A little story about a place I used to work

But first, a tangent.

Yesterday I got something in the mail for DH's student loan, claiming that his monthly payment was suddenly going up by about 250%--to over $1,100. A month. I freaked right the f*#%! out.

A couple of phone calls later, we worked it out. The monthly payment is still going up, but only by about $100.

But it still put the fear of God into me. Yes, we are working actively to pay off all our debt (so that things like that don't happen). We're not there yet, though. I was hoping to take a three-day weekend in a couple of weeks and go into NYC to see my friends. Now I wonder if we shouldn't stay home and knuckle under, give that money to the debt-repayment cause instead.

The good news is that I sat down and did the math. On our current payment schedule, not including any potential raises or bonuses, we can have all the credit card and private student loan debt paid off in two years. That sounds like a long time, until you realize we'll have paid off about $68,000 worth of debt in those two years.

After that, we'll just have the two car loans (currently at 0%) and the two big student loans ($70K and $80K, respectively)--but then we'll be able to pay all of that off in another two years. Gotta love the debt snowball.

Fingers crossed there are no major setbacks between now and then.

Anyway, so money's been on the brain more than usual. I've switched to a cash payment system for gas, since gas prices are so high, and I've quit running out at lunch for errands (savings on both random spending, like milk and trips to the Salvation Army, and in gas). I've also been putting in pretty regular overtime at my job, which helps a lot.

Which brings me to where I started. I like my current workplace. It's not the job I really want, and once we get to a point where we can live on one salary, I'll happily leave it. But as sustenance jobs go, it's not bad at all. The money is good, my boss is nice to me, and they give me a lot of responsibility and autonomy. I've worked at plenty of places where I didn't get any of the above three, for less money. Plus, there's pretty regular overtime, which I actually don't mind, since the place doesn't suck my will to live.

I was emailing with my friend T earlier, discussing plans for the (maybe) upcoming trip to NYC. She and I used to work at the Workplace From Hell--the one I got laid off from in February '09, the one that sparked the roadtrip. Remember that? Anyway, she worked there for several months after I got laid off, until she got fed up and quit. And she didn't just quit--she just never showed up one morning. She went in over the weekend, cleared out her desk, and left her keys and badge on the office manager's chair, without so much as a goodbye note. Her boss was livid. It was awesome.

She's been my source of gossip about that place ever since, and let me tell you, there's been some good gossip. She told me today that my former boss just either left or was hustled out. (Schadenfreude city!) I could regale you with work horror stories from that place for days, but I'll confine it to two:

1. The Office Christmas Party. Wherein one of the partners (not my immediate superior) grabbed my ass. Intentionally, and in front of people. It started with a conversation at the party itself. The conversation was pretty innocent, but he was standing weirdly close to me, and ended it with, "But look at you now! Successful, and gorgeous!" A compliment at face value, but I'm sure he was hard-pressed to remember my name. Fine, whatever. I chalked it up to alcohol and steered clear of him for the rest of the party.

Until it came time for the after-party, when a bunch of people decamped to a bar in Midtown. I was standing in a big circle, talking to several people. He was one person over from me. Without any warning, without me even acknowledging his existence, he reached around the person between us and grabbed my ass. Hard.

I looked over at him, dumbfounded, and he was talking to the person on his other side, pretending that had not just happened.

I left immediately.

Doesn't sound like much of a story, until you realize: he had a long history of this sort of behavior, which the other partners either flatly ignored or tacitly encouraged. Secretaries were constantly complaining, and nothing had ever been done. After the layoffs, after a disastrous reorganization, I guess someone lit a potential-sexual-harassment-lawsuit fire under the office manager, and he was actually fired.

For two weeks.

The partners protested so loudly, he was rehired. At his former salary and title.

He picked right up where he left off. So much for dealing with the sexual harassment.

2. The Phone Call. As you may have guessed from the above story, the partners were almost all male. The secretaries and office managers were almost all female. When I was hired, I was told in no uncertain terms that as a secretary in that firm, I could never be anything else. I would never be promoted out of the ranks of secretary to any other department or title.

I didn't care because it was a day job. I did my freelancing on the side, at night, and used that job as a paycheck. I wasn't interested in any other position, so I didn't take umbrage.

What this meant, though, was that the partners formed a boys' club. There was breathtakingly bad behavior on a regular basis. I don't mean the "treat the secretaries as peons" sort of behavior, though there was plenty of that, too. There was yelling. Throwing things. Actual temper tantrums. Underhanded politicking. Misappropriation of funds. Open and obvious sexual harrasment. A lot of passive-aggressive stuff like forcing existing meetings out of one particular conference room because "I have more powerful clients than you do, I can only meet them in the good conference room." Overtly aggressive stuff like bragging about "bagging some broad on the train from London to Paris"--in front of your secretary, who just ordered birthday flowers for your wife. Because there was such a clear line drawn between "partners" and "everyone else," the partners got carte blanche to act like two-year-olds.

During my first month or two on the job, I neglected to set up a conference call for a meeting. I was busy, there were several things going on, and I just forgot. Ooops.

Now, a normal person would have done one of two things: either dialed into the conference call himself (like an adult), or calmly walked out of the conference room to my desk and said, "We're ready for the meeting to start. Could you dial us in now?"

Instead, my boss waited ten minutes, then flew out of there in a red-faced frothing rage and SCREAMED at me. For five solid minutes. I don't remember exactly what he said, but the jist of it was that I was retarded pond scum and that if that ever happened again, he would make sure that I was homeless by the end of the day. And he did it at my desk, which meant he was shaming me in front of the entire office. I wanted to curl up like a potato bug and die.

When he was done unloading, he turned around, went back into the conference room, and dialed himself in.

Why couldn't he have done that himself, ten minutes ago, you ask? Without screaming at me? Because then he wouldn't have had an opportunity to publicly belittle his underling, thereby cementing his (imaginary) seat of power. Oh, and because he was an asshole.

Let us contrast that to today's workplace. Here, I'm in charge of several projects. I have a laptop, and a cellphone, and a corporate AmEx card. My boss dials himself into conference calls. I'm allowed to work from home on snow days. No one yells. No one throws things, or grabs my ass, or gets off on humiliating the support staff. No one micromanages how much I spend on office supplies, or what font I use in spreadsheets, or what food I order for meetings. In short, everyone acts like adults. With manners.

Now, is it any surprise, then, that here I willingly put in overtime, that here I'm much more invested in my boss's happiness and well-being? Any surprise that the other place is going down in mismanaged flames?

You catch more flies with manners than with yelling.

CORRECTION: Apparently some of the gossip was incorrect! That guy from the first story was NOT actually rehired. From another former comrade-in-arms: "There was talk of it [rehiring] until he 1) verbally attacked the secretary who brought charges against him in her new workplace (a client of the firm's) and 2) threw several partners trying to help him out totally under the bus in an attempt to justify his grotesque behavior."

Still a jerk, though.