You Can't Fire Me, I Quit

We had an interesting occurrence today at TheCompanyIWorkFor. We had someone quit.

I was going to be vague in the details, but I figured since I was actually brought into the proceedings I had as much right as anyone to tell whatever parts of the story I wanted told. And so I'm going to.

The person we lost was Kath. Kath was our fourth person, our "revolving door" person, called that because there are the stalwart three of us who've been there forever, and we keep hiring that fourth person that doesn't seem to work out.

The thing is, Kath worked at first. She was efficient, did what was asked of her, and, as a bonus, was a lot of fun to be around. It just didn't stay that way.

See, besides working at the old TheCompanyIWorkFor, she also ran a family business with her husband and some others. And she began doing that business in our offices. And it began taking over. And I won't go into those details, mainly because it would take too long and it might bore you anyway, but it finally got to the point where I told the boss K needed to hand about half her paycheck back over to repay bosswoman for the use of office space, telephone, copier, fax, and time in connection with Family Business.

She'd been warned about this and it subsided for a bit, but only a bit. Then one day last week we had a very ugly episode in the office. One of her workers visited Kath in the office, there was an argument, and things got ugly. Very ugly. There was yelling, threats of calling the police, and me - me, who not only hates all conflict but has the office adjoining Kath's - I was sitting there, hands over my face, saying quite out loud and to no one in particular, "Oh, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, please make this stop. Please shut up. Oh, my God, please make this stop." Luckily there were no other clients in the office at the time, so we lowly TheCompanyIWorkFor people were the only ones to have to experience it.

This was, for boss, the last straw. She had me type up a letter (by this time Kath had whisked herself away for her second vacation this year) to have on Kath's desk when she returned today. In it was stated that from hence till the end of time, no Family Business could be conducted on TheCompanyIWorkFor property. None. It mentioned nothing about personal phone calls (of which there were many, as K came with her own 10-piece set of baggage), or time spent doing anything else non-work related - it pertained only to the second business. At the bottom of the letter was a place for Kath to sign saying she understood this and would comply with it.

She wouldn't sign it. And so she quit.

And I felt really bad about it all. For about 20 minutes. Then I felt really angry. And I guess that's why I'm writing about it tonight.

The first thing that started that "bad feeling" going away was the fact that Kath suddenly decided that she wasn't speaking to me anymore. I made several attempts, even trying as I'd go past her desk on the way to other places. She put her head down and remained silent. Then - then! - in a stunning move of cowardice, she picked the moment when I went to the bathroom to leave. Not a so long, nice to have known you, you suck you fat bastard, nothing. And that hurt. Because I thought that no matter what problems she and the boss had, we'd always gotten along well and at least a nice "see ya round" was in order.

Then when she was gone I found out some things that transpired in that "I quit" meeting and I realized that maybe ol' Kath didn't like me as well as I thought she did. Or maybe she was just using me in her defense, I don't know.

First of all, when confronted with her wrongdoings (which remember, only concerned Family Business), her first line of defense was apparently that I'm late to work on a regular basis with no penalties levied. Then she went on to mention that our workmate San took her fair share of personal phone calls. And she even went so far as to accuse me of being favored over her because for four Fridays in October, I leave work an hour early to make it to Oktoberfest. This from a woman who's missed work, left early, and come in late for reasons such as going to court, kids' graduations, kids' dentist's appointments, football games, basketball games, snow, bad roads, meetings with teachers, truant officers, lawyers, etc etc till you want to puke. "It's not fair," she said. "And it'll never change."

Then Kath seemed to have a problem that I made more than she did. Never mind that she'd been with us about 3 years and I've been at TheCompanyIWorkFor longer than half her life. Never mind that it shouldn't matter to her what the hell I make, it's none of her concern. And you know, if she was that upset over it all she could have told me and I could have easily explained to her (as the boss did in that meeting today) that when my contract was drawn up I had two choices of how I was paid. I picked one, and that's my pay contract. It's different than hers. I'm salaried, because I'm mainly managerial; she was commissioned because she was hired for sales. Had she been working for TheCompanyIWorkFor and not Family Business all day long, her paycheck could have easily been double mine. She didn't want to hear it, though.

And you know, I think I know why she never came to me with her problem over this, besides the fact that for all she shows, she must be filled with entirely false bravado. Because if she'd have come to me with this problem, she'd have had to explain... how in the fuck she knows what I make in the first place! I've never told her, nor has boss, so she's either sneaked a peek at my paycheck or into boss's checkbook, which is accessible if one knows where to look.

And finally, she leveled the bomb that made me lose all respect or friendship for her. In the form of a blatant lie. While casting accusations on everyone around her, she saw fit to inform the boss that I blogged from work. Which may I say to that: I have no qualms whatsoever (and I freely admit it in the office) that I've done my share of work loafing. We all have. I've paid my bills at my desk, I've ordered clarinet reeds over the phone, I've looked at enough websites to fill the internet, I've snacked, I've read the occasional magazine. During downtime. But there are two work taboos I have. I won't go to Ebay and I won't blog. And it's probably out of fear more than anything, I feel somehow that doing either of those things could alert the TheCompanyIWorkFor weasels where I might be on their computers, thus getting my ass in some hot water with them. But I don't do it, she knows I don't do it, and it pissed me off that she'd use it against me in some sort of effort to take her coworkers down with her as she fell.

Anyway, she's gone. She didn't even try to explain herself, or say, yes, Family Business takes up a lot of my time, but let's work out a way to manage it. I'll try part-time work, or learn to delegate responsibilities of Family Business better. Boss would have been willing to listen to anything she had to say, but grew tired when all it turned out to be was attempts to drive knives into the workers who were left. She was gone by about 10am, or precisely the time the first drop of pee left my body when I went to the bathroom. And who knows, maybe I'll see her again one day, in a store, or restaurant, and maybe we'll say hi to each other and maybe we won't.

And maybe I'll get up the nerve to ask her all the questions I have about this day. How she was so knowledgeable about my paycheck. If she really had all that resentment towards me the times we worked together, the times we were helping each other do stuff, when we were laughing and talking about our lives. Did she really always think of me as some Dick Cheney, some evil minion to the boss who got away with more than she did and laughed evilly about it when I was back home in the evenings. Or did she just try to use me as a scapegoat because she was going down for the third time there in boss's office this morning and didn't have anything else to grab onto.

Maybe I'll get up the nerve. But I doubt it. I'll probably just put a menu up in front of my face.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* And if all that weren't enough, I got home tonight only to find an email telling me that my special buddy from Community Band, J, is facing some pretty serious health problems. I'm upset and sad, and everyone please keep a good thought for J. She's a special person.