This is a totally true story, except for the fact that I made it all up.
Ever come to a stunning realization that what you just discovered is going to get you fired?
I was certainly preoccupied, as I raced down the hall to the boardroom. Personal assistants do not read notes that they are carrying from one office to another. Personal assistants do not reach conclusions based on reading these notes. Personal assistants, especially interns, do not make revelations, shocking or otherwise.
But it was all there, in that folder. Proof. The company wasn't threatened by "leaner, meaner competitors" - it was threatened by greed, kickbacks, embezzlement...all the result of a corrupt vice-CFO (and my "mentor", much to my now-disgust), one H. Charles Pendleton.
Months of his casual putdowns. Months spent denigrating me with his little phrases. "Keep your nose to the grindstone," as I finally got my lunch break, abbreviated by yet another inane, pointless errand. "Don't count your chickens before they're hatched, you know," as I asked him for a raise, or SOME recognition for suggesting a new internal mailing system that wasn't insane (and was later adopted, under his name, the bastard.) Little phrases, boring into my skull, eating away at me...
No more. I had the proof, and that was the door, looming in front of me. I couldn't do it. I couldn't make myself go through there, I couldn't ruin even so horrible a man in his moment of triumph, in this sale of company assets, "to streamline the corporation." Even though he was lining his pockets even now, I couldn't do it.
And then I heard it. His booming voice, resonating through the door. "Business makes strange bedfellows, eh, gentlemen?"
I shouldered through the thick, sturdy doors and slammed the manila folder down on the desk, grinning evilly.
"Let's not start sucking each other's dicks quite yet, gentlemen."