I work in one of our local tourism companies as a tour admin. Work is relatively okay and all, except we work under a husband and wife duo. The husband is a fickle, indecisive man, and the wife is an absolute control freak and, quite frankly, a b****.
And for some weird reason, she seems to particularly not like me, probably because I am the youngest member of the team and she thinks I’m incompetent because of that.
She hovers over me from time to time, trying to catch me screwing up. At one point, she accuses me of installing Skype onto the office computer to chat with friends instead of working, when in reality, the app was already in there before I started working there, and I use it to chat with our dealers.
She then decides I am not to be trusted with the computers anymore and makes my supervisor give me menial jobs like cleaning out desks and sorting out their outdated files in order to keep me away from using the computer. After a while, my supervisor says she needs all hands on deck with their latest tour promotion, so I am back on the computer doing admin like I should be doing, much to her displeasure.
Finally, during the upcoming Chinese New Year season, my lady boss decides to take me off admin duty to sort out raincoats for the tourists, as we are also approaching the rainy season. She tells me to count all the raincoats, sort them by colour, and match them with the number of guests — under the watchful eye of the lady boss’s sister, who is also part of the top management.
I soon find out after I am done that the numbers don’t tally, so I make my way to her desk to tell her so.
Me: “Ma’am, I’ve checked all the raincoats. We’re short of about twenty.”
Boss: “What?! That’s impossible! I personally bought those raincoats following the exact number on the packaging! You must’ve counted it wrong! Do it again!”
I oblige and count it twice, and the results are still the same. Needless to say, she is livid.
Boss: “That is impossible! I don’t believe you!”
Me: “Ma’am, I have counted them twice. [Boss’s Sister] also watched me do it. We really are short of twenty raincoats.”
Boss: “There is no way we are short! I bought those raincoats myself! How can we be short?! There is no way! I don’t believe you!”
Me: “Ma’am, as I’ve said, I counted it twice. If you like, you could count along with me to verify it.”
She did, even with the help of her sister, and sure enough, I was right; we were short of twenty raincoats. She huffed and puffed and grumbled audibly in disbelief, and even her sister tried to imply behind my back that I must’ve lost the missing raincoats while I was counting — “That’s because she’s on that d*** phone of hers.” All I did was reply to an urgent text from my husband regarding my daughter’s school issue. It was two against one, so I couldn’t speak up even if I wanted to.
Later that day, I was called into the husband’s office, with both husband and wife there, and the wife told me that she was very unhappy with my work performance and that I was fired. The husband just sat there without a word as he handed me my last paycheck — didn’t even bother to even ask my side of the story — while the wife just sat there next to him with a smug look on her face.
I took the paycheck and thanked them and never went back, not even to book a flight for future holiday plans.
