Bad Friday

My Very Worst Job was in a department where I was a part-timer with a boss and another full-timer above me, who I’ll call M. The boss was pretty meek, the type who will avoid anything that might potentially cause a problem. M was, quite frankly, a bitch who had it out for me. My problems with her started when she would conveniently take off on days of major events — events she was responsible for — and have me run the show for her.  Then it moved into her taking projects I was working on and claiming them as her own. Finally, she started making up things about me to get me in trouble with the boss. I tried to offer proof that these things weren’t true but I still received “strikes” against me; meanwhile, she was caught falsifying her time card, with no repercussions.

The final straw came when my department received a grant and I volunteered to do the initial research that had to be completed before we could start spending money. I complied a long report with demographic and school district information and emailed to the boss and to M. The boss told me it was good work. M came in a few hours later and immediately sent out an email saying that my research was all wrong. My boss wrote the both of us back reiterating that it was fine. M sent out another email tearing my work to shreds. At that point I felt I couldn’t stay quiet and sent out an email. The first paragraph was carefully worded and I logically defended why my work wasn’t garbage. The second paragraph was one sentence: “However, if you feel that the time I put into this research wasn’t well spent, please feel free to do your own research.”

I hit send and a minute later, I hear her storm out of her office, say to the boss, “I need to speak to you” and slam his door shut. After talking with him she banged the door open and stomped out the front door. The boss then came to me and asked me to apologize to M. I refused – although my email was a little sarcastic, I hadn’t said anything truly offensive and I was trying to defend myself from what felt was an undue attack. I thought I was going to be fired the next day, since I had previous strikes against me. But a few days went by and nothing happened, so I thought I was in the clear. That Friday, the boss came and asked for a favor. We had a school group coming in on Monday and he wanted me to take charge. This was usually his and M’s responsibility, but M was “very religious” and insisted on taking that day off since it was the day after Easter. He, meanwhile, had tickets to our city’s opening day baseball game. I thought that doing this favor would get me back into his graces so I said yes.

Now normally when we have a school group we have volunteers so that one person doesn’t get overwhelmed by 50 urban schoolchildren. We looked at the department calendar but found no volunteers scheduled. The boss called M, who had forgotten to schedule any volunteers. So I showed up on Monday and spent 3 ½ hours by myself with 50 first graders. Then I showed up on Tuesday and got fired. During the speech I got from the boss, I figured out that they wanted to fire me earlier, but decided to wait until I could cover their asses on the day they both wanted off.