I started working for California Attorneys for Criminal Justice in 12/2021. I was hired by the Executive Director, Stephen Munkelt. CACJ as of this post, is a non-profit organization that provides ongoing education to defense attorneys in California.
I joined the organization because I felt that fighting for criminal justice was a noble cause. It's a small organization of around 1,000 members and my job was to manage the accounting, membership database, member meetings and help out with 2 of their main events of the year.
The main office was located at 1610 Arden Way, Ste 140, Sacramento, CA 95815, a very convenient location just across the street from Arden Mall. The commute was a little far but I was given the flexibility of working mostly remotely.
The office staff consisted of myself, Stephen and the program director, Tara Da Re. Throughout most of my time there, I pretty much kept to myself, just doing my work and helping out as needed.
At this point, I would like to say that in the many years of working for organizations, I became used to the near certainty that at least one of my coworkers would be difficult, or more to the point, a pain in the fucking ass. I never would have expected that of the other 2 people working with me, one would turn out to be a malignant narcissist, in some ways similar to Trump.
My strategy for dealing with difficult people is to avoid whenever possible and if needed, be as neutral as possible in my communication. However, even though I tried my best to be neutral in my dealings with Tara, with all her insecurities and personal issues, she was a challenging coworker to handle. Her attitude and demeanor towards me was both condescending and dismissive. On numerous occasions, I felt like I wanted to just leave, walk out and never come back. Fortunately, Stephen was a moderating influence. And in fact, he confided in me that he agreed that Tara was a bitch and if he could he would fire her. However, he admitted that the organization was too dependent on her as director of all the events and so he could only suggest that I try and be understanding of her flawed mental state.
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| Tara Da Re |
Stephen retired the end of January of 2024, leaving me to deal with Tara alone. I managed to make it through most of the year but Stephen's exit became a vacuum and Tara filled that vacuum, essentially making herself the de facto manager in Stephen's absence. I noticed her becoming more authoritarian and more demanding during the year and even though the current President, Emily Dahm meant well, she was never really available to help deal with Tara's obnoxious and condescending behavior.
Every year, there is a Criminal Defense Seminar held in San Francisco at the Nikko Hotel the first week of December. After the last board meeting of the year concluded at the hotel, Tara came up to me and proudly proclaimed that she was the new manager of the office. I had a bad feeling about this since I knew that she was obsessed with power and control.
My worst fears were realized. Sure enough, the next Monday morning at 8 AM I received an email from Tara saying that she was taking over the payroll. I could not believe what I was reading. She then demanded that I teach her how to do payroll. Why would someone want to take over a task that they know nothing about unless it was a raw power play or ploy to deliberately fuck me over and piss me off. At first I ignored her because I didn't think it was legitimate. She kept bugging me and bugging me for my timesheet. I didn't trust her at all to do the payroll correctly. In any case, she forced the payroll through even though I told her not to process my payroll.
By the end of the day, I contacted the new President, Robert Boyce and asked for a meeting to discuss the situation. We agreed on 9 AM the next day.
In the meeting, I recounted everything that happened and my position was that it was breach of protocol. Normally, the bookkeeper handles all the financial transactions of an organization for purposes of maintaining a degree of control to prevent unauthorized use of funds. Tara not only removed my admin access, but also went ahead and gave herself a raise. Again, I want to point out that the executive director or someone higher up such as an officer of a company would normally announce someone's promotion and new rate of pay. But the officers of this organization completely dropped the ball or from another perspective, couldn't give a shit about notifying me. What they failed to see, perhaps in their ignorance about financial control in an organization, especially payroll, was how sketchy Tara's raw grab for power looked that day.
So yes, I was already angry AF when the meeting started and when I tried to explain that it looked to me like a serious breach of protocol, the unanimous response from everyone attending the meeting was that Tara could whatever she wanted.
As soon as I heard that response, that was it. I had enough of their BS and ignorance so I announced my immediate resignation.
