Once upon a time, I worked at some regional sales office in a not so distant land. They made me take a timed IQ test before they hired me, and when they checked my answers, the big boss was deeply and genuinely impressed. He sliced his hand in the air above his head and said with a noticeable undercurrent of excitement, “You scored really, really high, and I mean really, REALLY high!” He even used the word “genius” in the same breath; I impressed him that much.

Naturally, they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, due to my desperation, and had me working for them right away, answering the phones at the front of the office as some kind of glorified receptionist cum secretary, for a salary considerably less than I had originally set out to get. It was the dream job of every genius.

My official title was office coordinator, and I supported about a dozen sales guys and several other sales support staff members in the office. Not only did I answer the phones for everyone; I took dictation and typed up letters; I wrote up meeting agendas and notes; I filled out expense reports and invoices; I put together bound presentation books, sales contracts, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, how-to manuals and estimates; I filed papers, and I made travel arrangements; I entered sales data into the database, and I did all the faxing. I ordered all the office supplies, and I provided all the inhouse computer tech support. Mind you, the average secretary might do all this work for 3-5 people at the most; I did all this for 15 people, and I did it all with a smile. On top of all this, I managed to make a few suggestions to the corporate office and do a bit of extra work because of a couple of character flaws I like to call “enthusiasm” and “eagerness to please.”

Needless to say, I was a wonder woman.

I killed myself working because I had my eye on the sales coordinator position, which would have paid at least 50% more and meant that I didn’t have to answer the phones quite so much. It would also have allowed me to afford a move closer to work, cutting out the two hours of commuting a day. Anyway, I figured I was a shoe-in because I was already doing the work with the sales contracts, and if they hired me, they wouldn’t have to train someone else to do the job.

Some genius I turned out to be; it was never in the stars.

My immediate supervisor was Milly Ganabitch. That really isn’t her name, but for the purposes of this entry we’ll call her Milly Ganabitch. She was the typical conservative soccer mom type who drove a monster SUV for all on-road adventures to the supermarket. Even with her severe accent, she managed to climb her way to the top, thanks to nepotism and marrying well. Totally irrelevant fact: H.E. met her once and asked me later about the yardstick up her rectum, which I truly didn’t see at the time.

Well, I was on pretty good terms with Milly, who liked me infinitely better than the girl I replaced, a girl who for some reason couldn’t do even a third of the work that I could, go figure. So I confided a lot in Milly. I told her, you know, I love the work and all, but it’s getting to be a bit of a strain. Couldn’t we hire someone full time to take over the phones and filing? I was taking in 40-50, maybe even 70, calls a day, and the pile of documents that needed filing was growing faster than I could handle.

Well okay, Milly conceded, how about a part-time assistant?

So we got a part-time assistant, and she was great. Wonderful. Truly, truly wonderful. She was as efficient and as fastidious as I was, and I absolutely adored her. The only problem was that she was in the office maybe twice a week for a couple of hours, which did nothing to make a dent in my growing pile of work.

Again, I went to Milly. Please, I need some help. I can’t do this on my own.

Milly reassured me. I’ve been fighting for your cause with the corporate office, April. It’s not in our budget right now, but I’m arguing your case.

Nothing came out of it in the end, but I was all gratitude at her promise. Thank you, Milly. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! I imagined moving easily into the sales coordinator position while someone else took over my office coordinator position.

As if she could read my mind and my ambitions, Milly gravely took me aside and talked down the sales coordinator position. It’s really not what you think it is, she told me. She saw it as being on the same level as the office coordinator, and being so smart, I wouldn’t really like it. No, really.

She said everything she could to talk me out of wanting the sales coordinator job.

Hm, I thought. I could decide for myself, couldn’t I? Besides, the extra pay would really help. In the meantime, I worked so hard that I don’t think I had much of an ass left at the end of the day; I worked it off daily and completely.

Then one day, they hired a sales coordinator. She was well dressed, well spoken, and really very nice. I found out later that she indeed got 50% more than I did, but she had far more experience in number crunching and sales support. Okay, I smothered my disappointment in smiles and helped to train her, only to find out right away that she was as slow to learn as molasses on a cold day.

There is just one thing I cannot stand in the work place, and that is working under someone who’s clearly not cut out for the job. I had to take time out of my extremely busy day to help this woman grasp the very basics of her role, basics that I had simply picked up and ran with, before she came along. When I simply couldn’t take the time, Milly herself stepped in and trained her. When even that proved fruitless, they had a couple of women from the corporate office fly by and train her as well. Heck, they even had online classes for her, too.

Through all this, I was growing more and more bitter and resentful. This new hire was getting paid more to do a job that everyone in the world was helping her to do, and here I was, poor as a pauper, still struggling to find help with mine. She lasted a month before she finally quit, defeated, and in that month my work had fallen more and more behind because of all the time I spent picking up after her. My going to Milly for help obviously didn’t work, so I e-mailed the corporate office about my need for help with the phones, a move which later bit me in the ass that I worked off so diligently.

On that fateful day, right before my long-awaited vacation and right after I took care of an emergency, Milly called me into her office for a talk. It began rather calmly, though severely, with implied blame coolly laid at my feet for the emergency which shouldn’t have happened but couldn’t be helped because I was totally overworked. Suddenly, she brought up the e-mail that I’d sent to the corporate office, which somehow had made its way back to her via the big boss, and she blamed me for that, too.

Why? I don’t know.

Milly said my e-mail made our office look bad, when really, all I wanted was a little more help. Genius or not, I can only do so much in a day, and I can only take so many false promises before I take things into my own hands and do something.

Needless to say, she was not happy with the e-mail I sent and found it reason enough to call me backstabber. Yes, backstabber! Completely out of the blue. I was in total shock over the accusation, and I could feel all the adrenaline in my body surge. My skin turned hot with my outrage, and to my utter dismay, I burst into tears. I tried to make her understand how overworked and how underpaid I was, how in addition to my commute the amount of work was killing me slowly, day by day. It might have been better if the work wasn’t so mindless, so mind-numbing, so insanely common and laborious. Anybody could have done that job—or rather, any three people off the street could have done that job—and here I was, the big boss’s genius, dying to do creative stuff, dying to help out with the corporate web site, dying to help out with the company newsletter and marketing materials. Here I was, made to do demeaning secretary work, made to train a highly paid incompetent to do a job no one would give me, and made to work three times harder than anyone should ever have to.

What did Milly have to say? “Whose fault is that?” she asked. The fault, she told me, was my own.

Bitch.

I tried to take my case to the big boss, the one who once called me genius, but with him being somehow related to Milly, it was a hopeless venture. I was told, in not so many words, to forget the “backstabber” comment and move on, to kiss and make up, to be, as before, tirelessly hardworking and openly friendly with Milly.

“I’m sorry,” I told him, “but I can’t do that.” And I was instantly called all kinds of ungrateful. After all the things they’ve done for me, I had the gall to behave in such a way? I had to laugh at their absurdity.

So I finally left, less than one year after I took the job. I remember leaving an enormous pile of work behind, work that had doubled and tripled because of my recent vacation, work that Milly would have had to take over until they hired someone. And I later heard from a friend who worked in the same building that they had to hire three full-time people to replace me, the knowledge of which truly gratified me and helped me live a happily ever after.

They say genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, but that job was far too much perspiration for my taste. I’m so glad I left.

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