My secretary who wanted to shoot me.

I fired my secretary - she came back looking for me with a gun in her hand.

In Montreal, Quebec.

She was a liar and a drunkard. After THREE legal letters I had no choice but to tell her that she was now, finally, released from her job. Only later did we found that she was embezzling funds from the company too, in my name.

She was drunk again.

She left.

When I came to work the next morning she was there, by the Telex machine - (A precursor to the FAX, for you who aren’t old enough…)

She proceeded to overturn just about everything loose, threw the full coffee pot at me, and left screaming.

I went home to get a camera to record the mess.

On my way back, the building concierge stopped me at the garage entrance.

“Don’t go in, Mr. Lindvall, your secretary is walking around, looking for you. She has a gun in one hand and a flower pot in the other.”

I left.

• In the ensuing trial, she claimed unlawful dismissal.
• The Crown went after the substantial value of the incoming payment cheques that she had cashed - and the gun.

A few months later, my secretary was in jail for “possession of an illegal handgun” - a six months sentence by itself and for “theft over $ 15,000” at the bank over my faked signature. (I had no signing rights.)

The bank manager, her friend, fared even worse, with a lengthy prison sentence - (The two ladies had shared the take.)

The moral here: Don’t steal from a Canadian bank…

And me? 

Oooh for the hours of hours of interviews with the RCMP, FBI (I worked for a Canadian Division of an American company) and the bank security people. No blame fell on me, nor the HR department, all was done by the book.

So what was she doing at the Telex machine?

She had sent the same message to about 80 of our corporate offices around the world, before I came in that morning:

“This is your official notification, Bengt Lindvall is dead and will never respond to any more business mail.”

And the gun? It was a Russian made 9 mm gun, nicely chromed, that she had brought home as a souvenir from her time as a secretary, and mistress, to a Canadian General during the Korean war. (1953)

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If you want to learn more about some other of my adventures, buy my memoirs here:

https://ayoungboysjourney.blogspot.com/2018/11/my-secretary-who-wanted-to-shoot-me.html