Stupidity that rules the World

The defining moment of stupidity at KRONOS was probably when I got in trouble for “touching people” at our Mona Vale rooms. By ‘touching people’ I mean either greeting them in the morning with a mutual kiss on the cheek, a causal hug (where the hands stayed in all the appropriate places,) or even horror of all horrors, touching people on the shoulder. Scandalous stuff! HR told me that placing my hand on a co-worker’s shoulder was unacceptable. Mick had been sexually harassing and groping young female trainees without censure, but when I, a gay man, touched a woman on their shoulder, it was sexual harassment. Brief, non-sexual contact with a gay man was apparently frightful, but lingering arse grabs by a middle-aged creep in a position of power was A-OK. Hypocrisy is apparently a synonym for KRONOS.

I had recently attended both Christmas parties for KRONOS, the official one and unofficial one. I had planned and arranged the non-official one, and invited all The Beaches staff. The non-official party had a far better turnout than the official one. My reputation as the king of parties precedes me. The official party went quite smoothly but I do remember being convinced that Abigail’s brother Mick was gay. Mick was creepy, and seemed to pay to close attention to the young guys. Later I would learn I was right about the creepy part, but young girls were his thing, not young guys. It turns out Mick creeped on young guys for a different reason. You know the mean girl trope? The hot popular kids in every American high school movie. Mick was a middle-aged loser still fixated on trying to re-live the high school days he never had. He was desperate to be one of the popular guys, so he lurked on hot young guys hoping to build his own sad KRONOS version of the queen bees. His sister Abigail was the same. Always trying to set up little cliques, playing mind games and trying to manipulate herself into the position of queen bee. The thing is, in time people with any sense see it for what it is. To people like Abigail and Mick, you are never a person, you are a pawn in their game, to be used and manipulated. Kathy confirmed my theory. She used to date Mick, and even continued to sleep with him once he married and had kids. Mick used his power to prey on the staff, and KRONOS rewarded him with more power. KRONOS sure knows how to pick who to promote. Aspirational stuff right there.

A lot happened at the official Christmas party. A lot of questions were going around about my sexuality so to make things easier I started showing one of my work colleagues some inappropriate pictures some love interests had sent me to clear things up. My phone was passed around the group. I forewarned everyone that the material was definitely NSFW and if they didn't want to partake in such an activity, they could just pass the phone on to the next person in the group without burning their eyes and staining their soul. Both Kay and Mick reported me to my supervisor the next day. They said my behaviour was inappropriate and they were worried about my future with the company. They said I needed to be talked to about appropriate behaviour, like I was fucking 3 years old. These KRONOS role models; these paragons of virtue were calling me inappropriate. Mick, who is a sexual predator any way you slice it, was complaining about me showing some pictures to informed and consenting adults??? And Kay the homophobic, girl calling, hater. In hindsight, Kay and Mick had it in for me from the very beginning.

The week after that, the unofficial Beaches party was hosted by mwah. It was an epic party that went down in history as one of the best events anyone had ever attended. I spilled an espresso martini on my supervisors’ white pants, and she just shrugged it off, climbed over a table of twenty people and headed to the bathroom to clean herself up. So, there we had it, two parties, inappropriate stuff being done by just about everyone, but I was being singled out. We had a sexual predator working in the training department, being enabled every step of the way, and I was being called into HR for touching people on the shoulder.

Tiffany, the supervisor who had drunkenly climbed over a table of 20 people, was being forced to talk to me about ‘appropriate behaviour’. I knew she thought it was bullshit, but was being forced by the higher ups to ‘follow procedure’ and ‘discipline me appropriately’. The strange part of it was, they were commenting on my behaviour at a non-official work party, which they quite frankly had no right to do. I could understand a complaint stemming from the official work party on work time, of course. But it was my party, arranged by me. I had invited my co-workers, but it wasn’t a KRONOS sanctioned event.

Tiffany knew it was a setup, that they were going after me over the ‘too touchy’ complaint from Mona Vale. After my meeting with Tiffany, I went back to the Mona Vale room. When I walked through the door, Brynn hugged me. I told her loudly that I was not allowed to return her hug because someone had reported me for apparently sexually harassing the female staff. I waved my hands in the air, loudly proclaiming to all ‘look at my hands, can you all see my hands? I’m not touching a female co-worker, I’m not sexually harassing her, see NO TOUCHING’

This is what my life had come to, this is what KRONOS had driven me to. Here was a gay man, terrified to return a hug from a woman because he was being accused of sexual harassment by a business that harboured and rewarded and promoted genuine sexual predators and homophobic’s.