“Corporate Appointees”
It’s no secret some people stumble into positions they have absolutely no business being in. Unfortunately, some businesses value who you know more than what you know when making decisions on hiring someone. Typically this doesn’t lead to anything more than someone being incompetent at their job; however when someone is aware of why they were hired and the privilege with it, it can be a recipe for disaster.
Our friend, “Noelle,” had to deal with an extreme case of this. Noelle worked for a large corporation and the incompetent person who stumbled into their position happened to be her boss, “Stacy.” Stacy was a “corporate appointee.”
Stacy’s mom was a “bigwig in their company who wrangled a corporate appointment for her daughter, which meant she had some clout behind her.” Unfortunately for Noelle and every single person in the large corporation, Stacy knew she had clout behind her and took full advantage.
~
“A Bully And A Tyrant”
Needless to say, Stacy was not good at her job. Worst of all, no one actually knew how she would perform in her job because she was barely in the office long enough. Stacy “was frequently out of the office for ‘meetings.'” These “meetings” consisted of “two-hour lunches, coffee with friends, and a bit of shopping.”
Stacy barely being in the office would infuriate all of her co-workers enough; however, she took it upon herself to terrorize Noelle and her co-workers any time she was actually present in the office.
Noelle described her as a “bully and a tyrant.”
It’s actually impressive to be considered a bully and a tyrant when you’re barely present at work. Stacy must be very efficient in being a prick during the time she actually spends in the office. Obviously, everyone hates her for barely being present at work while they’re stuck there but to be outwardly mean to your employees is super confident. She must really think no one can touch her.
Stacy would often “hold the threat of firing over everyone’s heads” to essentially get them to perform her job duties on top of their own.
Noelle did clarify “she wasn’t a micromanager because she wasn’t around enough to micromanage anything.”
Regardless of her lack of presence, Stacy’s antics became a legend around the entire building and she was disliked by nearly every single employee at every level of the company.
In Noelle’s words, “This was a large company, so to have a building where almost everyone disliked you took a lot of work.”
Under normal circumstances, no one could get away with Stacy’s behavior in the workplace. As a corporate appointee, Stacy was “untouchable” due to her status. “The person who had the power to fire her couldn’t because of her family. Even the number three person in the entire company couldn’t do it, and he was a corporate appointee as well.”
Noelle and her co-workers had pretty much accepted Stacy wasn’t going anywhere until “after a year of mystery meetings and time out of office, her excuses were catching up to her.”
~
“Special Projects”
With no choice, because firing Stacy wasn’t an option, the company director removed her from her job and placed her in charge of “special projects.”
“Anyone who’s worked in a corporate job knows people get put in charge of special projects because they were largely incapable of doing their previous job. They didn’t get fired, but they no longer had any power.” For obvious reasons, Stacy couldn’t get fired without severe backlash from her mother and who knows whatever other family members were in power in the company.
Some companies make zero sense. You’re so worried about upsetting some important figure you would rather stick the useless employee who has a connection to them in the janitor’s closet for the day than fire them and call it “special projects.” It must be so nice to be so connected. I hope Stacy doesn’t find a way to mess it up because I think this is the best possible position she could be in. She has absolutely zero responsibilities aside from just sitting in an office.
After basically being put in the corporate equivalent of a timeout, Stacy straightened out her behavior for a while. She was actually present in the office all day despite having no real responsibilities binding her there. Stacy even did her best to be nice to her co-workers. Or at least her equivalent of “nice.”
As Noelle and all of her co-workers were expecting, Stacy changing her act didn’t last long.
In almost no time, Stacy was back to constantly being out of the office for “meetings” despite having no responsibilities requiring out-of-office meetings.
Unfortunately for Stacy, the agency hired a new assistant director, “Tricia,” who was also a corporate appointee.
~
A New Sheriff In Town
Unlike Stacy, Tricia was very serious about her job. Tricia quickly got word of Stacy’s behavior and decided she wasn’t going to let it slide. Tricia wasn’t the first person with the opportunity to stick it to Stacy but she was the first person who decided they didn’t care about the reputation of Stacy’s family or her corporate clout.
How has it taken this long for someone like this to be appointed? They couldn’t even hire someone specifically for the purpose of calling out Stacy and taking whatever backlash from her family came with it? Is Stacy’s family really that terrifying to everyone? Is Tricia’s family more terrifying?
As she was the assistant director, Tricia had access to everyone’s electronic calendars. Meaning she saw every single “meeting” Stacy was out of the office for. Tricia decided to cross-check Stacy’s “meeting” times with the security logs to confirm when she was in and out of the building. Obviously, one meeting shouldn’t equate to Stacy being out of the office for the entire afternoon so Tricia quickly had caught Stacy in her lies.
After compiling her evidence, Tricia sent Stacy an email with a list of dates and times from her meetings essentially asking “Can you tell me more about these different meetings you were having? And why they took so long?”
“Well, Stacy wasn’t having any of that!” Little did she know, Stacy probably should have just let Tricia have her moment of triumph.
~
“That’ll Show Her!”
Stacy could be heard around the building screaming, to no one in particular, “How dare Tricia call my character into question! This is an outrage!”
Apparently, Stacy found it so outrageous she decided to write a resignation letter and slam it down to Tricia’s desk to make her point.
Stacy stormed out of the office and shouted, “That’ll show her!”
To the lack of surprise from Noelle and every single other person in the building, it did not show her.
“After a few hours, Stacy had time to think about what she had done. She remembered she had a one-year-old at home. She also remembers her husband was an ‘unskilled truck driver who made eight dollars an hour,’ in her own words. And she remembered she was the primary breadwinner of the family.”
Why did she not think of this before handing in the resignation letter? What was Tricia going to do aside from just calling her out? No one is capable of actually firing Stacy but she just handed in her resignation letter. Some people truly don’t think through their actions and I can’t say I’m surprised Stacy is one of those people. Also, I can’t believe someone willingly married Stacy. Her family must be loaded.
Stacy went back to Tricia’s office with her tail tucked between her legs. She apologized, said she was willing to try harder, and asked if Tricia would be willing to forget the resignation letter ever happened.
This is typically the part of the story where Tricia would be a better person than Stacy deserved and give her the resignation letter back as long as she promised to fulfill her promise. However, Tricia was exactly the person Stacy deserved.
Tricia responded, “Oh, I’m sorry, you’re too late. I’ve already processed the letter and sent it off to HR. I’m afraid I can’t undo it.”
“The previously untouchable corporate appointee had just been fired by the only corporate appointee who had the power: herself.”
Rather than protecting her because it could potentially benefit her down the line, Tricia just let Stacy be her own undoing.
“When news of Stacy’s self-firing raced through the building, you could hear the cries of ‘What? Are you serious?’ followed by howls of laughter as each new person heard the story.”
Thanks to Stacy, it was actually a much better place to work for Noelle and all her co-workers.
~
Thoughts From The Author
Stacy did what many people do when they think they’re untouchable, which is fly directly into the sun. It sounds like Stacy would have had it pretty made due to her connections if she had just simply taken the opportunity and done her job but alas, people like her don’t operate that way. Even if Stacy hadn’t bothered to do her job, I doubt anyone would have cared if she had actually been nice to Noelle and her co-workers. Being nice can get you a long way but Stacy, who had probably had everything in her life handed to her, probably never had to learn of being friendly.
I genuinely wonder who Tricia was appointed by that caused her to have absolutely zero fear of going after Stacy. Whoever it was must have been a bigger bigwig than Stacy’s mom who everyone was so scared of they wouldn’t dare go after her useless daughter. Maybe whoever appointed Tricia had a personal vendetta against Stacy’s mom, because where else would she have learned that behavior but from her family, and instructed Tricia to take down Stacy. Regardless of who appointed her or why, Tricia got to work immediately and it didn’t take much to get Stacy out of there.
Speaking of, it takes some serious nerve to write up a resignation letter as a threat against your employer when you are absolutely in no position to be without a job. Typically, that’s something you do when you have another job lined up and you want to give your employer one last opportunity to right however they’ve been wronging you before you move on to bigger and brighter things. In Stacy’s case, she had absolutely zero backup plan along with a one-year-old at home. What did she think Tricia was going to say? “No, please don’t resign. Please continue being a useless waste of money who everyone hates but no one can fire even though you completely deserve it.” Of course, they were going to accept your resignation letter, Stacy. It sounds like you were a complete waste of space, money, and a job, why would they not let you resign? Some people are really out of touch.
~