I’ve Got To Find A New Job.

Tom The Accountant: I’ve no idea why Boss has even asked you to speak to me about this. I’ve no idea. Only he could have done this.

I’m at work and am angry. Not your low-level ‘oh I’ve put the recycling bin out but it’s actually refuse collection day’ angry but actual laser-guided cut-glass steely-cold ‘don’t even look at me funny I will kill you’ angry, the sort of anger that would frack gas from the core of the planet without all that need for chemicals and such.

Tom The Accountant knows it and knows it’s ‘well above his pay grade’ to deal with a swivel-eyed skinny madman who looks like he is about to get himself in the news.

He wisely tells me he’ll ‘look into it’.

Ten minutes earlier:

Me: [Brandishing my payslip, which has had twenty-five percent of my salary deducted under the heading of ‘sick leave’ despite my not being unwell in the past month] Explain this. Now.

Boss: [Rattled, one eye desperately looking out of the door of the meeting room] I’ve no idea. I can tell you’re really angry –

Me: Angry isn’t the word.

I could turn the office upside down with a glance. I’m beyond anger – a place where I’m so eerily calm a mere look could take someone’s head off.

Boss: The fact is I don’t know. You’ll have to speak to Tom The Accountant about it.

Tom The Accountant is employed by the shadowy venture capitalists that fund Boss’s company.

Me: I will. As he’s here today.

Boss: [Suddenly panic-stricken, clearly forgetting that today was the day that Tom actually comes into the office and is in the next room] Oh, erm, yes. Ok.

Some time passes.

I’m again in the meeting room with Boss.

Boss: [ Having had a few minutes to regain some calm but still rattled by my thousand-yard stare] I may seem like a hard boss but I’m actually a good guy. I mean, all this –

He makes an expansive gesture to take in what I assume to be the whole enterprise which once consisted of a mere twelve employees and now consists of only Unfeasibly Young Zac, Methodical Mike and I, the xbox 360 that is kept in a cupboard and only taken-out to show strangers what a ‘fun’ company we are and the coffee table he has from the local charity shop ‘on trial’.

Boss: - may make me look like some sort of Alan Sugar-type but I’m actually ok. So I’ve paid you your salary short-fall out of my own pocket. Because I’m good like that.

The next morning I send him a text message from my mobile phone.

“Good morning, it’s me. Shan’t be returning to work. All the best for the future.”