I think that its only appropriate that we start our journey, well, at the beginning. My first boss was a mammoth of a woman, she was short, but she was as wide as she was tall. (I will call her Erin, as I will not be using anyone's real name) Erin was a woman to be feared, she may have been funny to look at from the outside, but she ran that store like a drill sergeant ran a boot camp. There was no tolerance for any failure in any category (which usually led to some magnificent fireworks if you weren't the one doing the failing). Erin could, and would explode at the drop of a hat.
I remember a time during my first holiday season where our UPS delivery driver was dropping off the usual daily shipment. He placed the boxes carefully behind the counter, as he had be instructed to do countless times before by Erin. He then simply asked her to sign for the packages, big mistake. She had been in the middle of doing something, we all knew never to disrupt her while she was doing anything, but poor UPS guy didn't. Erin lost her mind and just started SCREAMING, There was no build-up, no escalation, she had let out her war-cry. This was a sound that I can still hear in my nightmares, a savage howl that would pierce even the best armor, a howl that cut right to your very core. It was meant to disarm even the mightiest of opponents, and it always worked. Well, not always, now I will admit that our UPS guy was taken aback, maybe even dazed, but he recovered more quickly than I thought possible, and did the unthinkable, he retaliated. He started screaming back at her, something that I had not seen up until that point, and have not seen since, now keep in mind that this is the holiday season, and like any good retail store we are bursting at the seams with customers when this breaks out. So of course, every employee stopped what they were doing to watch this unfold, as though an invincible warrior had just challenged the ogre that was imprisoning us. We were all standing in awe, customers had tried stunts like this before, but ALL failed when the war-cry was used, and yet, UPS guy is here standing his ground. While the battle raged on for what seemed like a century, it was probably only about 2 minutes, but when the smoke cleared, no one could have predicted that it would be UPS guy that came out victorious. He managed to get Erin to sign for the shipment, and went on his merry way as though nothing at all had just happened.
Now, you'd think that this defeat would have done something for morale amongst the lesser employees, or that maybe Erin would lighten up even just a bit, but you'd be 100% wrong. Erin was as much of a tyrant as ever, perhaps even worse now that she had found someone that had made her feel stupid. She did what any grade school bully would do, vented her frustration out on the smaller, weaker kids. But to no avail, there was no stealing that satisfaction away from me, I relish that confrontation to this very day. It's all about small victories right?
