Liar liar, pants on fire!

Oh dear. I accidently caught TBE (aka The Boss Erratic) out in a lie, and now she’s got the hump with me.

Well, it wasn’t a lie exactly; more an act of complete incompetence and anti-management (yeah, I know: so what’s new).

Remember when TBE said this about Barista Boy?:

“I’m going to reduce his hours to a level I know he can’t afford. Mwa hahahaha, cackle cackle!!!”  (It’s possible that last bit existed only in my brain). After which, of course, he left.

Original photo: AndreasHolzner, Pixabay

Well,

I waited for her to tell me he’d gone. 

She didn’t tell me the first week. She didn’t tell me the second week. Or the third. Or the fourth, or the fifth…

After a full six weeks she still hadn’t told me he’d gone, which, it has to be said, is pretty barefaced, balls-out, slack-jawed astounding for a company with only two proper employees, wouldn’t you say?

But it turns out, even that was overestimating TBE’s management talents.

See, I thought she was avoiding telling me about Barista Boy out of shame.

Shame! Ha! What was I thinking?! Turns out she had no idea I didn’t know. Turns out she didn’t even realise she hadn’t told me, and when I (unavoidably, by accident – sort of) pointed out she hadn’t told me for SIX WEEKS, her immense ineptitude was laid bare between us.

Awkward.

So this is what happened (non-British readers be aware: this is all very, very British)…:

TBE had sent me an uncharacteristically chatty text asking me to work extra Saturdays. I queried this (by text), and was told (by text), “Now there are less staff, the three of us need to work more weekends.”

The three of us? Less staff? Oh come on! I just had to take that bait; how could I have avoided it?

So I replied (by text):

“Why less staff?”

Nothing. No reply. So I tried again (by text):

“Is someone leaving?”

Silence.

And more silence.

It appeared our chatty text conversation was over.

In the end I waited over two hours for a response. And I could tell by the curt, perfunctory reply that TBE was furious:

“(Barista Boy) left at the start of February.”

That was it. No apology for me being in the dark for a month and a half. No acknowledgement that the whole ‘teamwork’ vibe might have died on its arse. No recognition that this might have made me feel a bit isolated and a bit shat on………

Of course, I knew why the text was so perfunctory, and I knew why she was furious. And I also knew why she hadn’t texted for over two hours.

Because for two hours TBE would have been searching back through our text conversations to find the exact text where she told me Barista Boy was leaving, so she could cut and paste it into a new text and put me in my place by saying, “On such and such a date I texted you, ‘this’. And you texted, ‘this,’ in reply”.

It’s one of her things. She loves to put me in my place by cutting and pasting text ‘evidence’ of my forgotten comments and past demeanours.

She likes to catch me out.

Only this time she couldn’t find anything; because there was nothing. She’d never told me about Barista Boy. And the longer her silence carried on for, the angrier I knew she was getting.

I’d caught her out.

Now, a more generous person would have let her off the hook, but, well, she doesn’t pay me enough to be generous.

So I sent a text back:

“Oh. How sad. Was there a card?” (I knew there wouldn’t have been a card).

“Yes, I sent a card from us all.”

So I got straight on to Barista Boy and asked him if he’d got a card. He hadn’t got a card.

Original picture: OpenClipart-Vectors, Pixabay

Of course, I knew full well TBE knew I knew she hadn’t sent a card. Even as she texted me the words, she would have known I’d know she hadn’t sent a card, but what could she say: “No, I didn’t send him a card because I effectively sacked him”? Of course not; she had to lie.

She had to lie to me, knowing I'd know she was lying.

Boom! Caught out again!

Ooo, I bet that rankled.

Ooo, I bet she hated me right then.

Mmm, how utterly delicious!

(Yeah, I’ve just read this back. I think I need to get out more….)