Got Into a Fight With My Boss and We Both Look Stupid

In which two powerless adults scramble for authority.

1.

Yesterday at work I had to be separated from a manager after we started talking in each other's faces, volume rising.

After that we were taken outside, at intervals, to tell our respective versions of what happened, “resolve the conflict” inform the “investigation.”

Big headache and scandal but the store’s been dead, on account of the rain, so everyone’s pretty happy for a shakeup.

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2.

I've tried writing it simply but the whole story needs too much context plus I already had to tell the whole thing to various managers when they took me outside and sat me on an alleyway milk crate and said, “OK,” tryna look earnest while clapping at mosquitos in the dusklight, “first of all: you're not in trouble.” They just need to know what happened.

Telling it in the alleyway, right after it happened, my hands were trembling and my ears were hot; when I went inside I passed a mirror and saw they were fading from purple to red.

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3.

Plus I'm writing this before dawn and my girlfriend is still asleep and when she wakes up I’ll have to tell the whole thing again, on my feet, doing voices.

The way I’ve been distilling it, when colleagues ask what happened, is I just say mean things about the manager in question. It’s been cathartic. Ears still red and cheeks still pounding with adrenaline I’ll say, of his haircut, that the Jheri curl has finally swept the Shire. I wanted to mock his lack of muscle mass and so I looked up antonyms for “mass” and one of them was “cream” and I decided that yes: he has a cream of muscle.

Every blasé- or clever-seeming joke I come up with about my retail job is a sideways poem about powerlessness, humiliation.

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4.

I’m not very good at selling my skills and so I bought a book by an FBI hostage negotiator in which he shares the tactics he uses, talking with gun-toting kidnappers and bank robbers in the field, and explains how the reader might use those skills to negotiate a better deal for themselves — be it a raise or a car sale or a business merger; how to “Negotiate As If Your Life Depended On It” (that’s the subtitle).

The book is fun but has some red flags. A “negotiation” is when two parties with opposing interests meet at a table and compromise. No moralizing. Everyone treated as equals.

A “hostage negotiation,” on the other hand, implies a good guy and a bad guy.

And so the reader understands, implicitly, that “Negotiate” means “Fight,” which is not only the opposite of “Negotiate” but the thing that happens when negotiation fails.

The author makes his fortune these days as a blue-chip consultant and you can see how corporate American might appreciate his metaphor; if negotiation is a fight, greed is self-defense.

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5.

Here’s the short version of what happened with my manager:

While working the cash register I had three occasions to call for a manager’s authorization on something. On all three occasions Rhett came over, engaged with the customer, and behaved like a slowly engorging cock, worse with each visit, until finally he was outright insulting to that third customer and she stormed out.

I said, “That was bad, Rhett.”

He said, “People don’t realize — ”

“No I mean you, the way you behaved…”

He blinked at me as I riffed. Then straightened up and bowed once at the chest and said, “Thank you for the feedback,” before marching away.

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6.

A couple hours later I was Neatening Up the Milks, which according to a recent performance review is a Top Skill of mine, when Rhett jangled over, curls hopping, and said, “Can we touch base about what happened up there?”

Kinda rhetorical cuz what am I gonna say?

He sighed and, with body language that said I’m Trying to Be Reasonable, he explained: “Feedback is fine. I can grow from it, OK? But when you use words like ‘reprehensible,’ or ‘mortified,’ and especially when you do it in front of customers, that’s a step beyond feedback. OK? That’s…”

What happened is he fucked up in front of a subordinate (me). Now he’s cornering the subordinate and tryna retcon what happened; make the subordinate think they made the mistake, and should therefore bite their tongue about the whole snafu.

I made gestures with a quart of 2% and said some colorful things in a spiked volume. That’s when another manager busied up between us and created some distance between us where suddenly, somehow, there was almost none.

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7.

That happened Wednesday.

On Thursday, before I clocked in, Rhett had a meeting with other managers.

When I showed up, and had to ask him for my assignment, I asked with a smile, as if nothing’d happened. He sank, in face and posture. Said in a soft earnest voice, “Can I talk to you for a second?”

Kinda rhetorical so I just stood there.

“I wanted to thank you for yesterday. As you can tell, I am On My Journey, trying to be the best I can be at this job, and when I step out of line I want to make sure I hold myself accountable, and what you said yesterday gives me an opportunity to…”

The narcissist’s apology: If I hadn’t mistreated you, I wouldn’t be the better person I am today. “I’m Sorry” becomes “Thank You” becomes “You’re Welcome.”

Which, thank God, gives me another thing to joke about.

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