(Old Man) You need to have values in this company.
(Me)…You don’t pay me enough to have values in your company.
-Maria Dionisia
That’s what I said to
the last awful boss I had.
I used to work for a
worthless company I call Old Man & The Wig. They enjoyed
being vicious to their customers and regularly mistreated their staff.
My boss was deemed as Old
Man, because, well, he was. I named his wife The Wig because her
hair never moved.
The Wig was a confused person who knew how to start
trouble, but acted innocently. She would take a look at a customer’s file, foul-up
the account, thus wreaking havoc in the other departments. Once the file landed
in our laps, we would fight amongst ourselves, tried to make sense of how it was
ruined, until one of us realized The Wig jumbled up the account.
When this was brought to her attention, Old Man would vehemently
state that we were there to fix her mistakes.
She irresponsibly left any customer’s banking information out in the open. Disregarded their privacy and
didn’t pay attention to securing any of their identities. She created
violations in their files and sent them to collections. She tricked her clients
into thinking that the business was financially secure. It wasn’t.
Old Man walked around as though he was a tough,
sonuvabitch from the South Side. Really, he was a heart attack waiting to
happen; barking ridiculous orders at his staff, punching walls, throwing papers
in the air, etc. Not a healthy environment. How could it be? The office was a
direct reflection of how angry his life was.
I continued to clean up
the mess and kept silent. I never reported them; I was too focused on leaving.
When my wish was granted, I sent the Old Man a text that Monday
morning, saying that I’d rather waitress and serve juice-heads than work for his
old ass and irresponsible wife.
They taught me to be
honest in business, not careless. However, their bitterness did not compare to
the first awful boss I’ve ever had the misery of working with.
I used to work for The
Devil’s Daughter.
She was bold, savvy,
intelligent and I foolishly believed that with her guidance, I was going to succeed. She
was the perfect trainer with a firm grasp on business. Her primary love was money and the finer things in life. She had fancy cars, fancy shoes, fancy
clothes, and fancy language, to buy you into her world. I was bought. We all
were. Manipulation is a skill. She didn’t care about work/life balance because she didn’t have
one due to her extreme disconnect from reality.
I worked one winter with
The Devil’s Daughter. The snowstorms that brewed around Chicago
that year, were horrendous. Schools and businesses were closed due to the
intense weather conditions. The cold ripped through the skin, filled the lungs
with icy air, which prevented people from leaving their homes. Especially to drive.
Chicago highways are
ruthless during the snowy months, as they are packed with cautious drivers,
hidden potholes, black ice and limited visibility. Our roads are bad enough,
and with a snowstorm surrounding the work commute, my time would be better spent getting a bikini wax by a
blind man.
Chicago was warned of a
blizzard that was going to attack the city. The day the snow storm began, I
tried to call off from work. Her response: It’s just water. When I had
gotten to work, the rest of the office had called off which further ignited her
rage: Why are people freaking out?! It’s just water! By 2:00 p.m. 2 feet
of snow had blanketed the city. By 3:00 p.m. I was told I could leave work and
to text her when I made it home. But don’t disturb me past 9 p.m. Due to
the Chicago drivers going at 5 miles per hour and trying to survive against winds
and snow, I made it safely home by 10 p.m.
She would hold paychecks if she felt they weren't deserved. She screamed at people for trying to have a life outside of work, and was
incapable of understanding that people don’t go to work when they have the flu.
When I gave
my two-weeks notice, her rage had increased and I was mistreated
for the remainder of my sentence. My last day there, she had a co-worker place two trash bags behind my car, which indicated that I had one final task to complete. A task that was meant to humiliate me.
I walked over to my car,
knowing I had to load it with her garbage, drive around the back of the
building, to discard it.
Instead, I ran it over.
I ran over the mistreatment bosses give to their employees. I barreled through
the impossible work/life balance that people desperately try to have. I charged
through the notions of companies saying: Rely on us to design your
future.
What they should be
saying: We will teach you, to rely on yourself, to design your own
future.
I wasn’t going to let The
Devil’s Daughter, Old Man and The Wig, or anyone else for that matter,
create drama all because of ego. Running over the trash was my way of kicking
through those obstacles that have tried to prevent me from achieving what I
want.
Update: My current boss is a great person and
I would gladly take out his rubbish any day of the week.
