MEMOIR

How a Stapler Got Me Fired

The secretary used her boss as a role model to bully me

The picture was made with Pro by the author

I should have left. I hadn’t signed my contract yet. I was only in the office because I was told the team needed another person for a video shoot, and I would be credited for the hours.

But I should have left immediately when I walked into the professor’s assistant’s office. The assistant, let’s call her Debby, was near to crying in her office, begging me to help her print stickers for preserving jar
props that were needed for the shoot.

“I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with Photoshop.”

“We have to figure this out! If he finds out, he’ll get mad!”

Trembling, she nodded at the closed glass door opposite hers. He was the professor she — we — worked for.

“Oh, it certainly won’t be that bad…” I tried to smile encouragingly, but I felt my stomach muscles stiffening and my heart rate rising.

“It will be bad!”

She said she had hardly slept because she couldn’t figure out how to print the stickers in the correct format. Her eyes kept darting to his door and into the corridor. She was afraid he would turn up.