“I quit.”
With those two little words my life changed for the better. I quit my job last week. I quit my job last week with basically nothing lined up. I have options and ideas sure. But nothing tangible is lined up. And I love it. I hated my job. Cliché, yes, but true. It was finance, and I loathe finance. Growing up in a small Southern town, boys were encouraged to be football coaches, doctors, or businessmen. Since blood makes me squeamish and I throw like a girl, business won out. I had no idea that you could major in drama or English, so I majored in accounting. I never got above a “C” in any of my accounting courses, so that should have told me something right there. So basically, my job bored me to tears. There was nothing exciting about it. Literally, the most exciting thing about my job was being able to purchase theatre tickets for my boss. And I would absolutely cringe whenever I had to utter those tragic words, “I’m behind on my filing.”
My boss. Truly a piece of work. The tantrums were regular and legendary. No phones were thrown, but words sure were. People were sent home on a regular basis to “think about whether they want to stay or not.” His line of fire was intense. If you found yourself in that line of fire, it could be days, even weeks you would stay there. We called them beatdowns. He would constantly pick apart something that he considered wrong and harp on it for days. In front of everyone. We had group lunches every week. And every week, he held court like a puppet master. Choosing people to tell jokes over and over and over. It didn’t matter if they were the same jokes…and the more offensive the better. Nobody escaped unscathed. Jews, Mexicans, African-Americans, the Polish, blondes, gays, women. Some were funnyish, most were not.
Humiliation was his forte. Of a junior member of the firm, he once announced to the entire office at group lunch, “He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he tries hard.” He was an expert at finding a weakness and capitalizing on it. Especially weight. For overweight employees, group lunch was an exercise in remembering one’s self-worth. He constantly rode them about exercising more, always “jokingly” of course. If humiliation was his forte, empathy was not. Just last month, he called me into his office. Apparently the day before he saw one of the cleaners in the kitchen with her mouth full. Our kitchen is always stocked with fruit, so he assumed she was eating the fruit.
“Craig, I think you should hide the fruit everyday before you leave. I don’t want those people eating it.”
I stood there, dumbfounded. A man worth a ton of money couldn’t let a woman who probably made minimum wage have a fucking banana? I was livid. And everyday, I hid the fruit. With great shame. A series of smallish events led to my decision to leave. After over five years, the toxic atmosphere had seeped into other parts of my life. My creativity was zapped. I was drinking at night to forget about the days. So I handed in my notice, gave an extra three weeks until they found someone to replace me, and I left. I handled the notice so well, he agreed to pay me for my two weeks of unused vacation. Until he didn’t. After I left, he accused me of unauthorized usage of his credit card. And cut it down to one week. Basically, I was accused of stealing. And I haven’t stolen anything since I was twelve years old when I lifted a Playgirl magazine and a set of Lee Press-on-Nails from the local drug store. So, that was the final nail in the coffin for me. Any doubt I previously had about leaving flew out the window.
So to answer the title’s question…I don’t know. I don’t know what I am doing the rest of my life. Maybe something in the theatre. Maybe I’ll teach. Maybe I’ll move to Provincetown
And what did I get from all of this? Over five years of browbeating, verbal abuse, uncomfortable situations, and having to watch my boss’ utter disregard for another person’s humanity? Well, first of all I got a life experience worthy enough of an essay. Secondly…and most importantly….I got a new group of friends. A small but weary handful of friends who made the days go by a little faster, made the verbal beatdowns a little easier to swallow, and the long group lunches a little less uncomfortable because every time, I was silently laughing at their fake laughter. So I got friends out of an enormously difficult life experience. And that’s what counts the most.
Because friends would never make me hide the fruit.
