The Escape Artist
So, this is a rather long story if you care to indulge yourself in epic failures I’ve had, that somehow changed my life for the better.
I landed a job once at a time when I needed it most, though my entire life as I knew it was going to hell. A place I had always dreamt about working, New York City.
The job started out in Long Island, Central Islip for those of you who know that part of the world, but since the showroom was in Manhattan, I was able to convince my boss that I could get more done working out of the city rather than the manufacturing plant in Islip. I was thus spared the daily ride in to Penn Station on the Long Island Railroad, plus the indignity of living in Central Islip.
The job was more money than I had ever made, but my expenses were as well. I was paying a lawyer for a divorce, my shrink for my sanity, my son was in a private school in Connecticut and I was slowly going bankrupt from it all. So I needed that job just to hang on to my crumbling life. As circumstances would have it, my boss was a complete shit head of the most manipulative, evil, diabolical kind. A truly dangerous fellow who liked trapping his employees into personal loans for cars, and their children’s college debt, vacation home mortgages and the like and then holding their feet to the fire knowing they could not quit on him. He would then proceed to humiliate and verbally abuse them publicly in the workplace, knowing they were trapped. I had a fellow working with me, dear Julian, who warned me from the start to never, ever, take a thing from him and I heeded his warning. Came a day, when the entire sales and creative team was at the big conference table to review sales from market week, and the shit started hitting the fan – big time. Mr. Evil started at one end of the table ( I was at the very end) and one poor schmuck at a time, he berated their work and them personally till I was almost white faced watching their humiliation. He was however, making his way quickly towards me, and I realized my father would be turning in his grave knowing I was working for such a despicable man. I had had enough of being manipulated in my marriage, saw the ugly connection of putting up with crap and the long term harm it had done me, and suddenly my therapy kicked in and I knew I had to make a call. I slowly put all my files into my briefcase, stood up calmly and faced him down at the opposite end of the big oval conference table and said exactly that –
“If my father knew I was working for such a horrible person he would turn in his grave. I quit.”
As I marched out of the room, watching the looks of horror on my fellow coworker’s faces, he screamed at me, “You will never work here again!”
No problem, I was gone. It was time to go. And I felt like a bird let out of a cage as I marched down 5th Avenue free from tyranny – until I got to Washington Square, when it dawned on me that I was now living in one of the most expensive cities in the world… without a job.
Well, long story short, things got bad and things got worse. Within 2 months I crashed and burned both physically and emotionally and landed back in Buffalo, filing for bankruptcy, living with my mother, completely incoherent and on lots of Prozac. That’s how things can go when you make grown up decisions. I just knew no amount of money was going to be worth that paycheck, no matter how much I was loving being in New York City, and I surely was loving it.
But the most wonderful thing happened … I started to get better fairly quickly after I let go of the nightmare that had become my life. I crept slowly and painfully back into the working world, one sweet little low paying job after another, eventually without pharmaceuticals, and a newfound strength and freedom. Where I landed about 5 years later is sort of a fairy tale ending, but it just goes to show … you should know when it’s time to go!
(featured image – oil on canvas, THE ESCAPE ARTIST, by Catherine Massaro)