It’s been about three weeks since the assholes were thrown from the building and while the first couple of weeks were frenetic and stress-filled, particularly since our replacement contractor screwed us and decided it wasn’t for them after about a week, things have calmed. A little. Despite the flaky contractor.

Poor business, that, especially since it was months, if not years in the works.

The workload hasn’t slowed down, but I have, because, hell, they don’t pay me enough for this and they were supposed to immediately hire help. I spent the better part of two or three years pushing for these guys to be gone, spent months setting up the network takeover and planning for any contingency should the primary asshole or his idiot brother decide they want to lash out and fuck something up on the way out (and they did try). Their only job was to bring in the people to handle the workload. These guys weren’t doing much, but they did do something, and there was an awful lot of stuff they were supposed to be doing that they weren’t.

That plan included a contingency for physical violence. There was a tendency to ramp up really quickly with anger and do something stupid on that side, so we were prepared for that as well.

Turns out they’re more bark than bite, which is and isn’t a surprise. When your entire identity is built on a false ego of superiority to others, even though it’s clear to everyone else that you are remarkably inferior, and that the entire show is being driven by your flagrant insecurities and fears about being a pathetic loser (sadly driven by the actual fact of being said loser), well, in moments of high stress, there’s a tendency to revert to what you truly are.

Petty, vindictive jackass and insignificant nobody, whose claims of superiority far outstripped their reality.

The good news is that they’re gone. They’re still trying to hold on, keeping the few meager possessions they have in their hands hostage, trying to get paid. That won’t work, because the company has every legal right not to pay them a damn thing if they haven’t turned over all that they’ve asked for – equipment, passwords, keys, etc.

They still try, trying to blackmail or bully their way into a payday or revenge or simple spite, when it would be so much better to just move the fuck on.

I find myself moving on, slowly, mentally, focusing on the tasks at hand and the road ahead. Beyond that minor administrative shit, I could care less about what these guys do. I’m sure, in a year or two, I’ll hear an anecdote about how they blew the buyout they got, how they screwed over the two guys that had to leave with them (and ironically, could have been hired on directly and solved our contractor issue if they’d just asked), and how it’s all our fault.

Typical. They never accepted responsibility for anything they did, not when they fucked up, not when they were caught screwing around instead of doing what they were supposed to, not in the repeated instances in which they were caught lying about others, about themselves, about work they’d done or not done, depending on circumstances, or the multiple instances of police involvement, threats of violence, actual violence, bigotry, misogyny, or abusive behaviour that led to their dismissal.

Not once.

When the entire staff got together and advised the previous owners they were worried about the main guy’s potential for violence after threatening to burn down a law firm and shoot everyone in it, they didn’t fire him. They made him apologize to us. He laughed the whole way through, as he told us he was “working on himself” and he wasn’t really violent (despite other instances where he was actually violent). He thought the whole thing was hilarious. At no point did he issue an apology. I think he was glorying in the fact that he had the power to scare us with violence.

But that is past and only one of the many, many reasons he’s gone.

For now, mentally, my mind is moving forward and that is all behind. Hopefully, permanently.

As soon as we get our stuff back.

Target: 300 words
Written: 1007 words, hip little story: Get Back Again