I had a boss like this.

She absolutely hated me. I was pregnant with my youngest at the time and she picked on me every chance she got. When I went on maternity leave I was warned by a coworker that she was going to try to fire me when I went back. I took it as a challenge so when I went back I started looking for another job and doing things just to piss her off. One day she sent out a mass email to everybody saying she's moving everybodies desks around. She added a floor map where she moved me from my desk far away from her to a desk right next to her. So I packed up my stuff and moved to the desk right next to her and “accidently" replied all to the email. I wrote in the email “thank you so much for my new prime spot, and I'm so glad to have my trash can back.”

We did collections at the time for a local hospital so whenever a patient asked to speak with a supevisor I would say no problem and transfer them right over to her. Since I was sitting right next to her she always knew and would get so mad.

One day I collected something like 18k for the hospital, which is very high since we usually only collected about 2k per day. She chose this day to tell me I wasn't being productive and tried to make me sign a disciplinary thing. I refused, wrote an addendum citing the amount I collected that day and wrote some other stuff too.

Meanwhile I found another job, making quite a bit more money.

So the day finally came where she was going to fire me. I walked into the conference room knowing full well what was about to happen and sat there waiting. First HR walks in and takes their seat, then my manager walked in with a stack of papers. She proceeded to say blah blah bla, fired effective immediately blah blah blah. I looked at her and said “awesome. Can I go?”.

She looked at me like a deer caught in headlights and was like “well we don't want you to be confused.”

I told her I wasn't confused but refused to sign anything and walked out.

Anyway, I'm the type of person, if you're going to hate me for no reason I'm going to give you a reason.

This is just a short version of the full story. The full story goes on my entire pregnancy and about 3 months after my baby was born.

**Update** Not really a continuation of the previous story, but a new story.

New job, I’m making almost twice as much as the job from the above story. I’ve been here for 7 years. I’m in an industry that I hate. It’s boring and unfulfilling.

So here’s the new story. 7 years ago I was hired on for this job. The director at the time LOVED me and gave me 2 small raises within the first 3 months I was there. I say small but it added about $4000 to my yearly salary. Time goes by and people get hired and fired, managers come and go, etc.

A few years ago a new manager came on, who at first was really wonderful. She seemed like she was really on our side and wanted the best for all of us. I befriended her (as much as you can in a work relationship) and thought of her as kind of a mentor. She was really kind at first. A couple years ago by and slowly she turns into what I can only describe as a jealous monster. Every time I did something new like change my hair or get some praise for something at work by director/ceo (We’re a smallish company and I work for the corporate office so I see these people on a weekly basis) she would turn into this sour puss person. She was also the type of person who talked about herself ALL THE TIME. Like all the time. LOL.

At some point I just stopped hanging out with her. I stopped going to lunch “with the girls” because I couldn’t stand hearing her talk about herself one more time. She was NOT HAPPY with this at all. LMAO. She would make it a point to go and sit with the other girls and have these loud conversations, giggling and laughing about stuff. She and the other girls would go to lunch for over an hour almost everyday. If the girls went to lunch without her they’d be back in 30 minutes, but with her it was well over an hour. (This detail is important)

One day she sat behind me and every time I got up to do anything, use the copy machine, use the restroom, get water, she would “clock me out” for a break (in quotes because it doesn’t actually clock me out, it just marks the number of “breaks” I took).

Another day we had this client training. Before the meeting started I went to the restroom. I came back within a few minutes and started the training with my client. Days later she yelled at me that I went on a 30 minute long break that day and wasn’t there for the client. (I’m literally laughing to myself while I write this).

I needed a language class for my degree plan and chose Spanish. She remarked that “You’ll finally be bilingual!” I told her I’ve always been bilingual (I’m Armenian, and speak Armenian. Just because my other language isn’t Spanish doesn’t mean I’m not bilingual)

One day I had plans to go to dinner with a friend that used to work with us. I made the mistake of telling the girls I was going to meet her and when I arrived at the restaurant my friend was like “OMG Did you tell ***** you were meeting me?” I said yes and she was like “She called me right after you left and complained to me the entire ride here that the girls were taking these long lunches and she’s getting in trouble for it.”

One year we were supposed to be given the option to either get a raise or get a bonus. She chose for us and chose the bonus, which basically gave us pennies.

Mostly petty stuff.

What else?

Oh right. The new director.

So we got this new director. We do this thing at my job that the entire team interviews new people. We do it for almost every new hire. We interviewed the new director as a group over lunch.

The first thing she said to us was “play time is over”. This is long long before she ever started working with us, learned a single thing about our actual company, etc. She really had no idea what she was talking about.

Before she was offered the position with my company our HR department had a meeting with us to discuss whether or not we liked her. Jealous manager from above said some jealous things, made statements like I get a bad vibe from her to US but refused to say it to the HR. She tried to talk me into griping about the new director to HR but all I said was that I was kind of concerned based on the “play time is over” remark. She was really upset about that.

About a month goes by and I get a phone call from a recruiter who wanted me to consider a job. He told me that he heard *** **** (New directors name) was coming to work with us and he’s heard from many people how horrible she is. I was like WTF?! LOL, Nah hun. First of all you’re offering me a contract position with NO BENEFITS. I have a FT job, with excellent benefits, more PTO than I know what to do with and some of the best fringe benefits in my industry and you want me to quit this job, over second hand information about her?!

No, I didn’t like that one bit. I don’t like it when people talk behind my back and I will not listen when someone talks about someone else behind their back. It’s annoying and childish, especially as a scare tactic. I didn’t get a bad vibe from Director lady and wasn’t going to listen to someone about how I should feel about her.

She starts working with us and at first you can tell she’s very nervous. Her first day was like a brand new kid at a school with a bunch of cliques. She’d do things like nervously wipe the counters clean and kind of stumble over her words. It didn’t take her long to adapt, though.

So she’s working, she’s one of my bosses, one of the ladies I answer to along with my manager. She tells manager to train us in running reports, something that I’ve been doing for years now and I actually trained my manager how to do it. Manager lady has this big meeting in her tiny office with like 6 people in it. It was hot and sticky and smelly and I kept shifting around. She took this to mean that I was being disrespectful and immediately after the training meeting she went and complained to director.

Director calls me into her office and basically goes off on me. She tells me how I can’t disrespect people (*color me confused*) and how manager told her how I cursed her out (side note- my companies culture includes cursing. It’s always been allowed but always understood that we don’t curse people out. A casual fuck or shit is allowed) and blah blah blah. I wanted to laugh and cry from frustration so badly. Eventually after director is done I turn to manager and say something like “I’m sorry if you feel as if I was disrespectful to you”. It was done after that.

A few months go by and Director starts really settling in and making changes. She starts her actual work and learning about our company and all the ins and outs.

For a while I didn’t really like Director after that. She’d start making snide comments to me. She completely changed the way we worked. Previously our department was only working about 5% of the A/R and she switched it to 100%. At first it was very overwhelming. I went from being responsible for about 200k to 14 million. HUGE CHANGE! And when I said something about it she made snide remarks to me. She would call me into her office and tell me the weirdest things. I don’t remember them all except for this one thing that stuck with me. She told me that if I ever need to take a break and go smoke a cigarette I should just do that. And that she’s been warned about me. (What?! I had quit smoking almost 8 months before she ever applied with us, and NOBODY at work knew. The only conclusion I could come up with was that Manager in her infinite wisdom was talking about me. And second, You’ve been warned about me? By a manager that hates me? Yeah well I was warned about you by a complete stranger that sought me out to try to get me away from YOU! (No, I’ve never told her this)

Director got me and my team EVERYTHING we needed. It was time to get us new computers so she made the IT department order us some high tech laptops with touch screens, brand new monitors, a dock so that we can have 3 screen (laptop and 2 large screens).

At this point, there was a shift in the manager. She was not happy that director was actually directing. She was not happy that director was making things happen that manager didn’t even think about. (Manager lady complained for 2 years about how we didn’t have snacks, Director lady was like I don’t care about snacks, let get these ladies some good laptops).

Right after we got our new laptops and were setting them up we realized that we didn’t have Microsoft Excel on it. I am very proficient in Excel and use it all the time. Within 5 minutes Manager lady came and told us that we weren’t going to get Excel because “we didn’t do that high level of work” and Director lady came by our desks and was like, “There should be an email from IT, I’ve purchased Excel for everybody.”

Manager was not happy. Director was outdoing her every single step of the way.

Shortly after the laptops, the pandemic started. We were going out for a trial run for a couple weeks and ended up staying home for until now. We left March of 2020 and I’m still working from home today.

During this time Manager decided she didn’t like not having control over us anymore and decided to quit. At 5:01, her last day of work I blocked her on everything. Blocked her phone number from my phone, deleted her contact, blocked her on Facebook, Instagram, email, everything.

That part of my life was finally over. Thank GOD! The week after the freeze on Feb 2021 in Texas (Yes, I live in Texas. that was a horribly cold week with no electricity) I get a phone call on my work number from her. I refused to pick it up. I’m not your friend, you don’t need to check up on me.

Without the oppressive manager presence I was really able to do things my way and Director proceeds to be very impressed with my work. She complimented me very single chance she got. She’d go out of her way to teach me new things and really became a mentor to me. Although we are NOT friends, or friendly at all outside of a work relationship we’ve become very good at working with each other. Sometimes I’d go weeks without ever hearing from her while she checked up on everybody else on a daily basis. She’d email me some really basic instructions on something she needed and give me a deadline and I’d have it ready for her usually the night before. She trusted me 100% and still does with all of my work. She directs questions to me for a lot of stuff. Once I understood how she worked I was able to adapt to her specifications and do things in my way then form it into her way. We seem to work very much alike. She would start asking me questions about how I thought this or that should be handled.

At the end of 2020 she nominated me for the “Above and Beyond Leadership Award”. I was one of 2 nominees and no I didn’t win it. It went to a lawyer.

It’s safe to say she really liked me. I really liked her. I still do. I think she’s one of the fairest of all the bosses I’ve ever had. I think she’s a wonderful person (although I think she’s really benefit from taking a real vacation and unplugging from her stressors but that’s more of a concern for her as a person than her as a boss).

So after the nomination for the leadership award she decided she needed a new manager to take over so she has to do less of the day to day manager job. She VERY CLEARLY stated that “if anybody wants to apply you should definitely do it”.

And this is where some of you are going to be very upset with me.

I had 3 out of the 6 people I work with tell me I should apply. I had my director hint that I should apply. I chose not to.

Please consider my side on this for a moment. I’ve worked here at this job for 7 years with the same people. I’ve been moved around so many times, I’ve had my title changed at least 4 times with no reason behind it. I’ve been treated as if I’m the bottom of the barrel. People have looked down on me, people have said very condescending things to me. People have excused horrific behavior from clients towards me. (Let me be clear- IDGAF what these people have to say about me. It doesn’t affect me at all) but this shows the level of disrespect towards me that the people I’d be working with had.

But if you’re wanting me to APPLY for a promotion, willingly step into a complete clusterfuck (and yes it is a clusterfuck) and contend with attempting to earn the respect I most certainly deserve with those fucks all over an industry that I hate that I do NOT see a future in, you got me fucked up.

lol. Yes, I said no. I didn’t apply. I didn’t want to apply.

A couple weeks ago on one of the days we were actually in the office one of my coworkers told me “I’m so glad you didn’t apply for the manager job, you would have hated it, you knew exactly what you were getting into and you chose yourself over the company. I’m so proud of you.”

Anyway, I guess I should have put this closer to the beginning. I’ve been going to school and learning things like Web Development, Social Media Marketing, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, Video production, etc. I’m basically learning everything I can to get out of the rat race of the corporate world and get into doing something that I’m passionate about.

I’ve been building a business, creating a following on Social Media and have plans for launching a podcast in 2022. I have been working on a blog that will be launched with my podcast (I’m currently working on episodes and blog posts that correspond with my podcast, they’re not launched yet or I’d add a link). I have about 2 years worth of content planned for the podcast/blog and I’m working on having about 2 months worth of content ready to drop in Jan 2022 so once it drops I can watch the audience interaction and tweak where I need to.

This weekend I have plans to completely revamp all of my content and I have a REALLY BIG goal of preparing a months worth of Social Media content this weekend (I might not make it because it’s going to require A LOT of hands on work and creative juices).

Anyway, Long story probably even longer.

Everything, all the people I’ve met throughout the years, all the people who had dogged me, the ones who have hated me and treated me like trash (I haven’t even told you about my ex-husband or my ex-boyfriend), everything I’ve been through in the last 10 years or so has made me so much stronger than I ever was before.

These are the people I’m truly thankful for. Without their cruelty and their hatred towards me I would never have learned to love myself.

I have this infallible confidence in myself that I never had before. I love myself SO MUCH and am so happy to be who I am that my resolve is completely unshakeable.

I know that things are going to be hard. I’m going to have pitfalls and I’m going to fail (I already have with one of my “experiments”) BUT I love who I’m becoming. I’m becoming this woman that can say no, that can stand on her own, that can be calm and collected when faced with adversity. I’m becoming the woman that I’ve always meant to be. I know that this is going to be a life long process. I have visions of who I’m going to be 5 years from now, and she is so beautiful. I see myself when my kids are all grown up and I’m amazed by how much flawed perfection there is to see. No, I’m not the best person in the world. I’m not the smartest or the prettiest or the richest and I’m definitely not the nicest. But I work for everything I’ve ever had.

I guess I should put a moral to this story:

Here’s what I’ve learned, Don’t ever give up. Don’t ever let someone tell you who you are. Be afraid of who THEY want you to be. They want a different version of yourself. You were born as an individual, DON’T YOU DARE DIE A COPY.

I love you all.

***ANOTHER UPDATE*** Because I can, lol.

As I said above, my current job is great. I hate the industry but the job itself is pretty great. After refusing to apply for the manager job we hired on a new manager. He’s actually a really great person so no complaints there.

I was browsing the company website a few weeks ago and found a job for a trainer position with our National team (corporate HQ) that I wanted to apply for. The rules in my company state that if you want to apply for a job within the company you must tell your direct supervisor so that there isn’t any “omg i didn’t realize she was leaving” bullshit.

So I told my manager, he was like hey that’s a great idea and we definitely need someone strong in training. I was like Cool, I’m going to update my resume and apply next week.

Next week arrives and my director from above (the mentor-ish one) was informed of my wanting to apply for this job and was like NO, JUST NO.

She contacted me via Google Chats and arranged a meeting with me. We discussed the job opportunity and she was like look, I’m not going to tell you don’t apply for the job. What I am going to tell you is that I need you here, I need you in our market and I need you to do the exact same thing here. In our market.

I was like ok…. I’m not really sure I trust you 100% with this but ok I’ll give you the benefit of doubt because she’s always had my back since old manager left.

So I waited for about a week. I was still watching the company website and the job was still available so I was like it’s all good, I have time to make this decision.

Director lady contacts me again about a week after our initial conversation and she’s just very honest with me. She tells me that I have no reason to trust her, but that I truly can. She says that she really needs someone that’s very intelligent and knows exactly how to do things to take over the training in our region because it’s truly atrocious and a lot of the issues we see are due to poor training. She also tells me that she’s put in for a substantial raise for me and a substantial bonus (her words, not mine). I was like… cool.

A couple days later I was riding around in my car, listening to music and clearing my head when I had this sudden realization, “She’s given me power over her”. Like, she literally just handed over the reins. I can choose what happens to me from here on out and she will bend to my will to keep me.

This is kind of exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. (I’ve been following several of the laws from The 48 Laws of Power with her.) and I’ve managed to put myself into a position of power. It’s really weird being able to say that.

Anyway, she was 100% true to her word. We had these conversations about 3 weeks ago and I’m beginning my transition into the training position now. I’ve started to schedule training sessions as far out as San Antonio (I’m in Houston) as of right now.

I’ll update more once I get into the full swing of this new position.

What I’ve learned from this is that people give power. They allow things to happens so that they can get what they want/need out of the individual. The problem is that not everybody realizes that someone is giving them power. Do people even realize that they’re giving power? idk.

If you’re smart and you use the power you gain to your advantage without harming anybody else, then more power to you. Don’t be a dick about it though, there’s nobody you hurt more than yourself when you walk around being an asshole just because you have some power.

Another update, because I can. 12/21/21

I made the last update about 2 weeks ago or so. I don’t remember when. Today is 12/21 and today is a good day.

I started the day with a training session with someone that requested training. Right afterwards I pinged my boss (The director) and let her know a couple of things that the person I trained with told me that were concerning. She only had a few minutes but said she needed to speak with me at a later time today. So a couple of hours go by and I spoke with her again. I knew what it was about. It was about the managerial position. I said I wanted it.

Another Update, 3/1/22

My previous manager quit mid- December. This was during the time that I was supposed to be transitioning into the training roll.

Soon after my manager decided to quit, the talks began. My director (from above) contacted me and explained that she wants me for this position. She basically told me that as long as she doesn’t find someone that absolutely wows her I have the job. We talked about it for about 3 weeks before the job officially became available.

So… as some of you can probably guess, I applied. I went through the entire interview process, had to submit a cover letter and resume, interviewed with 3 different people.

I’ve been the manager now for about 5 weeks now and we’ve made some amazing strides since I started. I’ve gotten a massive raise, with a pretty massive bonus eligibility amount (which means my bonus next year will be based on merit, and can go up to 15% of my base salary.)

I have just hired my first new hire, someone that I truly believe is going to be amazing. I created a bunch of giant goals that we’re going to achieve, one small step at a time.

Anyway, as always. Much love to you.