M any moons ago, I worked in retail slinging video games, game warranties and the occasional Pokemon card. People asked me dumb questions about games, other regulars had their quirks but were always fun to deal with. I learnt everyone’s names off by heart in honestly felt like the games store in a small country town.
Overall it was a great job.
Until ‘she’ became my manager.
Now, the thing with truly bad managers is that it wasn’t immediately bad. It’s like a lot of bad things in life.
Let’s imagine You find yourself a nice girl. You go on a couple dates and you begin to really like her. You like how she looks, how she talks — she’s smart to boot. 2 dates turn into twenty. And now after 2 years you’re thinking it’s maybe time you consider spending the rest of your life with this person. Then, out of nowhere you find out that she likes Friends more than Seinfeld.
That’s the kind of unexpected devastation that hurts the most.
And while I never really felt devastated by my manager and her peculiarities (sheesh, I never liked her that much), my tenuous point remains; it didn’t happen straight away. Or at least, I never noticed it straight away.
There were some early signs that things weren’t grand.
- The store slowly got messier over the time she worked there – by the end of her tenure, you could hardly move around the back without walking into a stock box.
- As she got more comfortable, she would go on her lunch break and not come back until 2 hours later
- She would take a box of stock to her car, telling staff that she was doing a store transfer (spoiler alert, she wasn’t)
Now, in case my last point didn’t give it away, my fearless leader was in fact stealing from our store.
Stealing on its own (depending on the context), can sometimes even be grounds for sympathy; A starving child pilfering a loaf of bread; Robin Hood stealing gold from Commonwealth Bank, or whatever it is — there’s potential for it to at least seem morally grey.
But that’s not what this was. And I’ll tell you why. It’s not what she did, it’s what she did after.
- Telling other staff in the store that she suspected us of stealing (I assume to try and sway some weird favour or something)
- Setting up an iPad to record in the stock room after we closed up to gather evidence to support that pretty wild theory
- And (eventually) blaming a workmate and and I for the stealing (to her managers)
Now, I’m not saying this to be bitter. I’m actually saying this in response to every time I’ve heard gossiping around the dinner table about what someone said or did and the inevitable question of:
“Why would they do that?”
And the simplest answer is…
We’re human. It happens.
And where there’s humans, there’s problems. Speaking of which…
sociopath
- a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behaviour.
“A sociopath typically has a conscience, but it’s weak. They may know that taking your money is wrong, and they might feel some guilt or remorse, but that won’t stop their behavior. [THEY] lack empathy, the ability to stand in someone else’s shoes and understand how they feel.” (Thanks WebMD)
Depending where you look, psychopaths and sociopaths make up to 3% of the population.
Chances are, you’ve probably worked with, lived with, or met, a psychopath or sociopath.
Our brains suck. They do a lot of good things, but also a lot of bad. But even particularly bad brains need love and understanding.
And someone’s gotta give it to ’em.
I was lucky to have had my worst manager outside of my professional career. And despite the horrible nature of some of the things she did, I honestly just felt more confused by it all rather than angry.
So, here I am extending one last mention (probably) of the retail gaming chapter of my life, not because I hated it, but because I learnt a lot from it. And without it, I wouldn’t appreciate how good I’ve had it since.
Thanks, boss.
