Confessions of a libra

The Fulcrum | Credit: Here

[ Read after Oracle In The System, Meritocracy as Myth & Where The Cuckolds Roost ]

06.09.25

There is nothing worse to me than someone born with a silver spoon in their mouth, but proceeds to try and play-act at leadership they never earned. There is no shortage of men in this position, and not all of them are White if you can imagine that. Let’s skip the entrepreneurship journey I mentioned in Where The Cuckolds Roost, but trust I will return to it at the right time. After 9 months of working on stabilising my nervous system, and rebuilding my relationship with the self from the ground up – I was back in the job market. I was employed by this South Asian who owned exactly 3 clinics in the South-East of Melbourne. Let’s preface with why I always specify the ethnicities and races of the people involved, in case you’re new here.

I am an expert at pattern recognition, and I believe everyone should be treated fairly. I also believe that due to very intentional actions by colonialists, but also self-serving people of colour, wanting to raise their own at the expense of Black people – Blackness is always used to accentuate and punctuate bad behaviour. I aim to use this subversive tactics – since White people decided to race classify at all – to show patterns across different races and ethnicities. The purpose of this, is to equalise and humanise us all. And to hold up a mirror to the ethnicities and races I discuss. For anyone who is a long-time reader on my blog, you may also start to pick up on patterns.

One such pattern is across the board, I have had overwhelming negative experiences with South Asian people. I do believe where people of colour are concerned, they are amongst those who try and separate themselves from Blackness and position themselves as better. I would say 90% of these South Asians I have had negative experiences with have mostly been Indians, the remaining being Sri Lankans and Nepalese people. Let’s focus on the Indians, as there truly are many Indian migrants in this country. I believe this is largely cultural with the caste system, having a 3,000 year plus year run. Also even so-called spiritually advanced figures like Mahatma Gandhi, were racist. He helped shape the racial hierarchy still present in South Africa today.

Instead of arguing against prejudice, his stance was instead was to differentiate Indians from the Africans, often writing about the “Kaffirs” a derogatory term for Black people, calling Black people savages – and believed in the Aryan brotherhood. As written by Historian and author Ramachandra Guha who wrote the book, Gandhi Before India. I also want to note that though my negative experiences aren’t gendered, they are double edged with the men, where racism and misogyny intersect. Misogynoir, is a unique experience that Black women have to face.

Back to the job, I began working as a Front of House person. I learnt the systems, learnt the aesthetic language of the clinic and was immediately drawn into safety because my direct manager was a Black woman of Nigerian descent. When I entered this company, there were surprisingly no White people, I was curious how this would affect the outcome of my experience. The week I started there was apparently a White woman who was on her way out. I just heard about her by name, but she’d just stopped coming in. I noted that, but it wasn’t alarming in the first instance, because I had no context as to what was happening at this business.

I was trained in part by the manager who I will call Eve, and a team in the Philippines. The owner was around, but he wasn’t in my view just as yet. The Filipino girls were competent, trained me well and overloaded with work for the pay they were getting. They certainly were patient with the owner who we shall call Dr Fee. Eve liked to present herself as someone with really high standards, she was super tall and modelesque with a British accent. I read her really quickly though, she took pride in her work but I think it was about the appearance of her role. I read her as someone obsessed with beauty, obsessed with being viewed as the expert on aesthetics and I thought her accent carried her very far.

She was rude, she was bitchy and she wasn’t a girls girl. She was someone who liked attention from Dr Fee. I felt that his approval mattered to her, but in that bootlicking way that makes me shrivel inside when I see it in women who defer to men. Soon I realised that the very owner of the establishment was the biggest problem. Firstly, I was studying an Advanced Diploma of Cosmetic Dermal Science at the time. I was learning about how unregulated the cosmetic industry is, so as a part of my learning, I decided to check his medical abbreviations to determine what kind of expert I was dealing with.

Once I looked it up, I discovered that he was simply a General Practitioner who had done a few cosmetic certificates to learn about injectables and basically start his practice. There are different levels of qualifications and a distinction between Plastic Surgery vs Cosmetic Surgery is super important to understand. He was doing neither, simply non-invasive cosmetic procedures. I won’t lie, internally that made me side eye him immediately. Mainly because his personality already told me that he wasn’t competent before more physical evidence presented itself. I also in looking him up, found his mother who was also a Physician but was more specialised with more years post standard base-level med-school.

For someone with my brain, this told me that these clinics he had, were a result of financial cushioning from his family. This was corroborated when he tried to explain his first job, and it sounds like he may have cleaned a window or two working for his mother. I surmised, and therefore informed the girls during vent sessions – that this was likely his very first job. He went from med-school to being a boss and it was obvious. As a glorified Cosmetic Receptionist, nothing irked me more than him running over time (he was the most sloppy with his schedule), only to find him playing on his phone hiding somewhere.

I tell you, I remember the day I went to the kitchen, found him on his phone and I told him his next patient had been waiting. And he immediately like a toddler caught being bad, locked his phone and got to work. I probably gave him my expectant and slightly disappointed matriarch look. I couldn’t believe the disrespect to first and foremost, his patients. Don’t be playing a game, or texting while someone is waiting or forgetting them after numbing them. It was nothing short of clinical negligence. The disorganisation meant if you were closing, you might not close on time because he was piss-farting around.

One time we closed the clinic an hour late and he wanted to deny us our pay and I said that’s not how that works. Eve was trying to pit us against each other, by making sneaky comments amongst us girls. She also stated that she was applying to go on Love Island so if she got accepted, not to expect her back at work. I could have rolled my eyes. One day I am putting in a complaint against Dr Fee for a failed treatment, only to realise most of the complaints I had noted down were for him. So I scroll through the excel document. Out of all his hired practitioners – most of whom were more experienced and credentialed – he had the most complaints, by a mile. I couldn’t believe it. Well… I could.

I got hired just after one girl of Arabic descent and met a Filipino girl (in-clinic) who got hired just after me. The Arabic girl left the workplace first and good on her. By then she had already experienced, puncturing her skin with a needle he had not disposed of, in a sharps bin. That level of negligence is so disgusting to me, I told her to report him, but like many she likely thought it was too much effort. Better to have a clean break. Well, where I was concerned – I was feeling ancestral rage. But a cool, strategic rage where he entered my Ledger. The more he sinned, the greater my resolve to energetically and physically stall this man.

Things were escalating, and I believe I was the energetic trigger. As I have said previously I believe I am sent into workplaces to test their integrity, and to reveal the rot. There was an incident that seared itself into my mind. He was performing a procedure on a patient, who spontaneously peed their pants (I assume from shock) and then fainted. I was messaged on Slack to show up in one of the rooms. When I went there I find him and Eve, talking like two people colluding – hunched over in seats, giggling.

She puts on her professional mask and tells me what happened, at least attempting humility to be the adult in the room. But he gave himself away with further giggles and add ons. I was revolted. That poor woman was being attended to in another room, and here my leadership were, having a giggle. I know medical staff can lack bedside manners, I know intellectualising can be a real detriment to the emotional landscape when dealing with patients – but this was a new low.

I was trying to leave, but as usual there was a spiritual stall, I wasn’t meant to go yet. By then I had already told the girls who left, that I noticed that he didn’t have White staff (even though I know he previously had that one lady) and I felt that it was by design. Once I started working with him, I wondered if he chose a team that looked easier to manipulate and take advantage. He felt he was more likely to avoid accountability. He reminded me of that South Asian man I worked for as a waitress at 18, who didn’t want to give me my pay. Until I threatened him with a Fair Work complaint. Or the South Asian Engineer who I worked with at 19 as a Dispatcher, who would talk to staff below me when I was shift-leading. It was calculated as he would choose to speak to anyone White or male, until I reported him to HR. I’ll never forget the way he acted like we were best friends after that mediation.

As usual the young women I worked with at Dr Fee’s clinic, weren’t aware enough of the laws that protect them. He never saw me coming, and that was his greatest mistake. One day I walk into work, and he fired the women in the Philippines on a whim. I don’t even remember why, but I sighed at the loss of talent. I was happy though, that they might find a better employer with someone else. By then, my nervous system was shot, having to deal with Eve and Dr Fee almost exclusively. One day, I’m on my way to work, leaving the house and steeling my nerves. I get a call from Eve and I answer it, unhappily.

She tells me in a theatrical attempt at deadpan, that she has left the business and she called to tell me, not to trust that man. This struck me for two reasons; one, she had always been a bitch to me as though we were in competition and two, she was so close to him I had convinced myself they were secretly sleeping together. Either way, I went into work that day prepared for drama. I walked in and the man was ready to spin me a tale, me his last remaining employee. He told me, he counted the till and there was a couple of hundred missing. He checked CCTV and found Eve stealing the money from the till. He must’ve felt like James Bond telling me that story. I genuinely thought she was a vapid arsehole but my intuition and logic weren’t buying this little story. Nor the performance.

Why would a woman earning what she was earning and almost blindly loyal to him, suddenly steal a couple of hundred dollars? Pull the other one. I don’t recall if it was just before this incident or just after but I finally called Fair Work on an anonymous complaint. I told them about the uncapped used needle my colleague felt when emptying the bin, I told them about his general laisse faire attitude surrounding patients, pay and one more damning thing that had them acting fast. Back then there was a directive to close down a workplace and have it essentially fumigated after an active COVID case. We had a patient call in to tell us they contracted COVID a few days after coming into the clinic. He didn’t close the clinic for the appropriate time and actually fought me about having to close the clinic. I don’t think he got it professionally cleaned either.

There was also the issue that – once again – offended the African in me. At one of his clinics, they never ordered outside bins from the council due to sheer disorganisation. They – both Eve and Dr Fee – kept passing the buck to each other. What resulted was accumulation of rubbish bins in the kitchen – the very small kitchen – which ate into our space. It was absolutely feral, for an otherwise aesthetically pleasing clinic. Everything about working for this man, really grated my soul. I didn’t care if I hadn’t found my next gig, I would be DAMNED if he kept harming people and charming everyone while he did it.

A man from Fair Work came for a surprise inspection. I had been honest that I didn’t want to give my details since I still worked there, but that I was the last one standing. I still remember the day I had to give an Oscar-worthy performance. Click-clacking at my desk, rescheduling clients for the umpteenth time. After the Inspector left, Dr Fee came to me asking, ‘Hey do you ever remember the time we had that client with COVID? Did Eve ever say anything about it or any of the girls?’. I of course replied, that I hadn’t heard a thing! He swallowed it, because what could he do at that time?

Just before I left, he managed to hire another girl, she was White-adjacent but not fully. I didn’t want to ruin her perception of this lovely cushy job, but I didn’t want to leave her in the dark. I did what all responsible people do, I gave her enough information to make an informed decision. I also didn’t dwell on my critiques, or let it affect my ability to train her on what I knew. But my time was finally up, so I left. It didn’t take me long to get the next job, at the largest radiology company in the country. That was a long journey, marred by personal trauma and eventually piling work trauma.

How cathartic it has been for me to finally expel the contents of my lived experience! It truly eases the emotional load somehow so, know that I appreciate every one of you who read, like and share my content. Know that you are always more powerful than you give yourself credit for. Systems are supposed to be built for everyone’s comfortability not the few. As such it is our job, to utilise the checks and balances in place to things keep accountable and equitable. May your talents be recognised by the right eyes, in the right rooms. Asé.