A long, long time ago I had a boss who, in retrospect, must have had bi-polar disorder. By diagnosing him with this, I’m being very kind. Because if he wasn’t bi-polar, he was just a straight up asshole.

I was very young and impressionable. My confidence could still be shattered like a champagne flute dropped on a tile floor.

Everyone feared him, so if he came up next to me, bumping my shoulder in the mailroom, and ran the line, “How you doin’?” (about 5 years stale from when Joey Tribbiani said it on Friends), I’d be happy that I was being sexually harassed instead of being screamed at.

Yes, screamed at.

I once ordered lunch for a meeting that occurred monthly. Sometimes a lot of people showed up, sometimes little.

On this particular day, not many showed and there was a ton of food leftover.

He called me into his office. As I stood before him on the oriental carpet in front of his big mahogany desk, he ripped me a new asshole like I wasn’t perfectly fine with the one I already had.

After what seemed like an hour, but was probably a couple of minutes, he finished his tirade with, “NOW GO DO WHATEVER THE FUCK IT IS YOU DO AROUND HERE!”

Luckily I got to my shared office before I started to cry. The woman I worked with comforted me, but wasn’t surprised at all. We all endured his wrath at least once, unless you were fucking him, and even then, I’m not 100% sure those people escaped it either.

And as for what he said to me… I may be insecure in many aspects of my life, but my work ethic has never been questioned.

Some said he had a Napoleon complex because he was only slightly taller than me at 5’0”. Which is sad because height does not determine anything about a person other than their physical stature.

A prime example of this is basketball player, Muggsy Bogues – one of the greatest point guards in Wake Forest history, and a Division I basketball star – AT 5-foot-3. (Look him up to see all the great he does in the world besides his basketball career.)

My old boss was NOT in any way, like Muggsy Bogues. I agree it was most likely his height that made him an insecure prick.

He would tear down grown men to the point of tears in a boardroom full of people. I pitied those men for having to walk around the office for the rest of the day and then face their families at home. I’m sure they didn’t tell their wives the true story of their giant shit of a boss making them cry.

He ruined people, but the job paid well, so we all endured it. It made me realize that money DEFINITELY does not buy happiness. That was the one good thing I’d taken with me from that job.

I sometimes have fantasies of me going back to that oriental carpet and having him scream at me like that again.

Except this time, while the white spit globbers gather at the corners of his mouth as he berates me, instead of cowering away, I scream back at him and then body slam him. Then I climb up on his mahogany desk and do a Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka on top of him. Then I grab his puny head and turn his face toward me. I act like I’m going to show no mercy and smash the back of my hand into his face to kill him, but instead, I honk his nose like Mr. Miyagi did to John Kreese in Karate Kid 2. Then I drop him on the floor in a puddle of his own piss. I curse him out and tell him everything that’s wrong with him, loud enough so the entire office can hear me, then quit.

It’s very cathartic.