Recuperating from the Boss From Hell

I worked for the Boss From Hell for Two Years and Eleven Months.  I walked off the job two weeks before pay day.

I knew the Boss From Hell, we had gone to school together.  I didn’t expect his treatment.   I had never met a Boss From Hell, so became fascinated and began writing about it.

I was luckier than most people.

Put it like this; there is a difference between a volcanologist … a person who studies volcanoes,  who is there to map the explosions, the damage, take readings, and the poor people who hear the explosion and panic.

I was a volcanologist.

Seeing his behaviour that first ‘eruption’, hear him spew his ‘lava’, seeing how it was more important to him to explode than to have the work done,   I began to ‘study’ him.

While I studied him I noticed the effect he was having on me, and was capable to separating his opinions from reality.

Even though I knew what I was seeing, even though I could physically write down the events, I noticed its effect on me and appreciated that those who worked with him, for any period of time, would be damaged.

Amazingly, I found that outside of his secretary, who was virtually certifiable insane, no one spent much time except his sons.

One of them was a complete disaster.  A ‘baby’ deep in his forties who lived no where, (Daddy put him to live in the office), had nothing, (except an old bicycle) and was repulsive, and another who was nearly as old but the son of his current wife, so lived in Daddy’s house, ate Daddy’s food and was driven to and from work in Daddy’s car.

Outsiders, as myself, didn’t last six months.

I stayed longer because having developed strategies to deal with him I was not as oppressed and overworked as I made out, and tended to take him for comedy.

Despite this, when I walked out there was still a kind of ‘trapped’ sense, a kind of ‘uncertainty’ in my nature that had not existed before.

I realised that if one works for a Boss From Hell, they will need a time of self-rebuilding to function.

Leaving the Boss From Hell for another such person is to be avoided at all cost.   Better to take a lower paying job where one has some respect then re-experience the torture.

Working from home for a time might be excellent rehabilitation, or taking a part time job.   Anything to give your spirit a time to heal.

I was fortunate in that I was more aware of his psychopathy than anything else.

I recall towards the end he had called me into his office to attack me for whatever.   I say whatever because in my mind I was creating a sauce for my dinner and really didn’t hear a word he said.    At one point, when I thought of a few drops of honey, I looked up and met his eyes, and he paused.

I had looked up in that ‘Eureka!’ moment because a few drops of honey would be the ‘secret’ ingredient to make the sauce especially delicious.   Finding myself in his office, realising that he had called me to berate me, I made my exuberant face seem pained, and looked down.

I have no idea what he was saying, he could have spoken Klingon for all I know.

I glanced at the clock on his desk and thought; “thirty seven minutes to leaving…”   a little later I glanced again and it was “thirty four minutes to freedom”  when he sent me to my desk to do whatever.

I went to my desk, answered a few personal emails,  erased my browsing history, went to a document I was doing, put a few touches on it, and with twenty minutes to escape, began closing down, ran a malware, packed and was out of the office.

I realised, on my way home that I had so totally mastered the use of a Boss From Hell I had nothing further to gain from continued exposure.

When I left I began a new job the following week and it took time to adopt to the fact I had no ‘arrival’ or ‘departure’ time.  I didn’t have to be at the office bang on 8:30 and escape wasn’t until 4:30.

It took time to adjust to being in charge of my time.  And I was lucky.

But it takes time to excrete the Boss From Hell out of one’s system.