Of several instances that have happened to me, one really stands out in my mind (and in friend and fellow Quora user Ladonna Blount's mind, so she suggested I chime in) :
When I was in my early twenties, I left a job working at a piano store under less-than-friendly circumstances. My then-manager was doing some unsavory stuff and trying to shift the blame for it onto me, and I couldn't make the owner see that. I wasted a considerable amount of time in fighting that losing battle, then quit to take another job. Years passed, and I found myself planning my wedding. I decided I wanted to hire one of my piano-teacher coworkers to play at the reception. When I finally tracked him down, he seemed inordinately surprised to hear from me. Turns out that my former boss used my departure to tell my coworkers I was going home to die. He knew I was a childhood cancer survivor, so he concocted a story about how the cancer had returned and really fleshed out the whole thing. My new job took me into an entirely different sphere where I didn't really have contact with my former coworkers, so they saw no reason not to believe him. After a while, he broke the news to them that I was dead, and they believed that too...until I returned from the Other Side to email my former coworker and scared him half to death himself.
I'm not sure why the owner did that, other than to convey he had the upper hand when I left (unnecessary- I didn't spread tales or try to recruit any of them to my side). Or maybe he was just a compulsive liar. Who knows? I do know, with utter certainty, that I was not really dead. The store closed not long after I left, probably due in no small part to the managerial shadiness I mentioned. And when I went to look up the address of the former location when I was filling out some paperwork, I stumbled across the former owner's obituary. He had died of cancer.
A "runner-up" instance is here: Amorette Kitsa's answer to What is your experience with bullying?
Read other answers by Amorette Dye on Quora:
- What are some things you should not say to someone when they are very ill?
- What is the weirdest/grossest/most disturbing thing seen by emergency room staff? Do you ever find it difficult not to faint?
- What makes a man charming?
from Quora http://ift.tt/28Sn7Jv
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