by Nuiloa

Created on: August 25, 2010   Last Updated: August 26, 2010

The best revenge is living well.  I truly believe that....now. 

It was a different story when I was in my late 20's.  I worked for a monster.  He was hired as the medical director of the hospital where I worked and he thought he walked on water.  He was the type who would disappear for hours and then show up 5 minutes before the end of the day with "urgent" correspondence that needed my immediate attention.  His favorite was to give me reports to type just 10 minutes before a meeting and them embarrass me in front of all the directors by complaining about how slow I was in getting his paperwork typed.

Worse still - he had a habit of sexually harassing the ladies and had tried to attack my best friend at a party.  She was pregnant and was coming out of the bathroom when he grabbed her from behind and threw her on the bed.  He only stopped because her husband came in to look for her.  I know of another woman that he assaulted.  Nothing could be done about it.  Back then, in a small town, doctors were gods.

I was working 12-hour days, 7 days a week to keep up with his demands.  He used to brag that he had never kept a secretary for longer than 18 months.  I lasted 3 years.  I was coping because I had to:  my father was dying of cancer and there were no jobs in my field in that town. Then one day, my dad was admitted to the hospital and I took a 20-minute break to go visit him.  When I came back to my office, my boss informed me that he had made a formal complaint to HR because I had taken longer than a 15-minute break!  I never took breaks or lunch hours and never asked for overtime pay - and, for the sake of 5 minutes, I now had a reprimand on my file. He told me I had to follow the rules, like everyone else.

So that's exactly what I did.  I got a copy of the rules and I followed them to the letter:  in at 8:30, out at 4:30, two 15-minute breaks, a 1/2 hour lunch break and any overtime had to be paid at time and a half.  When he complained, I told him I was just following the rules, exactly as he had ordered.  This went on for months and then one day he screamed "I can't wait for your father to die so we can get back to normal around here".  I lost it - I came as close as I've ever come to seriously harming someone.  I think I scared him because he was very careful around me for quite awhile after that.  

Dad died a few weeks later.  I

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