Tuesday always appeared to be a pain in the backside. Everyone decided that they needed to fill her entire calendar with meetings that they would then change the time seventeen times, as other people book over their times or complained about them. This of course meant that she had fifty notifications which seem to ping at her even as the meeting they were moving had begun! Then she lost track of why she was even in the meeting. She sat there in silence and wondered why the attendees appeared to be talking in German about pineapples. She thought of getting up and checking the meeting room number, but tasting the pretty good coffee and tea cakes, she instead just plastered an interested expression on her face and nodded occasionally. She contemplated that most meetings with twelve or more people were generally made up with employees who randomly wandered in. After the meeting she shook hands with a very enthusiastic Chinese man who thanked her and said he would see her in Moscow. As she left, she idly wondered if she had sat through a different meeting as she was unsure where the Germans with their pineapple had gone and why she was apparently going to Moscow with a small Chinese man. Eventually deciding she should concern herself more with her actual jobs meetings rather than pondering the possibility of political European, Asian tensions.
She strode into the large meeting room and sighed as there was only one person there. Her boss, who looked like he was made up of potatoes with possible rotting at their core. He smelt like that as well. She could only describe his odour as ‘potato like’ being slightly stale and you knew it needed to be thrown away soon. He also had a terrible last name ‘Bunion’. Why he had never changed it from being a pain in the foot to a more suitable body part, which he caused pain in, such as ‘Haemorrhoid’, she did not know.
“Oh you eventually found the room did you?” He asked with a weirdly high pitched voice for a supposed man, which sounded ‘wet’, like he was constantly drooling.
“Yeah, was busy talking pineapples with a few people and knew you wouldn’t mind waiting,” she replied, sitting at the side of the long twelve seater table as far from him, but within talking distance as possible. He frowned and she stifled a giggle at the comical squish appearance it had on his almost bald head. She had to literally bite her tongue as she was tempted to exclaim ‘mashed potatoes!’ into the quiet room.
“As you know, this is your performance review and while you are doing a good job, I think there are areas which need your attention,” he sneered with contempt almost dripping from what he thought was a power shift. She leaned back in her chair and yawned. She knew her value and the fact his bosses would realise, if she left, that all the work he claimed was his own, was actually her. It was not something mentioned, just something known and not only by him.
“Oh, please do, I’m always looking to improve. Most just give up,” she looked him up and down.
He frowned again and cleared his throat, looking intently at a single sheet of paper, which he had obviously scribbled on, in a rush, “Well, I really think, um, hold on, yes, here it is,” he looked at her trying to be intimidating but instead looking like a Mr Potato head having a stroke, “you act too intelligent.”
“You want me to stop using my intelligence to do my work?” She questioned.
“No, stop telling everyone how intelligent you are all the time. You are constantly showing people how to do things,” he admonished.
“You want me to stop helping people?” She questioned.
“No, just stop pretending you know everything,” he spluttered, realising he was losing the supposed point he was trying to belittle her with.
“Did you want me to tell them to ask you first, when they ask me a question?” She smiled, knowing he had no clue how to work the systems she had designed.
“No, just stop helping Lauren!” He exclaimed. She took a deep breath as she thought of the poor woman called Lauren, who did need more help with the computer systems due to her age. She had great respect for the woman who had been working her whole life as the world slowly changed to make most of her skills as a worker disappear. Then without proper training she was thrust into complex technical work, which she was struggling with until she could afford to retire in the next few years.
“I can’t. That is a no,” she said and looked resolutely into his weasel eyes.
“Well then you are going against your managers command and can be fired. I should tell human resources,” he threatened.
“Please do, I would be interested in their opinion of the subject,” she didn’t allow him to use his number one scare tactic to try intimidate her. He thought people crumbled from being threatened by the often idiotic human resources branch, but she didn’t care as the stance of don’t help people would publicly be a big red flag.
“Well anyway, I also have noticed you wear inappropriate clothing!” She looked down at her clothing and raised an eyebrow in question. He shuffled his paper nervously.
“Please tell me, what the issue is?” She questioned in a low threatening voice.
“You wear unusual clothing on most days! Senior management has noticed it!”
“Is it too revealing? Does it have inappropriate icons or words?” She asked.
“That’s not the point!”
“Then it does not violate the clothing guidelines. Please tell me which ‘senior’ managers said these things as I think I will need to report management commenting on an employees personal appearance without cause.”
“There was cause! Your tights were too colourful and distracting!”
“That is not in the guidelines and just proves that you all have been objectifying me by staring at my legs. If I wore a bright top, would you feel justified in staring at my breasts for the entire day?”
“You do it to get attention!”
“Yes, we’ve never heard that before when it comes to chauvinism. I think that you should probably discuss this with a Human Resources officer before you comment on an employee’s appearance again.”
“You also spend too long away from your desk when you go to the bathroom,” he exclaimed, thinking he had come up with a point, “I timed you and yesterday at two you left for half an hour without a meeting booked in!”
“Alright for one I am going to go past the fact you think it is appropriate to time your female staff members going to the bathroom. We’ll address that as a different issue. But you are aware I recently have run a teaching workshop on the program I built for the other side of the office and was helping a new starter get set up?”
“For half an hour?” he scoffed.
“It was actually meant to be for longer due to the system failure we experienced, but then his manager told me that we’d set up a team wide meeting the next day, I returned to my desk.”
“But then you left for another half an hour after you returned.”
“It was twelve thirty, I went to lunch, which I am quite certain is in my time sheet and I went with three other people from the office.”
“You don’t submit your timesheets daily.”
“Yeah, I put them in weekly as I’m generally very busy and don’t have the five minutes to spare. That’s the issue with doing the job of twenty people.”
“So, you say, but also you shouldn’t be friends with Lauren, Tania and Julia outside of work. You should be friends with more reliable employees.”
“Very inappropriate to comment on friendships or other staff members in a performance review.”
“It was just advise,” he tried to look like he was winning, but she had finally had enough.
“Alright so lets go through this as a summary from my perspective;
One. You have told me that you don’t want me to be intelligent or smart or tell people how to do needed things to do their jobs.
Two. You have said you are distracted by my legs, which I have said is inappropriate to comment on my body and you have said a number of senior managers share your problem.
Three. You think it is appropriate to time female bathroom breaks and to also tell them when they can or can’t leave their desks. You have also demonstrated that you have nothing better to do with your time than to show stalking behaviour towards woman in the office.
Four. You question my timesheet, without asking why I need to spend more time in the office than everyone else due to increased workload, the constant calls when I am not in the office and the fact you have asked several people to spy on me, in case I was not doing what is written on the timesheet, caught on the security cameras, recorded by my swipe card and just is a well known fact that all the work I do for my job, yours, the five people you fired because they made fun of you, takes that many hours to achieve.
You have not provided a single factor against my work during this performance review, only against my personality and badly. They call that bullying in all contexts of the word.”
“You just don’t like people talking when you being wrong!” He yelled as she exited the room.
“Telling people that you are wrong,” She corrected over her shoulder, hoping her point that he was a inbred country bumpkin was not lost…
