She was a gifted interior decorator (though I think she over-used the color orange in her signage) who had once employed a small stable of designers and assistants. But since she was never pleased with anyone, the fewer people she retained the fewer she had to fire.

She was touchy about the strangest things: she had heart palpitations if I left my purse on the back of my seat. Heaven forbid some messenger or food deliveryman come in and see it there and snatch it. I nursed no such paranoia myself, but hung the purse on the hanger with my coat in her closet each day.

She also insisted that I open all her letters, including bills, with a knife. If she even found junk mail envelopes in the trash that looked as though I had opened them with my thumb, she would query me.

Yet, when she asked me to do some bookkeeping I found that for all her meticulousness she was short $10,000 in Accounts Receivable. I assumed she’d be pleased that I had brought this discrepancy to her attention. But she dismissed me as a “foolish girl” and insisted that I perform the math again. I came out with the same figure.

“You just can’t do ANYTHING!” she grumbled.

She took it upon herself to do this accounting and came out with the exact sum that I had twice calculated.

“My God!” she cried. “I’m owed $10,000! I can’t afford to hire you anymore!”

But That’s So Boring!

lynxes5 — 2010-04-05T00:00:00

He was a new media producer about 10 years ago, when new media was new. This guy could have been cast in a Merchant Ivory film: 6’ 4” with a heap of curly blond hair, he wore white gabardine pants with suspenders and panama hats to the office. Pleasant and evocative as he was to look at, he was a complete jerk. One morning he came in and asked me what I was doing at my computer; could he have a look?

I got up and when he took my seat he commented with a shudder that it was “rather warm.”

Sorry I’m not a reptile!

“What are you actually doing?” he asked me suspiciously.

“Programming all the headlines, as you asked me to yesterday.”

“But that’s so BORING!” he wailed. “Couldn’t you possibly do something more fun?”

He Left His Mark

midwife — 2010-04-05T00:00:00

This was in the newspapers when it happened. I work as a midwife in a city hospital. My boss, an OB GYN, carved his initials upon the belly of a patient after he had performed a C-Section on her. He thought it was of joke. Hilarious! Especially since there are rumors that the baby was his.

Cold Sweat

Ana — 2010-04-12T00:00:00

It was the first – and the last – time I worked for a woman. Being a woman myself, I always sympathized and admired other women in higher positions in such competitive field as science. I was thrilled to work for this successful, bright and young lady. I thought we would shake the walls and save the world working together.

She started showing signs of anxiety by the end of the first week as she complained that I had not finished some calculations. Initially, she explained the project and asked me to “start” to think about during those first weeks of adaptation in the new job. One more week passed and she would be never happy. Even with very good results, she would ask for more. She started to complain about deadlines and I started to work overnight to satisfy her desires. Her mood swings were becoming aggressive and I started to become scared of her. At the end of the third week, she broke down and wanted to fire me because “this is not working.” I was completely shocked; I was working full time, better say: I was working “all” time, including nights, weekends, holidays. Never worked so hard since I was a graduate student and she was accusing me of what exactly? What was not working? She wanted a publication ready in the three weeks. Well, I was a scientist, not a journalist, between obtain results, understand data, create an explanation or a model and write a manuscript for a new project in a new job usually takes a few months. I had results and I went to complain to the manager. That was a huge mistake, I showed him my results for my first three weeks working with my female boss and I also complained that I could not be fired without a reason and fire-at-will was not on my contract. I was in panic since I had spent so much money to relocate to a new city; my furniture had not even arrived at the time. It was just surreal.

For my surprise and despair, the manager said that I should do my best to make my boss happy. If my boss was not happy, he would not be either. I almost fell off the chair; I could not believe my ears. He explained that I could not be fired, but no one would ever talk to me again until my boss felt satisfied with my work. After that encouraging meeting, I went back to my office and continued to work harder and harder. My boss would storm into my office, sometimes like an angel, sometimes like the devil. I would never know who she would be. I started being so scared, so afraid of her, just the sight of her walking down the hall would cause me cold sweat. I was quite sure she would hit me one of those days. She wanted a slave, not an employee. Or did she want something else out of me that I did not notice? Sometimes she would stare at me strangely or she would stand very close to any female student or employee. However, I thought she was just weird: she dressed like a man without any make-up or jewelry.
I started looking for other jobs immediately and I also pushed hard to write down my results as fast as I could obtain reliable data. When I proudly showed her a manuscript with “our” results, she declined to be co-author claiming annoyed that the manuscript was not her idea. She had a major melt-down, cried and screamed. I stood there watching her to curse me, my work, herself and the universe.

I did not care if I had to lose money and relocate again. I just wanted to get away from her. I wrote a resignation letter immediately after I left her office. I gave notice and took advantage of the upcoming Spring Break to sublet my apartment and clean off my office. When Spring Break was over, I mailed my badge and office keys back to the manager. She called me a couple of times; I deleted the messages without listening. Hopefully, I will never see her again and I will be very – very – careful if I ever happen to have a female boss again.

Concierge, ready to serve

Maltravers — 2010-04-12T00:00:00

Being laid off, and getting a degree in PR in a city that prefers them barely post-pubescent, I was glad to get a job as a concierge in a downtown hotel & convention center. The boss was in his 60s, a gay man from the Deep South with a MA in Art History, who could be fun in the right mood, but his daily habit of weed and wine did nothing to help a brain that was immersed in hallucinogens he bragged of from his college days.

Although the schedule was erratic we weren’t allowed to write it down and were only given a few days at a time. He said he just couldn’t think that far. His best galpal (let’s call her Lola) worked there, well, she drew a paycheck though she rarely showed up or called. Every day I had to be by his side as he checked his e-mail. Every time he needed to send and e-mail with an attachment I had to walk him through it step by step. He refused to write it down. For two years. And every step was torture. ‘But it won’t work.” Yes it will. No, it’s not there, something’s happened to it. No, it’s still there. See. Well Baby Jesus F* me in the heart. Unfortunately he was not able to speak a sentence or phrase without some of the most vile combinations of swearing I’ve ever heard. Twenty minutes for every e-mail attachment. Then there were the days he couldn’t open an e-mail, when he called the IT guys or his ISP to cuss them harshly. I would open it for him.
What did you do?
Double-clicked
Since when do you have to do that?
Always”
More cursing and disbelief.

Once he couldn't open a link and cursed and swore that John McCain was controlling the internet so people could only see what McCain allowed.

The schedule conversations.
“Are you coming in tomorrow?”
No.
It’s a good thing I asked. Why not?
You told me not to.
So, you just weren’t going to show up or call?
Not if I’m told not to come, no.
GD-it just give me a straight answer.

Now, when you come in tomorrow.
I’m off tomorrow. Remember? Hospital? Biopsy?
But we need staff. What time can you get here?
Um, hospital says have someone to drive me home. Remember?
More cursing. And then more cursing.

To shorten this story, I’ll just make a little list of the highlights of his, shall we say, transgressions?
• When the opportunity came for one of us to work an extra shift at twice the pay, he only booked himself and the gal that was attendance-challenged.
• He quit putting one guy on the schedule because he suspected him of stealing some of his weed clientele. You heard me.
• He had a restaurant menu magazine biz on the side, and when restaurants wouldn’t pay to be in it he would pull their menus from the shelves and tell us not to recommend them. Even though they had paid membership dues to the agency we worked for to have us recommend them to guests.
• When the barista in our coffee area began sexually harassing me he refused to get involved. I found later he’d told HR that I had changed my mind and decided to drop it.
• If Boss Weed and Lola went to a restaurant, ordered a big meal and wine, they would turn into Leona Helmsley I & II tormenting the servers and sending back food. If a restaurant *gasp* charged them for the meal, they would tell us to never send people there or say it was closed.
• Sometimes people would approach the concierge desk asking for information or directions, and it was though a switch was flipped and the Anti-Concierge was in. “You can’t go there! You just can’t. They won’t let you in and don’t ask me or anyone else again.”
• I took his handwritten reports and created nice templates to make his boss’s job easier. He told the GM that Lola did them.

There were more, but I’m saving them for the book. Occasionally he would catch me studying software manuals or practicing for the GRE. Then he’d yell. “That’s a waste of time. You’ll just be an over-educated concierge. Nobody’s going to hire you.”

His temper, memory, and personality were such a constant rollercoaster of emotions we’d take bets on who should call the men in the white coats. The last week I was there I was cursed out (for calling to say the main highway near me was iced over and I couldn’t get in,) hung up on twice, lied to about schedule and told F-you. Then he said not to come back because I was being let go. So I didn’t go back. Of course the fool called five times the next day looking for me. I think he wanted to open his e-mail!

Sweating Bullets

Mr. Kotter — 2010-04-12T00:00:00

It all started when I accepted a part-time position as a Building Supervisor at my local fitness center in the Midwest. The pay wasn’t much, but one of the perks was having a free membership. I learned quickly that my boss was pleasant enough, although he expected me to do anything that he instructed. Meanwhile, he stayed mostly in his office playing games on his computer. Toilet clogged and no janitor around? Call the Building Supervisor. Broken down car in the parking lot that needs a push or a jump in freezing weather? Call the Building Supervisor. Naked man in the Jacuzzi again? Call the Building Supervisor. I did not mind doing most tasks. They could be a bit of a bother, but I like helping people. I was always at the fitness center working or working out, so the people there came to know me pretty well while my boss stayed in his office and played around on his computer.

One night around 9pm, I was watching the clock and counting down the minutes until I would be able to close the building and go home. I was the only staff member in the building. I enjoyed quiet nights like these where I was the only one working. My quiet night ended when the phone rang.

My boss was on the other end. He told me that the convenience store just up the street was robbed a bit ago by a man wearing a mask and carrying a sawed-off shotgun. This was big news in our small town of eight thousand people! Then my boss proceeded to tell me that the man was last seen walking towards the area of our fitness center, and I should go around and lock all the outside doors to the building. I thought it was a reasonable request.

My boss ordered me to do one more thing that was not so reasonable. “I know there are probably people still working out there,” he said. I answered there were probably about fifteen members in the building. “Well, when they come up to leave,” he continued, “walk them out to their cars one-by-one, and check their backseats and underneath their car.” Next, he abruptly wished me good luck and hung up the phone.

As I sat at the front desk thinking how my boss just lived a few minutes away and could have helped out with this mission, I wondered how much it would hurt to get blasted by a shotgun. I peered out the glass doors into the dark night as if I was in the movie The Mist. I did not know what lurked in the shadows. After I hurriedly ran around and locked all the doors, an older lady approached me at the front desk.

I explained the situation to the senior citizen, leaving out the part about being ordered to walk her to her car and putting my life on the line. I asked her if she would just like to stay at the fitness center maybe an hour longer until the police had time to search the area. She said she would like to get in her car and go home. I told her she was still looking a bit flabby and could use more time in the gym. She chuckled.

She was insistent about heading out to her car in the black night. I tried to convince her to let me tie a rope around her waist where she could give it a tug when she arrived at her car safely. The lady laughed and told me I was quite the kidder. She asked if I would walk her to her car so she would get there safely. I told her my skin does not stop bullets, and that if a guy jumped out shooting at us, I would be hiding behind her.

Right before we left the building to start the long trek to her car, I grabbed a metal garbage can lid for protection. I doubted it would stop bullets, but it did give me the appearance of a mentally-challenged Captain America. She held my arm tightly as we trudged to the opposite side of the parking lot to where her car was. It was taking forever because she was taking such tiny steps. I felt like I was escorting a mummy because of how slow she moved. She was talking the entire time, I think because she was trying to establish a bond between us. Little did she know, if push came to shove, I would shove her down on the concrete and take off running.

As we approached her car, I instructed her that I would check her backseat and underneath her car before she climbed in just incase the man was hiding in either of these places. She said that was good because she never locks her car. I silently cursed at her. Once the coast was clear, she jumped in her car and locked the doors. I watched her peel out of the parking lot as I ran back to the front doors of the building like I was being chased by bees.

During the next hour, I had my own deadly escort service where I walked people to their cars with a madman on the loose. I received many thanks and pats on the back, however, not a one of them ever waited in their car long enough to check to make sure I made it back to the building okay.

I worked there another few years before I had to leave because of my busy schedule. I do still work out there a few times a week. My boss only made it about five more months after this episode. It turns out he wasn’t playing games on his computer this whole time, he was doing online gambling instead and racking up quite a huge debt. Although, on this night, I was the one gambling with my life!

Wine and White Boards

ESL Teacher — 2010-04-12T00:00:00

Ugh…another bottle of wine gone bad. This is the last time I’m going to play the grateful employee when “Pasquale” presents me with a jug of something that he knows has been sitting around his house for too many a hot summer. A gift-giving boss, wow, sounds ideal. Pasquale, however, brings new meaning to the phrase, “It’s the thought that counts.” No amount is too trivial when he pulls the paper evidence of his largess out of his left-hand desk drawer. There’s nothing like re-swallowing that 70-cent cup of coffee you felt obliged to accept at an urgent late-night meeting focused more on the affair between an ex-student’s father and his cleaning woman than any scholastic matter.
False kindness is an interesting technique in boss-employee relationships. What defense do you have in the face of someone who is constantly telling you how much they’ve done for you? “Bella, bellissima…” Okay, you think I’m beautiful, so what?
Teaching English in a foreign country brings you into contact with all sorts of new characters, and often you find that the people who speak your own language are stranger than those who don’t. As my “friend” Pasquale seems to have interests more important than the running of his school, he tends to give my colleagues a long rope. So, for example, if I tell the students to open their books to page 43 and they start chanting, “Done that, done that…” in their native tongue, is it a problem that a “colleague,” for the umpteenth time, “forgot” to record it in the daily class register and I must carry on with unprepared material? If another teacher has the habit of ranting and raving, slamming doors, and screaming things like, “I hate you, I hate you, you’re ugly, you’re ugly, you’re ugly…” inches from my face forcing me to partake of not only a particularly rank lunch but a follow-up cigarette to boot, why would the boss bother with such trifles? Can’t we all just get along?
And thus, I discovered the classic technique of divide and conquer. I was so busy defending myself against my so-called colleague that, at first, I failed to recognize this insidious modus operandi. And in the world of stepping over one’s own grandmother to move up the ladder even when there’s nowhere to go, there are apparently tons of people out there just looking to collaborate with a superior like this. So when the boss is too lazy to order supplies, including textbooks for the students, the copy machine is broken, and all of a sudden my pens for the white board have disappeared, I understood later on that I needed to face the fact that this all might not have been a coincidence. When I finally went to my boss, however, I realized that I had already been accused and convicted while trying my best to get along.
It’s a sad day when you come to terms with the fact that you can’t just be yourself in the workplace and that you need to protect yourself in the face of an ever-increasing Orwellian society. Fortunately or unfortunately, having grown up with the tattletale list, reporting the transgressions of a fellow employee just isn’t in my nature. And regarding office interactions, I must also accept that there are many who have never cracked open a manual of good manners and that boorish behavior more often than not rules the day. Pasquale and his ilk are calculating professionals who not only take pleasure in watching their workers squirm, but more to the point are so limited in the realm of human relations that they really don’t have any other tools at their disposal. And, difficult as it may be for me to comprehend, individuals of this sort don’t have the best intentions of the school or enterprise in mind, they think only of themselves. As an employee, therefore, I have learned that I need to take my time in assessing friends and foe, and I must keep my guard up at all times. When Pasquale feigns the presentation of a gift, I now feign its acceptance.

Bombshell

C.E. Jones — 2010-04-19T00:00:00

Bombshell

I was rinsing out the last of Blonde Bombshell #27 when the pager went off for a down town fire, and – barefoot, with my toenails freshly painted - I still made it to the station before the chief. Not that it made any difference. I was jumping into my gear when he hit the door, and his scowl would have deflated me if I hadn’t been braced for it.
“Do something with that hair!”
Come on, who doesn’t love long, wet, messy curls? There is a skill involved in belittling underlings, and my beloved chief had it in spades. My fingers flew to fashion a loose topknot.
“Get all of it up.”
Could have been cute if he smiled. He didn’t smile.
Hard to believe, I had been a valued member of the city department, where, as a third generation firefighter, my last name had been synonymous with station 49. Here in Podunk, I was the new kid, and, far worse, the girl. In fact, the only female firefighter in the county, and, thus, a black eye to my newly adopted community. I had joined immediately upon my arrival in town, and in the six months hence had not broken through any barriers. The guys were taking their cue from the chief, and the chief didn’t like me.
No matter. Today we had a real fire. In a real building. Just like in the city.
A big crowd had gathered downtown in spite of the July heat, and the second floor of the tavern was billowing smoke through the windows. I was into an air pack before I even got out of the truck, and was hurrying to keep up with the others when the chief intercepted me.
“You!” He was actually yelling at me, stabbing me in the chest with an index finger. “Get out of that air pack! Do what I tell you, when I tell you, got it? I don’t remember telling you to get in an air pack.”
I was dumbstruck. Would have cried, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. I shrugged out of my pack, and laid it up against the truck.
I could feel the weight of a thousand eyes on me as I pretended interest in the pumper’s pressure gauges. My face was crimson and slick with sweat, but I was too proud to take off my gear and admit defeat. A chuckle erupted from somewhere nearby, but when I turned to find the jokester, I met with blank impassivity. Maybe a little curiosity. So this is how a city girl fights a fire?
I would not bite my nails. They had a perfect and lovely coat of Make Him Blush #72.
“Hey doll, come here!”
Doll? Doll! Incredible! The chief was beckoning, and I could feel a stir of interest in the rubberneckers as I hurried across the street to him.
“Listen,” he said when I stood before him, flushed and expectant. “My pick up is down by the post office. Run and get my other boots – my feet are killing me.”
I was being sent to fetch the chief his shoes! Arf, arf, good little doggy. How much could I endure? I couldn’t look at anybody - trotted, head down, to the post office. I was sure, now, that I could hear real laughter.
His boots were on the floor of the cab. On the seat was a bag of garden ripe tomatoes, left, no doubt, by an adoring female citizen. The bag might have tipped over when I reached for the boots. And a couple of tomatoes might have spilled out right into those boots. I didn’t check.
Fire is a hungry animal – doubles in size every minute – and it was roaring by the time I got back. I tried to reconcile myself to my petty duties and my even pettier revenge, and I actually had second thoughts; but the chief snatched the boots away from me before I could act on them.
He pulled the first boot on and was halfway into the second before he stopped and looked a question at me.
I made a poker face, and watched the fire.
Chief reached into the second boot and pulled out a tomato. Threw it aside, eloquent in his disgust, and glared at me.
I only watched from the corners of my eyes, but I saw him smile. Quick, and then tucked away.
“Get your air pack,” he said.

Everyone Loved Chuck!

Trainer — 2010-04-19T00:00:00

My third job out of graduate school was a doozy! The company was owned by Chuck. He was quite the charmer. Chuck was about 5’6” and he was round. He had the middle-aged hair style where one long wisp of hair was pushed over an ever receding hairline. Usually Chuck wore loafers with pants that were too long, un- pressed and sloppy. Chuck was overweight. And always Chuck was late.

Yet Chuck had the gift. Training programmers in large corporations, Chuck could get the entire class rolling on the floor when he did his “embed and replicate” bit. I will never forget his description of Boolean logic as he turned it into a dating scenario.. “If then, …” , and he would inevitably end up with the short fat old lady through some logic error. His timing and use of double entendres were impeccable!

Somehow, the most beautiful students would look past his outward waddle and he would have regular trysts with his female students. He could make the driest material into a clever comedy routine and just charm the clients to hysteria! At first I loved working for Chuck. He loved to drive fancy cars and we would always go to fabulous restaurants. He lived big and it was fun being along for the ride. He paid me well, taught me a lot about sales and showed me how to keep everyone laughing.

But back at the office, the office manager was not laughing at all, in fact her life was a living hell. Chuck, in his love of the “good life” would skip out on taxes, or paying his employees, or rent, or whatever was necessary to support his lifestyle. He would twist the story to make it someone else’s fault. And Susan (the office manager) was the recipient of the collection calls. She was the one to call the locksmith when the IRS would lock the doors. She was the one who had to schedule the instructors to go teach a class that she knew would not be paid. Chuck continued to enjoy his life and nothing seemed to bother him.

Nothing really bothered me at first either. I was able to build a department within Chuck’s company and somehow I was always able to get Susan to pay my people first. My department was growing, I was able to leverage Chuck’s charisma with the clients to try my training programs out for their users and all was right with the world. Somehow I looked right past the craziness in the office and went into my own form of denial.

That is until the day that Chuck asked me if I would loan him some of the money that I had saved, so that he could make a payroll. As a new bride, I asked my husband what he thought and after some debate, he agreed and we made payroll for a month at Chuck’s company. The agreement was that the company would pay us back in plenty of time for taxes and that would be that.
As the months wandered on, I watched as Chuck bought a new Jaguar, a mink coat for his wife, and finally the last blow – a horse for his daughter. I couldn’t stand it anymore. He still had not paid me back and now he had charmed me out of tens of thousands of dollars for his payroll. Tax day came and went, and we took the hit while Chuck continued to be oblivious to his obligations to me or anyone else.

I confronted Chuck, and he asked how I could be so selfish to suggest that he pay me back and deprive his daughter of her horse. Shortly after that, I left the company and Chuck eventually went bankrupt. His instructors sued — but most received only 30 cents on the dollar. I lost a lot of cash but the lessons I learned were much more valuable than I could ever have imagined.

Lawful Venom: A Survival Story

Amy Wilson — 2010-04-19T00:00:00

Anna Elkins, Attorney at Law, glared at me with piercing brown eyes and thickly coated charcoal eyelashes after berating me angrily for not setting the voicemail system correctly the night before. I was so unnerved by this harsh and unexpected outburst that I inadvertently forgot to remove the staples from the pile of documents I was shoving into the photocopier – documents she was standing there waiting for because she had a hearing at the courthouse across the street in ten minutes and had forgotten to give them to me to copy yesterday. “I need those copies NOW,” she demanded coolly, moving her gaze in the direction of the jammed photocopier. I looked at her helplessly, at which point she turned on her heel, her long bleached hair snapping behind her, leaving a scent of Pantene in the file room. During another similar incident, I actually broke out into hives.
Anna Elkins had been my divorce attorney whom I specifically chose to tackle my misogynist husband because of her assertiveness and bulging breasts. In other words, I wanted a Barbie doll with fangs, proving how powerful and smart beautiful women can be. But almost ten thousand dollars later, I was working off my debt, accommodating Anna Elkins around my own career as a teacher, as she built her private law practice. One of the initial deals she made with me was that if I could catch her state billing up to speed by a certain date that she would forgive my outrageous debt to her. I worked late at nights, alone in a dark building in an unsafe area of town, producing tentative bills for her review, some over a decade old! When the project was complete, she did not forgive my debt and had apparently forgotten the deal itself. Nor was I compensated for the time I spent on the project. But it wasn’t until I became responsible for parking her car in the mornings, unloading and carrying up her groceries and files, picking up her lunch on my way to work, making her breakfast when I got to work, keeping tabs on her boyfriend’s email and phone activities, and paying her personal bills that I began to suspect that she was using me. After all, I was only hired to answer phones and write minor enclosure letters.
It wasn’t until the late night phone calls to the cell phone she had provided me so that she could have 24 hour access to me and thereby write it off as a business expense that I began to feel that I had no way out. The calls were essentially about how angry she was at her boyfriend who was fifteen years younger than her. I listened politely, despite that I would be trying to grade papers for my classes once I had put my son to bed. Trying to convince myself that she considered me her friend, I occasionally reciprocated with complaints about my own ex. When this happened, she reminded me that she was entitled to charge me a fee for listening to my problems.
Anna’s work hours became consumed by her sudden interest in MySpace to find a new boyfriend, and thusly I became responsible for drafting the orders she was supposed to be drafting because I was not qualified to do paralegal work. The Devil Wears Prada came out in print and I did not find it funny.
One morning, on a day when I was not scheduled to work, Anna called me as I had just stepped out of the bathtub.
“The number I just called for a potential witness wasn’t correct,” she announced forthright.
“Oh,” I waited, dripping onto the ducky mat.
“So, what’s the number?!” she shrieked.
“Um, I’m in my bathroom, not at the office,” I pointed out.
“I NEED THAT NUMBER NOW!” It dawned on me that she must expect me to memorize all numbers of people she had appointments with, so I immediately blurted out a fictional number, as if I had magically just found it in the bathtub.
When she called back two minutes later, she was clearly annoyed by my incompetence.
The last straw occurred on the day after I had paid off my balance, a freedom almost as long awaited as my divorce. It was a happy day, and I could sense victory on my horizon. I asked Anna if she would consider buying a six dollar homemade peanut butter Easter egg that my church was selling as a fundraiser to pay our utilities so that we could hold our Easter service. My church was so small that the offering did not cover the church’s expenses. I figured after two years of dedication and a hefty ten thousand dollars from me on top of that that Anna could surely fork out six bucks for charity.
“No, thanks,” she said dismissively. “If I want an egg, my mom has a friend who makes them.”
On my final day of work, Anna Elkins refused to acknowledge my departure, but another attorney in the building bought me a cake. Clients thereafter disclosed to me that she blamed everything that went wrong in the office on me long after I was gone. At least she had finally secured herself a boyfriend on MySpace.
I’ve used what Anna Elkins taught me to help four couples get their divorces, free of charge, long awaited freedom that I certainly understand. And when I underwent my second divorce, with reason, we opted not to go through an attorney. And when Anna’s picture was recently in the newspaper in the section that features a different attorney each week, her fangs hidden of course, I recalled her in those tight suit skirts and high heels, so high she teetered in them, stomping away from me confidently, and wondered how many people can say they’ve safely made it to hell and back? I must be a strong woman, too.

Open Up and Say AAAAHHHHH

smilingreceptionist — 2010-04-19T00:00:00

Stepping foot in my place of employment you would be welcomed by the sounds of a dentist drill and the yells of my boss, the dentist. I was just a mere receptionist and often times thanked god that I was not a dental assistant at this particular dental office located in the Midwest. I soon realized that being a dentist office receptionist meant not only making appointments for teeth to be cleaned or fixed, but also meant holding onto dentures right out of a patient’s mouth. One of my duties as a bright smiling receptionist was one that really did not require much thought. It was opening the daily mail which also included the personal mail of my boss. Certainly I never sweated this job duty since it was so easy to open the mail and put it on his desk. Little did I know that this simple task would one day change my life as I knew it.

When I first began my journey my coworkers warned me about the dentist’s blasts of yelling. They would tell me that he was a nice guy, but would just yell at you if you made a mistake. Of course, this would put no pressure on you as a new employee. The dentist was a very nice guy and many patients made comment about his gentleness and compassion. It was when the patients were not present that he would take the opportunity to point out all the mistakes the dental assistants had made by yelling it at them. One day while he was yelling at one of my coworkers I envisioned him standing there with pliers ready to pull out a tooth for their stupid mistake. In a matter of a day I learned that in fact this dentist was perfect and you never questioned otherwise.

As the months passed on without having received a yelling blast, I began to feel as though I was perhaps doing things right. One day while doing one of my very important office duties, filing, I happened to notice a piece of paper lying between the wall and filing cabinet. I really did not think much about this piece of paper, but picked it up only to find something quite horrible, the dentist’s personal credit card bill. Immediately I began to think how long this piece of paper had actually been in this hiding spot.

Upon opening of the bill my heart began to race, my hands began to sweat, and I started to hyperventilate as I read the due date which in fact was that day. I swear at that moment when I ripped open the envelope that I heard the dentist yell and faint screams coming from one of my coworkers. I immediately thought “How bad could it hurt to have a tooth pulled out with pliers?”

Now this was back in the day when there was no such thing as internet or over the phone same day payments. I knew that this mistake would more than likely warrant a blast of yelling directed at me and only hoped that the dentist would suddenly lose his voice. I wanted to throw the bill on his desk and bolt out of there before he had an opportunity to even utter a sound, but I knew that was not going to happen. My next thought was damage control. My plan of action was to nonchalantly put the bill on his desk under some papers and make it seem like he had missed it on his desk and then to play it cool. The cool part of my plan proved to be the hardest since my palms were constantly sweating and I jumped every time the dentist would call my name. I wondered when such an everyday task became such risky business.

Later that day the moment I had feared happened. I will never forget the sound of his voice when he yelled my name and wanted me in his office that moment. I couldn’t play it off like I didn’t hear him because I think the people in the buildings down the street heard him. I slowly went back to his office and tried to calmly listen to him without covering my ears or my mouth. Naturally all the questions arose about why he hadn’t seen this bill. After about ten minutes of his constant abuse to my ears, I finally asked him why his personal mail was being sent to the office in the first place. What happened next was more frightening, silence. I thought please don’t let him pull out a front tooth, but much to my surprise he said I was right. I thought perhaps I was dreaming, but I wasn’t.

Weeks went by and I thought things were starting to look up since the dentist actually agreed with me. Over those weeks I had heard rumors of the dentist having a mistress who happened to be an office assistant, but no one had proof of this rumor. I decided that I needed a much deserved vacation after the stress of my ear abuse. While on vacation I wondered if my boss had realized what kind of items were charged to the hiding credit card bill and if I might have seen the details of the charges. I then realized that I knew the dentist was not perfect and was hiding a perfect little secret. Although I wanted to share my treasure with my coworkers, I decided not to divulge the information. Upon returning from my relaxing vacation I was informed that I was no longer needed due to a consolidation of dentist offices. I tend to think that perhaps the perfect dentist was doing a little damage control of his own.

Facilitate This

Robert Clark Young — 2010-04-19T00:00:00

The Dean of the General Studies Division, having called me into her office, thrust a folder at me. I reached for it but she drew it back. It was the final report from the Arts and Sciences Intermediate Assistance Learner Facilitator Committee.

Opening the folder, she straightened her five-foot-nothing, 190-pound box of meat to attention. Her glasses, small and round, like spectacles on a rabbit, twitched in resentment, as though she thought me a less-important rabbit, and I must be stuffed into a cage even smaller than my present one.

“I have the reports from all five committee members,” she said. “Dedication to the learner, unsatisfactory. Dedication to principles of equality between learner and facilitator, unsatisfactory. Coffee for learners, cold, and doughnut facilitation, not fresh. Willingness to change grades upward upon learner request, unsatisfactory. Overall attitude, ‘This facilitator has never made the personal decision to sacrifice sufficiently for his learners, due to his unrealistic obsession that he is a novelist.’”

She squared the reports into a stack before her and regarded them with malevolence. Without looking up at me, she said, “How do you respond to these charges of noncompliance?

Out the window, the fierce light of the Appalachian summer was turning the mud of the Swine Technology Learning Modules—the pig pens—a flaming red. How had I ended up teaching composition in this rural technical college?

I wasn’t answering fast enough for her. She swept her hand across the view of the swine modules. “Do you realize that you’re in danger of losing all this? What would you do if that happened?”

“I guess I’d just have to find a way to live without it.”

“Live without it? How could anyone—once you’ve experienced the sensitivity and democracy of learner-centered facilitation—decide to live without it?”

“That’s a tough one,” I admitted.

“We know you’ve been using the computers in the writing lab to work on your novel. We could fine you for unauthorized use of physical plant.”

I wondered if that were true.

“Yes, we could fine you,” she said. “But only if we were small, vindictive people.”

“Look, we’ve had our pedagogical differences, but it’s never been personal. All right, so I’ve never believed in the learner-centered paradigm. I felt it kept me from teaching. And it keeps the students from learning. I mean, the learners from learning.”

That was when she doubled my punishment. She told me she was moving me from Intermediate Assistance to Intensive Assistance. The five faculty members who had been monitoring me on the Arts and Sciences Intermediate Assistance Learner Facilitator Committee would now constitute the Arts and Sciences Intensive Assistance Learner Facilitator Committee, with an increase in pedagogical power over me.

They would wire me with a microphone and tape recorder whenever I was in my module with my learners—I didn’t “teach” in a “classroom”—and the committee would listen to the tapes later, to be sure that I was not employing the “outmoded hierarchy of professor.”

I was forbidden to do any writing on institutional computers, to contact my literary agent on any institutional telephone (even if using my calling card), or to intimidate the basic composition learners by mentioning that I was a writer.

Any of the five committee members could visit my learner-centered module at any moment, without warning, and ask the learners if the facilitator was in any way attempting “to exercise privileged expertise” over them and, if so, to give the violated learner the opportunity to challenge my “false authority.”

Throughout the week, I was required to attend meetings with each of the committee members, to discuss facilitation-preparation modules such as Allowing Learners to Award Their Own Grades; Servicing the Learner: It’s Not Just Coffee and Doughnuts Anymore; Quickly Unlearning What You’ve Learned about Slow Learners; and Nobody Is Stupid: The LD Learner Used to be Lazy and Dumb, but Now They Are Learner-Disabled.

I also had to meet weekly with the committee as a whole, where progress would be ascertained to be unsatisfactory if I continued to believe that I knew more about college-level writing than I or the learners could learn from other learners. I was nothing more than a learner myself, after all, as signified by the institution’s cutting-edge motto: “Facilitators and learners are all equal, for we are all learners in a learner-centered community, where learners learn the most from other learners.”

At the beginning of the summer break, my agent sold my novel for $50,000. I went on a three-month vacation, spending a month in California, a month on the Big Island of Hawaii, and a month in Cavalaire-sur-Mer, on the French Riviera. I was having so much fun that I didn’t bother to quit my job.

Instead, in September, on the first day of learner-centered facilitation, I drove a rented silver convertible straight up the handicap ramp—that is, the differently abled learner ramp—of the Arts and Sciences Modules and parked at the main entrance. When I was done cleaning out my facilitator cube, I picked up my new learner rosters and took them to my boss’s office.

She was already furious with me—the silver convertible was right outside her window, blocking her view of the Swine Modules. “Move that thing to the facilitator parking grid right now.”

I dropped the rosters on her desk. “You can facilitate these from now on.”

“That’s not even your car,” she said fiercely. “I had a look at the license plates. It’s only a rental car.”

I drove away.

And because of my new book, I was soon able to get a university teaching job with all of the perks and authority of a professor.

Weirdest Job on Record

sensaumer — 2010-04-26T00:00:00

Back before Viagra was an option, penile prothesis was an option for men who couldn't rise to the occasion. Surgeons could implant either sets of swizzle sticks (no good if you plan to take showers at the gym) or inflatable balloons (filled by a hand pump), that would resurrect the man in you. Because the procedure would involve irreversible nerve damage however, the surgeons wanted to ensure the problem was really physiological and not psychological.
It turns out that guys have erections as a regular part of their sleep cycle (hence the morning wood), so someone came up the idea that if you "protrude" in your sleep, the impotence must be psychological. If, on the other hand, you "flatline" during the night the conclusion is that the problem is physical, and you qualify for the surgery.
My boss ran these tests, but not wanting to stay up throughout the night monitoring these guys, he'd hire some grad student to stay up all night. You got $50 if you just did the monitoring, but $75 if you were willing to hook the guy up. The actual 'hook up' took 5 seconds, where you just had to slip the equivalent of a rubber band over...'him', and attaching two pieces of surgical tape. An extra $25 for 5 seconds work, but I was too homophobic at the time to want to touch 'it'.
I'm not done yet. If, at some point in the night, the meters showed that the subject was...happy, it was your job to rush in, rip the covers off his body, and snap a picture of the success story from 1 1/2 feet away (for scale). You knew it was a foot and a half because there was a string that length attached to the camera that you were supposed to hold up to the success story. I had to do that once.
Anyhow, I did that a...handful of times, but managed to avoid the extra $25. It was difficult to stay up all night watching the monitors, but fortunately the boss (a nationally renowned sex therapist) had an extensive collection of pornography and the bestiality ones were shocking enough to keep you awake at 3:30 in the morning.
I'm not saying this was a horrible job, and the boss was actually a nice guy. But it has to be the weirdest job on record.

2 Ferraris

2 Ferraris — 2010-04-26T00:00:00

This is not a long-winded story, nor is it especially funny — but I just had to write about this.

Many, many, many (too many) jobs ago I worked for someone who — to say was selfish, pig-headed, center-of-the-universe type — wouldn’t even scratch the surface. Since that time, I have worked for many others (too many) who, as bad as they were (and they were pretty bad) – don’t even come close to this one.

This was a very, very small publishing company located in the Los Angeles area, with about 10 employees, all schlepping along. The company was owned by one person — an egocentric, who really wanted to be a Hollywood movie star instead. It was like the little engine that couldn’t. The thing that really got me was that, he didn’t own just ONE Ferrari — no — he owned TWO! Cost of one Ferrari — approx $400,000.00.

So you say, OK, if that’s his pleasure, whatever. And I would probably agree with you. However, Diamond J.B. couldn’t bring it upon himself to even offer health insurance benefits to his 10 employees. Maybe he was saving up for THREE Ferraris!

I’ve been wanting to get this off my chest for a long time — and now I have.

Thank you very much.

Mrs. H.

R. McDaniel — 2010-04-26T00:00:00

“Don’t get in my way,” she bellowed, her high-pitched atonal shrill ascending with each word until it peaked on that same dissonant note like the chorus of sirens when multiple emergency vehicles whiz by simultaneously. There was a certain cadence to her step, like she was prancing over air on tiptoe, as she pushed her walker slowly past the alcove to my quarters toward her bedroom at the other end of the hallway. I had just reread the verse taped to my mirror - “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness” - prior to exiting my bathroom and was silently waiting for her to pass when she shouted the command. To avoid bulldozing her in my flurry of chores, I was constantly wary of her location.

In December of 2008 I was hired by Mrs. H., a wealthy, hateful, mentally sound 97 year old woman, to drive her and her Florida employee from northern Ohio to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. I was hired as a live-in companion, expected to work 24 hours a day, except during the window of 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. on weekdays when I would be relieved. My responsibilities included: preparing meals, changing bed linens, doing laundry, picking up after Mrs. H. and executing any other requests she had.

On the first leg of our journey, without option, I drove straight through to Beckley, West Virginia, about 375 miles, and due to winter road conditions, the drive took nearly seven hours. The forces propelling me toward the Quality Inn were room service and the luxury of having my own room, away from Mrs. H.’s constant complaining.

Room service was not provided and contrary to our agreement, I had to share the room adjoined to Mrs. H.’s. When I went to place a food order in the restaurant connected to the hotel, a server informed me that their kitchen was closed. Since Mrs. H. opted out of dinner, I returned with a large round tray containing two side salads, two baked potatoes and two glasses of milk in Styrofoam cups. As soon as I entered the room, the other employee grabbed her meal off the tray and disappeared.

Mrs. H., who sat poised like a gargoyle on the edge of her bed in a nightshirt and underpants, complained that the toilet seat extension was inadequate, refused to use the toilet, insisted that I sit at the desk, which she was facing, about five feet away from the bed to eat my dinner. I felt self-conscious; however, my appetite was not entirely depleted until after she told me to bring the trash can to the bedside for her to urinate into. I didn’t understand how using a low wastebasket was simpler than a 6 inch toilet seat extension; but my purpose was to assist, not to question. I was on my knees on the floor, trying to position the receptacle appropriately beneath her. The scene would’ve been more fitting with a ‘Beau Hunks’ soundtrack, all three stooges thwarting my placement, and a commentary by Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. She did not relieve her bladder that night and I did not eat my dinner.

Once we arrived at her condo located in the Harbour Inlet with stunning views of the Atlantic to the south and east, with yachts passing outside the window to and from Port Everglades Inlet and the Intracoastal Waterway, Mrs. H. attempted to tighten her grip. She tried to dictate what and when I ate. She insisted that I either return from my minimal free time to eat lunch with her or not eat at all. Also, she tried to limit how I spent my free time, which rarely amounted to the allotted 6 hours since either my relief was late or because Mrs. H. insisted that I return to the condo during errands because she refused to be alone.

She shouted my name from her bedroom at 4 a.m. I was required to either keep my door open or sleep with a baby monitor and since she blared her television all night, soliciting complaints from the neighbors above and below us, I opted for the former. The urgency and desperation in her voice jarred me awake and jolted me to my feet. When I entered she told me to fetch her remote control from the floor. “Your magic wand,” I said, presenting it with a grand gesture. Such shenanigans occurred nightly. One time she fell out of bed and another night she nearly pulled a tall, heavy lamp onto her head; instead she caught it and I ran to replace it to the bedside table before she lost her grip.

Her excessive use of suppositories resulted in daily messes and I was responsible for the repercussions on her robes, nightclothes and sheets. One day, while I was preparing her instant coffee and cheese danish in the kitchen, she came to the living room, hiding her naked bottom half beneath her robe. After eating some of her breakfast, she stood up and trailed a liquid stream of excrement behind her, onto the white carpet, and then returned to sit in her chair and bark orders at me while I scrubbed the stain on my hands and knees.

After a couple of months in that environment, I gained stress acne and premature gray hair and lost weight. When I gave my notice, she argued with me, asking why. I replied directly that she was hateful to me and that I have more self-respect than to allow myself to be treated with such little regard. She begged me to stay, yet her behavior did not change. I continued to treat her with respect and kindness, but I did not budge. The night before I left, when all my belongings were packed, I did a happy dance in front of the mirror, and the following morning she screamed at me until I left the condo.

Thank You, Culiseta Longiareolata (or, Everything I Know About Adaptation I Learned From my Boss, The Bloodsucker)

janet.g — 2010-04-26T00:00:00

Dear Culiseta Longiareolata,

You were my first boss at my first “real” job after graduating from college, and I have to admit I didn’t recognize you right away. All I knew was that you had a need for an administrative assistant at the nonprofit organization you ran, and that you had been around for about 30 million years. So I thought I could learn a lot from you. Now that I think about it there probably was a bloodthirsty look about you, but I dismissed it for the sleepless nights you spent worrying about all the innocents you had to save.

Your multi-faceted eyes missed nothing and almost immediately, I didn’t measure up. When I answered the phones — “Hello, Ms. Longiareolata's office” — I wasn’t cheerful enough. When I organized your file folders, I accidentally used the blue labels you hated. One morning, after seeing that the reports I had printed out for you were in a font you didn’t like, you wondered aloud why you processed a paycheck for me at all. I didn’t have an answer, but the more closely you scrutinized me the more easily I messed up. I became so terrified of making mistakes that I started to produce them at an accelerated rate: faxes were faxed to the wrong numbers, my voice shook when I answered the phone and sometimes I would forget to check your outbox at the end of the day. My coworkers lived in fear of you too, but they had already learned there was nothing they could do to change you. Maybe they saw that my daily defeats gave you an outlet for your frustration, and slowly they began to discuss my mistakes amongst themselves. My inexperience, the awkward way I had greeted an unexpected appointment, my lack of enthusiasm and leadership in my role became topics of conversation in the bathroom, or behind cubicles. Sometimes conversations stopped if I walked past, but the worse I felt I was doing, the more eager I became to please.

My insecurities and your scrutiny followed me home. Eventually I began to loose sleep, hearing your complaints buzzing in my ears at night.

I used to watch nature documentary shows as a child, and the shows that focused on predators were always my favorite ones. It makes you think the worst predators are large, powerful and swift: lions in the savannah, jaguars in the jungle, Grizzlies in Alaska, crocodiles camouflaged along the banks of the Nile. You don’t ever imagine the deadliest predator you might encounter isn’t the biggest, the fastest or the most frightening: it’s the one that slowly sucks away your health and vitality with a thousand tiny bites. It infects you with fear, and uncertainty. What it lacks in size it can make up for in numbers: a thousand tiny criticisms that embed themselves under your skin.

I will admit that I am young and that I don’t have your years of experience. In the last 30 million years or so that you have been sucking the blood of other creatures, I am sure you have seen many species rise and go extinct. Maybe something happened during those years that made you dislike yourself so intensely, or made it impossible for you to find an encouraging word to say to someone else. But one night, after many nights of being unable to sleep, I finally came to the realization that I didn’t have the power to change you, and no matter how hard I tried I might not ever be good at working for you.

This is when I started to change myself. I spent my money differently and began to save it. I started to take lunch breaks and would use them to make phone calls to friends of my parents, friends of friends, alumni from college and recruiters I researched online. I had only a degree, some determination and the realization that the ability to anticipate the future and plan for it was one of the main differences separating my species from yours. Telling you I quit was one of the most satisfying things I have ever done.
It is generally only the females of your species that suck blood. I have sometimes asked myself if women fight each other in the work place because we feel threatened by each other. But I know now, a few years later, that many people do not like their unpleasant bosses and this has nothing to do with gender. Your criticism buzzed around in my thoughts long after I would leave the office, and I would dread coming into my cubicle in the morning. It is rare that we openly talk about how workplace behavior affects our lives after we leave the office.

So the reason I wanted to write you a thank you note is this: while you may not have changed much in the last 30 million years, you forced me to evolve. You helped me find my backbone. You forced me to take responsibility for my situation and change it. I may meet others like you in the future, and you may try to take a bite out of me, but next time I’ll be ready.

Bugs like you are easy to swat.

Regards,

Your Former Assistant

Working for the Devil

thedude — 2010-05-03T00:00:00

I decided to become a street promoter over the summer after watching a seemingly unattractive man pull out $120 from two girls on the street for a spa package. I was blown away that a street vendor could make so much money from pitching a piece of paper, so I decided to give it a go and join the team. My boss was seemingly a cool guy, very nice in the beginning. But nice things don't last -- do they? We soon developed a twisted love-hate relationship...
What is the definition of a love-hate relationship? Is it a push-pull mechanism, where the two parties collide and argue over senseless matters, only to reconcile because of similarities in their nature and a strong brotherly love? Or might it be a series of schizophrenic episodes, where either one might suddenly burst out in a frenzy, almost to the point of physical violence to show that he is right, only to display affection mere seconds after, remembering the 'good times'? The latter might sound strange and confusing to an outside observer who has had a normal authority figure at his job, but to me this is the basis of a bizarre, twisted, obscene, and perverted relationship that I have had with my boss. What other boss is a womanizing, compulsive manipulator who has slept with your girlfriend, nearly beat you up, spit in your face, and loves you like a little brother? The affection might be one-sided, but there is a certain melancholy silliness when you think about it. It's both amusing and aggravating knowing that your boss loves you like a brother in his head, while performing devilish acts unfit for normal human being.
A little backstory on the origin of my employers behavior: One drunk and rainy night, his fiancee of 8 years went into his safe and stole an incredibly vast amount of money from him, leaving my boss bewildered, confused, and full of rage. The next few months were shrouded with gloom and despair, quickly followed by a desire to fulfill his 'lost' masculine self by fornicating with over a hundred women. I don't blame him. Anyway, this led him to be increasingly volatile and unpredictable, and even more childish. I joined his company of promotional advertising hoping to learn from the best, but I got more than a proper education. I got a look into the darker side of human nature.
My boss taught me tactics to charm, manipulate, and obtain good money from women in our business -- legally of course. He also taught a little of his manic sexual aggression, which led me to find my girlfriend through not so orthodox means. My outlook and respect changed when he invited my co-worker, me, and my girlfriend to his house to get drunk. He then proceeded to take her "to get wine," when he actually went to the abandoned apartment next door to do, well you can guess what. So he comes back, undresses her in front of me, and lets my coworker massage her feet while he kisses her. Not bad enough? She became his roommate for three weeks, until she was kicked out for vomiting on his bed. During those weeks he constantly showed me their sex tapes. What proceeded was more fighting and weird sexual adventures. I have been fired/suspended from that job half a dozen times, all for fighting and arguing with my boss, to be hired again the next day or two. What kept me going? The money. And the promise of a better future. I guess that's what keeps everyone going through tough times, especially at the age of 18.

I am Out from the Dead Rat-Like Smell

elong — 2010-05-03T00:00:00

I am Out from the Dead Rat-Like Smell

I landed a job that does social and land research which means frequent traveling around my country. On my first trip with my Research General Manager he asked me personal things. Though I didn’t like to answer his questions, he always reminded me that he was an ex-military in his country and forced me to share my personal information with him. I was outraged but I kept it within me since I was afraid that he would fire me.
He would decide on how much and how fast I should eat and what to say to people even if its meant lying. He treated me like I was his lowest rank soldier and he was my highest commanding officer or worse than that, a camel carrying his master’s burden and dragged with a rope.

I was one of the unfortunate employees under him. He loved to see people get messed up. When everyone wasn’t looking, he would re-adjust and advance the time of the log in clock to prove that I was late and he would berate me for being late. Then once he issued a log sheet where I had to write all my activities at home, from brushing my teeth and going to the bathroom until I got to bed and he even required me to list the time my boyfriend and I would have a date. That was so humiliating to me, so I went to his desk and threw my resignation letter at him. He tore up the letter and walked away.

Furious, I wrote a letter addressed to the Human Resource Manager of the company but unfortunately it was turned down. I had no choice but to go with him again on our trip the next day. Then the following morning while I was still in bed, I heard a knock at my door. There he was. He briskly said, “pack your things” -- what, at this very early morning? It’s five hours before our work was due to start. So I packed immediately in less than 10 minutes. He whispered to me that our company didn’t send him money for the payment of the hotel so we will just sneak out for a while and come back when we have the money, but of course our company had sent him money. It was just his excuse. I was so scared that I said “you can borrow money from me sir” but he didn’t like that idea ...he was so awful, not just in his manner but also his attitude towards grooming himself. His breath smelled like a dead rat, he seldom took a bath and he kept wearing the same unwashed blue shirt and farted whenever he wanted.

Back in the office I finally wrote my resignation letter again and addressed it to the CEO. I copied it to my boss too, stating that I could not afford to sneak out again from the hotel when my manager could not pay and please have him watch “Barney the Dinosaur" Show so he could learn manners and grooming habits. He was not totally fired but there will be a series of discussions among the board members of the company. After that, I haven’t seen him around, and I am out from the dead rat like smell of my manager.

Jon

Jesse Owens — 2010-05-03T00:00:00

The year I worked at The Pantheon, every time I came home my roommates would turn off the TV and look up at me expectantly. My work stories were always better than whatever was on TV. It was because of Jon. Jon was the owner of The Pantheon Restaurant. He called you “Hawney” if he wanted something, like coffee, and “You” if you were doing something wrong, like everything. The first day we opened there were only 5 spoons in the entire restaurant. Once we ran out of chairs and Jon called the strip club down the street and they ran us seven more. Jon didn’t even have to tell them who was calling. I pulled into work one day and grown men were standing around the trunk of Jon’s car trying on jackets. Once my check bounced and I called him. He said “I know, you and everybody else” and promptly hung up.

Jon was a tiny man who desperately needed mothering. He would show up to work unshaven in wrinkled, collared shirts and knit sweaters with holes in them. You distinctly had the impression the reason he hadn’t shaved was because his wife hadn’t been standing in front of the mirror to hand him a razor. All his son’s friends worked for him. They waited on the best tables. They sat down after their shift with Jon and ate steak dinners with red wine while the female waitresses cleaned up the restaurant ... and this was perfectly acceptable.

I walked into the kitchen one day to find Jon hunched over a tub of raw calamari he was mixing with his hands. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. His apron was hanging loosely from his neck with the strings dangling down to the floor. His hands, paused in midair, were dripping with olive oil.

“Hawney,” he said. “I cut my hand.”
There was a band-aid dangling off the ring finger on his right hand.
“Do you want me to get you a band aid, Jon?” I asked, exasperated.
He just looked at me, rolled his eyes skyward and gestured again with his outstretched hands, as if to say, “what else could I possibly want from you?”

I got a band-aid from the first aid kit and started to put it on his finger…he sighed an exaggerated sigh. Again his eyes lurched skyward. “You can’t put it on wet.”

I REALLY didn’t want to dry my boss’ hands. It’s a rather intimate gesture. I waited. He sighed. I dried them.
He said, “I need one of those things.”

In the restaurant industry, the most common injury is a cut finger. So much that a specific first-aid item has been invented and is known to all service industry staff. It is called The Finger Condom.

This was mortifying. I went to get him one. I handed it to him. He looked at me. Rolled his eyes. He was clearly waiting.

“Jon, I am NOT putting that on you.”

He said “I do not know how to use THESE THINGS.”

I rolled the condom onto his outstretched finger. I want to tell you I quit after that.

The Man with the Eight Hundred Dollar Resume

J.Fain — 2010-05-03T00:00:00

I answered an ad for a resume writer, and met my future boss, who I’ll call “Erik Zee.”
A tall guy with a friendly smile, in a perfectly tailored, expensive suit, Erik praised my writing samples, told me he needed good writers to fulfill his plans for expanding the business. He showed me the mock-up for the full-page ad he was placing in the Yellow Pages of other cities around New England, his tactic to make an immediate impact in new markets with “The Zee Group.”
However, when I asked him how many people were in the Group, he said only he was in “hiring mode.” Then, because I needed to calculate if the salary plus monthly bonus based on office revenue he’d offered was realistic, I asked how much a resume cost.
“That depends.” He smiled. “How much do you want to spend?”
So Erik was a sales guy, at least half full of crap. But I was tired of not making much money at my freelance writing or the other jobs I’d had, like warehouse work and landscaping. I was relying on my wife and her job as a city planner to keep us afloat.
Once hired, my job was to write the resumes Erik sold. People would call, and Erik would schedule an interview. After they came in, I’d sit in a chair outside his open door. Eavesdropping his pitch was the extent of my “training.” He would charm and press to determine someone’s budget and then offer different price options, with elaborate descriptions of the increased value they’d get the more they spent.
Not everyone went for it; some people were shocked at the cost and left. Others left a deposit but never came back. But enough signed up so that I soon thought of Erik as the “Reverend Jim Jones of Sales.” Somehow he got them to drink the Kool-Aid. He’d sell resumes for two or three or four hundred dollars, a large amount at the time, along with separate add-on costs for cover letters, matching stationary, a “referral service” and other things he apparently made up on the spot. He’d create an illusion about how his crack staff of “experts in the field” (i.e., me), would provide a litany of products providing unparalleled job search advantages.
Erik would do the initial info gathering and hand it off to me. Once I’d drafted a person’s resume I’d meet with them and review it. Some took what I gave them and paid the balance happily. A few got angry, expecting, no doubt from the way Erik had sold them, for something grander other than their own work history, with some generic “skills” listed at the top, printed in a nice looking font.
As much as I thought Erik was over-charging and often taking advantage of people, many unemployed, at a time of weakness, because of my compensation set-up the more he charged the better. That first month at the Zee Group I made more money than I ever had before and admit I put aside my unease with Erik’s aggressive sales techniques.
The next week though, Erik opened up his first new office in another city. All of a sudden I was doing everything: not only writing the resumes and cover letters, but taking calls, scheduling the interviews, trying to make sales. I did all right, but at much lower rates. I didn’t have enough Erik in me.
He came in that Friday and examined the sales for the week.
“You’re not charging enough!” he shouted. “I’ll have to show you… again. I’ll take the next one, who’s next?”
It was a guy I’d played phone tag with all week, a toll collector on the Mass Pike who claimed he needed a resume to get him into “software selling.” I’d scheduled him twice and he’d blown me off each time. I was surprised to see him when he arrived for his appointment.
He also had clearly been drinking all night during his shift, came in reeking of liquor, still in his toll-man’s uniform. Erik gave him a big smile and ushered him into his office, and even closed his door.
About an hour later, the man came out looking somewhat stunned. Erik waited a few minutes then came over to where I was working and held out a piece of paper.
I looked at the input sheet where Erik had written down the details.
“Is that $800?” I asked, and he grinned.
“And he left me a two-fifty deposit! Non-refundable!”
“Erik,” I said, “that guy can’t afford that.”
“Come on!” he said, “If he doesn’t spend it here, he’ll just buy lunch or something!”
That would have been a hell of a lunch. As much as I knew sales like that meant money for me, a toll collector couldn’t afford it unless he took quarters home from work for about five years.
It confirmed to me that Erik didn’t care about helping people. He cared about his nice suits, his name in big page ads, and as much cash as he could get, to fuel his big ambitions.
Soon after this, my wife got offered a good job in the Boston area. There was really no doubt she’d take it and we’d have to move. Relieved I had a good excuse to quit, I waited until Erik was in the office and went and gave my notice, expecting him to yell at me for delaying his plan of a resume-writing empire.
“Boston!” Erik said. “Can you imagine what we can charge there? How would you like to run the Boston office?”
As much as I hated deceit, it was easy to say anything to a guy who would say anything himself.
“Sure,” I told him. “I’ll call you as soon as we get settled.”
Not long after we moved I saw his ad had already hit the Boston phone book. But I wasn’t tempted to call. The next resume I wrote was my own.

The (Insane) Wedding Planner

mseg19 — 2010-05-03T00:00:00

A year ago I found myself sitting in a parked blue car, sitting next to my boss’s 14-year-old son. My boss, his mom, was inside a house. She was buying cocaine.

These are the type of lessons they failed to teach during my four years of college. They talk about dealing with difficult people, about handling angry clients, but they don’t mention that you might have a boss who besides being crazy, is really into her drugs.

When I graduated college I had two goals: to finally live closer to my boyfriend and to find an amazing job. I immediately started looking for work in Austin, since that’s where the boyfriend was finishing school. It was a summer of dead ends and “Thank you for your interest, but we’re not hiring” emails.

I eventually found a job working for a wedding planning company owned by Janet M, a bubbly 36-year-old.

I met with Janet for my interview at her home, where she had an office set up. The house was huge, and from what I could see, lavishly decorated. She introduced me to her four children, and I was really quite surprised. Her husband didn’t have a terribly impressive job, so it was clear that she was successful enough in her business to support her family and home.

Despite my lack of experience, Janet offered me a job a week later. I began to shadow her during meetings, help her throughout weddings, and learn how to gain clients of my own. I was having so much fun with the job that I didn’t notice the red flags that began to pop up.

On the way to scout out a location for one of my brides, Janet casually mentioned that she could “get a little crazy from time to time.” She told me that if I ever noticed her acting strangely, I should simply ask if she had taken her medication. Janet went on to explain that she had bipolar disorder, and sometimes didn’t like to take her medication because it made her feel sick.

My boyfriend raised his eyes at this when I later told him about our conversation, but I defended her. I said I didn’t feel right leaving a job just because of an uncontrollable illness. I also hadn’t seen any signs of weird behavior, so there was no sense in starting to job hunt again.

A few months went by, and I had forgotten about the conversation, until I noticed some startling changes in Janet. She stopped putting effort into her appearance. She would show up to meetings with brides look disheveled and wearing jeans and flip-flops. She also started to let me in on information that wasn’t quite appropriate for a boss-employee relationship, including cheating on her husband, being arrested for a domestic dispute with said husband, a suicide attempt, and her love of drugs.

This is the part where I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t run, screaming for the hills. I stayed at my job, mostly out of fear of having to go through another six-month job search.

I wasn’t making a lot of money, mostly because a large percentage of it went to Janet. She said it would take a year or so for me to get where she was, but it turned out that wasn’t such a great place to be. I found out she was renting the big house that had impressed me. While the downstairs was beautiful, I once went upstairs and found that there was almost no furniture. Janet and her husband had a giant bed, but each of the four children slept on mattresses on the floor. Her home phone was almost always ringing, but she told me to ignore it because it was probably creditors.

I began looking for jobs immediately, but kept the wedding planning gig, so I could continue paying bills. During the three months it took me to find another job, Janet dyed her hair pink, stayed in the psychiatric ward of a hospital for a week (I never found out why), and acted like all of this was perfectly normal behavior.

A month after I quit the job, a photographer I had worked with during a wedding directed me to a review that was written by one of Janet’s brides. The photographer didn’t think it could be true, but after my experiences with Janet, I knew every word was completely accurate:

I found Janet Morgan at the Austin Bridal Show, and we hit it off instantly. I made an appointment with her to retain her services for my wedding day. The day before my event, Janet was supposed to orchestrate a rehearsal of seven attendants, including the bride and groom, and join us for the rehearsal dinner. Janet showed up an hour and half late for the rehearsal. She then became intoxicated at the rehearsal dinner and stumbled out of the restaurant. This is a prelude to the rest of the weekend.

Janet used vulgar language and raised her voice to the venue staff on several occasions. She drank several margaritas while setting up the reception area, and used one of my wedding guests to help set up and decorate the reception area. She complained to everyone who would listen about being tired, sunburned, and having a headache from drinking too much wine the night before, and at the end of the reception she stated, "It's over now. I'm drinking on your dime." She consumed beer directly from the keg tap (Keg Stand) in front of wedding guests.

The worst occurred once my husband and I left for our hotel. Wedding guests informed us the next day that Janet and her husband smoked marijuana and offered it to two of my guests. My 13-year-old son saw what was happening, and had several questions that he confronted me with. At one point Janet became so intoxicated she undressed from the waist down in front of wedding guests. She was not wearing any undergarments.

Law Abiding Citizen

fluffy — 2010-05-03T00:00:00

I work wth a supervisor who has always been verbally abusive, has been quick to lose her temper,etc. She is on probation due to a drunk driving charge. The whole department knows about her. I received a frantic phone call from her while she was at home on a personal day. She said that her probation officer was at her door for the required visit, but apparently her daughter answered the door and told the probation officer that my supervisor was not home. She called me and asked me to lie to her probation officer if she came to our work site, she wanted me to say that she had just left work.She also said that she was hidng behind her sofa, and was afraid to come out of her hiding place! She asked me to lie to the probation officer if she showed up at our workplace. Again, she wanted me to say that she had just left work. Now, my faorite shows growing up were Charlies Angels and Starksy and Hutch. You get the idea, I will continue to follow the laws of the land. Lucky for her the officer never showed up at our workplace. My advice to this supervisor is "The truth shall set you free." But only if you tell it to your probation offcer.

Swim in the Kool-Aid...Or Else

LC — 2010-05-03T00:00:00

“Please, sit. The president of this company thinks very highly of you,” he smiled toothily. I noticed that the size of his large, square head was matched by his hair, a large brown poof seemingly tamed by Brill cream and the result of a hair dryer at the same time. It was curious. He had large brown eyes that were dull, like the hollow of snail shells, and a sloping chin that jutted out like a boomerang.
He and his siblings were part owners of this for-profit consultancy company that worked exclusively with the non-profit sector, and they proudly and loudly hated one another.
He proceeded to tell me about the project. “It will require you to bounce around a bit. A few days in DC a week, are you all right with this?” We were based in New York. “That’s fine,” I said. “I recently worked with Steven in DC. I know that he had been here for a few years. I really liked working with him.” Steven was a deputy director at the largest foundation in the United States.
He leaned back in his chair. “Steven. He’s not as smart as he thinks he is.” “When did you work with him?”
“I’ve never worked with him. But when people leave this company, they become shadows of their former selves—they pick up bad habits from the outside.” He rubbed his chin. “Are you any good? I guess you must be good, the president likes you. I should let you know, I have a habit of yelling and I have a short temper, but don’t take it personally. I’m working on it.”
I had been warned about his temper, which was so volatile that he had been banned from returning to a number of organizations. At one place, a church, he had cursed out the bishop. Banned. For life. But I had performed well and could handle anything.
The night before I was to leave for DC, he sent me an email telling me that I had to move there. “You have to be on-site five days a week. You can come back on weekends.”
“No. That’s not what we agreed. You had said a few days—two nights, three days.”
“I don’t think I ever said that.”
“What happened to make the terms change?”
“Are you calling me a liar? If you can’t do the job, I’ll have to lay you off.”
I got on my flight, miserable, and called the president, who was on his way to Asia. “If you can’t be there five days a week, just start the project and we’ll find a replacement after a few weeks.” I ran this scenario by my colleagues who told me that the firm tells that to everyone. “Be prepared to be in DC for at least a year. They won’t send a replacement. They never do. They just hope you get used to it.” To make matters stickier, the client was Mr. Hair’s former mentee, whom Mr. Hair said was “afraid of him.”
Once I was on-site the terms of what I was supposed to do had all changed. Instead of focusing on researching new markets, which I had experience in, I was told to focus on religious organizations and membership organizations, which I knew nothing about. The client also needed beautiful graphics, which I didn’t know how to do. It was an apocalyptic match.
With the president in Asia, I had to rely on Mr. Hair for guidance. He read my materials right before meetings, offering no guidance beforehand, and often stated I had made mistakes, which then he realized I hadn’t made. “My bad,” he would email afterwards.
I reminded my firm to please take me off the project. No response. Whenever colleagues returned my calls asking for advice—on what I should do, whom I should speak with, on finding my own replacement—I often ventured to the bathroom or conference room, which looked bad, but couldn’t be helped. The office was one large open room.
At the beginning of week two, again I reminded everyone to please take me off the project. This time Mr. Hair said he would talk to the client that day. I felt hopeful. But by the end of the day he hadn’t spoken to the client. Day 2 went by. By Day 3 of Week Two I realized there was no talk coming; I was stuck. I couldn’t concentrate. I cried.
For our first big meeting, the client gave me a huge mass of back literature to read, yet no documents related to the people involved, their own board and people they had relationships with. Everything was verbal, which struck me as strange. I hadn’t been able to follow everything.
After the meeting I was to send debrief materials. Since most of the people discussed were already affiliated, I sent a draft outline, figuring they would then supply me with hard-copy documents so I could correct whatever I didn’t know. The client team went ballistic. “You wrote his name as ‘John,’ when it’s James! How can you be so careless? You should have researched these people’s names.”
“They’re your own board and council, why didn’t you just give me documents?”
The next day, Day 4 of Week Two, I wrote a committee letter. They hated it. “Why aren’t you reading the right materials? You’re reading all the background materials! What’s wrong with you? We don’t want to be going through multiple drafts with you? Why can’t you just get it right?”
They complained to Mr. Hair that I was never at my desk and had checked out. Mr. Hair told me to get out. I was horrible. “I’ve never heard worse things about someone in my 20 years of being in this business. You have bad work ethics, bad work habits.”
The next day, when the president found out, he reinstated me. “No, thanks,” I told him, “I don’t want to come back. Ever.”