I blocked one of my ex-bosses yesterday on Whatsapp. It felt cathartic. It is childish and petty but I had to do it. One final act of defiance. The deserving slap on her face that I should have given but missed out on because it would have been bordering on criminal behavior.
CEF (the ex-boss and villain in my story) was the supposed princess of the office. But in actual fact, she was just another playground bully. Mean girl. Attractive with the face of an angel. One of the better-looking girls at work hence she was able to curry favors with higher management. She held the position of a “Tax Director” at the mid-sized accounting firm I worked in. She would stroll into the office at 915am (when the rest of us had to come in by 830am) with messy hair, sleepy eyes, nose up in the air, and the haughtiest attitude. Occasionally she would wear her favorite pink jacket. I suppose it was her signature look. What a style icon! I suppose in her deluded mind, the pink jacket was a symbol of her superiority.
Pretty Pink Princess was just another corporate drone with an expected plot twist — a devil in disguise
She was untouchable at work. She could hurl streams of abuse at her team and shockingly get away with it. She took weeks, sometimes months to review corporate tax diligence cases. It was apparently her team’s fault that she took months because she didn’t feel like reviewing Employee no 1’s work. She told her boss that Employee no 1* tends to make minor errors. Well, fuck you, Pretty Pink Princess— if an employee makes errors isn’t it your fucking job to find out why? Provide, I don’t know coaching and guidance since you have more than 10 years of tax experience and the rest of us have less? Why throw your employees under the bus just to save your own ass?
She had her many idiosyncrasies that were frankly unacceptable for a person in her position. She seemed deeply offended whenever I repeated messages to her on different tech platforms. For instance, I would email her an important document or information sent from a client. I may IM her to reiterate the message if it’s urgent. She didn’t like that. She took it personally as if every new reminder was an attack on her soul.
She once had a meltdown because a file was not saved in a manner that she would have liked on the server. The problem was easily rectifiable but she threw her big toddler tantrum anyway. Her reactions were highly disproportionate to whatever was happening in the office. Imagine a director freaking out over a file name. I am not saying she shouldn’t be meticulous. Her attention to detail is admirable, but the issue with the file was not a problem. It was fixable in less than ten seconds. She wanted to flex her power and authority. To show that she was bigger and better than all of us. Hence the screaming, shouting, out-of-control, and deviant behavior. She just seemed unhinged. Furiously frustrated. Sexually frustrated too I can imagine. Extremely emotionally unstable for a director in a professional services firm. Is this the type of personality that is appropriate for leadership and higher management roles? She can’t even manage and control her own emotions; how the hell is she ever going to manage bigger budgets, projects, clients, and teams? When the color of her pink jacket fades and when the lines start to appear on her porcelain face, she will be in for one hell of a rude awakening.
Pretty Pink Princess’s working style was stiffer than an erected penis
Make no mistake about it. I hate her. She ruined my career in tax. I had harbored dreams of becoming a well-respected tax consultant who would structure the most effective tax plan, saving corporate clients millions in taxes. She killed that when she refused to sign off on my probation review. She was intolerant of minor mistakes. She treated the first drafts of the report as the final version. She demanded perfection. Her expectations were higher than Mount Everest. While revisions and edits are completely normal and within industry practice, it was unacceptable to her. Her working style was rigid and stiffer than an erected penis. She did not allow for originality. There was no room for improvisation.
It was the same Excel template used and reused over and over again. The same PowerPoint template is recycled over and over again. The same email responses were brought to life a million times; only sent to different clients.
Fuck, no wonder I was bored out of my mind.
I hope this bitch receives the comeuppance one day and may that day be closer than ever. May she never meet the revenue budget. May her clients flood her email and Whatsapp with millions of questions, demands, and requests for revised tax computations. I hope her team sabotages her and lands her ass in the hottest fire possible. May her credibility as a Tax Director be questioned. May the tax authorities scrutinize her cases the way she scrutinized mine. May they impose penalties, fines, remand letters, threaten her and the firm with the possibility of jail term over a contentious issue just to scare her into oblivion.
I hope her pretty pink jacket is ripped and shredded into one million and one pieces. To make it more delicious? Her heart too.
It would be nothing less than what this bitch deserves.
*I am Employee no 1