2) What was the worst job you ever had?
It has been said that people rarely leave bad jobs, but that they leave bad bosses.
At twenty-something I was going through the motions…bored rigid, yet financially secure.
I was serving time with Esso (an Exxon subsidiary) as a fairly competent personal assistant/servile minion. My office was in Stratton Street, South of tree-lined Berkeley Square, in the middle of quintessentially English Mayfair – crammed with elegant Georgian facades, swanky hotels and exclusive retail boutiques.
I was ‘head-hunted’ (cue gruesome images) as office manager for an oil exploration company located in elite Mount Street – to the North of Berkeley Square – a monied area flush with splendid Italianate and Franco-Flemish red-brick edifices, broad pavements and window boxes tastefully disgorging lobelia, geraniums and pansies.
And no, I never did hear a nightingale sing.
Nor did I hear the alarm bells that started clanging when the recruiter said I had a reputation as someone “not easily intimidated, with a no-nonsense ability at handling difficult bosses.” No. Stupidly, I was far too interested in being flattered that she’d sought out little ol’ me. I wanted to hear more about my elegant office, the piles of money they wanted to pay me – and having my own secretary/prole to boss around. And anyway, they must be a fine establishment if they chose me, right?
Besides, it was time I had a change and took on a new challenge. Esso were starting to move their headquarters out of London and I needed a fresh start. Three months earlier my fiancée had been careless enough to get himself killed whilst crossing a road. I was tired of being avoided by those fearful of being tainted by my tragedy – exhausted by allaying the discomfort felt by those who did speak to me in my miserable grief. Here was an opportunity to bury my heartache beneath long working hours so that I didn’t have to register the pain.
It didn’t help either when, arriving for my interview, the receptionist breathed that she’d met Sean Connery on the stairs that morning. A film director owned the floor directly above the office, so I assumed I’d be frequently meeting famous actors. Not that I was keen on the ageing Connery, but I was still misguided enough to believe that celebrities were special.
Big mistake. Talk about being splodged!
The company was small, but ambitious. The London office consisted of me, an accountant, two secretaries and three fat-cat ‘executives’.
These three upper-class twits didn’t have a clue. They were self-deluded in the belief that, by arranging financial backing for the company via their old boys’ network, they were knowledgeable and skilled in all matters oil. These pompous toffee-nosed clowns played at being executives. They were preoccupied with power and prestige but didn’t know how to work with or manage other people.
All their chomping on expensive cigars and strutting about in hand tailored Savile Row suits didn’t help them run a company. Instead, they were clearly running it into the ground.
And there you had it….a microcosm of the class war that left meritocracy in tatters.
One man was particularly adept at inducing strangulation reflexes in me. They were all equally arrogant and condescending but this particular jowly specimen treated me like an amoeba. He’d micro-manage everything. His compulsive pestering about when assignments or reports would be completed wasted the time I had to actually get on with producing them. Everything had to be done ‘yesterday’ and he was haughtily determined to extract his money’s worth, expecting the unreasonable to the impossible from me. Whatever I did, it was never enough and as soon as I’d dragged myself home at the end of the day it was almost time for me to get up to start all over again.
The only occasion that Mr. Neurotic was pleased with me was when he left the office keys on his excessively large desk, locking us all out of the office. He couldn’t tolerate the thirty minute wait for the locksmith to arrive – so it was either remain huddled next to him on the stairwell, with his twitching and whining, or do something about it. I high-kicked open the heavy office door with my boots. That was where my ‘Wonder Woman’ nickname began.
The nadir arrived on the day he was due to return from his annual leave. Although he’d been on vacation with his wife and young sons, he’d still managed to telephone me almost every hour for progress reports. His wife should have put him on medication. The day he was due back at the office I could feel the (by then) customary nausea in my stomach intensify as I approached the office. It wasn’t anything specific that Mr. Hyper-Neurotic did or said, I’d merely had my fill. As he wittered on about whether to go to Le Gavroche or Langhans Brasserie for their extravagant, extended luncheon, it dawned on me that I couldn’t polish a turd…he’d always be a bona fide crackpot. I could no longer co-exist in the same work place, couldn’t even endure working out my notice. I just had to leave. Immediately.
To his sputtering disbelief I put my notepad down and calmly walked out of his office mid-sentence. He scrambled after me to see me tipping out my desk drawers and calmly putting my things into my bag. After ignoring his frantic squeaks as to what I was doing, where was I going, I could no longer restrain myself. I spoke to the belligerent little man (8” shorter than me) in calm, measured tones. Each word was delivered slowly, accentuated with a sharp prod to his protruding stomach.
“Anywhere. But. Here!”
Although I’d become aware of other people gawping at the two of us from the corridor, I hardly registered the spontaneous smattering of applause that broke out. I was too flushed with my own boldness as I emphatically pushed past him, resisted the urge to pat his balding pate and flounced down the stairs for the last time.
♬ ♫ ♪ ♩ … In my satin tights, fighting for your rights…Wonder Woman!
