Freedom

There comes a point in every abusive relationship, I'd imagine, when the abuse, although not your fault, is present and obvious enough that you are complicit in it. Essentially, the abuse would not take place if you had taken steps to stop it, and you haven't, so you're allowing it to flourish.

I'm an independent computer consultant. My customers are my lifeblood, and so without their good graces, I wouldn't have a business. Until last week, I was contracted for around 5 years by Holy Shirt, a T-Shirt printing company in Syracuse. Although I considered the owner, John Groat, a pain in the butt, I finally recognized that he is simply abusive to people. I explained it away as him having Asperger Syndrome, which may be true, but if so, then that's a condition he needs to deal with, not the rest of us. Over the years, I have seen him go through a steady stream of assistants, all extremely capable people that he mercilessly and publicly berated over minute offenses such as asking him to hold on for a moment while she was finishing a call to a vendor. I've seen him treat grown men and women like children, instructing them on every obvious detail in matters such as: how to pick up the phone, how to take a message, how to leave a message, and once, to me, how to form individual letters, as in, how to form the letter A, the letter B and so on.

Last winter a hard drive went bad in one of the servers. Some of the data, the "Transfer" drive which was used for moving data from machine to machine, looked irretrievable. Much of it was personal pictures John had stored on company servers and forgotten, or never intended, to move to a personal hard drive or DVD. I had told him several times in conversations regarding his extensive backup demands that this data, since it was non-essential, was not regularly backed up. It was simply too large and would take too long given our current backup regime, which would screw up the other essential backups. This was policy since before I contracted there and it was also told to him by the previous IT provider. In addition, the first item in the folder was a message in all caps with four exclamation points stating that "!!TRANSFER IS NOT BACKED UP!!" that had been placed there by the previous IT contractor. All of this was lost on him. So he screamed at me. For probably 8-10 minutes. With other employees present. I was shaking. One employee told me later he was waiting for me to punch John in the mouth. I didn't. I held my ground, restated my point that the data was too large, non-essential and known to be not back up regularly. I crossed my arms and waited for him to get tired of yelling. I thought about the income I was making from this account. I thought of my son. When he finally finished. I told him I'd do what I could to retrieve the data. I did not once say that I was sorry, because I wasn't. When you tell someone something several times and they don't listen to you and then it comes back to bite them, there's no need to tell them you're sorry. Eventually, I was able to retrieve the data. The episode stuck with me, gnawing at me. The money was good and I needed it, as I had recently lost a large account I was subcontracting for when the main contract ran out. His repeated excuse for his behavior, berating people, not allowing someone to explain why they did something, was that "I'm writing the checks, so I can say what I want to say!" This was the last thing he said to me.

Last week I received an email from the company managing his database asking if I could help retrieve a record that had been accidentally deleted about 6 weeks ago. I pulled the nightly DVD backup from the archive and copied the data to a computer where it could be accessed by the database company. An hour later I got a call saying that the record was retrieved, but data entered that day would have to be re-entered, as it had occurred between backups and oh well have a nice day, because it really was no big deal. 20, maybe 30 minutes of work. I tried explaining this to John, but all I was able to get to was that data was lost and it set him off. "We pay you all this money! We spend all this money on backups and you screw it up again!" I try to get a word in but he steamrolls over me. I tell him I'm walking out the door. I stand in front of my car. I breathe. I walk back in.

"John, I wil assist you in transitioning to a new IT service provider." Calm as a Hindu cow.

"Who would you recommend? Who can you refer us to?"

"John, I do not dislike anyone enough to refer you to them." I have never been more honest.

"Let's try to keep this professional."

"John, you have never been professional."

"We pay you a ton of money to keep our data protected!" He's shouting again.

"Let me explain what happen-"

He then says something about my responsibilities as a father and husband but I'm really not listening.

"STOP TALKING!" I have officially lost my cool.

"I'm writing the checks here.." Here it is. The moment I've been prepared for.

"Yes, you are the one writing the checks, and that gives you a lot of leeway, but you still need to act like a NORMAL HUMAN BEING! No one in the world could have retrieved that data! The record was modified then deleted. It happened between the backups, that's that. When you get a new IT provider I will come in to help transition, but until then I don't want to hear from you!"

And I'm gone. I call the bookkeeper and tell her it was a pleasure working with her a not to hesitate to call me with her own personal computer questions. I go to lunch with Nicole. She cannot be happier. Do we need the money? Yes. Do I sell my self-respect? I do not anymore. That night after putting Jonathan to bed I notice a missed call from a blocked number, I know it's John because he always blocks his number. I don't get another call.

The next day I stop in to another one of my clients, an advertising and marketing company called Integrated Marketing. One of the owners is friends with a designer at Holy Shirt. He shakes my hand, telling me how proud he is to have me there. It feels good to be appreciated.