Attracting Abusive Bosses by Terri Rimmer - originally published by Associated Content, 2009

First day of spring last year and I get fired from my day job - and in my birthday month, no less.

Once we passed the year mark in October 2009, I wasn't too worried about losing my job. I mean every time my boss screamed at me he'd turn around and compliment me or promise something or other.

When I met him I thought it was strange he had no employees. That should've been a red flag but I was so desperate for a job I ignored it. His story was that he could find no one reliable and that everyone had screwed him over.

Now I know better.

The first time I saw his rage was when he yelled at me on Christmas Day, 2008 as my dad lay in a coma in another state. Ruined my holidays, to say the least.

If you've ever been in a physically abusive relationship of the romantic variety, you know that first moment when you're struck and you are left reeling, wondering what happened and where that came from?

Well, that was my reaction when my boss let his anger loose on me that holiday. It was like it came out of nowhere and everyone I told about it said the same thing - "Quit."

But I didn't. Later that day my boss left a message asking if I wanted to go have Christmas dinner but then he couldn't find a place open. Of course, I'd already eaten but I thought to myself how borderline personality it was that he was leaving me this message like nothing happened.

As the months went by these things would continue which I would talk over with my therapist weekly. One minute my boss would leave me a singing Christmas carol on my answering machine, the next he was flying into a rage. And what made it worse was that he was so nice to everyone else.

This wasn't my first time with a boss like this; I was just foolish enough to think that those days were behind me. It seems like every time I get what I think is a good job I wind up with one of these guys and I don't know why. Then I'm a slave to the money like most employees.

I worked for an attorney who used to bounce my paychecks and throw files at me who I stayed with for two years. His personality would change on a dime. One minute he'd be joking with you and the next standing over you, giving hateful looks.

I was employed by a volunteer of the year who loved to needle me and screw with my head daily. I worked for another guy who had me walking on eggshells at all times and a woman who used my asthma as an excuse to fire me. I found out later she had ran off every good employee that company had. I had another boss who had me crying, humiliated at his desk while he sat there stone cold-hearted. Another one would torment me about my sales then I found out he was stealing the clients' credit cards and living high on the hog, all the while telling us employees that if we just worked hard we could have everything he had.

Then there was the man who had no patience for my morning sickness when I was pregnant or anything else, for that matter. And I can't forget the boss who, when my grandma died, fired me because I needed to go to the funeral.

Add to the list the huge pharmaceutical company who loved to make threats against their employees so that they lived in fear of losing their job daily, the editor who still owes me money, the entrepreneur who was so anal retentive I never knew if I was coming or going, the boss lady who fired me for having a run in my hose which looked "unprofessional," the wealthy mom who kept increasing my duties without raising my pay then gave me mixed messages constantly, denying that she ever said this or that. Another one that comes to mind is the one who kept saying she was going to pay me and has yet to do it.

I'm reminded of a certain someone, too, who just stopped communicating with me, only for me to find out my job was gone.

Usually when we weren't busy my boss that fired me last year was easygoing and so I mistakenly assumed that last year would be the same.

I didn't know what I was in for and that by finally standing up to him and telling him last year at this time just before watching "Precious" for the first time that I was tired of him yelling at me all the time that I would pay dearly for it.

Christmas 2009 I really hoped would be different, that we could get through the holidays without him raging at me.

But on Christmas Eve I got an earful then on Christmas night after going off on me and watching me fall and hurt myself and hearing me cry out, then driving off without seeing if I was okay, I swallowed the realization that this particular holiday was ruined, too. No matter what I did it was wrong and every time he got mad at me or I made a mistake he would punish me by taking work and pay from me with no explanation or apology.

Now, although I had a tremendous sense of relief, so did my wallet and once again I was left emotionally and physically drained.

He doesn't know and would probably not care about all the sleepless nights I worried about my job or that he made me cry on more than one occasion.

He doesn't know that I gave up a visit with my daughter last year who I only get to see a few times a year so that I could run him to 11 clients' houses the other day because his car broke down.

He doesn't know that my depression over his verbal abuse got to the point where I seriously considered suicide more than once.

He thought I didn't care about my job but nothing could be further from the truth.

And what I hate the most is now he's going to tell all the clients the same thing he told me about his former employees when he hired me: "She was not dependable and I just couldn't rely on her."

According to one website about abusers, very rarely will such an abusive person take responsibility for his or her actions and they've got the Dr. Jekyll and Hyde thing down to a science.

If you met him you would probably think: "He seems so nice."

And he did when I met him, too just like the other 12 abusive bosses I've had, saying one thing then doing another, lying, withholding work and pay, being overly critical, hanging up on me, pretending to not remember telling me things, or changing their mind mid-stream without telling me in the middle of a job, blaming me for their mistakes, and denying that they are abusive like other such bosses.

The ironic thing is that my boss who just let me go would often talk about how his late father and mother would verbally abuse and critictize him relentlessly and the effects of that but my boss could never see he was carrying on the same legacy with me.

It should be no surprise that the number one complaint in an employee survey was that the boss doesn't seem to know how to manage people.

I looked on Facebook out of curiosity to see if there was a group for those fighting against abusive bosses and lo and behold, there was.

We need our jobs and some bosses take advantage of that.

Mine did and now, again out of work, I'm the one who has to pay for it instead of him. It's the futility of desperation and there was a time not long ago that I had no more energy left in me to continue to keep getting up and starting over.

A year ago, however, the fight in me was back and so I got back in the ring once again to go another round.

As I put my boxing gloves back on and I bounced from one foot to another like the professional job boxer that I was, I knew that something better would come along and I thought to myself as I had so many other times the one thing that kept me climbing back into the ring:

"Maybe next time it will be different."

But that was a year ago.

Fast forward. I'm about to turn 45 and wrote the above piece a year ago, published it, then pulled it when my abusive boss and I made up (out of fear partly and for self-preservation, of course)and I went back to his abusive environment.

Well today it all happened again, same scenario, different script, same crap. Only this time I told myself if nothing changes, nothing changes.
And that, after editing this piece and updating some occurrences to it which didn't take much really, just changing some dates, I have promised myself that since I took him back a year ago and the same set of events almost played out in the same way took place that I would not, could not go through it again, especially since my depression has gotten ten times worse since then and my mental and physical health due to the circumstances because of my job have suffered.
So, call it a birthday present to myself.

Now, let's just see if I can actually stick to it this time.