Never trust

Whistling a happy tune in her heart, Haley has a new spring in her step as she gets ready for work. “I wonder why am I so happy to go to work? I must be going mad” thought Haley.

It has been months since Haley felt this sort of happiness. She has wonderful colleagues. Though most of them are a little quiet for her liking but they are a great bunch. Lunch is always full of laughter, especially when Simon’s around. He makes the room alive with laughter, re-enacting funny moments and making jokes. Almost everyday Haley and most of her colleagues eat lunch together. It feels like a small family during lunch hour.

As the weeks passed by, Haley is beginning to think that this might be the company that actually has the potential. Potential to appreciate their staff, the potential to not have any office political nonsense but she was in for a huge shock of her life. The sinister creep of a quiet monster goes unseen. All unaware except for one, Denise. She has been the victim of this unrelentless mental and emotional torture and abuse.

Haley and her best friend Annie has started noticing the verbal abuse but left it unsaid. Hoping that it was just a phase that the tyrant lady (TL) is going through. But as time passes on, the presence of this TL is beginning to make an impact in the office. Small snide remarks are being made by her. “Stupid! Useless!” Those are the words coming out from the mouth of this TL.

Still Haley and Annie tried to ignore it until one day Denise couldn’t take it and to everyone’s surprise she resigned. Denise had mentioned some of the abuse she has taken from the TL to Haley but from the outlook, she looks so docile and kind. Denise has warned Haley before this, “Be careful Haley. She’s not as what you expect her to be.”

Haley being Haley, never judges a person by just another person’s comment. She believes that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Thanks to watching too much CSI movies over the years. But Haley’s nightmare is just about to begin.

In February, Haley was seconded to another project and is to work with the TL. She was quite excited as this was something new and she was looking forward to it. Everything was fine till one day, the TL called Haley in for a meeting. “Haley, I think you should be more proactive, speak out more. You’re too quiet. You have talent and I can see that but you need to build that up”, said the TL. Haley kept quiet, looking at the TL. Making silent notes to herself to buck up on her work. Unfortunately for Haley, that was the first mistake she did. Keeping quiet was her biggest mistake ever, especially in front of the TL.

As another month passed by, there have been many meetings on the project that Haley was working on. She has seen a more sinister side of the TL, without her knowing it. The TL has gone power crazy. Hunger for power was shown in her eyes. As her eyes glint evilly, the TL has started a political warfare in the office. Soon, the project director decided to take a leave of absence from the project, stating personal reasons. No one quite understood why this was happening, especially when the project was at its crucial point. But Haley began to understand what was happening but kept it to herself.

One fine day, as Haley was making amendments for God knows probably the 10th time on the format of the document, she was surprised to see the TL walking into the room. The TL was always adamant that she cannot be seen in the client’s place as this project was under a totally different company.

The story goes back to the year of 2008. The TL and her husband decided to form a company called Nexus. Nexus is supposed to be a consulting company that specializes in bank consultation. On the other hand TL’s husband has an existing company by the name of Ingrid Systems. Ingrid Systems has been in the market for a couple of years and specializes in banking systems and solutions. As there has been always a fair fight to get banks as their clients, many IT companies would have to submit a tender before the project would be awarded to them.

However for the case of Ingrid Systems and Nexus, Ingrid Systems has been trying hard to win a local bank’s IT project. Both husband and wife team decided that in order to win this particular bank’s IT project, they would need to use a back way in, that was to go in to the bank as another consulting company and try to appease the customer and influence them to use Ingrid Systems. That was why Nexus was formed. But Haley and her team members were warned to not say anything about Ingrid Systems. She and her team was not supposed to have heard or know about Ingrid Systems at all.

Haley looked confusingly at the TL, wondering why she was at the client’s place when she adamantly insisted that she cannot be there as she was known to be the wife of the owner of Ingrid Systems. “This cannot be good. She must be here to make more changes” thought Haley. True to her word, the TL was asking her and her other 2 colleagues to again make changes to the format of the document.

This time the TL insisted that everyone followed the format for the Table of Contents instead of using the old one. Haley then remembered what the TL mentioned to her in the previous meeting, voiced out that maybe she can help compile everything after everyone has made their content changes and re-do the Table of Contents last as she knew that her other 2 colleagues were not too computer savvy.

The TL stared at her without blinking an eye. She commented, “It’s not hard. Anyone can do it. Why is it so difficult to change?” Haley kept quiet. It was not her style to go against her superior unless it was really necessary. The TL stared down at Haley, and then moved nearer to her. “Haley, please open the document that I’ve sent to you earlier” said the TL. “What do you think of this font for the header? Do you think it looks alright? Or should we use a bigger font?” asked the TL. “Anything will do” said Haley. She didn’t think that the font size would make any difference. What is important to her is the content of the document.

Haley did not see the TL’s eyes narrowed in anger towards her but her colleague Coleman saw it. After the TL left, Coleman said, “You shouldn’t have said anything will do. She didn’t like that”. “What? I didn’t have any views on the fonts. I think the content is what’s important. We’ve been changing the format for God knows how many times. First it’s the Project Director who changed it then the TL changed it behind his back. Back and forth for at least 6 times already. How many times do they want to change it?!” raged Haley. She has reached her boiling point. She knew that it was not Coleman’s fault and she told him, “I’m not angry at you. It’s just that I find all these petty things like font size, table of contents are unnecessary to be looked into until the final stage”.

Haley was starting to get really pissed off with the TL. She blew her top when the TL called her on Friday, raising her voice asking Haley, “Did you see your document before you sent it to me? Did you print it out?!” Haley was shocked by her tone of voice. She thought to herself “Oh no, what mistake did I do? I’ve read through all of it. I didn’t find anything missing” “No, I did not print it out. Is anything wrong with the document?” Haley asked the TL. “Of course there is! The font’s too small. You used Arial and size 11. How can you expect anyone to read such a small font?! Next time print out before you send it to me!” screamed the TL. “How many times I tell you that first impression makes all the difference! If you sent something like this to the client what would they think?! Do you need me to repeat all these again and again?” screamed the TL? “No. You don’t need to repeat” cut in Haley. The TL was shocked that Haley had the nerve to answer her back. The TL put down her phone. Haley was seething. Angry to the point that she would have hurled the phone into the glass door right there and then.

From that day onwards, the TL stared to make Haley’s life a living hell. The TL started finding small faults of Haley and making it a big issue. She started going around the office asking Haley’s colleague about Haley’s leave application, making it sound as if Haley was lying to her about her leave. When Haley found out, she was furious. “Who does she think she is? She’s not even the owner of the company. She’s just Ingrid System’s boss’s wife. How dare she?!” screamed Haley. She was venting out all her frustration to Denise and Annie. They sympathized but she knew they couldn’t do anything. She just felt so angry and helpless.

Haley knew it wouldn’t be too soon that there was another issue created by this TL. She now knew how bitter this woman was. Go against her even on a small matter and she’ll unleash all her power to make anyone’s life miserable. The TL was unforgiving. To think that previously she was so nice to Haley, telling her stories of when she was young, how rich she was, how she actually bought her first semi-detached house when she was only 29, how she knew all these big shots and they helped her a lot because she’s such a nice person and she always remembers her friends. “Bull shit! All just crap!” thought Haley.

The turning point came when the TL accused Haley’s colleague of lying for her. Haley couldn’t believe that the TL would stoop so low as to accuse her colleagues of lying. Haley has always tried to find her own ways to get things done. As she was based at her client’s place, there was no internet access. The only access she can get is via the modem that was being used by her project manager. She decided to try out the website www.wirelesskl.com and lo and behold she managed to get free internet access, though a poor one. She was happily using the free wireless one day when the TL called Coleman and her project manager. “How come she can go online?! Why is she using the modem? !That’s for work! It should be used constantly by the project manager! Where is he? I want to talk to him?” thundered the TL. Coleman was a small size man but pretty daring. “She’s not using the modem. The modem’s plugged in to the project manager’s notebook. I can see it before my eyes. It’s true” said Coleman.

Haley was staring at Coleman. Knowing that it must be the TL that called him. His brow furrowed and he looked stressed. “What did she want? What accusations now is she hurling at me Coleman?” asked Haley. Coleman sighed. “I think she’s really trying to do you out. She’s saying that she doesn’t believe what I say. She’s saying that you’re using the modem as she found out that you’re chatting with Annie over the internet” said Coleman. “How dare she accuse you and me like that?! I was just asking Annie over the internet what time should we go back for the company meeting. That bitch!” said Haley. “She’s going to call our project manager and ask him the same thing” said Coleman.

Haley couldn’t believe her ears. She was trying hard to understand. What was actually going through the TL’s mind. “Why is she doing this? What did I do to deserve this? She’s going to the extend of making not only my life miserable but other’s as well.” thought Haley. “I have to put a stop to this. I can’t let the rest suffer just because of one crazy woman” thought Haley to herself.