There was the Big Boss, I’ll call him Boss Carl. Then there was the lower boss, I’ll call her The Dragon because that was, in fact, her nickname. Seven or eight people worked for The Dragon. They loved their jobs because it was exactly one of those jobs people decide they must do, but few get to do, and they happen to get to do it. Like being a firefigher if that is what you always wanted to do, but firefighing jobs were rare. But they all hated their jobs because The Dragon … well, you can imagine where she got her name.
But even though they hated their jobs it was hard to leave them for the aforestated reason.
The Dragon hated when people took lunch. She would get mad at them if they took lunch. She wanted people to keep working but just eat their sandwich while they were working. The Dragon hated when people took vacations. She hated when people used their vacation time. She never did, why should they. But in between all these hates, The Dragon saw everybody as being incompetent, slow, and dumb. But they were all competent, worked with alacrity, and they were all very, very smart.
One day an employee, I’ll call her Mary, got cancer. The Dragon tried right away to fire her, but she couldn’t’. She wasn’t the Big Boss, she was only the Small Boss. She only ran a one unit (an important part, but only one part) of the larger institution. Then Mary needed Chemotherapy and had to take off a couple of hours once every two weeks. The Dragon tried again to fire her, but didn’t get away with it. Then Mary got sicker and needed Chemotherapy weekly, but only for a few weeks then the treatment would end for a while. The Dragon tried again to fire her, and this time managed to do it while Boss Carl was out of town.
This sort of thing went on for years. It went on for about 20 years.
Then, one day, the wife of Boss Carl, who occasionally partook of the services provided by The Dragon’s institutional unit, had something go wrong. The Dragon’s staff had made a goof, and Boss Carl’s wife was upset and may have said a thing or two. The Dragon, thinking the wife of Boss Carl was out of earshot, called her a “bitch.”
Boss Carl heard about this. Boss Carl went to the building when he knew The Dragon was out at a meeting, and lined all the employees up, and had them recite things The Dragon had done over the years. He knew there were things, but they had not been important to him before now. A scribe recorded the stories. By the end of the week The Dragon was fired.
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