Horrible Bosses, Part Two: Chunky Skippy

Bosses are like peanut butter: Sticky and hard to wash away  (Piccolo Namek, Wiki Commons)

George W. Bush had just been selected by the US Supreme Court in one of the most bald-faced political heists in history. And I had decided, after cobbling together a couple of midlist books (The Unofficial Guide to Surviving Y2K and Beyond, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Natural Disasters), that it was time for a rest from the hunt. Time to rest from constantly thinking up new ideas to sell to the shrinking population of intelligent acquisitions editors. (Intelligent, as regards acquisitions editors, is defined as willing to buy my idea on the basis of an outline and sample chapter, and pay me half a year’s income to write it.)

Anyway, I had decided a change of pace would be nice. I was even willing to give up the part-time teaching of hunter-jumper riders, which I love to do, for the great bonus of health insurance and a sizeable paycheck―from which I might pay up my taxes from previous years (see midlist book mention above) and still have coins left for dinner out.

The first change of pace I sought was a job as a designer at Ethan Allen. Not so weird. I studied art at the Art Students League of New York, where William Merritt Chase had taught in a previous century and Georgia O’Keeffe, Helen Frankenthaler and Maurice Sendak, among other more recent luminaries, had studied. I was even elected to membership. Between that and my scene design courses in college, drawing room designs and elevations would be no problem. I got the job. And that’s where the trouble began.

Locked in a box

Ethan Allen sent all new hires to a doc-in-the-box before their first day of work, I suppose for health/life insurance purposes. Or maybe just to be intrusive. Anyway, by the time my old car had broken down again, I had gotten an Enterprise rental car pronto and hauled my butt an hour to Silver Spring’s panhandler-laden downtown through suburban D.C. traffic, I was in a rare mood, and I had to pee.

When I got to the doc-in-the-box, the receptionist was behind a Plexiglas barrier--
and no, I could not come through to use the ladies room because then they’d have to unlock the door to the inner sanctum before my turn and that would apparently cause upheaval around the globe and hair loss among the local staff.

It got worse from there. By the time I was on my way back home, I had decided no job that made one go through that crap was worth it. I stopped at the barn, petted my horse, went home, picked up the phone, and declined the job I had just accepted. There went my visions of massive commissions as Bush’s cadre of bureaucrats moved into Maryland and redecorated the houses vacated by Democrats.

Oy. Back to teaching, sending out book ideas…

Shortly, I got a call-back for a job at an insurance industry magazine needing an editor. The publisher interviewed me at 7 p.m. one evening. He said he wanted me to do a writing and editing test, surely I had done them before, etc. etc. Actually, I hadn’t. And I shouldn’t have done them that time, either. If one could look at my resume and list of published books and conclude anything except that I was an accomplished writer and editor, one had to be an imbecile.

He was an imbecile.

His publication did nothing but “repurpose” the articles of other publications and run court case synopses concerning insurance agents in legal trouble for various things, such as stealing premiums. And it ran the drivel spouted by Maryland’s insurance commissioner. However, Chunky Skippy*, as I fondly called him, thought he was running the New York Times. The art director, a part-timer, was possibly the most arrogant living human being I have ever met, and that’s saying a lot. At that point, I had worked in publishing and advertising for 25 years in New York and Florida; case closed.

We didn’t get along, the Chunk and I. I didn’t care for the art director, needless to say. The single salesperson seemed OK, except that she didn’t actually sell advertising, but had certainly sold some sort of bill of goods to the Chunk, on which I’ll say no more.

The office manager was OK. I liked her, in fact. We actually stayed in touch for a while after I left.

Go in peace, but go

I’m not sure if I left or was fired. Part of my agreement was that on non-deadline weeks, if I wanted to ride my horse on a nice morning and come in late and stay late, that was fine. Chunk never really accepted it, but could do nothing about it. Anyway, one morning on my way in, I realized there was no way I could emotionally, mentally or ethically support my continued involvement, regardless of the state of my finances.

I had determined to quit that very morning, but I didn’t have to. The Chunk called me into his office and said he was laying me off, that business was slow (true) and he could do the editing job himself (also true.) But he would give me a good severance (yippee!) and support the effort if I filed for unemployment (better still.) With a light heart, I gathered my one photo (my horse) and two houseplants and left.

When I called my good friends Jeffrey and Don, who had been through the horrific previous five months with me, Jeffrey said,  “Let’s celebrate. Come to dinner tonight! But Don has the car at work, so you’ll have to take me to the grocery store.”

While we waited in the checkout line, I said, “Well, at least I won’t have to go into Chunky’s office to watch Jerry Springer every afternoon.”

Jeffrey fell about laughing. “You’re kidding! This calls for champagne,” said he, as we trooped next door to get some.

All’s well that ends well…even when one has had the boss from hell.

___

* Skippy was the name I had given a previous horrible boss, also encountered during one of my “rest cure” trips in from the cold of freelancing. His story next time.