Dear Boss...(long and personal)

The BBQ Pit
1

Dear Boss,

Oh, how I would love to say all this to your face. Unfortunately, that would most likely be the end of my job. And I have to pay the bills. So please accept an open letter instead.

I have never met anyone quite like you. And I do mean that in the worst way. You seemed like a real nice, ‘put-er-there-bud’ kinda guy at first. But I always had that little twinge in my gut that always made me feel uncomfortable around you, like I shouldn’t trust you. And now I’m glad I listened to that instinct.

The guys at work all love you. They think you’re a great guy. The girls think you are too; that is, the tall, slim, pretty girls who work part-time. Does your boss know that you leave work early saying you have to go “run an errand” when witnesses have seen you in fact flirting with each of said girls? I guess not, because if your boss did, she’d be watching you a lot more closely.

Remember last year, how your continued emotional and verbal abuse towards me caused me to actually have a nervous breakdown? After that last time you made me sit in a chair while you stood over me and yelled and told me how stupid and useless I was, I locked myself in the storage room and screamed and screamed and couldn’t stop. I’m glad someone cared enough to call the police. It’s too bad, though, that I now need so much medication just to cope with not only life, but with you during the day. Oh, Human Resources finally believed me then. They wouldn’t before, because they thought you were such a great guy. You were always so NICE! What I wouldn’t give for a hidden camera during the times we were working alone together. It was Jekyll and Hyde. And during the time afterwards when I was a basket case in the hospital and my department fell to shit, they realized that YES, you DIDN’T know what you were doing! They finally demoted you, but it really sucks that you’re still my superior, and I still have to report to you. Even though you lost, you still won, eh?

I thought that maybe you would have smartened up after that, but no. I can’t count how many times you lied to my face. I bet you don’t know that I have evidence, written and verbally from others, that you lied. Oh, by the way, you know the shy part time girl with the brown hair? Stop touching her back and shoulders and offering to give her rides home. It makes her very uncomfortable. Unfortunately she’s too afraid to report you, because she knows how good a liar you are, and you’d probably turn it around to make her look crazy and get her fired. And especially, STOP telling her how good you are in bed and how you know how to please any woman. She’s NOT interested, you scum. You’re a manager, for fuck sakes!! You’re not supposed to be trying to get into your 18 year-old co-workers’ pants.

I wish the job market here wasn’t so hopeless. I’ve been looking all over for almost 2 years now. I must have spent hundreds of dollars on resume paper alone. It doesn’t look like you’ll be going anywhere, so I have to get away from you. I wish to god I could just quit, but I have to pay the rent. I worked so hard to get my apartment. My husband only makes $400 a month. I don’t know what else to do.

I really try to believe that what goes around, comes around. i can only wish that you get yours someday, that all the lies and manipulation will come right back at you.

I hope you rot in Hell.

Yours Truly,

AFG

2

AFG,

BC is not so bad. A tad damp, true, but not so bad. Any chance that your skills (and your husband’s) are transferable? Boss-Cad does not deserve any more of your energy, although there seems to be quite a bit that he does deserve.

3

Ahhhh yes… beware of energy pirates.

In life, we choose our happinesses, but we also choose our sadnesses too. Dwelling on your boss’s nature ultimately is your choice, and as exasperating as he doubtless is, if you allow him to continue to be an energy pirate in your life, it’s you (not him) who’ll find the experience debillitating.

Learn to avoid him. Learn to approach HIS superior (if possible) and get a sympathetic ear. Most importantly, learn to place faith in karma that the assholes of this world invariably get what’s coming to 'em.

But whatever you do, stop making the choice of thinking about him so much. It’s you who suffers, not him.

4

Yikes, sounds like you have been in the power of a psychopath! Cite. (Scroll to the top of the page, and read from there.) Do the traits described on that site sound famaliar? Get out now, while you safely can, and take steps to gaurd yourself from him, I’d wager he’s not above pursuing a vendetta.

5

Oh. My. God.

Every single one of those descriptions fits him. I am not kidding.

I don’t know what to do…I can’t just quit or I’ll lose my apartment, and I can’t find another job no matter how hard I’ve been looking.

I wish there was some way to expose him…

6

After your boss sat you down and told you how stupid and useless you are, your response was to lock yourself into the storage room and scream and scream? Are you serious?

So what happened after the cops were called? Management knows about this person’s abusiveness now, right?

Ma’am, I’m saying this as kindly as possible: Your post reeks of victim mentality. You always have a choice about whether or not to take abuse. It’s not an excuse for bad behaviour, but you do realize that your attitude towards yourself is a major factor in determining how other people perceive and treat you, don’t you?

If the management of that company is stupid enough to allow this type of abuse to happen in their workplace, then there’s not a good enough reason on the planet for you to still be there. Quit, go on unemployment and keep looking for other work. Your only other choice as I see it is to take your complaints to the Human Rights Commission. I could be wrong, but I don’t think the Employment Standards Act covers abuse/sexual harassment but if you choose to stay, you could at least call them and see if they can refer you.

Good luck.

7

AFG, I just wanted to say that whenever I first see your user name, I always read it as “Amazon Floozy Goodness,” which is also a cool name. Good luck with the boss from heck.

8

I don’t know Canadian law. Can’t you sue for harassment?

And sweetie, no job is worth your mental health. Find something else, even if it’s digging ditches. And see if hubby can shop around for a higher-paying job. He’s also getting the short end of the stick, because you go home to him after your stressful day.

9

I, too, have worked in a hostile environment, where I was constantly belittled, yelled at and harrassed (by other women, ftr). I know how emotionally devastating it can be, even if you’re an otherwise strong-willed person. It’s easy to say, “stand up for yourself, don’t “allow” other people to intimidate you,” it’s another thing entirely to actually do that in a work environment where your continued employment feels (and actually IS) threatened. That’s precisely why laws have been passed to protect employees from this imbalance of power.

Take advantage of the resources available to you. Call the Human Rights Commission and find out what your legal remedies are. If you pursue this from a legal standpoint, your employer cannot fire you for making a complaint.

I wish you the best of luck and hope you are successful in either forcing this asshole to stop creating a “poisoned” work environment, or getting his ass canned for noncompliance with the law.

10

Can you set him up in some way?
Record his abuses on tape?
Meet the other woman who have to put up with his shit and band together to report him?

Yes, it is, especially when economics force you to remain in a horrible situation.
However, you may be able to out-crazy him-especially if you had a breakdown last year.
Siddle up to him when no one else is there, roll your eyes back in your head and whisper “Fuck with me again, and I’ll have your guts for garters.”
If he reports you, deny,deny, deny.

11

I didn’t react that way on purpose. I honestly had a nervous breakdown. It was like watching a movie - It didn’t seem like it was happening to me. The cops took me to the hospital. They were very understanding and said they’ve seen similar situations before. I’ve had problems with clinical depression since I was 16 and I had mentioned it to him once before when I thought he was more trustworthy. He played on it and pushed and pushed until he broke me. During the time before that happened I tried to get all sorts of help. I went to Conflict Management to see if they could help me in any way. I started seeing a counsellor too. I told Human Resources EVERYTHING. Unfortunately it was my word against his, and he’s an excellent liar, and used his charm and feigned ignorance to deny everything, and they bought it. All they had proof of was that he was not performing his job duties because while I was off sick, all the work he claimed that he did (which I really did) did not get done. Also, a few part-time people complained that he was trying to make them do my job while I was gone. That was his responsibility - and he never even gave them any training on what to do! So of course clients noticed that these “replacements” had no idea what was going on, and my boss was nowhere to be found, so they compalined to HR. Hence his demotion. But I had no way of proving his other abuse.

I took his shit for over a year. I tried to get help. I kept my chin up. He just wouldn’t stop. What he did to me is not my fault. I’m the breadwinner in my household. It has been impossible to find a job that pays enough for me to support us. My husband can’t find anything either.

I used to have pretty good self-esteem. You need to realize that this abuse occured almost daily over the course of a year. Anyone will break under that kind of pressure.

12

AFG, I spent some of the worst years of my life working for a psychopathic boss: a pathological liar, a sexist groper, a verbally and even physically :eek: abusive bastard, who took a twisted delight in finding and exploiting the weaknesses in his employees. He took my not very robust self-esteem and demolished it (“No one but me would ever hire you!”). Deliberately, I now believe, as part of his control mind games. Since he owned the small company, there was no one to go to for help. Since he too could be utterly charming and convincing, I believed no one would ever take my word for what was happening.

I quit – no, I got myself fired one day, when, in the fog of what in retrospect I see was my own nervous breakdown, I finally snapped, refused to accept any more abuse, and walked out. To no job, no references (this was my first real job after college), no savings to speak of – and an incredible feeling of liberation. After a couple of months on unemployment, I found a new boss who, it turned out, had been looking for me ever since he’d heard I’d left the former job. It’s been all onward and upward since then.

I’m not making light of the grim prospects for finding a new job you face, or the other considerations that are holding you to this hell-job. But still I have to say:

GET OUT. GET OUT NOW. RUN AND DON’T LOOK BACK. YOUR HEALTH AND SANITY ARE ON THE LINE.

If there were any prospect of HR helping you, it might be worth it to stay and fight. But you’ve tried that route and it’s a dead end. As one who’s been there, I say, escape or die – in your soul if not your whole self. Because this type of life-leeching scum gets his kicks from destroying his victims, and will never stop so long as you’re within his reach.

13

Hmmm… somebody earlier mentioned “victim mentality” and after reading a few more of the OP’s posts I’m forced to remember this age old truism…

There are only 3 rules in life…

(1) There’s always a victim.

(2) Don’t be one.

(3) Nothing else matters.

14

AFG it can be devasting to be under the thumb of a psychopath. You need to bring this up to your counselor so you can get help to rebuild your self esteem. (And thank goodness you aren’t married to him!) Also, I think you should find another job, or two jobs. It would still be better than where you are now. The posters in this thread aren’t kidding when they say your health is at stake, to say the least.

15

Looking at my previous post, I can see that the aside could grate. I didn’t mean it to be taken in a negative way, I was thinking of a site I saw once about the spouses of psychopaths, and what they went through is awful. I wasn’t trying to trivialize your encounters in the least. Please, get help and get away from him. Things will be so much better for you when you do, though I know you are afraid. He’s likely used that fear to make you think you’re better off working there, consider that.

16

Amazon Floozy Goddess, you have my sincerest sympathies for what you have gone through (and still are going through). I hope to God that you find something new soon.

Adam

17

Have you ever thought about keeping a tape recorder with you at all times to record his abuse?

18

I have. I don’t know, though, how not to make it completely obvious when every time he started talking, I would start fumbling in my pocket.

19

If I were married to a woman who was being hammered like you are at work, I would be having a private, one-on-one, in-person chat with the prick boss guy.

It would occur when he was out of the office, and by himself, and would be unannounced. It would be a discussion without overt threat, violence, physicality, or raised voices. It would last 2-3 minutes.

The message would be clear, as if someone took a couple of minutes to advise you about the problematic issues of walking across 8 lanes of freeway at rush hour.

My wife would not be informed of anything.

Guys like that are often all blustery and cocky on the surface, but then turn into real quaking pussies when they’re confronted in a basic male-on-male sort of way. If they clearly see the potential unpleasant consequences, they often modify their behavior.

Having my wife abused in the way you’ve described by a male manager at work would not be acceptable. No way.

Good thing you aren’t being hassled by a female manager. In that case, guys are often powerless. :stuck_out_tongue:

20

There exist noise/voice-activated tape recorders. Some of them are quite small.