There’s probably some kind of clinical or popular psychological name for people like your boss. Is it “co-dependent”? “Low self esteem”? Is it “enabling” behavior, such as a family member or friend might do, covering for and mending things for an alcoholic and only succeeding in making the alcoholic worse? Another thing that occurs to me is that CW might be non-white and the boss has “white guilt” issues? Which is it?
I think the technical term is “weenie.”
Well, if she did that, at least it wasn’t my podunk town.
Having worked with him for a number of years, auntie em knows him much better than I do, but since I do know him to some degree, I’ll think I’ll take a stab at this.
My answer? None of the above. I mean, yes, CW is non-white, but I really don’t think the boss has any issues with that; he’s hasn’t come across as the type of person who’d be cowed by some imaginary guilt concerning non-whites. Nor is he either weak-willed, an enabler or in lack of high self-esteem.
I think he just wants his non-profit organization to run, and expects his employees to act as adults and take care of their jobs. And since CW hadn’t really made a Hindenburg of her position before now, the cons of firing her (she had been there for 12 years, many people with whom she dealt liked her, trusted her and wanted to keep on dealing with her; also, he’d have to find someone to take her position at a relatively low pay, train them and then hope they’d stick around for a long while) outweighed the pros (wacky, nutty CW would be gone). Sometimes, as they say, it’s better dealing with the demons you know than the ones you don’t see sneaking up behind you with pitchforks, pipe bombs and signs saying “These things are moving into your ass!”
Okay. I guess I’m the only one who says that, but I think you get the point.
I don’t necessarily blame him on being reluctant to fire her (or anyone for that matter); for a small, non-proft organization with a handful of employees, it’s usually more of a headache to replace (IMO) personnel than it is for a bigger, profit-orientated business. And let’s face it: in a place that small, you get to know each other really well. Firing someone takes on a whole new personal meaning after you’ve been to one another’s homes, seen each other rip-roaring drunk, held each others’ grandchildren, etc…
Auntie em can correct me on any of this, of course, but I wouldn’t go jumping down the throat of the boss. Not until it’s revealed that the CW has been embezzling all of these years and he’s known about it. Then, yeah, I think we’d have a legitimate gripe. 
Wow it seems like this thread died fast…
Skip and auntie em, please let us know what happens when MC shows her mug back at work 
it’s not that the thread is dead, we just KNOW that there will be no news until monday. So we are conserving our energy. I mean seriously, we’ve LIVED in this thread for a week (almost 20K views with 500+ posts) can we have one weekend off?
It’s not fair to make us take the weekend off! I mean, if we’re going to be consumed by this thread, why spare us on the weekend as well as the workweek???
Even god took a day off Mama Tiger Let the Skipers and his fine Auntie have some quiet time 
Even god took a day off Mama Tiger Let the Skipers and his fine Auntie have some quiet time
Don’t you have a book to read? 
The time is now 9am EST. Auntie Em and MC are due into work in 60 minutes.
Will the loyal readers of the SDMB get their much-needed closure? Will MC show up? Will Don Knottsesque Boss make full use of his testicular fortitude and lay the smack down on MC?
(On a side note, wouldn’t it be really funny if he bawl her out Vince McMahon Style YOOOOOOOOU’RE FIRRRRRRRRRRRRED :D)
Auntie, you have to at least give us the epilogue, c’mon inquiring minds want to know.
Wouldn’t it be sad if we’ve waited all weekend & CW’s called the boss and asked him just to mail her final check…
Just checking in after being out of town since Thursday.
In all seriousness, I was on the plane thinking, “I wonder what’s going on with the Missing Coworker! I can’t wait to find out!”
I tuned in just in time for the cliffhanger. AAAAA!
Epilogue
Still no sign of her. Today we will be cleaning out her office, which is kuh-RAMMED with junk. My boss met with a woman on Friday who may be taking over the position temporarily. He said she seemed willing to come on board until she got a look at that office. She’s going to let him know for sure sometime today. We’re looking at bringing her in on a temporary and part-time basis until we can get an ad out for the position (which may end up being part-time permanently, so that we can offer a higher hourly wage).
In the meantime, we’re just sitting here waiting for the liquor stores to open up.
So we can get BOXES, of course, to pack up MC’s personal belongings. What did you think???
By the time we actually see MC, we’ll hopefully have all of her personal belongings boxed up. My boss is hoping to avoid the drama that would ensue if she were here for hours packing it up herself.
That’s all I’ve got.
Kudos, though, to Skip, for a very astute and enlightened post re: my boss’s apparent wussiness.
Well, I’m glad crazy MC turned out to be alive and not abducted or anything. I’m also glad you won’t have to put up with the drama queen anymore.
Auntie, I’ve been following this thread like everyone else. It’s mesmerising. Here’s my question: Do you have a good relationship with MC? Like, do you think you’d be able to call her after the dust settles and go out for a beer and ask her what the hell happened? I’d really love to hear her side of it from a one-on-one perspective.
Kalhoun, we are friends to the point where I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable if I were to run into her at Wal-Mart or something, but as for the scenario you presented, well . . .
a) I don’t know that I’d be incredibly at ease having a beer with her in general (in other words, even if all of this hadn’t happened), just because she can be so . . . weird. It’s true, I’ve imbibed with her before, but never one-on-one, always with the whole group of us. I’ve basically only dealt with her on a 1-on-1 basis twice since I started working here, and both were kind of awkward and twitchy for me.
Once, she came by my house on my birthday. I’d taken a few days off work, because I had a friend in town visiting, and even though my officemates had already given me a cake and chipped in for a gift, she came over and presented me with a quilt that she had made. Then she turned to my visiting friend and started going on and on about how she only makes quilts for people who are very special to her, and how (at this point she actually started crying) I had no idea how much I meant to her (this while I was standing about three feet away). Within 10 minutes, however, she was asking my friend (whom she’d just met 10 minutes earlier) what her favorite colors were, so that she could make a quilt for her, too. (Guess it doesn’t take much to get on her list of Very Special People.)
The other time I dealt with her one-on-one was when she called me at home to ask me if I’d been seeing Trucker. Somehow, she said, he’d acquired a picture of me and had been asking her all about me: who I was, how old I was, whether or not I was single. She had refused to give him any information about me, she said, but within a few days he knew my name and my email address. She finally decided that he must have hacked into her work computer (which used to be mine, but was handed down to her when I got a new one) and gotten a photo of me that was saved in the hard drive.
By then I was accustomed to her nuttiness, and so thought little of it, but I gave my boss a heads-up about the whole thing the next morning, just in case something bizarre came down.
b) Even if I did feel comfortable enough to invite her out for a beer and ask her what happened, I’d say there’s only about a 0.002 percent chance that I’d get the truth . . .
but that 0.002 Chance is what we are drooling over.
And at this point, her lies would only mske the truth more news worthy. You’re the dective in this story, so get buys dectecting, or I’ll never get my work done
I think we should have a contest to write an ending for this one. We have several talented writers here. It would have to be done “blind”, so that personalities wouldn’t affect the judging. And I’d think that it should have pathos, drama, comedy, etc, but hopefully not so over-the-top so as to be unbelievable*.
Should we start a new thread for that one?
*Although this is almost certainly one of those “truth is stranger than fiction” scenarios.
YES. Would you like to do the honors?
But, uh . . . how would we do it “blind”?