Congratulate me, I’m unemployed!!
As I mentioned in class I was turning in my two weeks notice on Monday. Once I returned to my D.C. villa (it might just be a basement studio apartment to others, but it’s a villa to me), I fired up my craptop and started Googling letters of resignation. I found one that was equal parts b.s. (it is with great sorrow, blah blah blah) and truth (there are many reasons for this decisions most of which you already know) and copied that missive into Word. I realize that to my moronic boss it makes no difference that I didn’t write my own letter, but for me that act demonstrated the utter lack of respect I have for that place and that man! After I printed the letter out I saw a few commas that were in the wrong place, but I didn’t even bother to correct them.
Monday, March 6, 2006. As 5 p.m. drew closer, I could feel the butterflies in my stomach. I placed the letter in a company envelope, licked it shut and walked to his desk. He was sitting there about to make a phone call. I half threw-half slid the letter on his desk and said, “Here, this is for you,” and walked right out. I half expected him to come after me. Lucky for him, he didn’t.
I went home and awaited the dawn of what would be a very shitty Tuesday, since my co-worker S______ would be turning in her letter of resignation in the morning!
Tuesday, March 7, 2006. S______ and I met up in the Burger King parking lot because we were both to chicken to walk into the office alone. We walk in, greet the new receptionist (this will be key later on) and greet D, my boss and commence to working. The entire time I am there I feel like I am sitting on a ledge about to fall off. The early warning signs of a tension headache are creeping in and it’s only 10 a.m.!
S_____ gets a phone call and realizes that she must go home because some repair or delivery guy is going to be there in 20 mins. D goes to her office to tweak the computer and she goes to his desk and places the letter on top of the stack of mail. A lime green Post-it with the name D is on the letter.
A few minutes after S____ left, D goes into his office and a ker-plump is heard. I believe this is his head hitting the desk. Then he makes his fatal mistake…
He comes into my office with S________’s letter asking me what is going on. Wrong move, buddy. I tell him that I am not paid to be an informant and that if he wants answers to talk to people directly. Then he has the audacity to say to my face that he now sees the REAL Chris and knows what kind of person I truly am. Well, no you don’t know who I am, because if you did you would have known better than to say that to me. This is when my Latina blood kicks in and what I like to call my “death voice” started talking. I let him have it. Everything that bothered me about the place (placing cameras to watch us, his wife yammering about me to her hairdresser, his lack of communication skills as a boss) came out like bullets. At one point I told him that if he wanted to keep his company alive, someone needed to grow a set of balls and learn how to effectively communicate.
I don’t usually act like that, but it was like he wanted me to apologize and feel bad for quitting. I’m sorry, did I sign a contract that gave him control of my life when I started working there?
Nobody treats me like dirt and tries to make me feel like a villain when I have done NOTHING wrong.
You would think things would have ended there, but nooooooooo. In the space of 24hrs, this company went from 4 employees to 2. And it’s about to end up as 1.
The newest employee, a receptionist and relative of S_________ gets a phone call by the dried up, bitter, shrew of a wife of D. We’ll call her The Hag. Haggie tells Newbie that what happened today was in no way going to hurt her job and that Hags and D had bent over backward for S________. Hags went on to say that I must have had influence over S___________ quitting.
Ok. What business is it of the Hag to start mouthing off about me to the secretary??!?! Why is she involving someone who has nothing to do with my quitting or me?
Wednesday, March 8, 2006
Newbie calls in sick that day, but she calls me to tell me that we have to talk. She calls me back at lunch and gave me the scoop about the power of my influence. Several thousand expletives and half a pack of cigarettes later, I make a few phone calls to find out if I can just walk out.
My friend, Queen, convinces me to go back after lunch and she’ll see what she can find out. She calls me and gives me the words I have been longing to hear all day: You can walk out and he can’t do a thing about it!
I pack what little stuff I had in my desk. I typed another letter and slap that one into another company envelope. And when the clock said 5 p.m. I handed him the letter, ver 2.0, and said goodbye and walked out the door!
I did however leave a parting shot that neither D nor the Hag would probably get. My Word of the Day calendar had this gem for the 8th: Baleful: 1. Portending evil; ominous 2. Harmful or malignant in intent or effect. I changed my screen-saver to this word and taped that page to the monitor.
Of course the Hag couldn’t keep her mouth shut. She calls Newbie again, this time telling her that she has no idea what wrong with me and that they are changing the locks in case either S_____ or I attempt to retrieve our personal belongings. They want to talk to us. Well, too late. The only things I left were some tea bags, a Hot Pocket and dust.
I now have a week and a half of VACATION!!! Something I haven’t had in the 2 ½ years since I started working at that mental institution! And they have a huge, steaming pile of shit to get through.
