Training partner betrayal

This way, there be monsters..

Steve was a partner in the firm I trained at – he was their ‘commercial property expert’ (self-proclaimed and justified on the basis he had trained at Lawrence Stephens – although tellingly, I now realise, he had ‘left’ on qualification.

Steve had liked me initially – but that faded fast when the woman he was having an affair with (this was an open secret and openly acknowledged and discussed in the office, even by the managing partner) decided I ‘wasn’t her cup of tea’.

At one stage during my training contract, Steve wrote down on a piece of paper what I needed to achieve/demonstrate in order for me to be guaranteed an NQ job on qualification – I still have this piece of paper somewhere.

At the time, it really mattered to me that I be offered a job on qualification with that firm, as within its own little bubble you were made to feel as if you were bloody lucky to have a job at all, on the basis that no one else would probably have you.

When NQ jobs were announced for my qualification year, my meeting with Steve was scheduled and I felt quietly confident about how this was going to go, on the basis that I had achieved (and could clearly show I had achieved) each of the things Steve had written on that scrap of paper.

When we sat down in the meeting room, Steve looked at me and said (in his awkwardly self-conscious, yet confident, way) I wasn’t being offered an NQ position – at which point the bottom fell out of my world. I showed him the piece of paper – to which his response was to say “that’s not my writing”.

He asked me not to say anything to anyone and that my departure would be announced in due course. I went out for a walk at this point – and when I returned, it turned out Steve had quickly called everyone into a room and told them that I had decided to leave.

This wasn’t the first time Steve had lied to me or about me – at one point he and Petra (with whom he was having the affair) had concocted a story to try and get me sacked for gross misconduct, which was subsequently shown to be untrue.

Since that time, I have been unable to trust any promises made by ‘a boss’ and left with chronic anxiety.

Steve still practices and owns a single-office (yet supposedly ‘regional’) firm in the South of England.

The monsters are real.