3x10: Our Former Boss

[00:00:04] My name is Andrew Tate and this is season 3 episode 10 of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. This isn't scary per se, but it's always creepy when someone you have known forever and thought of as a mentor is revealed to be something much, much different.

[00:00:38] So I had this boss. His name was Mike and he had come to fill in for a few months while my regular boss was on maternity leave. He was pretty amazing. He inspired me to work harder and even ended up promoting me.

[00:00:51] The two of us and a third employee, I'll call James, were always working shifts together. It was fun, just laughing and kicking ass because we all had a similar sense of humor and James and I were definitely the best employees there.

[00:01:07] After Mike's time to fill was over, James and I were super bummed because he was seriously the best manager. He was fair and rewarded hard work and truly cared about the employee's satisfaction. Plus, he just made everything fun even though we were working harder.

[00:01:27] We both looked up to Mike as a manager and a human being. We had the utmost respect for him and we vowed to keep in touch when we parted ways. Well, fast forward a year or so. James and I ended up dating.

[00:01:43] We kept in touch with Mike and he was happy that we ended up together because he thought we were both great people who deserved each other. We saw Mike a few more times and kept in touch over the years through social media.

[00:01:58] When James proposed and we started planning our wedding, we knew we wanted Mike to be in it. He was part of our trio back before James and I ever knew that we would be together and the three of us had a bond.

[00:02:10] We asked him to read something during the ceremony and he accepted, expressing how honored he felt. When it got to the day of the wedding, Mike was nowhere to be seen. We kept calling him as the ceremony was quickly approaching and finally James got a hold of him.

[00:02:26] Mike told him he couldn't get out of work and wouldn't be able to make it. We were both taken aback a little bit because the Mike we knew and looked up to would never bail like this and not even let us know.

[00:02:41] We figured there had to be some reasonable explanation and were pretty disappointed, but the wedding had to go on. We had James' niece do the reading even though Mike's name was printed on the program. Fast forward a few more years.

[00:02:56] We had only spoken to Mike a handful of times since the wedding, but he had also taken the time to write me a beautiful and lengthy recommendation letter. There were no hard feelings about the wedding and James and I still shared the highest opinions of our friend.

[00:03:12] Mike kind of disappeared off of social media and the next time we tried calling him his phone number had changed. James and I exchanged sentiments of concerned and hoped that he was doing okay, but I didn't go much past that.

[00:03:27] One day James got a random call from a number that wasn't on his contact list. He answered. It turned out to be Mike, so he put it on speakerphone so that I could say hello.

[00:03:39] We had our brief pleasantries, but then Mike got into the reason for his call. He wanted to know if he could stay with us for a day or two. My initial reaction was of course,

[00:03:53] but James shot me a sharp look. So I added, well, let's discuss it and we'll call you back. Before concluding the call James inquired about what was going on. Mike had been living with his father to care for him because he was terminally ill,

[00:04:11] but that he couldn't stay there another night because he had checked the camera footage in their home and seen his dad on tape standing over him with a knife while he slept. When the call was ended James said he thought something was off.

[00:04:29] He didn't really get why he'd instantly felt suspicious. I mean the story was insane and all but it was Mike. James just said something like, we haven't heard from him in forever and now he's calling us for a favor?

[00:04:45] He lives two hours away and we're the ones he calls? Why wouldn't he seek help from someone closer? He has family in the area too. I agreed that it was all odd and it definitely conjured up a lot of questions including why were the cameras inside their house?

[00:05:04] But I still didn't like the idea of leaving Mike hanging if he was truly out of options. I told James we should call him back and probe a little more. When we called back James asked if it would be easier to have someone close help him out and

[00:05:22] asked about his family in the area. Mike gave a vague explanation of why everyone in his life had turned against him. Then with the most mopey disappointed voice he said, it was okay if we couldn't help. That he understood what was going on. It wouldn't bother us anymore.

[00:05:43] Well, James and I looked at each other and said that we'd call him right back. We quickly discussed that this was all very strange, but that he had to be pretty desperate to contact us for help. We acknowledged that his little bit about

[00:05:59] understanding if we were unable to help was meant to manipulate us and we felt conflicted about everything, but ultimately decided a few days couldn't hurt. We called him back and told him that he could come and figured we'd give him the address and that would be that.

[00:06:19] However, he said he no longer had a vehicle and would need to be picked up. We asked about catching an Uber and he said he had no money that he could access at the moment. Which we didn't pry on him.

[00:06:33] It was getting late and it was a long drive to his location, so we asked if he had anywhere to stay for the night and we could make the trip in the morning. He said he'd just sleep on a park bench or something, which again

[00:06:48] we knew was meant to manipulate us, but we didn't cave in on that one. We asked where we should pick him up the following day and he gave us his dad's address. Immediately after we got off the phone,

[00:07:01] we were like what the fuck has been going on with Mike that has ostracized him from all his friends and family and caused him to lose his car. He had been making four times our salary when we first met, had a brand new car, and

[00:07:16] now he didn't have any money for an Uber? We went and picked him up the next day and I got out and ran up and gave him a big hug. He seemed oddly unresponsive to my affection,

[00:07:28] so I just shrugged it off and showed him the front passenger seat where I'd been sitting. He was super tall, so I let him sit up there and I hopped in the back. When we got back to our house,

[00:07:42] we showed him our guest room and he put his things down and then immediately asked if we could take him to the grocery store. James said he was done driving for the day,

[00:07:52] so I said I would take him, but commented that I thought he didn't have any money on him. He told me he had food stamps, which there was no way he would have qualified for them with his old job. So I knew something was up,

[00:08:07] but I wasn't going to dig into the personal details of his finances, so I just logged it in my mind and kept my mouth shut. You might be thinking it just sounds like someone who fell on hard times, and that was basically Mike's story as well.

[00:08:22] But it was all just very vague in important areas and full of story after story about people that seemed determined to destroy him for no reason whatsoever. One or two bad eggs is believable, but no one is the innocent victim in every scenario.

[00:08:43] He was telling us that he had no idea why his life had fallen apart and why those close to him seemed to turn on him out of nowhere. Or why so many people were out to get him without seeming to have any motivation.

[00:09:00] Two nights turned into a week, and finally James asked Mike what his plan was. Mike acted hurt and said he'd be gone by the morning. We told him he didn't need to leave immediately, but we'd like to have some kind of an idea.

[00:09:15] Something about his plan moving forward. That night in bed, James and I discussed it and decided that we'd tell Mike that he could stay for as long as he needed if he wanted to help out around the house and keep his room relatively clean,

[00:09:31] because it contained several antique items of James's mother's. We also were going to ask him to help me with some entrepreneurial decisions, as Mike had claimed to be a totally self-made successful entrepreneur before his streak of bad luck. A series of unfortunate events?

[00:09:52] I had recently been laid off. We presented our offer the next day and Mike excitedly accepted. We thought it was going to be a rewarding trade-off for the parties.

[00:10:05] Now this isn't a story about my marriage, so I'm not going to go too far into the wealth of problems James and I had, but for a little info, James was highly critical of me and often talked down to me and seemed to have nothing but negative opinions.

[00:10:24] I wasn't perfect, but I wanted to be loved and worked my ass off for James's approval. I was constantly trying to make him happy, but no matter what I did, I would fail in his eyes.

[00:10:36] After a few weeks, Mike clearly started to see the cracks in the marriage despite the fact that James toned it down in Mike's presence. Trying to be a good wife, I act like it was all fine in front of Mike and never mentioned any dissatisfaction in my marriage.

[00:10:54] Mike and I started to spend a lot of time alone in our entrepreneurial pursuits. He was supposed to be teaching me the tricks of the trade within several avenues of making money, but we kept coming out with little success.

[00:11:08] He had excuses and explanations for why his wisdom didn't seem to be progressing us forward at all. But he was someone I greatly looked up to as a professional and a friend, so I believed that it would all pay off soon, just like he said.

[00:11:25] After living together for weeks, enough talking among all of us had been done to start noticing weird contradictions to many of the things that Mike had told us,

[00:11:34] but he always worded things in a way that left a slight amount of room for doubt if you were to question any of it. There was never a way to straight-up catch him in a lie.

[00:11:47] Mike also wasn't fulfilling his end of our deal and kept saying that he'd take his turn to do the dishes and such, but probably only did it once or twice, and he completely trashed the guest room. Not only was there garbage everywhere,

[00:12:01] but he'd bring in food and drinks and they'd be lost in a sea of clothes and trash and we could smell things rotting. There was a melted tub of ice cream sitting on the bedside table for weeks.

[00:12:14] I didn't care as much as James did and I suggested we just move his mom's things from the room, but I did agree that it was disrespectful. Meanwhile, things were getting more and more icy with James and I and one day

[00:12:31] I was out with Mike on a job quote-unquote and I broke down in tears about how much I was hurting about how James was treating me. Mike offered words of comfort and

[00:12:43] reluctantly admitted that he had picked up on how mean James could be to me and said he was very sorry and that I didn't deserve it. Mike agreed that it was incredibly unjustified

[00:12:54] but made me promise not to tell James that he'd said anything because he didn't want to appear like he was taking sides. The next day, Mike once again volunteered to take a turn doing the dishes, so I didn't do them.

[00:13:09] I hate doing dishes and I happily left them for Mike when he assured me that he would handle it. Well, Mike got a call informing him that his dad didn't have long to live, so he wanted to go see him. James didn't seem at all interested in helping,

[00:13:26] so I volunteered to take him and stay for moral support and we headed out. On the way to see his dad, Mike started to tell me that his dad has dementia and makes weird things up, so he advised me not to take anything to heart.

[00:13:41] He cited a few examples of things that he had previously said and they were all more like One of them being that Mike had stolen all of the money from his savings. I thought that was pretty odd,

[00:13:56] but couldn't really reconcile the vast difference between the Mike that I had met eight years before and someone who could rob his dying father. While we were visiting his dad, I didn't say much as I didn't want to insert myself into private family moments,

[00:14:13] but I kept noticing things that were weird. Like his dad was fully conscious and talkative and didn't seem like a dying man at all. He even asked us to get him Burger King in the middle of it all.

[00:14:29] I kept trying to justify things in my head like, who am I to say a dying man can't want a final meal at Burger King? A few hours in, James called, irate that I had left again without doing the dishes that Mike had promised to do.

[00:14:45] He chewed me out and threatened to divorce, which was always his go-to to try and whip me into shape. And having the recent affirmations from Mike that I wasn't the only one who saw James's emotional abuse,

[00:14:59] I said, fine, divorce won't be thrown in my face anymore. So divorce it is. Back in Mike's dad's room, his dad was yelling about his will and money and such and Mike looked at me in a way to signal that the dementia was talking.

[00:15:17] I had started to really question what happened with his dad and if he was really even dying at all, but it wasn't something I could really handle investigating at the moment given that I just separated from my husband on the phone.

[00:15:33] When we left the hospital, Mike's dad was still alive eating candy bars. I had nowhere else to go, so I went back home and slept upstairs on the couch. I didn't speak to James for two whole days

[00:15:46] and then Mike said he would talk to his mom and that I could stay there for a week. Then I wondered why his mom wasn't the one helping him if they were in contact and on good terms, but I just accepted the offer.

[00:16:00] I couldn't stand being at that house anymore. Mike said he was going to go with me and stay there too, which I thought looked really bad, but he said he spoke to James and that he understood and was fine with it.

[00:16:12] I spent the entire week crying and talking to Mike about how I felt. He even woke up in the middle of the night with me if I woke up and started spiraling downhill. He made no advances on me or anything of that sort.

[00:16:27] After a week, I went to stay at my parents and Mike went back to stay with James. I eventually saw both of them when I'd come over to get things, and in talking with James, he was very much ready for Mike to leave.

[00:16:41] They barely seemed to talk and didn't seem to be on good terms whatsoever. One night, I got the weirdest impulse to ask James if Mike ever said anything about me that he made him promise not to tell me. James hesitated for a second but said yes.

[00:16:58] Through a series of questions, we inched through both of our experiences with Mike. He had been playing into our rapidly declining marriage and was using everything he observed against us. He had been going out and quote-unquote teaching me things to make money,

[00:17:16] and he did the same thing he did as my boss all those years before. Told me about my strengths and complimented my ability to catch on to things quickly. We didn't have much success, but it was very obviously not on account of me.

[00:17:34] However, he was going back and feeding into James' terrible opinion of me and claiming that we weren't making any money because I was so dense and hard to teach. Mike would also comment on the very things he told me were unacceptable that James did,

[00:17:51] except he told James he doesn't know how he lives with someone like me and that he'd go insane. He has carefully and strategically forced our marriage to fall apart by exacerbating our personal fears and insecurities and systematically validating and encouraging our resentment for one another.

[00:18:10] He did it in such a way that neither of us doubted his sincerity for a moment until I finally got a weird feeling and decided to ask that night, and even then I didn't really anticipate finding out that he'd been two-faced and manipulative to that extreme.

[00:18:29] James kicked him out that night. I haven't spoken to James in one and a half years. I proceeded with the divorce despite this because even though Mike was an insincere piece of shit,

[00:18:40] he caused me to get enough distance from James that I was able to see I deserve so much better. Last I heard about Mike was from his mom who called me to see why he'd been asked to abruptly leave James' house.

[00:18:55] I told her what he had done and she didn't seem surprised at all. I asked if she was aware of any mental problems that he may have and she said she didn't want to betray her son by giving out details, but that he isn't right in the head.

[00:19:12] I asked about several of the traumatic events Mike had claimed to be the victim of and she said there has never been any evidence that any of it really happened. I don't know why he actively initiated the final downfall of my marriage

[00:19:29] because I never felt it was an attempt to be with me. I just don't get what his motivation or gain would have been. Mike's mom texted me a few days after he left James' house to tell me

[00:19:44] that he had been admitted to a psychiatric facility and wouldn't be out for a long time. So former boss turned friend turned delusional sociopath let's not meet again. Being a true crime addict from an early age, I'd like to think of myself as a pretty vigilant person.

[00:20:17] I would always joke to my friends that I have heard and read about so many cases that I would never find myself in a potentially dangerous situation. I wouldn't realize just how wrong I was until the fall of 2015.

[00:20:34] In 2015, I had just moved into a suburb of Houston, Texas and into my first apartment with my then boyfriend. Everything had been going great. I had recently found a new job at the local library and was on track to graduate from college within the year.

[00:20:51] One day, I was going about my normal routine which consisted of attending my art classes for the day then making the drive home to change and watch a few episodes of The X-Files before my evening shift at the library.

[00:21:06] As I was watching the television, I heard a knock at the door. Being the cautious person that I am, I never answer the door when I am home alone. I muted the television and waited in silence for whoever it was at the door

[00:21:20] to eventually give up and move on with their day. Instead of giving up, the knocking grew louder as a man shouted AT&T! from the other side of the front door. Having AT&T, I was immediately relieved and thought maybe my boyfriend

[00:21:37] had forgotten to tell me that he's scheduled for a technician to come to our apartment. Just to be sure, I peered through the peephole to see a man dressed head-to-toe in AT&T uniform, clipboard and all, standing patiently at my doorstep.

[00:21:55] Still a bit hesitant, I opened the door, not unlocking the security chain which prevents the door from opening more than a few inches from the frame. As soon as I cracked the door, the man introduced himself and shoved his hand through the small gap to grab mine

[00:22:10] and called me beautiful. I instantly froze. Instead of a handshake, he continued to hold my hand gently as he vaguely introduced himself, never giving me a name. I began to study the man's face, just in case, taking it all in.

[00:22:28] Although towering over me at 5'3", he had a very thin frame and looked to be in his early 20s. Still holding my hand while making direct eye contact, the man began to tell me how he was in the neighborhood offering free installations to people who were interested

[00:22:44] in switching from their internet service providers to AT&T. Confused and now admittedly regretting my decision to open the door, I just stated that I did in fact already have AT&T and pulled my hand away quickly. The man paused for a moment, staring down at his clipboard.

[00:23:02] He smiled, then apologized. He informed me that he would remove my house from their list and hoped that I had a great day. I wasted no time and shut the door before the man walked away. I immediately double-checked all of the locks and the windows in my apartment.

[00:23:19] I panicked. I sat back down on the sofa and tried to rationalize everything that just happened. I feared that maybe the years of consuming terrifying stories had just made me paranoid and that I may have misinterpreted his intentions as malicious.

[00:23:35] One thing I was sure of is that there was something about his smile and the way that he held my hand that left me nauseated. After calming myself down for about an hour, I decided to text my boyfriend about the weird encounter

[00:23:51] with the AT&T technician to get a second opinion. He told me that he thought I was being a bit dramatic and reading too much into something that sounded like an honest mistake. Admittedly, his response pissed me off,

[00:24:04] but I shrugged it off and went to work for the evening. Around 9 p.m., I wandered through the library, completing my nightly closing duties, which consisted of shutting down the power in the building, locking the doors, and recording the foot traffic for the day.

[00:24:19] In the pitch black of the building, only illuminated by the bright red exit sign, I pulled out my cell phone to call my boyfriend and let him know that I was on my way home, as I did every night. When I unlocked my phone, my stomach sank

[00:24:36] as I read the text from my boyfriend that was time stamped at 9 p.m. It read, They came back. I sprinted to my car, calling my boyfriend to find out if everything was okay. When he answered the phone, he seemed calm and simply explained that AT&T workers

[00:24:56] had come back and again explained to him that they were offering free internet installations for customers in the area. Also confused, my boyfriend replied, Oh, we already have AT&T. Didn't you come by earlier today? My girlfriend told me that she spoke to you this afternoon

[00:25:13] and that you had mentioned that you would take us off that list. He told me that the man looked startled and that there must have been some confusion, then apologized and walked to his van. All I could get out was, What the fuck? I'll be right there.

[00:25:31] Do not answer the door for anyone but me. I sped the entire way home, parked my car and looked around in the dark, completely terrified as I made my way back to our apartment. Once inside, I locked the door and double-checked the windows once more.

[00:25:45] I sat down with my boyfriend who was somehow still calm at this point to get more information from him about his encounter with the man, or now two men, as he explained on the phone. As he went back over his story with me, his face turned pale

[00:26:01] as he had a realization. He described how the man from earlier was no longer wearing a work uniform but was decked out in black from head to toe and how he had not even realized there was more than one man until another tall man,

[00:26:18] a 6'4", stepped out from the shadows when they realized it was him and not me who answered the door. I immediately called the cops who had sent a patrol car to drive around our apartments for the next few days. I felt so sick to my stomach

[00:26:33] when I realized what they had been there for. They must have come to our apartment to case the place earlier in the day and when the man with the creepy smile and empty eyes saw me, a small young woman who had seemingly lived alone,

[00:26:50] he had decided that I was the perfect target for whatever they had planned later in the evening. Although the police never found the suspects, I'm very thankful for whoever had been watching over me that day and that I didn't ever find out

[00:27:06] what those two men had in store for me later that night. So take this as a cautionary tale and be careful who you decide to answer the door for. And to the creepy guys posing as the AT&T technicians, Let's Not Meet ever again.

[00:27:22] Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. This week you have heard I knew him for eight years and looked him up until I finally discovered there was something very wrong with him by Reddit user CuriousKiwi. And finally,

[00:27:58] Near Miss by a listener that asked to remain anonymous. Don't forget to send your stories in to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com if you want to hear them on the show. I've been getting a lot of good submissions and I still have a lot to read through,

[00:28:13] but the more the merrier. You can follow me on Twitter at Let's Not Meet Cast or join the Facebook group just search Let's Not Meet Podcast. Or you could just simply email me letsnotmeetpodcast at gmail.com I like to hear from you guys.

[00:28:27] I also want to again remind you guys I do have a Patreon out there. If you want to get bonus content there's over 75 stories over there already. I've just been doing it for, you know, three or four months, four or five months maybe. Head over to patreon.com

[00:28:42] forward slash Let's Not Meet Podcast. I'll see you guys next week for a brand new episode of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast.