Oh God

MVWJ was a couple years ago at a florist. I love flowers and thought it would be an enjoyable job. It would have been were it not for The Office From Hell. The designers all attended church together. One of their husband was the pastor there and she was opposed to wearing any lower garment other than skirts as a religious conviction. Another’s husband was a deejay at the local Christian radio station, which they always listened to at work too. This would’ve been fine, except for the fact that I am an atheist and that wasn’t fine with them. The owner was like Ms. Swan, from MADtv, complete with insane clothes and incredibly rude, inappropriate comments. She would show up in her bedazzled jeans with gold and purple sequins and say things in a mocking tone.

Rachel, who hated Ms. Swan and totally lacked the social skills to acquire a job, was my supervisor, but fortunately for her she was leftover from when her sister’s rich husband had owned the place, and was therefore the only person there who could run it; even Ms. Swan could not. Rachel looked like Mariah Carey if she grew a beard, shaved it and covered the five o’clock shadow with creepy pancake makeup. What’s worse was that Rachel had the monopoly on the place and she knew it.

I spent six months kissing Rachel’s enormous ass and trying to read her mind. I would do something as she had previously instructed me to, only to be called stupid when she found out what I’d done. Bringing up the fact that I was following her directions would result in her explaining that I “should’ve known this was different” or denying she’d said it to begin with. I was terrified of screwing up, but when I did (always in a very minor way) Rachel would make sure I understood how stupid I was for it. In reality, I was very skilled at my job based on what the owner and other employees would tell me, but I always felt utterly inept and incompetent based on the abuse of my supervisor and spent my time at that job falling into bed at night and crying to my fiancé because the emotional stress was so much.

I mentioned before that I am an atheist, but I have no stickers on my car, no shirts, nothing displaying this information. I do nothing to advertise it, but of course, that wasn’t good enough for Rachel and the other ladies. Where I attended church and more importantly, would I attend church with them, became major focuses of our conversations. Gay people who came in ordering flowers for their partners were openly sneered at and declared “disgusting” by the employees (I’m also bisexual). African Americans who came in were made fun of as soon as they left the building. As the only one not partaking in their hate fest, I obviously didn’t fit in. Besides all of this (or maybe alongside it) was the fact that Rachel was almost definitely a painfully repressed 35 year old virgin and hated the fact that I had a love life. She would tell me how “cute” my fiancé was every opportunity she got, and even said at one point that she needed one of him for Christmas. This was not normal girl-to-girl flattery, but Single White Female-esque weirdness.

She would also call me at home every day I was off to ask about things she could’ve figured out or things that I had left notes about. This was a passive-aggressive move that started after I’d called her at home quite a few times, because she’d freak out if I made any decision without asking first. One day, after months of explaining to me that we could use the internet whenever we wanted, I was on NPR’s website while Rachel was on FOX News. Within hours, it was being explained to me that the “internet was for home.” My employment ended when I asked Rachel for a certain day off, to which she agreed. Weeks passed and when the day arrived I was about to begin my daughter’s birthday party when she called to inform me that it was a busy day and they’d have to cut me down to one day a week. I told them no thank you.