There were a few times that I fell deeply in love with somebody,
two times to be exact. I never really loved my husband, Mark, that
relationship was just something to fill a void. At the age of nineteen,
like any starry eyed young woman, a wedding and having a child seemed so
wonderful at the time. The real love would come later, when he started getting
mentally better and he stopped using drugs. My husband was and is a good
man, just lost and confused but after our son was born that possibility became
something I could not wait for to happen anymore now that there was another
life to be responsible for.
The next life move
taken, a domestic live in with Frank, was just another bad decision and it took
me three years to realize it before leaving that relationship. I thought
Joe was the one, for whatever reason but he wasn't that much different than my
husband, the dependency on drugs and alcohol where the same. It just took
its course in two separate personalities, they both are from different
backgrounds and born during different decades. After two and a half years
with Frank we tried Alcoholics Anonymous together, although he just was not
ready and neither was I was my discovery a few short months after we went our
separate ways.
In AA is where a
very short affair started with a much older man, O'Neil, not a handsome man but
he seemed sweet enough. We shared his apartment together in less than two
months after we met and it was a disaster. Eight months later we split up
and my older and I were sharing an apartment. For a few years I stayed
out of the dating scene, had a few flings here and there but nothing that could
be serious. After getting my own apartment for the first time in my
entire life is when things started to change. At that point my drinking
hadn't really picked up yet but was still waiting in the showed for me.
In nineteen
ninety-nine is when Adel walked into my life and our addiction over drugs and
alcohol bonded as tightly as our friendship did. It was the most
dysfunctional relationship and it lasted for eleven years. We fought, we
made up, we were best friends and business associates. Even today we are
still good friends and I do still help him out in any way possible when it
comes to his small business issues, as well as his personal family
issues. Adel was probably the one man my heart went out for more than any
other man in my life. It still does and whenever something major happens,
if he is in his country visiting I will call his brother and notify him of
anything that might damage their business.
This last time,
even though there was no relationship it hurt me the most. It was because
this man, Chuck, fooled me so severely that it really hurt and yes my big ole
pride was damaged. Chuck was the owner of the company I worked for and
knowing he was married still didn't stop me from having a wild crush on him,
like so many other female employees did. He had a way with words, funny,
smart and successful. All he had to do was toss a few bucks around for a
good cause and he hired people with not so great backgrounds, gave them another
chance at life in the business world.
Who wouldn't fall
in love with somebody like that, especially since it isn't often that a man
like that is so rare. Chuck would get this look on his face when I would
admire him, he loved that look and it made his ego blow up bigger than a
balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The discovery of who he
really was is what hurt the most and what other employees told me that I
couldn't accept at the time as the truth was what made those hurt feelings
worse.
It turned out that
he used all of those things to lure you in and than it turned out Chuck was
really manipulative, uncaring and selfish. One time Chuck told me that he
owned his employees, which much was figured out when the one of the free
T-shirts for a trip to the Great Escape said "owned by Famous
Techniques" across the chest. Chuck played with employee’s emotions
by promoting them and than demoting them without a reason. He would stop
talking to them and ignore them as if they where a piece of dirt after
befriending them for months, all this to make them try to quit. This was
done with employees that started costing him more money as an employee than it
did for him to earn money.
Upon demoted as a
receptionist with no real explanation. The managers said it was because I
was good at data entry and they wanted me in the back just for that. One
manager, Rachel told me that since they moved me in the back my work went up,
which was obvious since the number of documents showing on the bottom of the
computer screen said as much. Doing what everybody said to do, working
hard and just being grateful to have a job
Sometimes he would
show up during my lunch and break times or when I would go to the
bathroom. There were even times Chuck would show up when during my
menstrual cycle, which turned out was just a ploy to make it seem as if my more
frequent restroom visits was because he was there. You are probably
wondering how he knew it was my time to menstruate, this was because the
company policy was no purses at our work station. This meant that during
a woman's menstruation she had to go and get her purse before using the
restroom.
Chuck even went as
far as telling the company he has a contract through that our production dropped
and the ones who were doing so well previously must be taking extra breaks.
Eventually figuring out that this could be just how Chuck wanted it to
look, I changed my schedule. This seemed to work out until one day, doing
more work than any other day, the first box produced had to be rescanned
because of deleted images and than the mangers told me they got a call for me
to go to one of the other offices. Working at the other office for about
a week we had our usual, after work hours, monthly work function, this time a
haunted hayride for the Halloween season. After work we had pizza in the
break room and the entire time Chuck ignored me so brushing it off my
girlfriends and I stuck together for the night.
Once we had
completed the hayride portion of the trip next was the walk through of the
haunted houses and mazes. This was the first time Chuck actually sexually
harassed me, hands on. Take into account that my crush was pretty big, of
course complaining about it wasn't going to happen but why it happened is what
was confusing. Months prior to the incident at the hay ride, I was also
guilty of saying and doing things inappropriate as well.
Chuck did it in a
way that made it look like an accident by bumping into me from behind in one of
the darker mazes of the walk through at the hay ride. Chuck did this
twice, the second time pressing his penis against my derrière so hard that I was forced to take a few
steps. Next he reached in front of me to tap another female employee on
the shoulder and while doing so his hand brushed against my derrière while my own hand brushed against his genitals. In another part of the maze he pretended
he was startled by one of the acts, threw his hands up, yelled and when he
turned around he hit my breasts, apologized profusely and my comment was,
"its okay, I don't mind". During the rest of the trip Chuck
continued to ignore me, except to say goodbye with a hug that I asked for as
usual.
When I did not
respond to the incident by following him around like a love sick dip shit woman
or even ran to the Lori, the representative of the Employee Assistant Program,
with complaints of sexual harassment that is when a few weeks later came the
incorrect production reports. Chuck and the Managers even went as far as
to try to convince me, as well as people around me, that the production was low
due to distractions. When looking at the production reports showed that
this was not the case, especially since I was being told that if my production
did not improve that they would start writing me up is when
addressing it seemed like the right thing to do, WRONG! Chuck started
talking to me as if I was some unintelligent, paranoid dumb ass of a woman who
had no business complaining about these issues in the first place.
During the
Christmas party the Friday before my termination is when the discovery that the
work presented at the RV office was counted by box, not by documents and that
the number. This is when it also became clear that Chuck's accusation of
my production dropping went down because of how the boxes were merged together.
Even thought the same amount of work was done in less boxes it did not
make a difference to the production reports, this was just another way of
making it appear as if production dropped for myself and other employees.
The weekend
following the Christmas party I emailed Chuck asking about the production issue
at the RV office and even expressed how unhappy I was feeling at they way the
company was treating me as a person that is when he discharged me. According
to the ALJ at the unemployment hearing board, being dissatisfied and
using the "F" word in the same conversation is misconduct
1 Comments
Why did you not report it anyways?
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