“Kind Of” Seems Mild

I work in a small art gallery. The owner is not who you’d expect to run an art gallery; he’s ex-police, very blunt, not very polite… Okay, he is kind of an a**hole. Also, as it turns out, he’s kind of sexist. I should have figured this out when, at my interview, he suggested I go talk to my husband about whether I should take the job.

One day, I’m at the front counter and my boss walks past me and gestures abruptly.

Boss: “Come here now.”

We go to a display of glass items.

Boss: “See all this? This is dust. It’s dusty. What have you been doing all day?”

Me: “Helping customers and then eating my lunch.”

Boss: “No, no, no. Cleaning comes before lunch. And see all this?”

He points to an imperceptibly “dusty” frame.

Boss: “Dust. Dust. Dust. Does your house look like this? Your husband lets you get away with this?”

Me: “Well, no, because he—”

I was going to say, “He does most of the cleaning, actually!” but my boss interrupts me.

Boss: “You’re a housewife; you know that things are supposed to be clean!”

Me: *Pauses* “Okay. I’ll get some paper towels.”

I had to walk away before I said something I’d regret. Later, the owner let me go the day before Thanksgiving, a couple of weeks later, for “not selling aggressively enough.” Good riddance, as I was about to quit anyway. I work at a much better art gallery now with bosses who are a thousand times nicer.