Power Shift
The power shift was immediate and brutal. Within days of getting her promotion, Becca transformed from ‘work bestie’ to full-blown nightmare boss.
She’d snap her fingers when she wanted coffee—MY coffee, not the break room sludge—and would text me tasks at 10 PM with ‘urgent’ labels that somehow always involved finishing her work.
In meetings, she’d interrupt me mid-sentence with, ‘Actually, Cathy, that’s not how we do things anymore,’ on procedures I LITERALLY WROTE MYSELF. One Tuesday, she handed me a stack of claims reports with a sticky note that read ‘Fix these by EOD.
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They were her assignments—the ones she’d been too busy making TikToks to complete. I stayed until 8 PM finishing them while she left at 4:30 for ‘networking drinks.’ My coworkers saw everything but said nothing.
Dave would give me sympathetic glances; Margie occasionally whispered, ‘This isn’t right,’ but nobody wanted to be Becca’s next target.
I kept telling myself to stay professional, to not let her see me crack. But each morning, as I dragged myself to my cubicle (now relocated to the noisy spot by the bathrooms), I felt my dignity chipping away piece by piece.
Then came the day I discovered her second video about me—and this time, she wasn’t just mocking my typing.