When I was 24 and I wanted to kill a guy. The guy was the boss of my friend’s boyfriend. If I had killed the guy I would have been found not guilty ...reason of temporary insanity. The boyfriend of my friend was narrowly able to stop me. Too bad I did not kill him.
My friend and the boyfriend both lived with me. There were 4 of us (plus two kids) living in the same house co-op style. We all worked as Security guards and since Guards don’t make a lot of money and work all shifts we figure that living together would improve our quality of life considerably. Especially me as I had to support two kids at that point.
It was 1998 and I had recently given birth to my son. My son was less than 3 months old at the time (I do not remember his age exactly. There was definitely still snow outside). My son ate every 2 hours, which means he did not sleep more than 1 consecutive hour at a time. That means I did not sleep more than 1 hour at a time during the night. I had tried and tried to get him to eat every four hours but did not succeed. He had a healthy appetite and was HUNGRY! I also had to take care of my beautiful 5 year old daughter so she did not sleep at all during the day. I also had other things to do around the house, errands and so forth so I got very little sleep, if not at all for days on end. My mental state was therefore more fragile than usual.
As mentioned earlier, I had housemates. One evening a housemate was sick (the boyfriend). He called his work to say he could not go in the next morning. As I recall, in order to book off work, we normally needed to provide a certain notice to give the supervisor time to find a replacement. You also all know that sometimes, illness strikes fairly quickly. Injuries strike faster, it is not always possible to call so many hours ahead of time. Also, sick time was unpaid. In his case he had not called within the recommended amount of time (8 hours I think). I believe he got food poisoning; it was something fairly fast anyway. When his supervisor arrived at work that morning around 5.30 am and got the message, he decided to call the housemate to give him shit. He called not at 8 AM to tell him he needed to come in for a meeting. If a supervisor wants to give an employee a dressing down, they need to bring them in during paid time to do it, not whenever they feel like it. This guy, this supervisor, he disregards any of that and calls his employee at 5:30 in the morning to give him shit about booking off.
Since I had the phone beside my bed and my friend and her boyfriend both slept like a log, (good thing considering the baby) it is I who got the call. I had just fallen asleep after being awake for nearly 48 hours straight and being overly exhausted due to general lack of sleep. He asked to speak to my housemate, I told him no that he was sick and asleep and he could call back after 8. (I have to admit I may not have been excruciatingly polite, but I was also not very awake) The supervisor then ordered me to put my housemate on the phone which I refused. I should mention a few things here. The four of us worked for the same company, two of which had this particular supervisor. I did not work for that supervisor nor did a 4th party. The girlfriend did work for this supervisor but she was on extended sick leave as she was pregnant and having a rough time of it. I was on maternity leave. The fourth worked night shift and was at work. Also, both the girlfriend and I were shop steward. Oops!
When I may refused, I may have mentioned that he was breaking the law for calling at an ungodly hour for non-emergency reasons. The supervisor then started blasting ME! Oh that did it. To make matters worse, the call had woken up my son.
I lost it in a big way; I was overwhelmed by an urgent desire to KILL HIM! Dressed in my pajamas, I grabbed the car keys, told the housemates that had woken up (my screaming perhaps?) to watch the kids I had something I needed to do. Of course they wanted to know where I was going, and when I told them, the girlfriend wanted to come and help me, while the boyfriend did everything he could to stop me. All I wanted to do was kill the asshole! Eventually he was able to calm me down.
At a reasonable hour, once our manager was in the office, I called to speak to the manager (the supervisor’s boss) to complain about the call in the middle of the night. At first the manager was taking the supervisor’s side saying as there were several guards at our address it was acceptable to call at any time day or night. Then when explained that two of us were not working and that the call was a disciplinary call, which our collective agreement said had to be done during office hours on business premises, that this particular call should not have been done the way it was. At the very least the supervisor could have called during regular hours to politely call and ask for a medical certificate or something of the kind (which the housemate had) and not assume that everyone in the house should naturally be awake.
Eventually the supervisor was disciplined for the incident, but the measure did not sate me. I should at the very least have beaten the shit out of him. All things considered I would have been let off easy.
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