Just Like Christmas

How my impossible manager’s comeuppance was the best workplace gift I could have received

Photo by Tessa Rampersad on Unsplash

I’m the most forgiving person I know, but in my forties I had a manager at my job as a communications assistant manager that I still I can’t forgive even 15 years later. She was abrasive, invasive, petty, manipulative, and cruel. I don’t know how I reported to her for six years, and the why was purely economic. But when I’ve had an experience as difficult as that, I try to gain something useful from it. There’s always something to learn.

I learned quite a few lessons from my impossible manager. I learned that I’m a minimizer. I grew up in a chaotic household and was often the lone voice of calm in a volatile family landscape. My manager was a maximizer. When she panicked, I tried to calm her down by putting the crisis du jour in perspective. This was absolutely the wrong approach. Minimizing left her feeling abandoned, so I pretended to freak out a little. I’m not sure I was very good at it, but I tried so that she wasn’t out there alone, twisting in the wind while wailing about a missing shirt sample.

I’m extremely independent by nature. Asking for help is a big step for me, and usually a last resort. My previous manager, a gracious woman who never raised her voice, would invite me into her office whenever my to-do list overwhelmed me. We would have a friendly little chat while she put numbers next to the tasks, ranking them by priority. I thought this was what managers did, this…managing.

About a year after I came to work for the impossible manager, I was working under backbreaking deadlines on too many projects, so I brought her a too-long list for help with prioritizing. She shoved it back at me. “Don’t ask me,” she barked. “I’m not here to tell you how to do your job. It’s all important. It all needs to be done.” I learned an important lesson that day. I learned to never ask her for help with anything. Ever.

She might have refused to help me prioritize (wait, isn’t that actually a manager’s job?), but that didn’t stop her from micro-managing me. That is where she truly excelled. She would stand in my office doorway, verbally going over all the steps for projects I managed. As she told me in detail how to do what I’d successfully accomplished many times, my will to live would slip away. One day, I looked at her and said, “If I don’t know how to do this by now, you should fire me.” Obviously, I wasn’t a perfect employee.

The problem was, we were so different. Take the entire concept of a career. I have always regarded career advancement with bemusement. I worked in order to pay bills. I pursued promotions to obtain raises, to pay more bills. My career was simply a job, a way to avoid financial catastrophe. My manager’s career was her life.

This was only the start of our differences. Physically, she was a short, trim woman, a former cheerleader and homecoming queen with a mathematically precise bob and a rigid corporate style formed during the reign of the Power Suit. I’m a tall, stately ocean liner of a woman who dresses in an unapologetically feminine fashion. I bought most of my clothing from thrift stores. Most shockingly, I didn’t color my hair.

We differed socially. The social side of the office bothered her. She had no comrades, no lunch buddies, no gossip friends. She went to the gym on her lunch hour. By contrast, I spent mine eating and laughing with office friends, who would also stop by during the day, and send me emails that made me laugh out loud. She found this unsettling. Were we allowed to have fun at work? Was enjoyment permitted? She thought not.

Our personal lives were also a contrast. I was twice divorced and always dating. She’d been married forever and didn’t approve of my getting calls or flowers at the office, even though she received both from her husband. She had a grown stepdaughter who wouldn’t speak to her, and no children of her own. I had three daughters who occasionally needed attention. My manager didn’t understand my obligation to attend parent-teacher conferences, or the necessity of retrieving a vomiting child from the school office. She seemed to think my motherly duties were purely optional.

I’ve probably painted myself as a blowsy sort, a too-much woman, too tall, too romantically active, too maternal, too social. But I was a kick-ass employee when it came to the work itself. I did it well and quickly and correctly. I had energy and ideas and hustle. I took on more of her responsibilities, including all press placements (getting products into movies, shows, and press features). I built enough rapport with editors, costumers, and production assistants that our year-over-year product placement rate rose over 400%. I also met every deadline.

My undeniable competence allowed my aging manager to whittle down her duties, handing off many to me. Her days were often spent going to meetings, because our old-fashioned company had a lot of them. While she sat in conference rooms, I wrote copy, edited speeches, presentations and press releases, took calls, chased orders, handled returns, and disseminated our placement results companywide in memos with her name on them. I tried my best to make her look good.

Most managers would appreciate an employee who did their job for them. Appreciation never arrived. It was confusing to be treated with suspicion and nitpicking when I’d hoped for recognition. But even this taught me a valuable lesson. I learned to cheer myself on. I saved every single completed task list with date assigned and date finished. I compiled my accomplishments for twice-yearly reviews. I documented my performance so well that she didn’t have to. Working for someone that demotivating taught me how to motivate myself.

Maybe the biggest difference between us was in our levels of happiness. She seemed miserable at work. She was terrified of making a mistake, and every moment of the workday held the potential for calamity. I imagined her as a tattletale in school, constantly raising her hand and calling out, “Teacher? So-and-so is passing notes,” in a plaintive, piercing tone. She was obsessed with rules and procedures, and quick to point out any violations. This caused more trouble for her than the coworkers she reported for various infringements. I, on the other hand, was happy. I liked my duties, the company, and the members of my team who weren’t my manager. I enjoyed my job.

She’s not the only person I know who has had a heart attack, but she’s the only person I know who had a heart attack on the golf course. The heart attack didn’t make me happy, but the six weeks of mandatory leave she took were, comparatively, like an in-office vacation. I did both our jobs just fine in her absence. But there was one aspect of her job that I absolutely could not do, a duty that engaged and soothed her. This woman loved to pack. It was just like Christmas for her.

It started with lists. I imagine she laid awake at night, mentally composing long, detailed lists of what was needed for a trade show or sales meeting or photo shoot. This meant planning out the contents of each carton—what would go in with what, balanced and careful, lots of brown craft paper around the forms, the toolkit, the apparel samples, the steamer. Then, using a precise but lively printing that would have been at home on an architect’s sketch, she would put the lists to graph paper. Beside each listed item, she would draw a small, perfectly square box.

She’d go over these lists several times, erasing and arranging with great care and concentration. While she planned, I’d lay in supplies: large quantities of boxes, paper, tape, and tape guns (which of course she’d reminded me to do repeatedly—see micro-managing, above). After I reassured her that all necessary supplies had been procured, she would pick a morning.

On that special day, she would come to the door of my office wearing her official packing outfit of cardigan, capri pants, and sneakers, clutching her clipboard, eager to go. “Let’s pack,” she’d holler, as intensely as if we were headed to Paris and had a plane to catch. She’d walk quickly to the elevator, barely restraining her anticipation as we rode down to the first floor, where she would herd me to the prop room like a sheepdog and let us in.

It was just like Christmas for her. Her focus was absolute. Nothing could bother her while she packed, not even my placid lack of emotional engagement with the process. After she placed each item where she wanted it to go (or told me to put it there), she would stop, go to her list, and make a large, careful check in the box next to that item. She was in a flow state.

I wasn’t, but at least I was obedient. She wanted a hanging dress form in there? Fine, there it went. A double wrap on that same form? Double wrap for sure. She wanted things taped with four-inch overlaps? Four-inch overlaps it was. Not one steamer, but two so there was a backup just in case? Two steamers, coming right up. And each box needed a list of contents written on the side, and a large number.

I’m terrible at packing. It’s my least favorite part of any vacation. So I was happy to act as an automaton while executing her detailed packing strategies. She was happy too, so happy that while packing that she forgot to be awful to me. Her heightened focus and deep serenity lasted throughout the packing, sealing, numbering, and recording. And all those perfect little squares got their check marks.

Check. Check. Check. Check.

She went to the events for which we were packing and took her list along as a manifest. She always knew exactly what was in which box when it was time for setup. I would look forward to her being away at the trade show, sales meeting, or photo shoot, because while she was gone, I could breathe.

I took advantage of one of her absences by clearing every scrap of personal material from my office, every photo on the corkboard, paperweight, coaster and plant, right down to my favorite thumbtacks. I could pack what was left (Altoids, a tin of pocket change) in my Kleenex box and hit the road in two minutes. Her expression when she saw what I’d done was gratifying. I wanted her to understand that I was a flight risk.

So how did it all come out? Eventually, after a comprehensive departmental re-org, my manager began reporting to an executive creative officer. Her hall monitor demeanor wasn’t seen as helpful by the creative officer. One morning she flounced into my office and announced, “Apparently I’m supposed to bring solutions to her, not problems.” I clucked sympathetically, but solutions require creative thinking. I knew this was beyond her. She was doomed.

The day came when the creative officer could tolerate no more. My impossible manager was stripped of her management status, job title, most of her pay, and sole report (me). Along with this dramatic demotion, she was relieved of every single job duty. Every. Single. One.

Other people might have quit, but she was stubbornly holding out for Medicare eligibility. She had nothing to do. No planning. No packing. No little checks next to items on her long, long lists. For ten months, she sat in her office, pecking at her keyboard, answering personal emails, and pretending to read Women’s Wear Daily.

Occasionally, someone would remember that she existed and ask for help with fabric swatches or sales material distribution. These were projects I’d previously managed with workers from a temp agency, so I knew how to do them. But she would jump up and rush to my office door clutching a list, raring to instruct me on how she wanted me to go about doing it.

As the new lead for marketing copy, I would be crafting a blog post or naming a product line or polishing a pitch or working on the creative aspects of a marketing initiative. I’d look up and smile. “You’ll have to ask my manager,” I’d say pleasantly. “She can add it to my workflow if she thinks I have the time.” My former impossible manager would stomp back to her office, fuming and furious.

Let me tell you. It was like Christmas for me. Just like Christmas.

Karen G. Berry lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She is interested in micro-societies, the strange and secret lives of children, and the heroic nature of everyday living. Karen’s work has been published by Inknest, The Offing, HerStry, Flash Fiction, Thin Skin, Rust & Moth, Parks & Points, The Gilded Weathervane, Hot Pot, Panorama, Ekphrastic Review, and many other journals and anthologies, online and in print. You can learn more about Karen at her blog, I am Not a Pie.