I used to work for a landscape architecture firm as an intern. One time my boss came over to ask me a question and while doing so he took some Vaseline out and rubbed it in his nose. It was weird and gross. At this office we had one AOL email account (shared by the five person staff) that we used as the main business email. Apparently my boss would also use that account during and after business hours to chat on AIM with chicks. In the mornings the project manager would find random emails from chicks telling my boss how much they enjoyed chatting with him and some even sent inappropriate pictures. Finally, we convinced him to get a more functional business email account so that each of us had our own separate email, but I have to admit that reading some of those emails was very funny.
I had been working my ass of on a pitch with our sales team (I was in marketing) for Target. My boss decided very early on that she didn’t like me, but I knew my work was good. The meeting at Target went famously and they indicated that they planned to buy a bunch of the new product ideas and the buy would increase +20% over the previous year. When I got back, excited to tell my boss the good news and hoping it would help her at least start to like me, I gave the report. Her response?
“That sounds too good to be true, the buyer must have just thought you were cute.” I didn’t have enough sense to process that and take it right to HR, but later realized how fucked up it was.
She had a kid and would talk about how slow he was to read and how other people’s kids were smarter and complained when her husband wasn’t going to be home at night because then she would have to “babysit.” One day when her entire team was in her office she tells us she’s pregnant. We remark that so many women in the department are all pregnant at the same time and she said, “Well, the job market is bad and no one is getting promoted, so I decided to say “fuck you” to the company and just take advantage of the benefits and time off.” Sounds like a good reason to bring a kid into the world if you ask me. Apparently she now has three kids. At least they have each other.
She would always make sure that I didn’t succeed and I let it get to me. She would give me an assignment, I would bring back results. She would then tell me A was all wrong and I should do B. I would then go in with B and she would tell I was incompetent and ask me to do C and so on. I finally realized that she was sabotaging so I sent out my resume, had one kick-ass interview, got an offer and told that bitch good-bye.
I was a Production Assistant on movies in my early 20s. I was so excited to enter a career in film and was ready for anything. During this time I was asked to do everything from removing stickers from fruit to scoring cocaine for the producer in charge. On one particular afternoon I thought I was going to get fired for sure when I mistakingly served a beef hamburger rather than a veggie patty to a lifelong vegetarian who worked on the film. I was mortified, but honestly had no idea what I was doing as I was here to learn about film rather than work in food service. Working between 12 and 18 hours a day and being under so much pressure and stress, I would make errors here and there and was constantly getting yelled at. One low budget movie in particular was funded by the Mob. The Executive Producer was a roided out guy named Vinnie with a 30-inch neck. I was terrified not only for my job, but for my life. After being threatened to be beat up by a B-list actor I decided this was just not worth it and I got out of movies once and for all.
