Then, while I was working at the insurance company, I got saddled with running the supplies department. Being stuck in a dark cubbyhole all alone wasn't a good environment for me, particularly when I hit a long spell of depression. The managers knew something was wrong, but instead of getting me out of that job they stuck me with a new supervisor, Regina, a heavily closeted lesbian who'se own job was on the line for being ineffectual. She had me moving boxes here, moving them there, making things look busy, and then blaming me for how badly the response to the rest of the office was when they needed their supplies.
It turned out that her scheme was to get me fired, to prove that it wasn't her fault for how badly things were going. Fortunately, one of my former supervisors stood up for me, got me transferred back to the fileroom, and everyone was shocked and thrilled to see a 180 degree turnaround in my job performance. Everyone except Regina, of course. She was given another slave clerk, who found it just as impossible to work for her. Meanwhile, the evidence kept mounting against her, and after she got my replacement fired, she was fired herself.
Several years later, der B and I were leaving a restaurant in Orange County when who do we run into but Regina. She was thrilled to see me, as she was suing the company for discrimination. It was obvious that she had been fired because she was a lesbian! (Mind, she had been so deeply closeted that I hadn't suspected a thing, and I was already very out of the closet.) She tried to get information on what her former bosses were up to, and expected me to side with her because, after all, we had to protect each other, right? I simply kept my mouth shut, and got away as quickly as I could. It never even occured to her that I, the fellow who was out at work, had been kept on the job; the whole discrimination charge was a sham.
The next day I reported the incident to my supervisors. It was the least I could do to support her. The very least.
