I'd worked at the same job for six years. It was a cellphone company of sorts, a chain of retailers not directly owned or controlled by any of the major carriers or device manufacturers. Although the corporate headquarters with the bigwigs was somewhere else the business was big enough in the Upper Midwest, where it primarily operated, to have a medium sized office building as its primary hub of operational management. This is where I worked.
I worked over the phone doing all manner of technical support for the retail locations. They'd call in when their systems weren't working or customers in the store had questions the retail employees couldn't answer. It was an ok job in an office call center type setting that was boring and bureaucratic, but consistent and paid decently (though certainly nothing tremendous).
I have a pretty anti-authoritarian personality, I always have had. It has been both a benefit and a detriment to me in my life, but I'm not an asshole or anything. I don't like being told what to do without sufficient explanation, I don't like following arbitrary guidelines thought up by someone who doesn't even do my job, I don't like being bossed around by people who I don't perceive to understand the situation as well as I do.
I stuck with the job for those years because it paid just well enough to keep me from looking elsewhere. Gave me just enough ok hours to make me wary of getting worse hours somewhere else.
I've always been lucky to have a familial support system onto which I could fall back should I ever need to. I'm an only child and my parents are well off enough to house and take care of me should I ever find myself out of a job. Because I was never really afraid of being fired combined with my inherent disdain for authority I tended to always speak up when I felt the company was telling me to do something I didn't think I should have to do.
Again I want to stress I tried not to be an asshole about it. I have an affable but dominant type personality. I'd had a few talks over the years with supervisors and DLs (Department Leads) about my attitude when I felt I was being mistreated as an employee, but I never really felt anything serious would come of it. I did my job pretty well and, for the most part, everyone I worked with liked me.
This story starts about two years before I was ultimately fired from the company. Strange as it sounds, though, I was fired willingly under good terms. But that's a long way down the line from where we'll begin here.
It was a normal day like any other day. I was sitting at my desk talking to someone on my headset about some certainly dumb thing. I was leaned way back in my chair with my feet up on my desk. There was little in the way of dress code at our building because no customers ever came in there, and in general the atmosphere was pretty relaxed. Sitting in this way was something I'd done numerous times without incident.
On that day, however, there was an incident. My DL was a woman named Melanie Conner. At the time she was in charge of the department in which I worked. I didn't know her age, but I'd take her to be a 40 something. She was pretty short and rounded, rather overweight in a large chested and stocky way but by no means grotesque. She was African American and had a short buzz haircut, her tight curls maybe only about a half inch long. Under those short curls was a rather pretty face in a plump and pleasant way.
I'd always liked Melanie. She was both smarter and more laid back than other managers I'd had. She seemed to like me too; she'd specifically taken time to help me develop in the company and was always vocally praising how smart she thought I was (not good for my already overinflated self image, I know).
However on this day she and I had an interaction that wasn't like any we'd had previously. As she walked by where my cubicle was located she saw me sitting way back with my feet up.
"Chris put your feet down, that's not appropriate." She said to me.
Being reprimanded, especially by someone I didn't expect to be reprimanded by for something I didn't expect to be reprimanded for, I immediately felt myself go on the defensive.
"I sit like this all the time." I countered, trying not to sound angry or whiny (not certain I accomplished either).
"Well not anymore, it's too much." She said, and stared me down until I put my feet on the floor.
"Sit up straight Chris." She added. And now I felt like she was talking to me as though I was a child, something I couldn't stand.
She watched me with a placidly expectant expression until I did as she said. I felt myself redden in the face, but sat up straight. She then moved on without another word, and I had already resolved to email HR and question if Melanie had the authority to tell me how I should sit in my cubicle.
It took me a few minutes to cool down and get back to work. By the end of the day I'd pretty much let it go and never did send the email to HR.
The next morning when I came in I found a curious email and a corresponding meeting in my virtual schedule. It instructed me to meet Melanie in her office when I got in (I worked a later morning shift so there wouldn't be a chance I got in before her). The email was vague but had one cc, Paige Vay.
Paige Vay was the director of the whole office building, in charge at a hands-on level of many of the company's customer facing operations. A meeting with one's boss AND their boss definitely wasn't something anyone ever really wants to see in their email. However, a universally accepted truth in our building was that Paige was an incredibly good person.
Paige was always completely sincere and empathetic with all her employees. I don't think during my years in that building I ever heard anyone mention a bad experience with her. It felt like she was the average employee's advocate regarding corporatism and the faceless executives who told everyone what to do.
So while I wasn't looking forward to this meeting, I didn't feel I had anything to fear in an interaction with either Melanie or Paige. So I got myself a cup of coffee and headed over to Melanie's office.
"Hey Chris," she said as I peeked my head into her open door to make sure she wasn't busy. She had on her normal friendly smile and I immediately felt some relief that this may not be the negative experience I had feared it might.
"Hey Melanie, how's it going?"
"I'm good, I'm good, how are you?" She asked with just that light touch of a southern accent she had.
"Oh I'm fine. What's going on?" I asked, anxious to know what this was all about.
"Well, we have a few things we're going to need to discuss." She said obliquely.
"Ok?" I said hesitantly.
Melanie grabbed a sizable looking black briefcase and stood from her desk. "Follow me, we're going to go to a different room."
I followed her as she led me to the elevator. When we got in she scanned her key card and hit the button for the 3rd floor. Both the elevator and the doors at the top of the stairs were locked down to the two primary floors for most employees. Only senior management could access the 3rd floor. This was also very suspicious to me.
I'm not sure what I was expecting to see up there, but it was just like the rest of the building, only bereft of any people. There were several unused meeting rooms and a little lounge area that looked identically furnished to all the ones on the lower two floors.
Melanie continued on until we came to an unmarked door that seemed to be to a room with no interior facing windows, which was odd in that modern building which had been designed to feel airy and open everywhere else. Strangely in addition this door didn't appear to have a key card sensor, instead it looked like it needed an actual metal key to open. To my recollection only the maintenance closets were like that in this building.
