Imagine doing your job and doing it well, but then your boss goes in, messes something up, and lies about it. If this made your job much more difficult, would you quit or do whatever it took to fix all of the problems your boss created?

In this story, one newspaper employee is in this exact situation, and the harder her boss makes her life, the more her mental health suffers. That is, until she finds out why he’s being so hard on her.

Keep reading for all the details.

My coworker messed with my files and tried to get me to quit

So, there was a girl in our office, Marcy, who worked full time, but worked half of that time as a writer and half as an advertising assistant to Roger.

While she was fine at first, she eventually became a mini-version of him.

Both of them were bringing back ad copy for big and difficult ads at the last possible moment.

I later found out they had that ad copy available long before then and were purposefully sitting on it, and not handing it over.

But it gets worse.

Worse yet, Marcy made a habit of telling me she wanted an ad to look one way, or the art to look one way, and when I did that, would come back and tell me that wasn’t what she said. She would then say she had wanted it to look completely different.

She would sometimes pull this multiple times for the same ad.

Occasionally, at the end, she would default back to her original request.

It was around this time that I also noticed archived ads and art files were going missing.

She kept everything very organized.

Part of my job at the paper was to make sure all electronic files were properly archived. This included stories, art, photographs, ads, the paper itself, etc.

To do this properly, the paper was divided up into volumes (based on the year from first publication), and with 26 editions for each year. And everything in each individual volume had its own folder, that was then broken down to separate folders for ads, photos, editorial copy, etc.

We kept everything going back a full year on the main server and everything older I would place in the archive server. This was so when we needed anything from the archives, it was within easy reach.

Everyone had access to the archives, but it was my job to keep them organized.

It was especially important for certain ads.

Since we had several ads that repeated on a yearly basis, like Lenten fish fry ads and Christmas ads, it was important that all ads and images be where I could find them.

Images in ads would be linked to wherever the image was located in the system, and if it was renamed or relinked (which was not supposed to happen, unless I did it), the image would either error out, or print at an extremely low resolution.

But since no one was supposed to be going in and doing that, it had not been a problem until this point.

This is a big problem!

Suddenly, a few past ads that I had archived were missing multiple image links.

I found that some of them had been renamed.

Both Roger and Marcy admitted to doing this for some (not all), of the images. Their excuse was because they didn’t like my naming system, and thought they should be named something else. Because apparently, their renaming them generic Img128 and ImgFish3 were better than my naming them StGeraldsFish-1 and StGeraldsFish-2.

But when I explained to them that it was breaking links, and making it difficult to find ads, and they couldn’t do that, they said they’d stop.

Now they’re lying to her.

But after that talk, even more archived ads started losing their links to images.

I asked again, but both denied doing it.

Yet, I continued to find renamed images.

They even took to saying that I must be the one doing it and just forgetting. Roger even suggested I talk to my doctor about my forgetfulness or start taking Ginko Biloba.

She had to work overtime.

After about two months of this, and ads that should have taken me 5 minutes tops to get ready for proofing were now taking me over an hour just to look for and relink images, I was getting more and more frustrated, anxious and angry.

I was back to working overtime several days of the week, coming in on weekends before deadlines to get ads finished and prep the paper, and back to not getting out of the office until 9-10 pm on Wednesdays of deadlines.

But it gets even worse!

Then, instead of images just ending up re-named, they started disappearing altogether.

I found some that had been moved to odd locations, but others I had to spend hours tracking down where the original art came from or recreating in Photoshop, by hand, from extremely pixilated images.

More overtime, more frustration, and at this point, I was spending more time crying than not.

And again, Marcy and Roger claimed that I must have moved them or deleted them by accident, or renamed them and forgot, etc.

Her mental health is really suffering.

My already high blood pressure skyrocketed (like 172/129), and that was with my BP meds. My mental, emotional and physical health took a nosedive.

I had started throwing away food and sinking back into my ED, started self-harming again (but not nearly as bad as in the past), so that I wouldn’t blow up at work, and almost started smoking again, because screw asthma and chronic bronchitis when my sanity was on the line.

I essentially shut down at work and just did my job.

All the while Roger and Marcy continued to nitpick and goad me for a reaction in any way they could.

Roger started an odd conversation.

My break though came when Roger came back and the following conversation occurred. I don’t remember exact words and phrasing, but this is the gist of it.

Roger: “Gee, SayerSong, I’m surprised that you even wanted to work here in the first place. You’re not even Catholic.”

Me: “I was told I didn’t need to be, and it was a good job with decent pay.”

Roger: “But why would someone who’s not Catholic want to work with Catholics? Shouldn’t you hate them?”

She does not hate Catholics.

Me: “My mom and son are both Catholic. I know a lot of nice Catholics.”

Roger: “But it must be hard on you.”

Lindsay (a writer who was there and listening to all this): Roger, ease up. It isn’t like she’s an atheist or anything.” (turns to me) “You’re a non-denominational Christian, right?”

Me: “That’s what it says on my job application.”

Okay, Roger doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Roger: “But non-denominational people are basically Pagans, because they don’t belong to any church group. So, it must be tough on a Pagan like you to work with a bunch of Catholics.”

I just stared at him in absolute amazement at this, because that’s when it hit me. He was trying to get me to quit.

Two years of intentionally antagonizing me, treating me like utter garbage, disrupting my work (though I couldn’t prove it at the time), and interfering with the newspaper’s deadline even more than before, was all because he wanted me to quit.

Lindsay was trying to write it all off as his bad attempt at a joke.

It wasn’t a joke, but she was still laughing.

Joke was on him though. Because I am Pagan. I didn’t say so on my application because I didn’t know if they would hire me.

So, as I sat there flabbergasted, he finally left.

Lindsay started trying to comfort me (I guess she thought I’d be upset about it), but I just started laughing.

Because now I knew how to fight back.

Her attitude completely changed.

I stopped freaking out about the missing files, and just rode with it.

If Roger or Marcy came back with ridiculous requests, I didn’t bother trying to explain why they wouldn’t work, I just did it and let them see for themselves.

If they claimed they said something else, I didn’t argue. I just apologized and redid it.

My hours didn’t change, but the two appeared very unhappy about my lack of reaction.

Roger started taking his frustration out on Marcy and treating her poorly as well, and eventually she quit because at that point, even she couldn’t deal with him anymore.

It’s amazing how a job can be so much less stressful with an adjustment in your perspective and attitude. I’m wondering why she doesn’t look for a different job though, maybe where the boss isn’t out to get her.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person would’ve handled it differently.

Another person would’ve backed up everything.

Here’s an explanation of what Roger was doing and why.

This would’ve been a good comeback.

Always get it in writing.

It’s not too late for a lawsuit.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.