Why I Left My Old Job (The end)

A Dysfunctional Company

The end…

During the time I was manager, there was one key figure that I felt gave me no problems. She was, as a matter of fact, a tremendous support to me and very smart. I realized, sheepishly, that she should have probably been manager, not me, and I encouraged her to try for that job. I assured her that I would be able to work for her easily and would support her in any way I could. About a year or so later she was promoted to the position of manager.

Problems arose, however, some time before her promotion. The woman… we’ll call her Helen… was a serious alcoholic. Oddly enough, my best friend was her roommate and would regale me with tales of how she’d pass out on the floor and stagger through the house, etc. As she became more and more entrenched with A1 politics, she became more and more recessive from my best friend (and me), and began to spend long nights on the phone with the manager from another department (we’ll call him Tom).

From what I could access, Tom and Helen would spend hours discussing plans for their future at A1. They would tell disparaging tales about all of us working for them and plot as to how they would rid the company of certain ones. This knot of dysfunction drove them closer and closer until they found themselves in a heavy sexual/romantic involvement.

At first they tried to keep it secret. But my best friend had little anecdotes about their being together (like Tom hiding in the closet so that my friend wouldn’t realize they were seeing each other, etc). Anyway the news, of course, got out and everybody whispered about this odd couple.

One of the reasons they seemed an odd couple was that Helen was about fifteen or so years older than Tom. Another reason their relationship was odd was that Tom had formerly had an intense sexual relationship with my best friend. From that relationship, Tom jumped to a serious entwinement with a hard-bitten lesbian employee. These two married.

The marriage, unfortunately, did not go well. Tom’s wife ended up leaving him for his first assistant, a pleasant woman whom everyone liked. Word has it they tried to hide it at first, but apparently Tom found out later (if he didn’t know sooner). On the heels of the ended marriage, Tom took up with Helen. This becomes even more complicated when you understand that my friend that roomed with Helen was a man. (Tom had been in a homosexual relationship and his wife in a lesbian one when they turned to each other in marriage, so it was a bit unique.) I don’t mean to dwell on all of this, it’s just that in order to understand how our little world in A1 became so dysfunctional, you need to understand the people.

The relationship with Tom really changed the already unstable Helen until she became a person that we barely recognized. I tried for a long time to be loyal to her as boss. I attempted to explain some of her more irrational decisions to her subordinates. I defended her to some that made low-blow comments. At the same time, it was hard to continue as her behavior became more and more erratic.

I was also getting somewhat bored with my job. My attitude was slipping into a darker and darker place. Along with this my son was diagnosed with a chronic illness and I had to place much less emphasis on my job and much more emphasis on him. Unfortunately, plans were being made by the “higher-ups” to re-locate all the Project Management staff to an office that was about an hour away. It just so happened that if we moved to that office, Helen would be able to work side-by-side with Tom every day. It took her a year to pull it off, but she did it and we found ourselves facing an hour’s commute.

There were three of us to transfer at first. (The forth project director — the husband of my son’s godmother — had gotten demoted by Helen and friends, but he hadn’t been a strong employee so it didn’t come as a big surprise.) First my best friend went. He was bitter and unhappy, but got an apartment out that direction and things improved. Next, the guy who had paid for my honeymoon went. A twelve year employee, he quit three days into the new job. I put it off for some time because I didn’t want to be so far away from my son, but once his new school year started, I had to go.

From the moment I got to the new place, it was miserable. There was an unbelievable dynamic in the building. By this time Tom and Helen’s relationship had ended and Tom had begun an affair with a really likable young guy that worked for Helen. Helen also had Tom’s ex-wife working for her. Alongside Tom’s wife was a Xenaphile lesbian who bumbled her way into the position and was the butt of too many people’s jokes and derision. So, as it turned out… Tom’s ex-girlfriend, Helen, had a whole battery of Tom’s ex-lovers and current lover in her stable of folks. First there was my best friend who had been Tom’s lover before his marriage. Then there was Tom’s wife (the lesbian who was still hooked up with Tom’s assistant). Along with that there was Tom’s current lover, the nice guy whom everybody really liked. You really can’t even imagine how bizarre it was going to work in this place every day.

Maybe I could have dealt with it all if there weren’t so many people who were out to undercut and back-stab so many other people. The culture was completely unfriendly with nobody stopping by to welcome me there or even tell me where the bathrooms were. I got to, at least, share an office with my best friend, but he was out for six weeks due to an injury (that he eagerly fostered in his desire to get away from there.) I wanted to give it all a chance, but I became completely miserable and made plans to quit. I was just determined to stick it out until the end of the year so I could get my 1998 vacation time.

Come the end of the year, however, I was rescued. A stable and competent manager from another department invited me to join his staff. I thought it over and decided to give it my all. Beginning in 1998 I moved to his department.