Moral Victory?

My whole life I have felt deep inside that I’m a good guy. In fact I know that I am. I had a rocky start to things and a pretty unhappy childhood, and found myself at age eighteen broke beyond belief, kicked out of my parents’ home for no good reason and on foot. I nearly starved to death, eating one meal every two days and even suffered the happy embarrassment of having cans of corn and beans brought to me from a church’s food pantry—at one point I lost about forty pounds in six months due to malnutrition (I've contemplated going back on this diet). I fought through it with a happy attitude, making barely minimum wage, going to school without having enough time to study properly, working hard and getting promoted, and out of sheer luck meeting and marrying the right girl.

I don’t have an ounce of bitterness over any of the events—in fact they make me laugh a little bit. The strongest steel comes from the hottest fires and that sort of thing. And I have certainly had to learn how to be tough. I remember a psycho boss who was having PMS decided to use my employee review to blindside me about an issue during my semi-annual review. I sat still, quietly and calmly asking her for examples of the issue she was raising, which infuriated her more.

For the record, I was being accused of not acting like a team player because I overrode one of my colleagues’ poor decisions on a project—I heard her points and explained to her why I disagreed: I was personally responsible for the project and this was a case where there was no middle ground. Someone had to make the decision, and it fell on my shoulders. Besides which, this had occurred two months before and I had never heard an objection—I guess my colleague had just run to the manager, and when my boss was writing up my review the day before presenting it to me this conflict had somehow become a focal point of her comments about me. There was no question that I had made the correct decision, which resulted in a procedure change which saved the company a quarter of a million dollars! But back to the psychotic boss…

As I sat and endured the tirade, the boss got madder and madder—her face grew red and she started peppering her language with obscenities. I stayed very calm, probably more out of confusion and trying to see what she was getting at than any type of self-control, which is typically my weak suit in the face of emotional events. I’m sure my face was red, too, though. My heart was pounding so hard in my ears that I could hear the blood sloshing around—I needed this job so I could finish college. I couldn’t lose it. And this company had a strict employment policy—if I lost my temper they could certainly justify firing me. I remember the tiny white flowers on long green stems on her desk sat in a blue ceramic bowl with tiny white pebbles. I must have been staring at the pebbles, because they’re embedded in my memory. She had let the water stand in the bowl too long: the soil reeked of some sort of bitter mold, and it wafted in the air like smoke--for a little while, I thought it was bad breath from the boss. The bitterness floated in the air. I must have tuned her out—she wasn’t making sense.

Finally, exasperated, she stood up, screaming, grabbed my review paper with the paragraphs of criticism about me in her left hand and made a fist, crumpling it and throwing it on the floor. She screamed “F*** you, F*** you!” at me then threw open her door so hard that the doorknob made a hole in the wall. She pointed toward my desk and told me “Now get the hell out of my office!”

Like I said, I needed the job. I didn’t get mad, and I was through trying to convince her to reconsider her stance. I would love to say that, as I was sitting in stunned silence staring up at my boss shrieking at me from her doorway, that I was like a chess grandmaster playing out every possible move, and that I chose to sit still and quiet because it would play out perfect. That’s what happened, and it actually was the perfect move, but I think it was just that I was in shock and my knees refused to work.

My boss just threw her hands up in the air, looked at the ceiling, and let out an exasperated sigh. She stormed out of the office, out of the work area, perhaps even out of the building. I just sat there, but it had the appearance of holding my ground.

My boss was frustrated with me to the point of driving me out of the company, and I just sat there. I wonder if some people would look at that as an act of cowardice. It seems that lots of folks get so hung up on what is fair and ideal that they get outraged over being treated improperly, and insist on exacting some sort of retribution for maltreatment.

I just knew one thing: I needed that damn job and the paycheck that came with it. I had adapted this crummy position and schedule and income into my plan, and I didn’t want to leave, especially on someone else’s terms. I was living life in semester-shaped chunks, each one getting me a little closer to graduation and my goals. And as she stormed out of the office, I felt that I stood about a millimeter away from having to rewrite my life plan, and this crazy chick was holding a knife to the thread. I felt indignant, not that I had been mistreated, but that this situation threatened my future so decisively. I decided not to go for any moral victory, but just grab onto this job with both hands and try to survive.

I ended up getting my moral victory, too. A year later, right before getting fired for a similar outburst with one of her peers, my manager apologized for her behavior. It was a nice, unexpected bonus, and I guess it was unnecessary at that point—I had survived. I even went on to become the top-rated employee in the company, and the aforementioned project which I went on to complete resulted was very high-profile. A year after successful implementation, the president of the company flew in and took our whole mid-management team out for steak dinner. For one night, anyway, I was the toast of the company.

My dilemma is the question: Did I take the moral high ground or the moral low ground?

Viewed in a vaccuum, the morality of the situation may dictate that I stand up to the manager and insist upon hashing out the issues properly and completely. Since she seemed to be so angry, perhaps I should have appealed for us to go into her manager. I should trust that the company wants to be fair and just, and won’t support this insane treatment of employees. If this wasn’t upheld, I almost certainly had legal recourse against them, right?

I know other people who would hold a blood grudge against someone who insulted them in this manner. They would never be able to let it go, to act civilly to this person, to report to them as a boss, or even smile at them. I wonder if my ability to get over it is a strength or a weakness.

My interpretation, though self-serving, is that the moral victory is best viewed from a distance. In this case, a year later I still had a job and she didn’t. By enduring the outburst without losing my cool, I lived to fight another day and perhaps win the war instead of focusing on a battle I was certain to lose. It was certainly humiliating to sit in the chair and take the abuse from a raving maniac, but I couldn’t afford to sit at home, unemployed and unable to pay for my tuition, and be the winner of a moral victory.

And there are other factors. Perhaps in retrospect it is interesting to note that her husband was having an affair behind her back, and was openly mistreating her five-year-old son (from a previous marriage). She was unpopular among her peers (go figure), and was obviously miserable. The job was all she had, and, as I said, it was a crummy company. I, on the other hand, was working toward something else—I had hope, and even felt “above” all of the mediocrity of the company and all of it’s beaurocratic nonsense. I never felt the tedium of knowing that, unless I did something drastic, I would be waking up to trudge in to the same cubicle ten years from now, and that must be the frustration she was feeling. She was still crazy, though, and as she was escorted out the door in tears, I was guilty about the mixture of sadness and joy that I felt.