Mean Girls Part II or The Devil Wears Chef pants.

The first time I met her, she was merely another instructor at school. I was in the chef's office entering some data into a computer with only about 2 minutes to go before class time when she came bursting through the door. I had never had any kind of exchange with this woman, good or bad prior to this moment but she came screaming like a banshee (in a Southern accent, so from here forward anything I write that she said you must imagine in a Southern drawl) accusing me of unplugging a computer in a classroom. Being that she was so rude about it, I didn't even lift my gaze from the screen and merely answered, "Okay."
In a matter of months though, management canned my boss, the head instructor and in his place put her.
She had been in another department. Turns out she was supposedly trained as a pastry chef.
Oh great.
I gave her the benefit of the doubt because I am a professional. I shook her hand, congratulated her and offered my help with anything she might need. A week or two  later, her father passed away. I took up a collection, purchased flowers and all the chef instructors signed a sympathy card. I placed it on a table in her office so that she would see it when she returned to work.
She never mentioned a bloody word about it. No "thanks y'all" or anything.

Still- the boss is the boss. I forged forward. I tried to be the best that I could be. Soon enough though I noticed that this woman had all the social skills of a wet fart in a sleeping bag. They stunk. Morale went spiraling down among the staff. We started to wonder if our office was bugged or if there was a snitch in there because she seemed to know more than she ought to and constantly berated us for complaining. Now one of the reasons that a faculty lounge exists is so that teachers can blow off some steam from what is a very high pressure job. And if we weren't bitching before, we certainly started to now. She repeatedly told us how lucky we were to even have our roach infested office.

I have been the big cheese before and I know fully well what a difficult job it is. There are a couple of things that are important to remember when you have a staff.

•  Listen to them. Get both sides of the story. Start out with the assumption that your team member is right and have their back. It is really important to workers to feel that their boss respects them, believes in them and thinks that they are valuable.
•  Admit to being wrong once in a while. To err is human, remember?
•  If an employee is valuable give them a warning before firing them. Sometimes a situation can be rectified.
• Try to treat people equally and don't pick favorites. You may like some of them more than others but the playing field should be level for all.

Our leader screamed at us. Humiliated us. I kept a secret list on the whiteboard above my desk hidden behind some papers that I called the S.O.W. (Shit of the Week). I will always try to find humor in a bad situation. It did seem as if every week there would be one particular instructor whom she would dump on especially hard. Once she'd finish hounding that person and stormed out of the office, I'd slide the papers aside and say, "well Chef so-and -so, looks like it's you this week" and enter their name.
Not only was she just downright mean but it was hard to respect her professionally. If she was this great pastry chef it would be a real asset to show her stuff a little. The students always asked and she would snap at us when we would approach her. She made up all kinds of excuses why she couldn't or wouldn't do a demo for them. Her predecessor also used to substitute teach once in a while, a great way to be in touch with the students and to understand the perspective of the teachers. She never did, except for one class that was lecturing only. It became clear to us that she knew nothing. Worse than this was her refusal to listen the the chefs about how lousy the syllabus's were or how the requisitions for food were inadequate. If a chef was caught at the stewarding department trying to get a lemon and she was there, God help you!
Morale sunk deeper and deeper. The students were low priority. Shoddy equipment was put in the kitchens and she would get mad at us when it didn't work. Certain chefs could breeze out the door leaving a disastrous mess in their kitchen, others who were not favorited would get chastised if they left a rolling pin on a table. We never felt supported or like a team.  Once in a while her predecessor used to take the department out for drinks and a meal together for a little bonding. Now staff would run out of there to hide in a bar and bitch to one another, commiserating about our jobs. We never felt secure. People were getting fired constantly, management would lie to our faces, we started mistrusting one another and altogether it became a dysfunctional working environment.
When I was promoted to a management position for the evening shift, she zeroed in on me even more. Every morning I woke up to really nasty e-mails about something that I missed the night before. No matter that the place was cleaner now, in better order and overall a good feeling at the school at night, I'd get a snippy note that there was an open container of mustard in the reach-in in K-5!!!!  I started to dread looking at my  messages in the morning.
Eventually she had a hit put out on me. I know it had to do with the fact that another chef and I were dating on our own time and discreetly. She made it look performance oriented. The cowards started blacklisting me. They wrote up reports that were full of untruths so that they could start a paper trail.
Instead of perhaps approaching me and discussing management's disapproval of my relationship with the coworker, together we might have come up with a solution. Something honest would have been the high road. Instead they threatened us, we lied, they lied and it was ugly. We both got fired.
I had been trying to get out of there, I had been interviewing and doing tastings for other jobs. In the long run it had been my plan to leave because of the abuse. What really hurt though is that she badmouthed me, without my being there to defend myself. I became the scapegoat for everything that had been wrong at that place. There is one problem with that though. I don't want to toot my own horn but, everybody liked me. Toot.  Frankly I don't think they believed a word about what she said in connection with me. The outpouring of support that I got from students and coworkers was great affirmation and truly touching.

Now I live a peaceful existence without a tyrant over me. And I may not be perfect but I'll tell you one thing, if you sent me condolence flowers, I would sure as hell say thank you.