Member-only story
Why Take The High Road When No One Else Will?
The path you take defines who you are.
I learned a very valuable lesson years ago: Be big, even if no one else will.
After my Hollywood dreams crashed and burned in the late 90s, I started over. I took an entry-level job at a local software company doing tech support. It didn’t pay very much (fast-food workers made more than me), but I did get benefits — health insurance, they paid for college, and I even had a small 401k. I took full advantage, going back to school to learn as much as I could about computers. It seemed like the right thing to do, since my life path had shifted unexpectedly, and my previous degree in film was utterly useless.
Work was benign but fairly pleasant, aside from one coworker — a menacing bully with terrible breath and a caustic personality. A raging narcissist, he’d pick fights, demean people, and argue for the sake of arguing. He got off on it.
The rest of the office, not so much. He even made a poor woman cry — and every time he took it too far, he’d either gaslight, claim he was joking, or accuse people of being too sensitive.
Have you ever known a person like that?
Mostly, he really loved picking fights. It could be the most innocuous topic, and he’d purposely try to rile people up.
