Before we get into it, I know I messed up. Badly. So please, if you’ve got any advice, I’d love to hear it. I’ve made a massive mess, and I don’t have the slightest clue how to fix it.
Until two weeks ago, when I served her up one massive reason to hate me on a silver platter, my manager Jada had never been anything but nice to me. In fact, she had gone above and beyond in the niceness department, to the point where I found it a little off-putting.
Every shift started with a hug. My coworkers didn’t get a hug, but I did because I “gave the best hugs” and was “the right height for it.” After a few initial objections when I was new to the job, I learned to shut up and accept the hugs. It was better than the alternative, which was her moping around the museum and whining that I didn’t like her.
Throughout the day, she’d find excuses to come and talk to me. Talking often led to touching, and touching led to, you guessed it, more hugging. But again, the alternative was a whiney Jada who complained not only to me, but also to my coworkers and even to the visitors. It was better for everyone if I swallowed my pride and made a bit of small talk.
And then there were the gifts. No matter how many times I told her not to spend her money on me, I would occasionally open my (locked) locker to find a $100 gift card or a bottle of designer cologne, invariably with a handwritten card from Jada. The gifts would end up back on her desk, but I always kept the cards. Returning those felt rude.
Yes, admittedly, I wasn’t nearly as grateful for Jada’s kindness as I should have been - a fact that’s glaringly obvious now that she hates me. She always told me that I’m too uptight, and honestly, if I can’t handle a nice hug or a thoughtful gift without bristling, then maybe I should have taken her word for it.
My point is, while Jada had far fewer compunctions about physical contact than I did, she has never, ever given me reason to believe she would hurt me.
And I never believed that she would, until I ended up on the floor.
__________
It was a particularly slow day at the museum. I was supposed to be selling tickets, but I couldn’t because nobody was there to buy them. So I just sat at the admissions desk, clicking my pen and contemplating the intense heat radiating up my right leg. That was unusual. Everything had felt normal a moment ago, and now my leg was uncomfortably hot. And getting hotter. And hotter.
I looked down, and immediately leapt out of my seat.
It was an electrical fire. The ancient power strip - probably older than half the artifacts in the museum - had been tasked with one daisy chain too many and had gone up in flames. The fire hadn’t quite reached the wooden desk, but it was dangerously close.
I broke into an all-out sprint. There was only one fire extinguisher in the building, kept in a supply closet in the back of the atrium. It was blessedly close to the admissions desk, so I didn’t have far to run. I swiped my badge and flung the door open. My eyes caught the bright red fire extinguisher immediately, sitting right beside the doorway.
A sharp noise confirmed that the smoke detectors had finally been tripped. I grabbed the fire extinguisher and started running again, seeing to my horror that the sprinkler system had been activated. I suddenly had less time than before: water and electrical fires do not mix.
I dashed back to the desk, positioned myself right in front of the power strip, and hoped to God that I was knew how to use this thing.
And then, I felt my head hit the ground.
For a moment, I was too distracted by the splitting pain in my head to realise that my hands were empty. A rush of white foam smothered the flames. I traced the stream of foam backwards to find Jada wielding the fire extinguisher. She looked angry, but given the circumstances, she might have just been focused.
Given my position relative to hers, it seemed like she had somehow hip-checked me and grabbed the fire extinguisher at the same time. I couldn’t understand why she would do that. (The obvious answer was that she wouldn’t, but you’ll have to forgive my stupidity. My skull had just been bashed against the tile floor.) Given that she was actively putting out a fire, it seemed like a bad time to ask.
So I picked myself off the ground and awkwardly backed away, joining the rest of the staff outside where we waited for the fire department to arrive.
__________
In all the commotion, I had barely considered that technically, the supply closet was off-limits to anyone below the rank of manager. Entry-level staff like myself were only granted badge access because, as I mentioned before, the museum stored its only fire extinguisher in there. I didn’t think this could be a problem later that afternoon, after the firefighters had left, when Jada forced the fire extinguisher against my chest.
“Where did you get this?” It was a confusing question, because yet again, we only had the one. There was only one place I could’ve gotten it, unless I’d walked over to the sub shop next door and asked to borrow theirs. But Jada had admitted to falling asleep in trainings before, so she could have been genuinely asking for all I knew.
“We keep it in the supply closet,” I answered. “Speaking of which, I think it’s against the law to only have-“
“You aren’t supposed to go into that closet.” She sounded angry. I couldn’t understand why. “You weren’t even supposed to leave the desk!”
I gawked at her. “I wasn’t supposed to leave the desk during a fire? Everyone else evacuated!”
“So why didn’t you?“
My mind raced, but it could’t keep up. Jada was loud at the best of times - in my less forgiving moments, I had silently labeled her as obnoxious - but now that she was actually yelling at me, I could barely separate my thoughts for all the ringing in my head.
“Hang on, was I supposed to evacuate or stay on the desk? And didn’t the fire safety training say to grab the fire extinguisher if you’re close enough? Isn’t that why we have it?”
She scrubbed a hand down her face, as if I was the one stressing her out. “I don’t have time for this. I have to write you up-“
And that was the final straw for me. My head was pounding and my adrenaline levels were crashing. I was not about to get blamed for following protocol.
And to be written up by someone who took naps during the workday? Who repeatedly opened my locker without asking? Who had knocked me over in an emergency and left me on the ground? As if.
“Go ahead,” I challenged her. “You tell HR that I opened the supply closet, and I’ll tell them you pushed me to the ground. Let’s see who gets in more trouble.”
“I never touched you,” she said. And then she walked away.
__________
Predictably, I was the only one who got in trouble - both for opening the closet door and for lying about being pushed. In my defense, I didn’t think I was lying at the time. There were two of us standing by the fire, and one of us was shoved to the ground. I couldn’t think of another explanation.
It wasn’t long before the other explanation found me.
After a slow morning of standing in the galleries, I was headed downstairs to lead a visiting class of sixth graders on a tour. Helping out with field trips is my absolute favorite part of the job. It’s one of those tasks that I’m not technically supposed to do, being an entry-level employee and all, but Jada had trusted me with it so that I could develop and showcase my skills. It also took some responsibility off of her plate, which was good as she was constantly complaining about her workload. Fewer complaints from Jada and more tours full of curious kids was a win-win for me.
I was about halfway down the first flight of stairs when I felt something slam into my back. My stomach dropped. My feet were no longer touching the stairs. After a sickening second of dread, my face connected with the landing. I heard a crunch. I felt that crunch. The tile beneath me felt hot and wet.
The echo of footsteps told me that someone was coming. I peeled my face off of the landing to see Jada looking up at me in disgust. I sighed. Jada had barely spoken to me since I had accused her of pushing me, which was understandable. If somebody had to see me in this position, I wished it had been anyone but her.
“Are you just gonna stay there?” she asked.
I wanted to cry.
“I…” Glancing behind me, I confirmed what I had already known: no one was there to push me. “I fell.”
She took another good look at my face and visibly winced. “Jesus, you’ll give the kids nightmares looking like that. I’ll lead the tour. You go grab the sanitiser and clean up.”
“Right.” I could still feel the blood leaking out of my nose. Before any more could hit the tile, I scrambled to grab some paper towels and disinfectant from the closet. (A closet that I was allowed to go in. Obviously.)
Later that day, when I had shown up to my second job with bloody paper towel scrunched against my face, Jason and Penny had shepherded me back into my car and demanded that I go to urgent care. And when the nurses at urgent care asked how I’d broken my nose, I told them exactly what I told Jada: I fell. No one had pushed me. No one could have.
__________
And because the universe doesn’t believe in me catching a break, this couldn’t have been a one-off occurrence either.
It didn’t take too long for me to see what was happening. Nothing unusual had ever happened to me in that building until I opened the closet door. And then, literally as soon as I opened it, some invisible force decided it had a vendetta against me. Clearly, I had upset some ghost or entity or something that had been contained in the closet (or just didn’t want to be disturbed in there?) and its method of retaliation was to mash my face into the nearest available surface.
It only happened when people weren’t looking, but that didn’t mean that no one noticed. Jada always seemed to be just out of sight, coming around a corner or talking to someone in the next room over when whatever it was decided to strike.
And would it really matter if she did witness it? What was she gonna do about it, send the ghost to HR? As the days wore on, I accepted that maybe this was some sort of cosmic retribution for being a bad employee. I had taken my manager for granted. I had flaunted the rules, entering a room with restricted access. I had messed up so badly that even some supernatural force had tired of my bullshit, and now I was paying the price.
Days passed, and it became harder to focus. I was constantly drenched in nervous sweat. One chaperone even pulled me aside mid-tour, asking if I needed to sit down and insisting that he could show the kids around the museum by himself. I unconvincingly told him that I was fine, and while he did let me finish the tour, he walked directly behind me on the staircase as if to catch me if I fainted. In his defense, I had spent the better part of that week feeling like I might.
I couldn’t go on like this. The visitors were noticing. Penny and Jason were also noticing, asking me more often than not if I wanted to take a sick day. Between the two of them, I think they pointed out every single bruise on my face and arms. I told them what I’d told everyone: I’d fallen. Again and again and again, I’d fallen, and there wasn’t anything more to it than that.
Clearly this was unsustainable. Something had to change.
__________
And finally, something did change.
I was working behind the admissions desk that day. Jada had been sitting next to me for the past hour, staring at her own computer screen and making a big show of not talking to me.
The pointed silence had been driving me crazy, until a visitor approached the desk and struck up a conversation with me. She was around my age, and she said her name was Anna. Anna had a really nice smile.
As I rang her up for one adult ticket, Anna explained that she was visiting every local history museum in the area. She was documenting her progress on social media, she said. When I told her that sounded like a cool idea, she tore a scrap of paper out of the notebook she was carrying and jotted down her Instagram handle. She slid the paper across the desk, flashing that cheeky smile again.
“Then you should check out my page,” she said, slipping her credit card into the payment terminal. “And maybe you could DM me sometime.”
My heart did a flip.
And then my entire body slammed into the wall.
I had never been in so much pain. My skeleton seemed to vibrate on impact like a gong. I should have been terrified, but every synapse in my brain was too busy screaming in agony.
I pried opened my eyes to see Anna and Jada, both staring at me in shock.
My feet weren’t touching the ground. They didn’t need to be. My body was pinned to the wall with enough force that I couldn’t even twitch, let alone break free.
A single thought entered my battered, ringing head: I finally had Jada’s attention, and if I was ever going to explain the situation, it had to be now.
“Listen, this-“ I was interrupted by my own head slamming against the wall three more times. I heard a crack, and desperately hoped it wasn’t my skull. I cried out in pain, and the force threw my head back one more time for good measure.
And then the force was gone, and with nothing left to pin me to the wall, I crumpled to the floor.
Jada’s heels clacked towards me, and Anna’s ballet flats hastened out the door.My eyesight had already faded to black, but I could still hear the shrill beep of the payment terminal, objecting to Anna’s credit card being left there for too long. As I muzzily wondered how we were going to get her card back to her, the rest of my senses gave out.
__________
The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the waiting room at urgent care. Jason and Penny were seated on either side of me, propping up my limp body. In retrospect, this really wasn’t an urgent care type of problem, but it made sense all the same. We were three young adults who could barely afford our combined rent, let alone a hospital visit. If I needed an MRI, we were effectively sunk.
I struggled to form a coherent thought. The best I could come up with was, “D’d you…close the c’fé?”
Penny actually scoffed at me. “No, we’re running it remotely. What the hell do you think?”
“Oh, right.” I fought against my drooping eyelids. “D’n’t tell the parents, ‘lright? D’n’t…mmm…”
“Oh, you mean the parents on your emergency contacts list? Those parents?” This time it was Jason grilling me. “Yeah, I get the feeling they already know. Call it a hunch.”
Shit. That was bad. When our parents had needed to go overseas unexpectedly, the three of us had temporarily been tasked with running the family business. The café operated on a shoestring budget at the best of times, and the last thing we needed was to spend an entire afternoon closed down.
Thinking felt impossible. I tried anyway. I needed to solve this. But my brain ached, and every thought wilted and died before I could decipher what it was.
“So what the hell do we tell the doctors?” Penny continued, talking more to Jason than to me.
And that question felt worse than every push and shove and slam against the wall combined. Penny - unbreakable, unfazeable Penny - sounded scared. And Jason, who was never at a loss for words, just shrugged. I should have said something, anything, to assure them that everything would be okay. But my eyelids were so heavy, and my mouth wouldn’t open. I felt my entire body droop, and my brain shut down again.
__________
And that brings us to now, since I don’t actually remember the rest of that day. I’m currently on medical leave from both jobs. The museum has called to let me know how bad the damage to the wall was, and if HR decides I’m at fault, the money for the repairs might come out of my paycheck.
They also mentioned that since my injuries are of an “inexplicable nature” and “best described as an act of God,” I’m not eligible for worker’s comp. Lucky me.
But honestly, that’s the least of my worries.
Jason and Penny want answers, which I don’t have. They also want me to get off of my phone, because apparently it’s bad for people with concussions to look at screens. Maybe that’s why I’ve felt worse while writing this. But I can’t not write it, because I’m in serious need of advice.
On the family front, how do I convince my siblings that it’s gonna be okay? They seem pretty shaken up by everything that’s happened, and running the café was already stressful enough. I don’t want them worrying about anything else if I can help it.
And then there’s the mess I’ve created at work. I’m considering buying Jada a gift, since like I said before, gift-giving seems to be one of her love languages (working-relationship languages? manager-subordinate languages?). If anyone knows what would be appropriate to buy a manager as an apology gift, please let me know. I was wrong to get annoyed with her for the hugging and the gifts and the opening of my locker without asking. I didn’t know how good I had it. She’s barely spoken to me for two weeks now, and the guilt is eating me alive.
Oh, and if you happen to have any experience with angry, violent ghosts in the workplace, I’d appreciate some help with that too.