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Revenge is a dish best served cold.

For some reason, this doesn’t sound like me, and I don’t think I ever seeked a revenge… But in the end, this story seems to fit the saying anyway. I’ll let you judge.

If you had your seat in The Cove during my early years as a blogger, you might remember Booh Boss. I haven’t mentionned her in years (I think), for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I feared that she’d someday find out about my blog and sneaky as she is, she probably would have read quite a lot of it, and eventually found out my thoughts about her. On the other hand, even if she never found out, at some point, I just considered that writing about her was giving her much more attention than she deserved.

Booh Boss has been my team leader for the last 12 years.

Needless to say that we never managed to get along. Our characters just can’t fit together, and I’ve long made my peace with that. Booh Boss is an Alfa, with a power addiction, and she hides behind the ”I say what I think, that’s how I am, deal with it” excuse to be rude and mean, at times.

Early in my training days, she openly made fun of my natural bubbliness and my sometimes cheesy sense of humor. Of course, I didn’t enjoy that, and my response was to restrict our interactions to work matters, and work matters only.

I must add, here, that our personal incompatibility never affected my opinion of her job-wise. She’s always had my full respect as my team leader. She knows the job (and our company) better than anyone in our department (even better than our boss, I am sure), and I always knew I could count on her as much she could always count on me.

In about two weeks, she’ll be retiring. The announcement was a big shock in our department. Including for me. She has held the team on her shoulders for over twenty years, and loosing her will be a huge loss. 

Last week, we had our last team meeting before her departure. It wasn’t really a work-related meeting, more of a group chat to reminisce the ”good ol’ days”. She had writen a little roast for each and every member of our team, and I really wasn’t eager to hear mine.

The beginning was actually pretty nice… She mentionned my good customer service, how she could rely on me if she had overtime shifts to fill. And at some point, she said that I was very discreet and that I wasn’t getting involved in conversations when she was around, while she knew that I was very chatty with my other colleagues after she left the building. She finished by appologizing for never trying to work on that bad vibe between us. I admit, the appologies really surprised me.

She brought it up again, a couple of days later, during a one on one conversation. That ”You were always really quiet when I was around” really seemed to bug her.

You should have just been yourself, you know? Sometimes, I say things straight forward…But you could’ve answered, and it would have been fine…

My answer wasn’t prepared, but I am glad that’s what came out.

I could have… But that’s not me. You made it clear that you didn’t appreciate my personality from the very start. I had two choices; to stay myself around you, and accumulate your (harsh) comments, or to go low profile, and enjoy the chit-chats with the people who enjoyed me as I am. I made my choice.

What I didn’t tell her, is that she did me a great favor 12 years ago.

Not only did I stop fooling around around her back then, I also decided not to release any unnecessary personnal information. And seeing how Booh Boss likes to make fun of people she doesn’t like, I am now really really glad I didn’t give her anything precious she could use against me.

And I have a feeling that’s what she’s really sorry for.

Because the joke’s on her now… After twelve years, all she can say about me, is that I can handle customers with grace, that I am a team player and that I am not afraid to work the long hours.

And that must be very annoying to her.

You know what? That feels like a mini-victory. But I’ll miss her, job-wise.

Bye bye, Booh Boss!