The Curious Incident of the Yacht in the Afternoon

For your reading pleasure, I present  a short morality tale about the humiliation of underlings via yacht-torture. (As I wrote this post my current lack of a career seemed ever-so-much-more pleasant...)

Any resemblance to individuals living or dead in this account is purely because it's true.

Also, feel free to use the comments space recounting your most humiliating on-the-job moment. For the record, this isn't actually my worst moment ever, but a girl needs some dignity.

Once upon a time there was a young Junior Account Executive called Kate, in her very first job out of uni. Kate was a country girl and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but she had the misfortune of falling in with a small company run by a complete and utter psychopath.

The Boss was such a bastard that staff who lasted longer than three months were the veterans of the office, and through a process of rapid attrition Kate went from the lowest of the low to holding the senior accounts, all within four months of starting work at this awful, tightarse company.  She was also given a pay rise, and went from earning $26 000 to $28 000! A year!

Meanwhile Mr Psychopath and the other business partners bought apartments on the North Shore and went for holidays to mountain health retreats, while their staff had to record stamp and envelope usage in a little red book.

Despite her rapid ascension to key accounts person, Mr Psychopath's customary 9.05am dressing down did not abate (whatever she had done wrong the day before was addressed, in great detail. Common infractions included forgetting to sign out of the 'lunch book', arriving at work a minute or two late, 'looking bored in meetings' and often, falling into traps Mr Psychopath would set for his staff, such as forgetting to tell them about important meetings and then dressing them down in front of clients when they weren't prepared.) 

Kate continued to cry in the toilets every morning, and most of Sunday nights. She also developed a persistent and mysterious stomach-ache that lasted all the time she was at work. She was threatened with being fired quite regularly, including when she asked for a day off so she could go to her university graduation.

Kate's most important client was A Very Big Important Credit Card Company who were very demanding and she worked back many evenings to meet the demands. Mr Psychopath insisted on giving her lots of other clients as well, including Friendly but Small Company That Made Sheds. The boss at Shed-making Company -- who was at least 50 years old -- took a bit of a shine to 21-year-old Kate, and Mr Psychopath used to make all sorts of lewd jokes about it. It made Kate very very uncomfortable, but she was becoming quite used to being the butt of Mr Psychopath's jokes.

Anyway, Mr Shed-maker had a yacht and he used to go sailing around Pittwater. Kate had only lived in Sydney for a little over eight months by this point, and didn't even know where Pittwater was. Mr Shed-maker invited Kate and Mr Psychopath out for an afternoon sailing. As it happened, this clashed with Big Important Deadline for Big Important Credit Card Company, but
Mr Psychopath made Kate and the other staff work back even more so they could go sailing. At the last minute, Big Important Company rep called up the office and asked Kate to come into a meeting but Mr Psychopath made her call up and say she had another job on and could she come in the next day instead? Big company wasn't impressed but they agreed. This turned out to be a problem later on, but is a story best saved for another day, probably one where pigs fly and corporate machinations turn out to be interesting.

Yacht day dawned bright and sunny, a pleasant late-October day, and Kate dressed in casual gear as her boss had suggested. In fact, his exact words were 'Dress comfortably'. And that was it. The weather report said there was a threat of a storm in the evening, so Kate put her favourite black hoody in her bag too. In her mind, she pictured the afternoon: puttering about the bay, some cheese and bikkies and a glass of wine, putting up with Mr Psychopath's excoriating attempts at humour, and then hopefully coming home again in time to watch Secret Life of Us.

Kate and Mr Psychopath headed off to Pittwater after lunch in his Saab, and arrived at the Prince Alfred Yacht club (I think anyway, it was a while ago) mid-afternoon. Kate, having grown up inland where the only boat they ever went on was her dad's fishing dinghy, was surprised at the sleek lines of the yacht they approached. She was even more surprised to see that everyone was wearing raincoats. And rainpants. And rainhats.

"Did you bring a jacket?" Mr Shed-maker asked as he approached in his plastic-bib-and-braces pants.

Kate said she had and so they all climbed aboard the yacht. There were no bikkies, no cheese, and definitely no wine. In fact, she learned, it was a racing afternoon! She was positioned up the back of the yacht by Mr Shed-maker and told to 'do what everyone else did'. She was also given a life-jacket, which she dutifully donned.

Soon they moved out of the docks, and it was very, very cold and dark clouds threatened. Kate looked at everyone else's raincoats and fished her own hoody from her bag. It didn't do much against the wind. It also didn't take long for the yacht to spring to action, and she was in the way, and trying not to do anything stupid, and water kept splashing up, and the yacht screamed through the water towards a bouy... and then around the bouy, and everything went sideways, and Mr Shed-maker yelled 'tack!' and they all threw themselves the other way, except Kate, who was too busy clinging to something, whatever she could find. And then it began to rain, and there was yelling and jumping and tacking, and everyone in rainsuits (that is, everyone but Kate) looked like they were having the time of their lives. Her only saving grace was that she did not get seasick.

It went on for a long time until it got dark and Kate was drenched and cold, and exhausted from leaping from side to side and clutching on things to avoid falling into the dark water. Finally the boat headed back to the jetty and everyone went off for a congratulatory drink at the yacht club. Except for Kate, who was so wet and cold and miserable and teeth-chattering that Mr Psychopath did the only nice thing he'd ever done, possibly in his entire life, and took her home rather than inflicting her sodden wetness on the Upper-Crust patrons of the club.

Of course, Mr Psychopath did make her sit on a grotty old towel so as not to damage his leather seats, and he also berated her the whole way back for not bringing a change of clothes or a proper rainjacket and looking like a bit of an idiot in front of Mr Shed-maker and his friends.

"Don't you know anything?" he finally said.

Kate was very embarrassed because she did not, in fact, know anything about sailing at all. In fact, as she pointed out through her chattering teeth, she grew up 400 km from the ocean, and called anything that went on the water a boat. Her boss then launched into a long tirade about the stupidity of country people and the time he went to Dubbo and nearly died of the isolation. The drive home seemed to last as long as the yacht experience.

She then got a dreadful cold and spent the rest of the week in bed, which caused even more problems, but she won't go into that now.

Postscript: It took me another seven months to get out of that particular hell-hole, but get out I did. And I haven't been back on a yacht since.

Comments

[Ariel]

sorry for posting that twice ...

[Meredith]

You capture being young and vulnerable in the workplace so well Kate. I don't have an embarrassing story to tell - I was waaay too good at staying under the radar & covering mistakes up (undealt with files? oooh, let's just pop them into the air-conditioning duct) before I actually found a job to love. But I did also have a Mr Psychopath. Let's call him Mr Cheapsuit. He made my life a misery, mostly because he hated that my hours were "irregular" - meaning that I arrived at 8.30 and left at 4.30 in order to collect my daughter from after school care. At 4.28 he would loom over my desk, a furious "I dare you" look on his oily face, and give me something urgent to do. So most afternoons I had to run the 2 kilometres from work to school, in high heels. Later he had a nervous breakdown, and it's the only time I've ever rejoiced over someone's mental illness.

[Helen]

I'm furious that someone as nice as you could be put through that by someone like that. I'm very disappointed you didn't throw up on him.

[Kate]

MikeB, you're more optimistic about the power of collective action than I am. Though I agree many workplace relationships are characterised by sadism and masochism... as are, unfortunately, many other relationships.

Laura, that's awful! Though the comeuppence they got is rather satisfying. I hope your injuries weren't too on-goingly traumatic.

Ariel, that's awful too, and it's terrible to be put in that position because other people can't get their shit together. Also, feeling you on the cast adrift on the ocean of freelancing thing. Oh yeah.

Meredith, what an arsehole. Yet another reason I don't want to work in the corporate world: one day, I would like to have children and not be punished for it in that manner. (As an aside, Mr Psychopath forced me to quit a tafe course I was taking because it involved me leaving work 1/2 hour early twice a week. God knows what he would have done with me had I had children. Oddly enough, no-one in that office did have kids.)

Helen, me or Meredith? Both of us could have done a good up-chuck in our circumstances.

[worldpeace_and_aspeedboat]

Captain Fyodor O'Frontbottom

*snigger*

:)

[Ariel]

Kate, I really SHOULD have included in that comment (it was 1am, too much excitement) how much I enjoyed your post, and am enjoying the blog at the moment (oops - no pun intended!) Though I hate to be enjoying your pain, it is well captured. And definitely reminds one that the world of permanent work is not so great, either.

[elsewhere]

i was just going to say, it sounds like the Devil Wears Prada minus the cool clothes.

[Kate]

Ariel, why thank you. And this is remembered pain, and time is a great anesthetist for such things. Plus the company doesn't seem to be doing that brilliantly, if I can judge from their website, which hasn't been updated since I left in 2002. And there's nothing like a bit of schadenfreude to make you feel better.

Elsewhere, yeah, only I didn't get a makeover and become a supa-hot fashion plate, and there was no 'moment of redepemtion' for my evil boss when I discovered he actually was a human being underneath all his personality disorders.

[Fyodor]

You...mean...he...didn't...have...an...over...-...deliberate...manner...of...speech?

[harry]

Ahoy thar, Cap'n O'Frontbottom!
Where is your embarrassing story for us?!?!
Kate paid up: time for your dues.

[harry]

I too am disappointed you didn't spew on him.
I would have, at least, tea-bagged his beer. Like I did for my last boss.

[Liam]

That's pretty ill, Harry. But I'm curious: did you have to top it up afterwards to conceal the deed, or was the liquid displacement not a problem?

[Fyodor]

"I would have, at least, tea-bagged his beer. Like I did for my last boss."

Bit of a handful for Kate to manage, nestle paw?

"Ahoy thar, Cap'n O'Frontbottom! Where is your embarrassing story for us?!?! Kate paid up: time for your dues."

Fair cop. My second-most embarassing story falls under the popular category of drunken tomfoolery, and it's more embarassing than humiliating.

In my yoof [you know: Teh Olden Days] I attended the office Christmas party on a boat (...) and got profoundly stonkered after crashing and burning in my attempt to chat up my office crush.

Got off the boat with similarly loserish amigos and promptly lurched over to the casino, where I spent about 24 minutes (actually much longer, but it felt like time was whizzing past at a frantic pace, to match my loss rate) emptying out my entire bank account (about $300 - I was poor and reckless, as was the fashion in those days) on games I'm crap at even when sober.

Coming up to dawn we wandered out to a local pub and I had to bum a couple of drinks off a more fiscally responsible fellow. I was in that state of continuous drunkenness that never quite descends into hangover. I then went back to work in the same suit I'd been wearing. Managed to borrow a razor off a colleague to shave and fronted at my desk at 8am. Only to find my boss waiting for me - we were due at a client presentation.

Of course, we arrived late, so had to take the only chairs left, at the front. Relieved, was I, thinking that being close to the presenter would surely focus the mind awfully. Wrong. Have you ever been dozy in a meeting and experienced one of those microsleeps that goes "nod-nod-nod-SNAPBACK"? OK, but have you ever a "nod-nod-nod-nod-OHMYFUCKINGGODIJUSTKEELEDOVER" total blackout? Right in front of the client, I attempted an unconscious forward roll from a seated position. My boss was horrified, but the client cacked himself. He helped me up and I had to drive a ballpoint pen into my palm to force myself awake for the rest of the presentation with everyone staring at me, waiting for a repeat performance.

I blame Kate.

[Kate]

Teabagging? Ah no that's not my thing, for numerous reasons (as Fyodor points out, there are logistical issues). The closest we got to that was when one of the graphic designers took an image of the nasty boss and photoshopped his bald head to resemble a giant penis, an image which we soon used to create a series of festive greeting cards. That was satisfying, though juvenile.

Fyodor, that's a great story. Thank you for sharing, and I apologise for causing the incident through my astounding power of 'being responsible for all the world's bad shit'.

[Fyodor]

"I apologise for causing the incident through my astounding power of 'being responsible for all the world's bad shit'."

Thanks for apologising - it's the least you could do. But, really, what's with the Mass-Murdering Communism, eh? And what are you playing at with this Global Warming shit? And why isn't Britney wearing panties? What up wid dat?

[Kate]

Whoa dude, I'm prepared to cop to many things in the name of lefty white girl first world overly privileged guilt, but Britney's missing knickers is not one of them.

[Liam]

"but have you ever a "nod-nod-nod-nod-OHMYFUCKINGGODIJUSTKEELEDOVER" total blackout?"

Mine was in a guest lecture given by a visiting research fellow from the LSE when I was in second year. I'd have gotten away with it, too, except that I smacked the back of my skull on some echoing hard boards. Alas, the client was all out of cack...

[Fyodor]

Yo, berray-dude: check your email.

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