This could be a really long story or I could try to keep it short so it will get read. Hmmm...which shall I choose? I'll choose the short version but try to put in all the good stuff.

I've mentioned before that over the past two years I've gone through many personal and family traumas that kept mounting and eventually put me in the hospital once and have kept me depressed until just recently. Well, saving everyone the details, one of those had a followup yesterday that was quite surprising and exciting. It was one of those surprises that leaves one with the feeling that there might be some justice in the world after all.

My husband retired last week. It was time. But two years ago he nearly had a breakdown. There was a management upheaval where he worked whereby he was demoted from a manager to a middle management person who, actually, wasn't even a management person, just a glorified clerk. This occurred because of several incidents involving this new boss reprimanding him for things like (1) not writing down notes in a management meeting), (2) misunderstanding verbal instructions,(3) using an online chat application to communicate with office personnel, various things that she thought were unprofessional and not to her liking. I cannot tell you who his employer was because of security reasons but it is a government agency which most of us have contact with on a monthly if not weekly basis. She also made it very clear that she was there to clean house and no one currently in a management position would be there by the end of her first year. She also stated openly in a management meeting that my husband would never work as a manager for that company again.

My husband is 86% deaf. He wears hearing aids in both ears. The reasons he did those things that he was criticized for were accomodations for his hearing loss. He explained this to his new boss. She made it very clear to him that he could not function as a manager under those conditions. Of course, he had been doing so with outstanding success for four years before she arrived.

Well, since that time, through the use of intimidation and discrimination, she has managed to bully her way into making the company run in tip top condition. My husband made his complaints to HR, saw an employee counselor, a therapist and kept his job because he was close to retirement. In spite of all of this, he was one of the most popular middle-management people there. His three retirement parties were testiment to that fact.

Yesterday, he got a phone call from the chief attorney in charge of corporate discrimination issues for his former employer informing that he is now their star witness in a suit against his old boss charging her with eight counts of illegal discrimination in the workplace. She will be terminated eventually and could be stripped of at least part of her retirement benefits in order to provide retribution to the employees who were wronged.

My husband is thrilled.