Elyse Mulraney

OP here. I'm IT, not an English major, and 300 charas is a limited space. Sorry if it was too garbled. This actually happened last year and was the last straw as far as my job there went. The company had a small sales staff and a policy where tech personnel, working on their own time, could bring in new clients. You got a biannual bonus proportional to how much the client contracted for. At the time, my wife was pregnant and on bedrest, so we really could have used the extra money. I had a friend working for a nice-sized company in the area that needed some IT services. While I didn't get any insider secrets from him, what I knew from general conversation was enough to tailor an offer and know how to present it to the company owner. My boss was the kind of person who saw everyone competent as conspiring to threaten his job, so he insisted on being on the call she wanted to confirm everything before signing. He was condescending to the client, constantly interrupted her, and tried to sell her things that she would never need. It was obvious he didn't know or care what her company needed or wanted. She politely asked him to stop and he dressed her down for rudeness and disrespect in front of her own employees. When she declined to sign a contract with us, he blamed me, even though I'd only gotten about three sentences out. And then I got a job somewhere much better and quit.