Six years ago I had a Steven Slater moment. It wasn't quite as histrionic as the JetBlue flight attendant's but there was a good amount of drama. It didn't involve an inflatable slide nor a media, in his words, "brouhaha" but it did involve emotion. A lot of it. The word hysteria comes to mind.

The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back? Two words.

"You're lying."

Let me set this up.

Eight months prior to me hearing those words, I was packing my life into small, perfectly assembled, brown boxes in anticipation of fulfilling my lifelong dream and moving my 26 year old self to the glitz and glam of the Big Apple to manage a store for [insert name of well-known fashion designer here].

A month later I was on the telephone with Miranda Priestly's evil twin and in tears because she was offering me another option: to manage a different (much more career-advancing) store. I didn't know how to say no to her. To be fair, I didn't even know that I didn't want this new offer. Everything about it was good. All I could do was just sit there, tears streaming down my face. I couldn't say a word. She took my silence as a 'yes' and that was that.

Miranda Priestly's evil twin thought I should visit the new store during The Ginormous Corporate Visit so as to meet all the important managers, VP's, etc.This wasn't just your typical corporate visit, it was, basically a week-long corporate training conference that was using my-soon-to-be-store as its guinea pig. Of course this meant canceling my already planned vacation.

Fine. Canceled.

I met all the important managers, folded knit walls with every DM in the company, wined & dined with the RMs and VPs and even got my picture taken with The Big Man On Campus. All was good.

A few weeks later, upon arriving at my new store for good, I found myself with a staff that, without going into specifics, wanted another person to get the job and thus was defiant and hateful toward me.

Cuss.

Cuss. Cuss. Cuss. Cuss. Cuss.

Things did not go smoothly.

[Luckily I had a track record of greatness behind me. In eight short months I had turned my previous store from a filthy, unorganized, hot mess to a profitable business again. The entire management staff was let go and I built from the ground up. I can remember LIVING in that store. LI-TER-ALL-Y. After the turn-around I was lauded and respected. I knew my cuss. Soon I was traveling to other stores in Miranda Priestly's evil twin's absence to conduct audits and to save another suffering store.]

Things still did not go smoothly. Again I found myself living in a 10,000 sq. foot box.

What made things worse was that Miranda Priestly's evil twin built her entire career on the success of this one individual store that was now mine. She had managed it very successfully for years and it was her baby. She was very close to it. Too close to it. She couldn't trust any body else with it.

[In the end, it was this mistrust that lead her, through her agent, to say those two little words.

I wasn't lying. And it hurt that she was, through her agent, accusing me of doing so. And did I mention that she did so THROUGH HER AGENT? I mean... COME. ON!

I don't think I had ever lied to Miranda Priestly's evil twin. I may have over and/or under embellished, but never lied. Never. I'd always considered us partners. Yes she was my boss, but we'd worked together for years. We understood each other, respected each other.]

Things were no longer 'not going smoothly'. Things were bad. So bad. Oh. So. Very. Bad.

I began to hate going to work. It literally made me sick to go to work. Suddenly nothing I did was pleasing to Miranda Priestly's evil twin. That store was cursed. Historically, every manager that had gone to manage that store after The Reign of Miranda Priestly's evils twin got the energy sucked out of them and left the company. Why I thought things would be different for me? I was banking on that relationship of respect that I seemed to have had with Miranda Priestly's evil twin. Boy was I wrong.

A few of the other managers in the company who knew my ethic tried to make me feel better, "If you can just hang in there for a year, you'll have The Golden Ticket."

The. Golden. Ticket. Oh how I was desperate for that golden ticket. So I stayed. And I continued to smile through all the beatings. Soon I lost all of my confidence and became a small little mouse.

So that day when HER AGENT accused me of lying? I flew off the handle. Not in front of everyone. I was actually on my lunch break, in my car, on the phone with HER AGENT when those two little words popped out of her mouth and onto the phone lines and into my ears.

My two words back at her?

"I QUIT!"

Immediately a flood of tears took over as I tried to tell her all the reasons why I had come to that point. I realized that my voice was raised, my pulse was racing, my arms were going numb. I'm fairly certain that I was not speaking in clear, cohesive thoughts. It's a wonder she understood that I was not coming back. (I did, of course. I couldn't quit on the spot, that wouldn't be professional of me. So instead I turned in my two week notice.)

I don't think I ever felt so liberated in my entire life.