Many of you who know me have heard me talk about my old job. This is the same job I affectionately refer to as the job from h*ll.
I worked for a manager who I could never please. He was an older man, who had worked for the same organization for 15 years (and he didn’t let you forget it).
Things started to go downhill when he found me reading a Time magazine at my desk. I truly didn’t have anything to do at the job and was too apprehensive about it to ask him for something to do. I figured I would be given some type of meaningless activity. Sure enough, many times I was given meaningless activities, nothing of which challenged me. Entire afternoons were spent shreading documents. An hour was spent on the phone calling area Office Maxes just to find just the right type of sticker to go on nametags.
Then there was the time my manager lost a piece of paper in his office and accused me of taking it or knowing who took it. Since I sat right outside of his office, it was obvious that I should act as his doorman and report any person who comes into his office to take sheets of paper. So per his direction I had to go around and ask coworkers if they had seen his paper. After about an hour of him going absolutely nuts over it, he finally called some coworkers into his office to try to sort things out. Instead he found that he had just misplaced the paper, logging it in twice. It was a mistake on his part. I asked him about it that same day. He explained how it was misplaced but didn’t offer any type of apology for me.
In June I had seen his name disappear on the organization’s webpage. I figured one of three things had happened. He retired, was fired, or left on his own. Then just this week I Googled his name and found an obituary on him. I scoured the organization’s webpage and could not find any reference to his death. Curiousity got the best of me and I inquired about it from a worker who I knew from there.
He filled a backpack full of rocks and walked into the spillway at Radnor Lake. He left specific instructions for his secretary to give a note to the HR rep at a certain time. The staff, always trying to follow his exact direction, did exactly what he said they should do. By the time they got the news, it was too late. It was just time to recover his body.
Obviously he was a very unhappy person and make others around him unhappy. Perfectionist. Control freak. Even up until the very end he wanted control.
Coworkers were left shocked. Some grieved. Many were (and still are) very angry. Why didn’t someone do something about him? Why did it take something like this for people to pay attention? It happens all the time. A control freak gets in some type of power at an organization. Those people who are the head of the organization seem ignorant or unwilling to keep this person at bay. And then it comes to this.
So now I know that it wasn’t me who was crazy. I’m really not trying to make light of a bad situation. How ironic it was that this person worked with doctors all day as part of the organization’s purpose. Yet it was he himself who was in need of a doctor.
If anything hearing the news brings closure for me. I think if I hadn’t gone through that crucible, I would not be the homeowner I am today.
I wish I were making this stuff up. You can’t write a stranger experience.