As you may know I work for the owner of a well-known gallery downtown. When I began I started helping out in his studio and since then it has evolved to doing family history work. My boss opened the gallery back in Sept. 2001 as a gift to his wife. He’s 20 years older and wanted her to have something when he passed. Unfortunately she never took onto the gallery as he expected and with the downturn in the economy it closed Oct. 16, 2010. During the years it was open it kept her busy and for the most part happy as she had somewhere to go everyday and something to do and people to micro manage. When I started working for him he kept me apart from the gallery and I was his personal assistant reporting solely to him. It has always been a good working relationship. She does her thing and he does his thing. For the past few years their accountant has been saying that they really need to set up a budget and stick to it. I do my best to keep expenses low and to discourage him for spending frivolously, but with one clicking on amazon it’s hard to control. She has a shoe fetish and finds these amazing deals on e-bay and amazon and has enough shoes to fill a whole bedroom and she does, she turned one of their spare rooms into a closet. The spending hasn’t decreased over the years, but their income has gone down as people are unable to pay their rent. My boss is a retired contractor and over the years he has purchased a lot of commercial real estate and his income is from those renters. Now that his wife no longer has the gallery to look after and people to micromanage there she now stresses about money and works hard to control his spending. Finally the last straw was this past week, when she got hold of the credit card statement from the card he gave me to use. She totally flipped out on him. And what made it worse is he didn’t recall that he authorized those charges. He’s got a bit of dementia so that doesn’t help the situation.
Well, she flipped out and called the credit card company, canceled the card and requested all of the charges be reversed and has been coming down hard on him for being so generous with me. As I was also using the card for gas under his direction and that made her livid.
Poor guy. You’ve really got to feel bad for him. It’s got to suck having a wife trying to micro-manage your business when she isn’t involved and all of the money he has and continues to bring in was all acquired before they were even together. She is wife number two. She entered his life after he was well into retirement from being a General Contractor who owned his own business and did so well he spent half the year traveling abroad. In theory she should be the trophy wife, but she has no wife instincts at all. You’d think by him marrying someone who is 20 years younger she would be there to take care of him, but she does no such thing. She doesn’t cook, do laundry, or clean the house. They had to hire a maid after she refused to do laundry for a month and he eats all of his meals out. The whole situation is messed up.
After being accused of making outrageous charges I took the credit card bill and itemized all of the charges to his satisfaction, but he is still taking the heat from his wife about it. She isn’t going to drop this one.
There is possible good to come of all this on my end. He may finally put me on the payroll, which I’ve been bugging him to do forever. I really pushed hard last year when I increased my hours after the divorce, but his accountant talked him out of it. I am totally dreading paying taxes this year. It was high last year, but it’s going to be an outrageous sum this year. After this last battle with his wife he is extra motivated to figure out a better way to deal with our business expenses including paying me. So my chore has been to research payroll services that include a credit card and checks that she won’t be able to get his hands on. We think we have a solution.
I was caught off guard when he walked into work today and informs me that his wife wants to deem him incompetent. (He didn't say this but the reason she would do this is so she can control all of his money.) The sad thing is I wouldn’t put it past her to do it.
At times I feel like I could be part of the serious Modern Family. The episodes that you say, there is no way that could really happen.
End Note: Before I moved in my roommate informed me that he doesn’t do drama and doesn’t want a roommate that brings home drama. So last night after telling him the crazy day I had, I told him that my life isn’t full of drama, it’s an adventure. He laughed. I said wasn’t New Year’s Eve fun. He said yes and said he is looking forward to joining me on my adventures.
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