So I’m the parts manager of a small industrial refrigeration company. It’s pretty much a massive hodgepodge position that encompass everything from purchasing, inside sales and inventory to shipping, receiving, data entry and pick-ups/deliveries as we don’t currently have a dedicated gofer. It’s also important to note that it’s normally a two-person department and I’ve been running it solo for the last few weeks since my assistant was fired. The point I’m trying to hammer home is that there are any number of reasons at any point of the day for me to be away from my desk.

There have been several times today where the owner has come into my office looking for me and I’ve been elsewhere, each time doing some facet of the job. Each time he said nothing about having to find me (important to note). So 1:30 rolls around and I decide “Hey, I’m caught up on my workload, it’s a pretty quiet day and my colon just grumbled for the third time in ten minutes. Perfect time to pop off for a nice quiet dump.”

So I go and do my business, was in there for maybe seven minutes, and right as I walk out of the bathroom who greets me but the owner and one of our larger customers who has come to pick-up some parts he had on will call. The owner immediately berates me for hiding while the customer has been here for five minutes and they haven’t been able to find where his order was (It was in a box, on my desk, labeled with the customer's name on it). You’d think seeing someone walk out of the bathroom trailed by the stench of fresh, terrible ass-leavings would make it obvious I was doing anything but hiding, but the man microwaves fish on an almost daily basis so it kind of doesn’t surprise me that he failed to notice the scent of 1,000 corpses wafting out of the bathroom.

This isn’t the first time the owner has said something like this to me in front of a customer, nor am I the only person he’s done it too. If he’s showing a customer around and finds any fault, no matter how minor, with anything that you’re doing he’ll berate you for it and explain how to do it as if you're a total moron. I used to try and explain things, but I’ve learned over the years it’s a pointless exercise. He’s the boss and he is always right, so I just quietly seethed and got our customer his order.

A little while later I leave the office to go pick-up some supplies our welders requested for a system they’re currently installing at a packing house. One of the things I picked up were paint brushes, but instead of getting the ones we usually get for $1.33 each I got the ones that cost $1.75 each. I also grabbed a couple extra paint rollers that were a bit nicer than the ones we usually get, just in case they were needed on site.