The End of The End Days

We had this client. Judy. This nice older Italian lady from New York. Who has a house in San Francisco. Who also happened to be dying of recurring breast cancer. Judy spends her time flying between Sloan Kettering in New York and Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. She spends all her money on her health and her legal problems.

I've probably told you before that Turkey is a psychopath. I actually looked up the definition of that and sociopath to figure out which one he was. Why yes, I DO (not) have a degree in psychology, obtained from Google University! The only thing Turkey doesn't fit is the torturing animals thing. Anyway, one of Turkey's cute personality quirks is that when he knows of a weakness in someone, he digs in. Visually, I see it as someone pointing out a bullet hole, and Turkey taking two fingers, pushing them into the hole, wiggling them around until the wound starts bleeding, then skipping off into the sunset, confused about why the person is angry at and hurt by him. I have watched him do this to people. More than once.

Sometimes Judy is only in town for a day and a half. One time Turkey insisted she had to come to the office to go over something. During a heat wave. At a time when Judy had just gotten off a cross-country flight and was preparing to fly to Los Angeles the next day. Turkey is notorious for being late. Severely late. Also, for jumping up in the middle of a meeting to run to the toilet while his ass explodes. Multiple times. So Judy showed up to our office, and she didn't look good. I immediately got her some cold water. She was pale and sweating. Her hair was a mess. I felt awful that she'd been hauled over to our offices when she clearly didn't feel well. Parking her in the conference room with water, I went to let Turkey know she'd arrived.

Of course, he had her sit. And sit. I kept checking on her every 15 minutes. Turkey kept making her wait while he worked in his office on something he claimed had come up that was "urgent," his favorite word. Judy waited almost an hour. Finally I pointed out to Turkey that he had another appointment coming up, after Judy's, and did he want me to cancel that. No, no he did not.

It was awkward. I'd go into the conference room, apologize to Judy, ask if she needed more water, maybe a Snapple, and she'd just ask if Turkey knew she was there. "Oh yes, I told him when you arrived, and have been reminding him every 15 minutes." He just doesn't care. Had Judy not really needed legal advice, I think she would have left. She looked worse and worse. Finally, after Judy had been waiting almost an hour and a half, Turkey "realized" the time.

Calling me into his office, Turkey told me to reschedule Judy. "Turkey, she's been waiting for over an hour!" He looked at me as if I was nuts. "Well, I have an appointment, what do you want me to do?" I stared at him like the idiot he was. "Be late for it, and meet with the person who made the effort to get to your office despite not feeling well." If you're thinking, "Isn't it kind of inappropriate to talk to your boss this way?" the answer is yes, and I knew I was taking a gamble.

Turkey was quietly loving it. He thrives on drama. Even if it's the type of drama that makes people angry at him. You can just see his body language get happy - I've never seen anything like it before.

Wondering what happened to Judy? Well, I suggested to Turkey that he have her walk downstairs and ride to his destination with him, and then he could just get out of the cab and give her money for the cab to take her home. That way he could get to his meeting without losing time but he'd still be honoring his commitment to Judy. Turkey refused.

Instead, he literally SNUCK OUT OF THE OFFICE on the coattails of a couple of delivery people complete with crouching down and everything, leaving us to tell Judy ... whatever. I almost cried. I was so embarrassed to be working for this idiot, and so angry and frustrated on her behalf. Judy couldn't quite comprehend what I was telling her at first. But ... did he realize she'd been waiting for him? Yes, yes he did. Did he realize she was only in town a short time? Yes, yes he did. And that she wasn't feeling well and had hauled herself over here despite that? Yes, yes he did. I did not make any excuses past the initial, "Turkey asked that I apologize that he had to miss this meeting, and that we reschedule when you'll next be in town."

Judy stared at me in shock, trying to wrap her head around what had been done to her. I walked her all the way down to the street and hailed a cab for her while she waited in the shade. Then Turkey fired her.

So you may understand why I rejected Turkey's offer of two weeks of severance pay in exchange for signing his release of claims, and said that I hoped he would consider putting the money he saved in not paying my severance, towards the Judy's bill, so he's suing the woman dying of breast cancer for less money. Office Manager did the same thing. Turkey probably won't reduce her bill. Judy will never know what we did. But every time I think about whether or not I'm an idiot to have foregone the money, the decision made feels like the right one.

The End Days

It's hard to know where to begin. I'm trying to begin at the beginning of the end, but it's hard to know where that is. Maybe it's January 4th, when Turkey announced he was shutting down the firm, and then promptly laid off the office manager using that as an excuse, while the truth was that (he desperately needed him) Turkey was scared of Office Manager, after OM began showing his anger at how shittily Turkey was treating him.

I think my last day of work was February 19th. It was definitely a Wednesday. The last two days nearly killed me. We were trying to pack up the office, get everything out of storage (about 240 boxes filled with files), and wrap up a few legal cases that weren't being transferred to the new firm.

Turkey was barely in the office during the last couple of weeks. Each day I came home with new paper cuts and sore arms from moving boxes (yay for muscles!). In my last week of working for him, I never even saw Turkey. He called the office a few times, but he didn't come in. So my goodbye was very anti-climactic. There was nobody there except Turkey's part-time accounting lady on my last day.

By my last day, Turkey and I still hadn't resolved that severance issue. I'd taken the liberty of filling in the agreement with how many weeks I wanted (we'd discussed it, and I'd explained why I honestly thought my request was fair).  I'd asked Turkey for four weeks of severance after he initially offered three. I worked with him for almost two years, longer than ANY OTHER secretary lasted, through three suicides (his mother, a peer, and a cousin), four personal assistants, two office managers, several lawsuits, the purchase of his country home (which was a lot of work for us, though it shouldn't have been), etc. Oh, and I was walking away with 88 hours of sick time accrued (but not used). Also, Turkey saved money because although he initially offered me health insurance, he never managed to pay for it, which meant I didn't have it. Originally he'd said he would pay up to $500 per month towards health insurance. Never happened. He saved thousands.

This past week, I got a new severance agreement in the mail. With my name spelled incorrectly AGAIN. There's something to the fact that I got both my employment and severance agreements with a misspelled name. In this new severance agreement, Turkey offered me two weeks, one less than he initially started out offering me. You could say I'm lucky to be offered anything at all. That I was greedy to ask for more than he started out offering, and this reduction is my punishment. Maybe that's true.

I spent an hour on the phone with the Office Manager. He was offered even less severance than I was. The severance is connected to a release. Turkey's goal is to give you as little severance as he thinks he can get away with, while still getting you to sign that release saying you won't sue him. OM told me he was thinking of not signing, and foregoing the severance. Nothing speaks louder than money to Turkey. He throws money at problems, and views whoever has the most money as the most important, most impressive. So to reject his money will blow his mind. It's crazy, but so is Turkey. I am tempted to join OM, but go one step farther. Cliffhanger!