Just LIVID

I know, I know...you thought, since I was pressured out of my old job--fired, really--that you'd seen the last of my rants about it.

Well, I ran into my other driver today...the other driver from my old job.  We had a chance to talk for a few minutes.

Some of what she told me warmed my heart in a sad way.  My old boss, in my absence, is apparently having to work his tail end off for the first time in years.  Understand: he CLAIMED to be working his rear off for eighty hours a week for a long time, but we knew he falsified time sheets (seen it at least twice with my own eyes, folks, I am NOT making this up!) and God knows we never saw him break a sweat.  So, on the one hand, I was kind of glad to hear that he was having to actually DO SOMETHING.

When I heard that he was having the audacity to rhymes-with-witch about the difficulties involved in doing my old job, that kind of teed me off.

Don't like having to hand carry several cases of nutritional supplement up rickety stairs and around a corner?   Poor baby.  I had to do it every month, and I don't recall you having any sympathy for ME.

I guess it's been more than a month since I was forced to resign.  I mean, I complete my fourth week at my new job (which is going pretty well, thank you) tomorrow, and I was off almost a week before that, so I guess it's been more than a month...

At any rate, they haven't yet hired a replacement.  Oh, they've TRIED.  But apparently the only guy they actually hired spent all morning trying to find a place and time they'd let him dip snuff, looking for breaks, and then just left the premises.

I TOLD them they didn't offer enough starting pay to attract anyone good.  My other driver would never--I mean that, literally, would NEVER--have taken the job had they told her up front what she'd be making.

No paid holidays.  No benefits to speak of.  Crappy starting pay.  Oh, you may eventually REPLACE me, but if you think for an instant that you're going to get someone who can operate for hours, or even days, largely without supervision, relate to clients, handle paperwork, regulations, tools, installations, maintenance, repairs, navigation, and consulting for the pay YOU'RE offering to start...well, good luck with that.

So there's a twisted sense of satisfaction in that.

But I was also told that he'd talked to the 69-year-old now-retired co-worker--you know, the one his best friend's ex-meth-head wife, whom he had hired, had actually physically shaken in a fit of anger?--and told her that I'd been forced to resign because he "just couldn't take it anymore." Presumably he was referring to what he referred to as my "bad attitude," or the fact that I had confronted him with his misdeeds and misjudgments more and more often.

All I could think was, "What in the **** is he doing telling her something like that?"  Leaving aside the fact that she had caught him in lie after lie over the years and KNEW he was full of squeeze, what was he thinking?

This is the man who'd lied repeatedly, had hired a girlfriend, then the same lady as an EX-girlfriend in order to line HIS pockets, who hired the ex(?)-meth-head because of his personal relationship with her and her husband for a job directly under his supervision, who'd fired a perfectly innocent employee because the ex-meth-head couldn't stand her, who'd lied about clients complaining about me, who'd falsified mileage logs to line his own pockets, who'd falsified time sheets to make himself look good, and more other stuff than I care to take the time to re-write here, who had, in short, gone a long way to making life MISERABLE at work for me and several others, who had made us "TAKE IT" for years?

All *I* did was tell him directly that some of what was going wrong was HIS FAULT--and, finally, under provocation, tell him to his face that he was bughouse crazy and acting like an ex-cokehead.  Admittedly, not the smoothest move in terms of job retention, but the man had just come this close to accusing me of having an affair with a co-worker--a co-worker whom HE'D driven to distraction through his behavior over the years.

And he just couldn't "take it."  ****'s Bells, he'd PROVOKED IT.  I think deliberately.  I think he was looking to provoke me into something that he could take to his boss that would get me canned--and he got it.

The other thing I was told that just had me LIVID was this: It seems my other driver had told our--her current, my former--boss's boss that she was "done."  What did she mean?  She meant she was "done."

If you don't know what that means, it means you are on the verge of walking out.

SO WHAT DOES MY OLD BOSS'S BOSS DO?

She goes to my former boss and tells him TO LEAVE MY OTHER DRIVER ALONE, that she is to be allowed to do what she thinks she needs to do the way she thinks she needs to do it!

Now, obviously, I have no objection to THAT.

But note: if I go to my boss's boss and say, more or less, that I am about to quit, and my boss's boss goes to my boss and tells him to leave me alone, does that not say loud and clear that she knows **** well who the problem is?

Let me put it bluntly: that means that my boss's boss--and probably her superiors--KNEW my boss was causing problems and forced me to resign anyway!

Not HIM.

ME.

WHY?

You're going to say, "Because you called him bughouse crazy, MOTW," and yeah...I did that.  After years of repeated  provocation and maltreatment and outright lies.  But I don't think that's why they kept him and got rid of me without ever hearing my side of the story (there were no witnesses, after all--only God knows what he told them).

I think they did THAT  because, as my boss's boss emphasized in the meeting that took place the day they got rid of me, our section, our division, of the company was the only one making a decent profit.  I think they--God knows why, it sure as thunder wasn't HIS brilliance--thought that their profits were at risk if they got rid of him, even though they KNEW he was causing personnel problems and had every reason in the world to suspect him of outright corruption.

I think the dollars mattered more than their integrity, and I say this about an ostensibly Christian organization.

I know it sounds bitter.  But that's what I think.  And I doubt seriously I ever trust anyone in that particular Christian organization ever again.  Their word stinks, as far as I'm concerned.