Can't Let It Go in Current Events

I dreamt about my old work again. Thus, I woke up thinking about it all and it actually feels like a fresh wound. It’s been seven months. Learning that Mel lost her job made me feel dirty. I’m not sure what my emotions are trying to tell me right now. I can’t sleep because I keep trying to put all of the pieces together and then I’m trying to figure out how to prove it.

Multiple women were concerned about Larry and his current marital affair. It was sloppy and everybody knew it was happening. Also, it was not his first one. An ex-employee came forward because she actually felt coerced into it. Employees are vulnerable, I had this argument several times. If you stand in the way of somebody’s career progression then they are vulnerable. Larry brags about that affair only he paints her as somebody that was obsessed with him. He bragged about how she would pick him up from events topless and send him nudes. In her story, he was intimidating and he asked her to do all of that. Larry is an Operations Manager. He is in charge of installing people to operate various restaurant locations. He is a very powerful man and all of this information was brought to me because those women were told that I would do the right thing.

I followed our policy and I reported it to my boss Brad, my General Manager/Operator and he basically told me to just ignore it. It makes sense that he would say that, he is an absolute menace to his staff. I’ve had to fight constantly about his racism and sexism and violence. My employees/friends suffered many indignities whenever I was not present to protect them. He is also terrified of Larry. So I went over his head and reported it to head office. Steve, our regional manager, was not impressed that he had to hear about this from me when I told my GM. So Brad got in trouble. Steve said that he would get back to me once he spoke to his team at head office to sort out how to navigate this issue. He literally handed this issue over to Kirk. Kirk is the Franchisee who owns thirty stores and Larry is his right-hand man. Without Larry Kirk would not be able to babysit all of his stores. I was told that they were going to “investigate” this matter. They dismissed all of the allegations from previous employees and just focused on the current affair. They discounted the previous employees and labelled it as sour grapes… which was wrong and I think those women would have been taken into account if there was at least one woman involved in this process. So they circled back after a few weeks and told me that these allegations seem credible but they don’t have any evidence and they have too much invested in him so they will just transfer him to the other end of the city. Problem solved?

That’s when I experienced a direct retaliation from my boss Brad. He went from good job, Tom! I love how things are going. I’m going to do a review on you soon to him not returning my calls, texts or e-mails. To him not coming by the store while I was working and telling the staff that he hates how things are going and that I’m doing a bad job. Even though the store was recognized by head office as one of the highest performers in the province and they recognized that I did all of that by myself. The store was at the bottom until I rose it from the ashes. He was then lashing out at my staff and being abusive and he only spoke to me when he absolutely needed to. I had no help or support and an opportunity presented itself and I made the big mistake of hiring Karamjeet.

Karamjeet was a GM of a store that burned down. She was an absolute menace. She is a narcissist and I fell for her charm so I invited her to join my team. Turns out, her charm was just an act. She was caught by my staff on many occasions saying that she wanted to get me fired so she could take over the store and hire her old team from the store she burned down. Then one day she told me that she heard about what I did to Larry. That I stabbed him in the back. That I should have been loyal to the company. We argued about the ethics of what he did. Literally she said that it is okay to sleep with employees and treat them like shit. They mean nothing to her. Shortly after that, I noticed that they removed my thirteen years’ worth of writeups from my file and put them in a separate folder labelled confidential. They were reviewed and they were waiting for me to fuck up so they could fire me. I had a target on my back and I had to watch myself slowly lose my job.

She was constantly trying to get me to lie on my reports and steal and she would scratch and pinch me when we argued and she was always telling me that I need to get laid whenever I got strung out about the way she was doing things, in front of my staff. I finally had enough and told her that I was going to have to report her behaviour to Brad. That day she was trying to leave four hours early and pay herself for it. That’s when she tried to gaslight me about raising my voice at her, she stormed out and caused a scene. Two days later I was fired for being abusive to Karamjeet because I raised my voice at her. Literally she yelled something at me and I yelled something back because I was two rooms away. Literally the day after that blowup between us she continued to try and gaslight me. She even demanded an apology. I don’t play these games with narcissists.

So there I was, everybody had a target on me. What the company decided to do was protect the predator and silence the whistleblower. Head office, Steve, just wanted this to go away without a PR disaster. Kirk almost lost his right-hand man and needed the trouble maker to go away. Larry’s affair blew up in his face and he “almost lost his job.” Brad got in trouble for mishandling this and was tired of fighting with me about his abusive behaviour. Karamjeet wanted consolidated power over my store and I threatened to expose her.

The indignities continued and actually got worse after I was terminated. Their employees continued to come to me because they did not know where to go with it all. The people in charge of protecting them from indignities were the ones creating the predatory culture. That caused me a lot of stress as I watched all of my friends get fired one by one because they were too close to me. When I learned that Mel and her Boss got fired at their store it became clear that their “investigation” into the matter was actually used to create a hit list. Every single person who spoke up against Larry and had a tale to tell about his predatory ways has since been fired after they pulled the trigger on me.

It’s just been hard to let go because of these injustices. Seven months later and I’m still affected. I don’t know how to detach myself from this. It’s all that I can think about once it crosses my mind. The lawyer finally returned my call yesterday but it went to voicemail and I can’t bring myself to check it. I have myself convinced that he will refuse to help me sue them. My friend who works at that law firm did tell me that he will forward me to somebody who can help me. Now I’m like… overthinking this all even harder.

Blah! I absolutely have to go get things done today. Ta