Bewitchered

I couldn’t take it anymore.  And Tuesday was the day I would end it.

Two-hour workweeks in a dismal, gray, cubed, cold, smelly, narrow-minded technical hairy male environment.  Tiny gray cold, snowy, town without stoplights.  Failing, foolish, tragically ethically foul company.

I hatched quite a scheme to escape this special breed of career-stunting hell.  There was little work, and the work I had I created myself because my then-manager had no business managing a bowl of Cheerios, much less a woman with almost a full ounce of intelligence.  And he hated me, as did most of the group.  I was too pushy, too wanting, too motivated.  I cared too much about the success of the business and not enough about the success of the other individuals in the group.

I scheduled a meeting with the VP who had promised great things a few months before.  He even brought in an expert to figure out how fucked up the organization was.  But, as with most things in that environment, the results of that report were trapped under mountains upon glaciers upon fossils of problems the size of a microscopic virus.

My demands would be this.  I was hitting the road and getting a nice severance package since I’m not doing anything anyhow.  It makes good business sense for you to let me go now.  I had nothing to lose.  If I stayed, I’d rot.  Worst case, I leave without severance.  Either way, I was hitting the road.

It was a sound plan.  Odds were in my favor at that particular crap table.

But, sigh.  Monday.  Before my Tuesday meeting.  That other VP showed up. Joe, who I’d done all that work for.  Who I’d sucked up to like a bucket of leeches hoping that he’d rescue me from that prison. I had pounced on him the second he was hired and worked more for him than I did my original boss, becoming indispensible on purpose. 

I asked for a meeting with my parasitic host, Joe, and told him my plan.  I didn’t want to leave him in a lurch.

“Don’t do it.”  He croaked. Desperate-like.  I watched his face.  His pointy, shiny nose.  His perfect hair.

“I can’t take it anymore.”  I felt bad.  He’d been good to me, singing my praises.  Appreciative.  “If I don’t leave this place, I’ll kill myself.”  I was fully prepared to do the unthinkable.  Move back to civilization living like a pauper until I found work.  If I didn’t before my savings ran out, I’d move in with my parents.  I’d even picked out a storage unit.

“What could I do to make you stay?”  The sky was the limit, my wish list surpassing the next galaxy.

“Well…”  I asked for a job, directly under him.  With these specific responsibilities.  With a higher title.  An elevated salary.  Full relocation.  In preparing to sit on his red felt lap, I knew he would look better with another direct report, making this scheme somewhat appealing to him as well.

It was ridiculous, of course.  I hadn’t been doing any work for the last three months.  The company was failing.  Only three people out of 100 wannabes had been relocated to the new home office.

“Let me see what I can do.”  I cancelled my meeting with my original VP.

A month later, I was gone.  With my new title, boss, responsibilities, salary, and home.  I’d gotten everything I wanted.  And more.

I still have no idea how this happened.