Never underestimate the power of menopause, I say. I was the National Sales Manager for a large corporate at one time, and had a team of around 12 sales people working for me at any one time. The National Campaign Manager and I had been friendly, but I was getting the sense that he was a bit of a bully and wasn't sure where that would lead. One day, we had a little meeting, both of us were there, and my whole team. During this meeting, I said something about upper management not really caring about the team, so we had to care about ourselves. Well, the NCM thought that I was out of line and wanted me to apologise for saying what I had said to the team. I told him no. I said that I didn't believe that I'd said anything wrong, and it was partially to create a sense of us working together against the odds. I thought that was the end of it.

About 30 minutes later, I walked past one of the glass enclosed conference rooms, to see my entire team inside with the NCM. I didn't call this meeting, so WTF? When the first person came out of the room, I asked him what was going on. He said, "Phil was apologising to us for your remark." Suddenly the menopausal brain kicked those hormones up to HIGH. When the last salesperson walked out and Phil was heading toward the door, I stepped in, closed the door and opened a can of whoopass. Basically it went kinda like this: Who the FUCK do you think you are? You're apologising for ME? FUCK YOU! You have a shitload of nerve thinking you can take my goddamned team, people that I got to win after 2 years of losing, and apologise for me. Fuck you, twice, asshole.

There may have been a few more "fucks" in there but that was basically the way it went. I went upstairs, to speak to the Division head, a man who liked me a lot and put me in my role because I made him lots of money, but he was in Aussie that week, so the stupid woman who was in his place, instead of getting us both together and hashing it out, told me that I should go home and think about it. I told her that I quit and that they could send my cheque to my home.