Yesterday would have been
my first day back at the bookstore. Cute Pansexual Assistant Manager was transferring,
so it seemed doable a couple of weeks ago. When the time came, though, it
seemed too sad. I knew it would take a lot more transformation for me to feel
safe there, and it felt like that would take more work than my 10$ an hour
covered. I’ve been wanting to commit to my own business anyway, so I took the
leap and declared myself bossless. I’m nervous about the change and still heartachey
about what happened, but I’m proud that I put myself first.
Things finally broke down
between me and CPAM while the Store Manager was off for a week. We were setting
up the textbook department for fall rush, so there was lots of good getting-in-a-flow-and-moving-heavy-books-around—my
favorite part of the job.
But on the Friday of that
week, something curdled in CPAM. He was in a text message argument with his
sister-in-law. (she and his brother had just moved back in with his parents,
where he lived as well) He was sniping about her to another employee in the
back room and when I walked back there to get more books, he looked at me with
such deep contempt, like how dare I walk in there, as if I were the hated sister-in-law
herself.
I kept doing my job and
chitchatting cheerfully with him—I have that abused-kid bad habit of trying to
nice somebody out of being a jerk, as if I can avoid being hurt by being well-behaved
enough. It bugged me, though, when he talked about her “bitching,” when he said
he was going to “put that bitch in her place.” I had been volleying back his
low-key prejudices for weeks, but this outright misogyny was still shocking. I
didn’t say anything about it, though, because I was sick of having to say
something so many times.
But then he turned on me.
Although I had been working with a textbook company on and off for fifteen years,
he decided to explain how alphabetizing works. Then he explained it again and
again.
“I know how to alphabet,”
I joked to try to get him off my case, but I succeeded only in giving him a
chance to correct my grammar. Just want to mention at this moment that I have a
Master’s Degree in Education.
I
said calmly that I wanted to be treated like an adult, but he kept doubling
down on the condescension. I needed to learn how to take constructive
criticism, he said, because after all, he was my superior. Which technically he was, but nobody had ever put it quite
that way to me before. In all my years of low-level and often-temporary
positions, no one had ever talked down to me that way.
As I tried to stand up for myself, he poured on the
gaslighting: He said I needed to “compose myself.” He said I wasn’t hearing what
I thought I was hearing. I left early, feeling livid and shaken. I wrote to the
Store Manager about what happened, and he wrote back right away saying that he
would take care of it.
Next Time: He didn’t.