Pregnant

I work for a total douchebag. When I was pregnant two years ago I was
sick as a dog. Despite near constant puking, I managed to keep up with
my workload by staying late whenever possible. My boss wasn’t real
happy with the idea of me being pregnant because he assumed that it
would mean I would use the pregnancy, and later the baby, as an excuse
to miss a lot of work. Now, mind you, in the five years I had worked
there I had only taken 3 days off, so it wasn’t like I had a habit of
calling in sick all the time. We were in the middle of a big project
and I was having irregular contractions. Earlier that day I had my 39
week check-up and the doctor was ready to put me on bed-rest due to my
blood pressure being so high. I begged him not to put me on bed rest
and he agreed, provided that I come back in two days to have my blood
pressure re-checked. So anyhow, I tried to ignore the contractions,
thinking it was false labor, but they got strong enough that I was no
longer able to talk through them. My boss accused me of being a drama queen,
even though I was trying my best not to draw attention to myself.
Suddenly my water broke. My boss looked at me, disgusted, walked out
of the room and came back in with some Resolve carpet cleaner and a
wet rag. “I suppose you aren’t going to help me finish things off
here, but you could at least clean up the floor before you leave,” he
said to me. I was gobsmacked, but I had the presence of mind to tell
him as I went out the door that I would not be back, ever.

No Running

My boss is the worst kind of overprotective parent. When his kid was
born he would call his wife every 10 minutes to make sure she was
turning him so his head didn’t get lumpy. He got rid of his three cats
for fear that they would “steal the baby’s breath” and cause SIDS. He
puts a motorcycle helmet on the child when he is in the car. He only
allows him to eat fruits, vegetables, and small amounts of meat (no
bread, crackers, or God forbid anything that might be construed as a
sweet) because he is so afraid of childhood obesity and diabetes. He
had banned peanut butter from the lunches of all the employees just in
case his kid has a peanut allergy, which I could understand if he
brought the kid with him to work daily, but he’s only come to the
office about 4 times in his five years of life. I’ve heard him say
that they don’t watch any sports at all for fear that the kid might
want to play and be injured. I overheard him on the phone with the kid
one day explaining the dangers of running. RUNNING! For crying out
loud, this kid is going to rebel and rebel hard before he hits junior
high.

…And Twins!

After some personal upheaval in my life I decided to start from
scratch. Kind of like I had an early mid-life crisis. I quit my job
and moved to a new town across the country. I found work at a small,
family-owned gift shop. The boss came in my first day and at first was
really nice. She was showing me around the place and left me to stock
a shelf with some new knick-knacks. A few minutes later she came back
and it was like she had done a 360 turn–she demanded to know what I
was doing, why I was doing it, and why there was a broken music box in
the stuff I was unpacking (I hadn’t even seen that it was broken yet).
I was dumbfounded. She led me over to the register, angrily showed me
how to use it, asked me if I was too stupid to make change for the
customers, and stormed off. I was a little puzzled as to what to do,
and there were no customers in the store at the time. I stood there
for a few minutes absolutely dumbfounded, and she came back. I started
to apologize for the music box and, in a sing-song voice, she told me
not to worry and that I should relax. This odd bipolar behavior
continued for my entire shift. I ended up in a bar afterwards, trying
to decide whether I would be able to make this job work. I started
talking with the bartender, and it turns out this gift shop is run by
identical twins who like to fuck with people by pretending they are
the same person and playing “good cop, bad cop” with anyone they can.
The bartender offered me a job and, with tips, it ended up being about
$3/hr more than the job at the psycho gift shop. Every once in a while
I see my ex co-workers in the bar, musing about how the business is
going downhill. I hope they go out of business.

The Food Truck: Part Deux

Today is a great day! My lecherous, racist, homophobe boss got fired 2
days ago. He was the taco truck story. The HR director for Texas came
to the office 2 days ago to investigate the numerous allegations of
sexual harassment and racism.

HR director and Rick sat down together for a “chat”. Rick lasted 10
minutes into the conversation before calling him a butt pirate. Rick
marched back to his office complaining about being trapped in a room
with a homo, afraid he might get raped in HR.

He got on his phone and called his brother in law who is a vice
president. Apparently the HR director had already visited him. HR
advised him that the continued actions of keeping Rick on the payroll
and promoting and transferring anyone that Rick harassed was having a
negative impact on the staff. The vice president was given a choice
either he leaves or Rick leaves.

Rick was escorted out the front door and told that his stuff would be
mailed to him. We were dancing around our desks as Rick was being
escorted out