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Episode 72: From the Pot into the Fire II

Writer's picture: Kristin LindstromKristin Lindstrom

Derek was American but had been raised until his teens in England. This gave him a certain panache along with a slight English accent. (My husband Perry was born in London and lived there until he was five years old. He still regrets having lost his English accent and all the girls it would have attracted over the years.). At 40-something he was tall and slender and reminded me of the boss in Office Space. He was attractive but on the dodgy side.

One day, Derek told me he was going out of town, and I could use his parking space for a couple of days.

Swell! That would save a lot of time over taking the Metro in and out of town.

The next morning at 11:00 my phone rang. When I picked it up, I found a screaming harridan on the other end.

“You get your fucking car out of that spot in the next 20 minutes or I’m having it towed, you bitch.”

Who on earth was this? “Derek said I could use—”

“I don’t care what that asshole said, you twit. You move that car pronto.” She smashed the phone down.

I looked up to see my friend Ray standing next to me.

“Whathehellwasthat?” I stammered, assuming the whole office heard the exchange.

“That’s Derek’s lovely live-in girlfriend. She’s a real treat. And you’d better move your car right away, she means what she says.”

Who was this man who split his time between two such poisonous women?

Curiouser and curiouser!

When Derek returned to the office, he announced he had hired a market director, Jonathan. Did I feel threatened? Of course.

Jonathan was tall, slightly flabby, and pale faced with dingy blonde hair. He had unsettling eyes that never seemed to look straight ahead. After his arrival, time dragged on, and we still weren’t pulling in any contracts. Then Jonathan identified one three weeks out. I was pleased. I gave him a draft two weeks before it was due. He immediately left for a lengthy business trip.

He got back into the office a couple of days before the proposal was due. On the due date, he started tearing it apart. He continued making changes until 3:30 then announced himself satisfied as the draftsman ran across town to deliver it by 4:00.

I was furious and stormed into his office and said, “I’m never doing another proposal this way again! (How true this turned out to be!) You had plenty of time to make changes in a reasonable manner. Instead we risk making mistakes by this haphazard approach and you drive everybody crazy.”

Johnathan looked at me thoughtfully and nodded, as if to say, “I hear you.”

This was a Friday and I was never happier to go home.

The following Monday, I arrived at 8:30 a.m. as usual. At 9:00, I was invited into Derek’s office.

He and Jonathan mumbled a lot and cast each other uneasy glances. Finally I asked Derek, “Are you trying to fire me?”

The pair of them nodded their heads and mumbled some more and I left Derek’s office as if shot out of a cannon. “Nitwits!” I packed up what little I had in my desk and left.

In the weeks to follow it was clear they weren’t finished with me. Derek tried to block my unemployment payments by telling some ludicrous lies. He claimed I’d been having an affair with my very, very gay friend Ray. And he said that I was messing with financial files I shouldn’t have had access to. Only they were the very files I needed to write the proposals.

Derek didn’t know who he was dealing with. The folks at the unemployment office were hard as nails and didn’t put up with his stories.

In early January, I heard from a woman architect who, minimally, befriended me. Derek was invited to New York for the company Christmas party in early December. He was fired on Christmas Eve.

Swell.

She also said that his girlfriend had left him, leaving him wide open for an attack by the bottle blond redneck. And attack she did: she married him.

The last I saw of Derek was when I was walking up Connecticut Avenue. I happened to glance up and saw Derek in a wheelchair, pushed by his cheery – not- bride.

Karma, indeed!






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crosser_inks.0o
Nov 30, 2022

Karma is sometimes the loveliest thing ever! When was this?

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