Years ago, I was secretary to one of the co-owners of a company in PA. She was great to work for and she was pleased with my work. We had a wonderful working relationship based on mutual respect.
I was friends with everyone there, except for the office manager, a feisty short-statured woman everyone secretly referred to as ‘The Dragon Lady’. No matter what I did, how well I did it, or how late I stayed to help when the need arose, I could not please the woman. She didn’t seem to like me even though she hired me for the position.
I wasn’t raised to treat like with like, although it was hard not to. I tried my best to be civil, since I had to work with her. I wasn’t the only one who noticed her attitude. My friends often asked how I could stay so upbeat in the face of her daily wrath.
They suggested that (in a manner of speaking) she had been testing me, waiting for me to fail at something —not to fire me. They said feeling superior seemed to be what she needed and I wasn’t giving her that. That sounded ludicrous, so I continued to do whatever was required of me.
I had been there almost a year, when we had a terrible overnight snowstorm. I lived in Punxsutawney, with a twenty-mile commute to and from work. It was full of hills and curves, so I left my apartment early with the storm in mind.
As I went out my front door, I slipped on a sheet of ice hidden under the new snow on the concrete stoop outside my door. My legs went in the air, lunch bag and purse went flying, and I came down hard on the third step down. As I landed, both elbows slammed down on the step behind me.
At first, I couldn’t move at all. The pain was excruciating. My tailbone hurt like hell as did both shoulders. It was a while before I could pull myself together enough to stand and go down the rest of the steps to dig my purse and lunch from a snowdrift.
It was still snowing hard and I was covered by the time I shoveled my car out and got in it. I was grateful I was able to get behind a snow plow with a salt/sand spreader on the back and I followed it the whole twenty miles to work.
In a lot of pain, I went inside, took off my coat and hung it up. When I turned around, there stood Dragon Lady. She immediately pointed out I was ten minutes late —without asking why. When I look back, I chalk up what happened next to the horrible, crappy day I already had and being in a world of pain. The top of my head blew off revealing a year’s worth of anger.
Looking her in the eye, I painfully put my coat back on, gathered my personal belongings from my desk, and turned to go back out the door.
“Where do you think you’re going? YOU CAN’T LEAVE!”
“Oh REAL-LY? Watch me, BITCH!”
Then as I slowly made my way out the door, I turned to my friends and said, “I’ll miss you. Watch your backs. ‘Dragon Lady’ will be looking for a new patsy.”
From work, I headed straight to the Emergency Room of the hospital a few blocks away. Later, I left for home knowing I had torn both shoulder rotator cuffs and cracked my tailbone.
For the next several weeks, I was a hurting puppy … but I welcomed my new sense of calm, too.
At about 5:00 a.m., as coffee was brewing, I peered throgh a window, into the new snow that was falling. Then I opened your post and marveled at the synchronicity of snow.
Over the years I have left several jobs, one because the owner spoke to me in a haughty manner, another two because I felt taken advantage of. I suppose my life has been a reflection of that american restlessness, the wandering spirit which moves us from uncertainty to discontent.
I am fortunate, however, that in the snows of Winter I have mostly found purification and hope for the future. I think this has been paralleled in the mutability of my work circumstances. In retrospect I can honestly say that each job change, even the most precipitous, has been for the better.