I've been chewed up and spat out (LONG)

rearden · Pileated woodpecker Joined: May 10, 2005 Posts: 196

Please bear with me, I'm kind of in shock here..

My ex-best friend and I started running online businesses together about 3 years ago. Things were GREAT at first. The two of us ran a advertising website with a third guy. I did the programming and administrative stuff; the other 2 guys handled the marketing. Both my work and the money I made were far more rewarding than I had ever anticipated, and things were just perfect. However we took a blow when the third guy ended up stealing the websites and disappearing, leaving us without any recourse.

After that, my friend and I started a new website, and I got another job to support me while we were building it. It was quite a blow, but things were looking up again! Once our new website began to become a success, the company I worked for said that they didn't like me working full-time for 2 different businesses. I wasn't sneaky about it, nor did I inappropriately work on my stuff on their hours or anything like that. They just thought I should dedicate myself to one business or the other and asked me to pick. I stuck with my friend--I would much rather run our own business together with someone I trusted rather than stay at that company.

I moved halfway across the country for this guy, so we could work together in the same town. That's when things changed for the worse--he was no longer my partner--he was my boss. He lost interest in the site, and bossed me around rather than working with me as before. If I complained he said I was being "insubordinate" and threatened to withhold my pay, etc. He said that I am not to question him. Even innocent questions like "what are your long-term plans for this project I'm working on now?" were met with angry rants and threats because he thought I was questioning his decisions, when in reality I was just curious.

Over the past couple months, things got even worse. He started antagonizing me; trying to get a rise out of me. He'd do things like IM me constantly with 10 different requests (all of which had to be done RIGHT NOW!), knowing that I can't multitask well and knowing it would upset me. He started saying I was incompetent, lazy, didn't care about our business--all while I was staying up for 2 days straight trying to finish all the tasks he put in front of me. If I went to bed at a reasonable hour (as in, 2-3am), he said I was lazy. If I pulled an all-nighter and went to bed at 10 in the morning then slept the following day, he said I was too undisciplined to stay on a reasonable schedule and treated my work like a video game rather than a real job. I dealt with this abuse EVERY SINGLE DAY--and the moment I'd say something showing even the slightest hint that I was getting upset, he'd say "see! it's all your fault, you have an attitude problem!"

He started docking my pay if I'd protest any of this or defend myself in any way. Yesterday, the worst happened. I was working on one of our new websites--I've been putting 60+ hours per week into developing it over the past month or so, and it has a lot of VERY innovative and advanced features that I'm really proud of. We had last talked 2 hours ago and things were fine--then he suddenly IM'd me, claiming there were several broken links on one page and accusing me of being too incompetent and lazy to see them. I checked every single link; there were no broken links--there were a few links to incomplete pages but they were still valid links, and I explained this. He said "that's it..I can't work with you, you're too stupid.. take a vacation or something", said that if I harassed him he'd call the cops, and signed out.

This afternoon, I find that all of our websites and their associated servers are down. From what I can gather from calling the hosting company, he asked them to lock everything down and change the passwords. Why they've been down all day, I have no idea. In addition to our businesses there are a few sites that only pay him (which I've worked on for FREE for the past 3 years as a favor to him), and those are down too..So I'm not really sure what the deal is.

After this I got suspicious and started looking on freelance job posting sites. Sure enough, today on one there's a new listing asking for a programmer to replace his "ex-programmer" (me--he hasn't told me this yet though) and I know it's him because it's the correct city, and he named two of our websites to give examples of the "complex nature of the programming talents that went into these sites", in his words (yet I'm sooooo incompetent). Too bad for him that they're down right now, though.

I turned my whole life around for this guy and our business ventures--I've done free work on sites that don't pay me, I helped him remodel his house as a friend, I've put in obscene hours trying to make him happy, I've dealt with his terrible control-freak attitude that developed after I moved here, and now he just feels like finding someone else, probably hoping to save money or see if he can find anyone that is even more of a doormat than I was (if that's possible).

What sickens me the most is that I'm sure if he finds someone else, he'll be wonderfully accomodating and generous, just as he was with me at first--he has a very charming, personable facade. Then once he establishes control, it'll no doubt turn out the same. I can't believe I've put up with his crap for so long, only for this.

I don't even know how to react yet, I'm in shock right now. Even if he doesn't find someone now (which isn't likely, given the complexity of the work involved and the money he's offering), he clearly showed his intentions and is no longer trustworthy. The site requires registration to see the postings, so I don't think he intended to just scare me or anything like that. I guess it's time to plan on moving back home or something. I dunno. What little faith I had left in humanity (which he improved at the beginning) has been obliterated. I don't know what else to say..