AS I READ the confession last Saturday about the female police officer, I thought about the things I and my female colleagues banded together to teach our former supervisor a lesson. Here is my confession.
E, as I would call him, came to work at the manufacturing plant where I worked as a supervisor. Being a champion athlete, he had a well-built body, sculpted to perfection. The women in the plant went wild over him, but he kept to himself.
Here I must tell you about the company and the relationships that existed among workers.
Believe me, if there were 50 women working at the plant along with 40 men, we were either married to them or have children with them. That’s how close we all were. Even the union representatives were involved with us or were living in a house with one of the girls.
So “to come and don’t do”, as we used to say, was not on. E had to fall in line with what we had been accustomed to, and if he didn’t, we intended to deal with him.
When E drank water from the fountain, the women would pass and smack him on the butt. All he did was complain for them, but the manager and other supervisors were also in relationships with the girls at work, so no one paid him any mind. They would ask him if he was a man or mouse while making fun of him behind his back.
But he would carry on his duties without question until a so-called Christian woman decided she wanted him. Again, all he would do is jokingly laugh at us. Did he think he was too good for us, or that we were below him?
E would just come to work, get in the van and leave the compound when his shift was finished.
About 16 of us who would work closely together didn’t like him for his discipline, so we came together and lied on this man.
We knew we would be believed as we were women and people tend to believe what women say. Besides that, as we were already involved with the other guys in the plant, people would think we were telling the truth.
We said all kinds of things about him and the things he did to us. We knew all were untrue but did it to teach him the power of the group, and just because we could. The matters went up to Human Resources. The head of the department at that time loved gossip and was friends with many of us in the plant, so E was summoned to a meeting and was asked to resign from his position. He did so without putting up a fight.
This man had a young child and a family to maintain, but we just wanted him gone because he didn’t want any of us. Who did he think he was to refuse any of us?
Well, after he resigned, one of the guys in the locker room put on the finishing touch by saying he “had a list of all the women E put down who work in the plant”.
Of course we knew that guy was lying but we couldn’t care less.
I was laid off from the company and hard financial times have me in a mess. I saw E Easter bank holiday with his family and he passes me as if I was a street light, as if seeing me brought back the memories of what we did to him.
I sat in the park and cried as I watched him playing with his three boys.
He has a wonderful family, we were wrong to have done something like that to a man because of what he stood for. I wanted to tell him how very sorry I am about what went down a few years back, but my own guilt was pressing on my conscience.
So I decided to write instead, hoping that he sees this and knows how very sorry the girls were – most of all me.
I believed the company lost a gentleman, since all who came after him found themselves in the spider’s web.
There is a famous saying – “A hundred Frenchmen can’t be wrong”. But what if they all banded together, told the same story and lied?
I realize what I did was evil. Some of us are convincing liars and wolves in sheep’s clothing only craving attention.
