I worked as a lawyer in a very small office, it was just after i graduated (not long ago), and i had a female boss in her 60´s with a classical case of narcissism. She would take any chance available to put me down, foment a discussion, micromanage my work (which was actually better then hers), but the worse was the money management.
In order to see me beg, she would postpone my payments and make me ask many times to be paid, i'm sure it was the feeling of power that was behind that, she had money and would buy things for her house and herself, in front of me, while postponing my salary. Also every chance she had, she would deduct things from my commissions too.
For every lawsuit that the office got while i was there, i would earn 20%, as i worked in all the cases and did almost all of the work (she would usually work there 2 or 3 days of the week).
So, if any of you are familiar with narcissists, if you start to not show reactions to their abuses, they will put all of their effort to increase the abuse. Getting your reaction = having power over you. I won't even list all of the situations, but it went from what i reported here, to worse.
All of that happened until after one year there, she had 2 young men in her desk, which was in a room next to mine, so if i made a effort i could hear it, and she negotiated to work in 2 lawsuits for them, but instead of money, they would work for her as carpenters to remake her house and part of the office. They would work for her for 3 months, because the work that we would do for them, would cost a lot too.
So naturally i got curious, what do earn with this, i asked her.
She said that they would work to improve the office too.
So i asked that if i would pay for her office, that made me a associate? No more working for her, taking her orders, being there every day in the hours that she said that i should be? It was this, or she could ask them a small feed in money in order to pay me.
Well, she had no response for that logic, so obviously she took the coward way and told me to accept that, or leave. I left in the spot. My computer, that had most of the clients files was blocked by password, and i said that i forgor what word was it, but that was not the revenge part.
Around that time, this bitch was divorcing her husband (nobody can handle her, she even stole from her sisters), and had many cases where she was representing him. So, i was friends with her ex-husband, and a few months after i left, she had a discussion with him and said that she would never do anything for him again, and resigned from all of his cases, sending him a letter with a list of all the lawsuits that HE was part of. This list was the result of a lazy and dumb job, because she listed even the cases that were closed, that she was not representing him, etc, she didn't checked all the cases, lazy, lazy, lazy.
One of those cases was about a huge land, the whole process is almost over, it's worth millions, and the funny part is that by some reason, it was not both of them in case, just him, with her as his lawyer. And guess what? She listed that lawsuit in her resignation too ^^ So i talked to her ex-husband and he gave me powers to represent him there…
A couple of weeks after that, she came to ask me if i was crazy for “kicking her out” of that lawsuit, threatening to come after me and sue me, etc.
I just showed her some prints of the letter that she sent to him, with her signature and asked “but we did what YOU WANTED, you wrote that you didn't want to work in that case anymore. What happened, you would not make such a huge mistake of listing something wrong, would you?“.
That was by phone but i could see her going red, fuming with rage, because a narcissist will NEVER recognize a mistake like that. It was my moment and i could feel it, so i didn't stop, i decided to be generous and made a proposition: “well, i see that you worked a lot here, so how about this, i can give you 20% of what we win when this case is over, is it ok to you? I guess 20% is a nice payment, right?“.
So here i am, blocked until this day, and whatever happens, it is already worth it. And no, i still didn't saw any of that money that the ex-husband is fighting for.