What the What?

Time to continue the tales of woe-

So. I worked for a venture capital company for 5 years. It was a particularly weird place to work, but it suited me. They treated me well. They were a lucrative company and they tended to throw money around. This was great because sometimes they threw the money at me. We had fancy black tie parties, catered breakfasts every Friday, field trips and so on. They were also really flexible with my schedule. When I came back to work from maternity leave, they promoted me and allowed me to work 30 hours a week and still retain my medical benefits. I could also bring Aidan to work, which was a great perk. Sounds great doesn't it? Well it didn't take me long to realize that the reason the company was so generous with money and perks was that the CEO, we'll call him Henry, was truly and clearly insane. I've unofficially diagnosed him with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He's brutish and abusive and as it turned out, a horrible businessman. As the company had tons of money, we could afford to have principal employees who would guide his business decisions. As the money began to dwindle, so did the principal employees. This left Henry to make the majority of the company's decisions and ultimately to the company's undoing.

It was very strange to work for someone with essentially no conscience. I could regale you with stories of working with this madman, like the time he held a company meeting in his house wearing only a polo shirt and underwear or the multiple times he went hunting and had his taxidermied trophies delivered to the office and then hung them on the walls or all the times he made people cry in his office. I'll save those stories for later.

This work environment also affected the other employees. Either Henry attracted morally bankrupt people or after years of working for such a man, their moral compass began to shift. In my five years we caught 2 employees in my office embezzling money. One embezzled 10K while the other embezzled 140K. This is an office of 15 people, so we were all pretty close. It was shocking to learn of these crimes.

Things took a turn at the office about halfway through my tenure. Henry was always nuts, but he began to be nuts with the company's money. He started to spend his money on extravagant hunting trips to Africa and he bought a gun company in another state. No money was coming in at this point. The tens of millions of dollars that were in the bank were spent in 3 years. We poured at least 10 million dollars into this gun company and then it had to file for bankruptcy. He's still holding onto it even though it's a money pit.

For the last year I was the sole accounting department. I was privy to all the banking information. I could easily see that there was no money left in the accounts. We would typically have $500 total in cash. This is a company whose rent was nearly 11K a month. When payroll rolled around, Henry would beg, borrow and steal to cover it. He cashed out his 401k, borrowed money from friends, took money from the gun company, he refinanced his home loan and he even forged his wife's signature so he could take out a loan in her name. He was always able to make payroll, but just barely and this also meant that there was no money to pay anything else. The loans he took out never got paid and all of the essential office bills were paid at the last possible moment. Rent wasn't getting paid, his RV was repossessed, and the company's Amex bill was defaulted on. It became an incredibly stressful place to work. There was no money, so employees were getting laid off. What was a company of 15 employees became a company of 3. Our jobs were basically fending off creditors, begging for our medical insurance to be paid and commiserating in each others offices.

The writing was on the wall for over a year. I knew that at some point, Henry wouldn't be able to pay me and I would be out of there. I was surprised that I was actually one of the last three standing. Thinking about how toxic a place it was to work, I shouldn't have been reluctant to leave, but I was. I was paralyzed into inactivity. I was prepared to go down with the ship, but the ship kept puttering along in a really painful and depressing way. About a week before I was "let go" I started sending out my resume.

In an odd set of circumstances, see "hospital" post, my parents were in town for a visit. They arrived on Friday and I was let go on Monday. It was weird and depressing and the unknown is always frightening. I spent that week with my son and parents and I sent out resumes to any job I was qualified for. It was great to have my parents in town. What makes them great is that they worry about me the right amount. They're not nonchalant and they don't panic. They are appropriate with their concern, which makes me feel good. They know that I'll be OK and that I'll make the right choices. Their confidence in me was a real boost during that week. I'd love to tell you how it turned out, but I'm writing my tales of woe chronologically, and coming up next is-
Scary Uncle