My Cautionary Tale

He was already impossible to avoid. Here I was walking down the sunny street feeling righteous and untouchable when I saw one of his paintings in a gallery window. It was front and center and so large it loomed over me. It was unmistakably his with the brusque strokes depicting a schooner racing along the waves both technique and subject identifiable. I realized for the first time that he rarely painted faces. People were a means to an ends, but without distinction: paying clients, willing commissions, admirers, worker bees, pawns. The boat's crew were mere apparitions. I had the desire to step in and purchase the canvas just so I didn't have to think of others admiring it in route to lunch or shopping, or maybe so I could destroy it.

I ducked in the jeweler down the block instead. The irony of choosing to stop there then only came to me after I was buzzed inside. His crew had recently completed a painting job at the business. The jeweler was disputing the charges because the invoice was high and the job incomplete. "They sell Rolex watches," he said with envy in his voice when I questioned the rate. What that meant was stick it to them, they're rich. I found his disdain for the wealthy interesting given that he lived rather high on the hog even if he couldn't afford to. I could still hear him proclaiming proud as a peacock, "I live large." That folks is what's known as entitlement.

I didn't look at the watches. I was there to pick out a medal for protection. St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers. I wasn't bound for distant seas, but I considered myself a vagabond. I was still wandering, adrift and unmoored. Only minutes earlier I'd quit my job. It wasn't exactly a rash decision, and yet, it hadn't played out the way I planned.

As I walked back to my car, I was sure that he'd drive by with his empty van. When I stopped in the office intent on returning the key and saying my piece, he was shuttling paintings from his studio to his home. He could no longer afford the extra space and so he was clearing it to the million dollar house the bank was pressuring him to sell. It was, but one of the things I learned that would confirm how over-leveraged his life was. This would be his to and fro route. For a brief moment, I imagined him spotting me and veering to the curb. What would I do if he pulled over to confront me? He told me with a smile on his face that he almost hit a woman once because she made him that mad. I imagined that this could be a second. I've never been hit by a man. I believe I made this one mad as a hornet because I saw through his peeling good guy picture.

I didn't see him. Instead I severed ties with his partner as he slacked in front of the computer trying to clean up some kind of mess. At the end of the day, I decided it was probably best. His partner wasn't keen on hiring me in the first place and so they went with someone else. A couple months later, I got the call offering me the job again. She didn't work out.  Now, I'm really not surprised. Then, I should have said no. I'd sworn off narcissistic men.

Narcissists are many a thing including charming when they want to be, when they need to be. To be sure it's a smart course when you're trying to woo an employee. I was, in fact, taken in by his infectious charisma and said yes with enthusiasm to his offer of underemployment with a good faith promise of a swift and sizable raise once things picked up. In six months, I agreed to three changes to my schedule despite the way these senseless shifts messed up my days. I was eager and loyal and all in. I never received the raise.

Well, that's not entirely true. I first initiated a discussion regarding my compensation a month ago, then again two weeks later, and lastly a week ago. I was reluctantly granted a meager increase, but only after enduring a rather mean-spirited scolding on all my deficiencies and inefficiencies. It felt unfair and also like, perhaps, I was being made the scapegoat for a failing partnership, disgruntled customers, looming debt, no buyers, too many buildings and boats and bills. Be my bitch was definitely not on the list of job requirements when I applied. Nor was read my mind. In fact, I had been doing what I was hired to do in spite of the poor communication and inconsistent policies and procedures. The way he's running the business, I'm not sure he could ever pay me what I'm worth.

Isn't it funny how when we look back we recognize all those bright flashing red flags?

I think that's what bothers me most about the past six months: I always pride myself on the strength and surety of my intuition. I let myself down.

The very first warning was the job offer and then swift retraction followed by the rehire and request to call me not by my name. He explained, "I'll have to call you something other than Kristin. That's my wife's name. Do you have any nicknames?" I should have said, idiot. It didn't take long before hearing him utter, "Kris" caused me to hold my breath lest I say what was on the tip of my tongue. I despise being called Kris. I told him he could call me Krissy, but he settled on Kris and Kris it was. I told myself I was overreacting, being sensitive, but now I see that it was a deliberate measure on his part to make me other, to make me less. In her manifesto on the politics of womanhood Levy asks, "If we don't have names, who are we?" Reading that today affirmed why this was so offensive to me. I was nothing to him.

Another red flag was the way clients were nothing to him. They were "dumb" and "cheap" and "demanding." The mounting number of unhappy customers and my realization that they had every right to question, complain, or dispute was startling. The realization that I would never hire him or recommend him. He talked gallantly of being in business for sometimes 30 and other times 50 years because he was the best. It's true if best translates to most expensive. By his own admission, his painters didn't paint well and they weren't upstanding or reliable. He could never see his own part or that he was the ultimate black kettle. He seemed not to care that he was cheating the customers by padding bills and taking short cuts. By lying and not keeping promises. They owed him. Just like the insurance company who paid him out for a workman's comp claim despite the fact he hasn't painted in decades by his own admission. That's called fraud.

I'm quite sure he sees himself as honest, generous and as an all around good guy. He said as much almost daily. He was his own loudest, proudest fan. I believed it at first. I wanted to believe it in perpetuity. It just wasn't possible as I got to know him better. His walk didn't match his talk, and then his talk was revealing in a startling way. The first time I remember calling his character into question he was sharing about the untimely death of his next door neighbor's daughter. His eyes kind of shined with what felt and looked like excitement as he told me she was shot in the head while vacationing in Mexico. I offered my sympathies while he almost gloated that it wasn't one of his girls. He often spoke of others tragedies with insensitivity. The richer they were, the more he jonesed on their misfortune. Then he revealed that the next door neighbor is his wife's best friend. He had so little regard for someone his wife held great regard for and that was a glimpse into his lack of empathy. I asked about the funeral a few days later and he told me that it didn't bother him because it was mostly in another language so he didn't have to listen to nonsense. He labeled himself a non-believer. "Religion offends me," he confessed.  It was obvious that he felt they deserved the tragedy and that he was above it. He was even above God.

Then there was the time he shared that his father in law was put in a nursing home over the weekend and that it was hard on the family, but not him. "I hope I can go out with $200,000 in the bank," he said. I think he saw the shock on my face at his insensitivity. He tried to change course and claim to have empathy for his wife, but he literally was unable to come up with the word. True story. Everything was always all about him.

The thing is everything we say and do reveals our character. And it's also true that what we don't say and don't do is also defining. I just want to remember this...the lessons I learned from taking this job. The lessons I learned from deciding to leave this job. Because if I know one thing it's that each and every person we meet is either a blessing or a lesson.

Edited a week later to add.

I walked by the gallery today in route to the jeweler again. His painting was no longer in the window. That felt like a sign to me. A positive sign. And no, I don't think it sold.