Who’s the Boss: Dr. G
Exploring the theme of disempowerment, I comb through my confusing history with ego-driven bosses who tested my intuition and made me question my self worth.
In this episode, I revisit the year I spent working for a shadowy doctor with a plan to save the world. After months of chaos, I found his “suitcase of secrets” and started putting the pieces together.
A few of the “business plans” we were provided… 🫠
Directives arrived in all sorts of formats
✒️✍️
Grandiose plans 🙌🌍
Some insight into his mysterious world…
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This is Divine Interruption. I'm Sarah Hildreth Rankin. Hi, welcome back.
It has been a minute. I have been doing a lot in the background lately in transferring a lot of my technology and the programs that I use to create the podcast and do hosting and everything like that. It has been a whole thing.
So I have been relearning a bunch, and I'm here today because I have a lot to share and talk about. And some of it is kind of related to what I was talking about for many episodes of my Sex and Relationship series.
I still have more stories there, but this has kind of wedged its way in. I've really been wrestling with power lately. I have done that through relationships, right?
I've learned a lot about disempowerment. A big theme in my life is disempowerment and trying to find my power and find my voice in so many situations.
And this has a lot to do with not just relationships, but also people in power, with authority figures that have played a key role in my life, and just ways that I would have never expected.
So I'm going to do at least a couple episodes about bosses, because specifically bosses, people in power that I've dealt with, have definitely shaped a lot of how I feel about power.
And I've recognized that I've needed some pretty strong examples of people in power or who've held some sort of power or perceived power, honestly, over me to illuminate just how disempowered I've felt as a human.
And you know, sometimes we need that. I fully believe that's what life is. It's a game, we're led down all these different paths into the dark forest to really figure out where we need to grow or learn or heal.
And when we're not getting it, we may just need bigger or more extreme examples to help us see what we're missing or hiding from or maybe what we're afraid of. And as a young person, I would always dream of having a job.
I remember sitting in the back of the car when we'd be driving on a trip, and I would be envisioning this life that I was going to have, where I was going to dress up and go somewhere.
I was going to have this yellow car and this fancy suit, and I was going to go to work, and I was going to create things with other people. I was going to make something of myself. And you know, as kids, we imagine all sorts of things.
And I obviously had far too high expectations, especially though of people in charge and what a boss would be like and what it would be like to work with other people.
3:05
Unprofessional Leadership
I've been able to see that essentially, I shouldn't work for someone else because almost every boss experience I've had has been very challenging.
And some of the bosses that I've had were just extremely not suited for the role that they found themselves in. And they may not have been intentionally acting in any set of malice, but it just always played out in unpleasant or unprofessional ways.
Maybe they were promoted beyond their abilities. They could have been extremely self-interested or just not good at working with others. And what I experienced time and time again were people who really got off on having power over others.
Even if it was just a handful of co-op students working a summer internship, the draw to their ego was undeniable, and sometimes it was shocking.
I had bosses that would pull me aside and tell me how to dress, tell me how to keep a boyfriend, tell me what men liked, or they would befriend me in one moment in a very grandiose way, and then they would fully shatter my image in front of our
colleagues in a meeting. I had bosses take credit for my work, my ideas. They had agreed to pay me more, or they would promise me like a special promotion, that then they would later just take back.
I had one boss hire me outside of my position to do contract work and I spent months trying to extract payment out of her after she told me once I'd completed the job, that she could have just done it herself.
After I'd done it and delivered it on time, I had a boss tell me my job wasn't rocket science and leaning over as if we were both in on the same joke saying, I mean, anyone can plan events or create posters, am I right?
After she had already stated that I didn't deserve to be paid my assigned salary, I built an almost familial relationship with one of my first bosses over almost four years. And after my dad died, I decided I had to move home and I gave my notice.
And he canceled all of my shifts. He took me off the schedule immediately without saying anything. I even showed up and I wasn't supposed to work because I was off the schedule.
And he never spoke to me again. He did not even say goodbye. And that broke my heart.
That was almost like a sign of things to come. And some bosses were extremely passive aggressive. They would ignore me or not speak to me for days when I'd asked for time off.
And then I would spend that entire weekend, you know, agonizing over how I was going to have this healthy conversation with them to resolve this immature or unfair behavior.
And then they would pretend as if they've never even said that or done anything. Rushing in right away when I confronted them saying, Oh, no, no, no, I have no idea where you got that from. Like, Oh, no, no, take all the time you need.
So it was a very confusing landscape. I had bosses who did really try to support me at times, and they really relied on my skills. But then they would leave me out of the conversation.
They have removed my decision-making abilities or give me just enough control over my work to feel like I was in control or that I was valued, only to have them step in in the last moment and just take the project away, take my power away.
And, you know, there's a caveat here which is I do not claim to have the ideal skill set to be a boss, to do that kind of job, to manage people. And I don't particularly enjoy that role. I also really don't think it's an easy thing to do.
And I really admire those who can lead a team. It's just so happens that I did not bear witness to someone doing this in a really great way throughout my career.
And I believe I've been a part of just many egregious scenarios that made me question power and also the people who crave it.
Work was just this place where I witnessed and experienced a great level of disrespect or underhanded insult that I was never expecting or felt warranted. It was never based on my performance or my behavior.
Like, I really tried to conduct myself in a professional manner, but it didn't seem to matter. But I should also be clear that likely this was also because I was seeking validation from some higher source, right?
I was looking to these people above me, quote unquote, above me, who could tell me I was good. I wanted them to say I was worthy of being alive. And therefore, like, is it a surprise that I was met again and again with the very opposite thing?
My soul was like screaming out to me, you know, take yourself seriously, validate yourself. You are worthwhile. You don't need other people's approval.
And so I was really served up this lesson through all of these work situations.
8:25
First Encounter: Dr. G
But I will say that among all of these situations, there have been some true standouts. And the one that I want to talk about today, we're going to call him Dr. G.
So I was first introduced to Dr. G. I was 25.
I was just out of college. I've been working for about a year. And I met him through my boyfriend at the time, his sister.
She was neighbors with him and had been apparently walking his dog. And he had told her about this company that he was starting. She said, he's a wealthy doctor from Alberta.
He just moved here and he's looking for a team to help him with his philanthropic work. He's this entrepreneur. He's building this company to help patients and vulnerable populations.
And my contract was coming to a close with an organization I'd been working with. So the timing was quite impactable. And she said, hey, he's looking for a team.
How about we set up a meeting? So I met him in this boardroom in an office building. I had dressed up.
I prepared my resume. I really was not sure what to expect at all. She hadn't really told us very much.
Now, this was not like any meeting or job interview I'd been to before. We kind of entered the room and he barely looked at me. And he just launched into this whole spiel.
He had this whiteboard, he had a flip chart, and he was very consumed in talking about all of his things. But the thing was, I really had no idea what he was talking about. And I had trouble keeping up.
Like, there were a lot of circles, there were a lot of words, then there were a lot of lines connecting to other lines that were connecting to the circles with the words, and he just talked and he talked. And then it ended.
He wasn't interested in my resume. He didn't even want to talk with me. He didn't ask me any questions.
Basically, the meeting ended, I went home, and then I was like, what just happened? And I just told myself, you know what, it's okay. It'll make sense later.
And then I thought again, well, of course, I don't get it. Like, it's such a big project. He's so smart.
You know, if I got the job, I would just learn and I would figure it all out. Like, that's what every job I've done, you know, there's no training, you just figure it out. So I had no idea what would come of this meeting.
And then the email started. And it appeared that I was hired. And along with my boyfriend at the time, and also his sister, we had never really had any sort of formal anything.
It just kind of started. And when I reflected later, I realized that at that meeting, the first meeting, he had never even like looked me in my eyes. He had kind of just looked through me.
And I never really connected with him in any way, if that makes sense.
The feeling of that first meeting, the confusion, the chaos, the lack of actual human connection, should have been maybe my first red flag, that this was not going to be an amazing experience. But I let it go.
And right away, the emails started coming in.
11:55
Chaotic Work Environment
And with those emails came long lists of items and deliverables and more meetings. Now, this is going to be so hard for me to explain. I'm really going to try my best because it was confusing.
And when I talk about it now, I still get bogged down. I'm like, what am I even saying? What he had was not just one business.
This was like, in all caps, a vision, you know? And one that continuously required filling all of these whiteboards with more words and circles and shapes, like I said.
And the explanations of what exactly the business was or this vision was was truly ongoing. And very quickly, I was taking photographs of the whiteboards to try and make sense of them after the meetings.
And I would be recording him talking on my phone, so I could, again, make sense of it later, because there was so much information, and I was not kind of connecting the dots. So what exactly was the vision? Okay, here we go.
Well, he was a doctor, so there was his actual medical practice where he would see patients, and he would assess their injuries, he would recommend treatment or rehabilitation, he would prescribe pain medication.
That was kind of his area of expertise, I think was pain management, except he didn't work out of a clinic or a hospital, and he didn't have any sort of space to see patients.
So I remember thinking, oh, well, I don't know anything about doctors, I don't know how that works. That's interesting, does he go to their house? How does he practice medicine?
I don't know.
But then he was also venturing into telehealth, where he wanted to partner with all of these large technological firms, and he wanted to use their cameras and their fiber optic connections so that he could see patients remotely, people who lived in
other areas of the province or country that could not get to him easily. And he really wanted to be the pioneer in remote health care, which was interesting because this was 2011.
And I remember thinking, there's some really huge corporations and companies that are doing this. It's not the way it is now, but I remember he really was like, I'm the one starting this thing.
So he had his medical practice, and then he had this whole remote health care angle.
And then there were these overseas missions where he would go to other communities in different countries and meet with groups of people who really were very highly vulnerable, and they needed support, and he would help build hospitals or give
treatment. So that was the third thing. Then there was this charitable organization that he wanted to start that was going to foster literacy by connecting children around the world. Now, when I say this, it sounds very vague.
It's because it was very vague. He's just like, children learning the world. There was no specific region or country, but the entire world of children who needed to learn to read, and he wanted to connect them with different mentors.
And then he would assign them these different writing projects. So they would submit papers that were going to be judged by these mentors, and then he was going to offer all these varying levels of financial scholarships to them.
So I was like, okay, okay, that's that's pretty big mission. Again, I'm sure there's many organizations doing this, and that is all they do. But okay, that's one of your big things.
Then there was the national conference that he wanted to hold in 10 months time, where he would invite experts and speakers and varying levels of government and all sorts of national health organizations from across Canada to present on First Nations
health care in remote communities. So this was a whole other level. So I think I've said like five things, maybe I've said six things. This was his vision.
He had all of these things happening at once. So when we started without really any formal introduction, things just started happening. We realized that there really was nothing in place.
So there was no office, there were no resources, there was no accountant or payroll, there wasn't a website, there were no email accounts, there was no infrastructure, so there was nothing. We were starting from scratch.
There was this doctor and this whiteboard with all the circles and the scribbles and the lines. And he had just hired 320-somethings to create all of it. Like we were responsible for everything.
We had to find an office space, we had to set up a clinic and a boardroom, we had to hire people. You know, I was combing through resumes of people who were well beyond my age. It was just a lot all up front, and we were responsible for everything.
And part of that was really exciting, you know? We were up for the challenge, this was all new. I really wanted to prove myself.
I wanted to create something. I told you how I was excited to work when I was a kid. I was like, having a job.
And this just sounded like, whoa, okay, we're going to get so much experience here. I can definitely lend all of myself to this role, which even saying now, I don't really know what my role was, but it was do everything.
Now, all of that can be perfectly fine when you've got a strong leader at the helm, right, of the ship. And he did appear to fulfill that role.
He was confident, he dressed well, he drove this emerald green jaguar convertible, where he would wear like a Parisian silk scarf that would like fly in the wind.
And he'd have this like bespoke lambswool gilet, gilet just being fancy word for vest, but probably cost more than my rent at the time. Like he was into all of those details.
And he spoke with authority, you know, he had decades of experience and credentials. I mean, he was a medical doctor, right? A doctor.
He worked at the Mayo Clinic, what? And he was always referring to all these investments that needed to be made to get things going, as if it was nothing, right? Like hundreds of thousands of dollars that he was going to put here and there.
And yes, we'll just get it done. And oh, I hate working for other organizations. They're so slow.
All these governing bodies are always holding us back. I want to change the world. I've got things to do.
And I was just so flattered that I'd been chosen to be a part of this small team to do all of this work. Like someone trusted me to just handle all this money and oversee all these projects.
And I got to work for someone who was so important, it seemed like doing important work. That was all very flattering to me.
And as this train, this job, this venture left the station, I would overlook all sorts of things because of the fact that I'd been chosen, and that it was supposed to be hard, and that this guy was a big deal, was what I thought.
So we realized very early on that we were essentially at this doctor's beck and call. So when he needed something, he needed it now. And there was no real thing as working hours.
So he expected constant attention and responses. And if the email wasn't promptly responded to, it became a text, which became a phone call. And everything was always urgent.
There were always changes of plans. There was disregard for whatever you may have been working on in that moment, because he always needed something else, and he needed it right away.
His emails would come in all sorts of different colors, often written in red or orange, and they would be in all caps. And sometimes he would write using a stylus on his iPad or his phone.
And then he would take screenshots, and then he would forward those screenshots of his scribbles as emails.
Even just looking in my inbox, I went back and just kind of looked in there to see if what I had, and I found a string of 12 of those in a row in my old inbox that were meant to amount to one written email, but they were 12 separate screenshots of
his scribbles. So just completely illegible. And so things were pretty erratic. They were chaotic, and that's kind of what he was like.
He was setting the tone for what this job was like. It would be within the first week, he's like, okay, guys, like actually, I'm going to Jamaica tomorrow.
I'm starting this new clinic with this other doctor, and I need you to get this person, this person, and this person on the phone, and I need you to forward this information to there to here.
And then the next week, I need to be a keynote speaker at this very important conference in France. You need to get me on the list. It's on Wednesday.
Like, oh, okay, okay. Then it's, I'm pitching the CEO of BlackBerry tomorrow. I remember that one.
And I need you to get the contact details of the CEO immediately, so I can book a meeting. I'm going to be in Toronto. So I'm like, oh, so you're pitching BlackBerry, but you haven't actually reached out to them.
Oh, you need me to find the contact of the CEO and set up a meeting. That is likely not going to happen. Or I've written a proposal to, like, his wife's ex-colleague or something.
She's a principal at a school in Denmark, and she's traveling to London, and I need to pass on the materials that we have for consideration to Windsor Castle. I had all these emails about Windsor Castle.
Or I was going to be in Egypt today, but I canceled because our dog is very sick.
So, there was a lot happening, and he would truly, like, exert his control over all of us by making it impossible to follow through on our plans or our meetings, and he was prone to canceling or changing everything really on a dime without any
consideration to anyone else. Before we had our office space, we were going to create this whole presentation for him, and we had to show him the pitch deck. And we had agreed to meet at this coffee shop downtown early morning. It was like 830.
We get there. We set everything up. We run through the whole thing.
We're waiting. He doesn't show up. This was a big deal.
We'd been preparing this for like over a week. And then he calls and he's like, Oh, where are you? Like, oh, we're at the coffee shop.
We're waiting for you. Well, I need you to get to my house immediately. Okay.
We're like, we don't know where you live. We don't have a car. He lived over 40 minutes away.
So we just had to cancel everything else that had been going on in that, you know, that day, catch a cab, catch a bus, get to his house as soon as possible. We did not have anything to eat. We had not prepared for this.
And then he kept us at his house for literal hours. We had no idea when the meeting was going to end. It was very cold.
He didn't offer us any water or food. And we just, we were enveloped in his energy. He was going off topic.
He wasn't making sense. We weren't making any progress. And all we had wanted to do was show him this presentation and go home, right, and get on to the next thing.
But we left. We like stumbled out of his house like hours later. We're like hungry and thirsty and we're like, oh, we have to catch a cab home.
And just more discombobulated than we had been going in. And the whole day was just gone. Or there was the day when he had a very important meeting that had been in the calendar for weeks, that he'd been talking about for weeks.
And as the time is nearing, we're like, where is he? Why isn't here? The person shows up.
It's really awkward. We're like, don't worry, he'll be here any minute. And he evades us all day and then sends a message.
Oh, you know what? I can't make it because I'm trapped in a snowstorm up island. And we're just like, what?
That seems really weird. He's like, yeah, just a freak snowstorm. And we look it up.
And there's even like airport footage of where he is. We're like, there's no snowstorm, like bizarre things like that.
There was the day when we were looking through the share drive at work, you know, amongst all these confidential patient files and all these letters and all of our projects, and just stumble upon this very graphic porn video.
And soon we realized like he had saved all of his private masturbatory material on to the work share drive. So things were happening that were like, whoa, how did he do that? Or why is this happening?
This convertible that he would drive, there was one day when he parked it just on the street. And when we did have our office, it was in a very kind of sketchy area of town. So there was always a lot going on.
We saw a lot of different drug busts and even cop stings, crazy things happening. And he came into the office, and he spent, I don't know, hour and a half doing a bunch of things.
And one of us had gone out for lunch, and we came back and we're like, oh my gosh, your car is parked down the street. And the keys are in the car and it's just running.
He had left his convertible in the middle of the street, just running with his keys in it, and just completely disregarded that. So he was always doing things like that.
He had this big leather bag that he carried around that was filled with prescription medication. That was never really discussed. And honestly, there's just so much more that I don't remember, because there was always something going on.
So not only was he chaotic, right? Some of the things I've said are just random, weird things that would happen in the office or the way that he dealt with things, but he also could be quite delusional.
He had these visions of grandeur and who he was, like his image was very important to him.
The way that he came across, the letters behind his name, he was obsessed with letterhead and his credentials, and the way that we would draft these letters, which was this almost outdated way of doing things, it felt like, but was his process of
essentially making everything look more prestigious than it was? Like, we spent hours, like us and the other staff, just dealing with letterhead, amending the stupid letterhead over and over again.
He's like, oh, this is one inch two to the right, and we need to put my name here, and you have to add this in here. And it was obsessive.
Not only was he obsessed with sending out letters to people as a way of communicating, then he was obsessed with this huge briefcase that he had, filled with recommendation letters. And he just, this was his prized possession.
Essentially, it was just letters and letters of, well, what he thought were recommendation letters, but when we looked closer, a lot of them didn't add up. But he was like, you need to get all my letters onto the website.
We're like, what are you talking about? It was like he needed people to see that he'd worked at all these different places or that he'd been in contact with these specific people.
And when we would look through them, we realized a lot of these letters were him writing to certain hospitals or governing bodies or important people.
And then them just responding back, or sometimes they would even deny his request when he had asked for a recommendation letter. And they'd say, sorry, we're not sending this back.
But he believed that just having been in contact with any of these people or places, that that gave him a level of expertise or status that he was very proud of. He even told us that he'd been awarded the Order of Canada.
And I remember thinking, really? Like, that's, oh, okay. And I was like, that's definitely not true.
Anyway, he was obsessed with this briefcase, and he was obsessed with his image and his credentials. And we were always drafting endless letters to just random people around the world, doctors, administrators, hospitals.
We even had colleagues that we'd never met or talked to that lived in Cairo or in Amsterdam or in remote areas of Canada. And he would speak about them as if they were just as in the work as we were. But they would never respond to us.
A lot of times we'd be emailing them being like, oh, Dr. G said this thing, and we need to follow up with you about it. And a lot of times they would just ignore us or not write back.
And over time, we were able to discern that there was some sort of disconnect, because a lot of times they would even respond saying, okay, like, that's enough. I'm not friends with Dr. G, or I don't want to be associated with Dr.
G. And we thought that was really interesting, because he was speaking about these people like they were working on all of this with us. We had just never met them.
And he seemed to think that he could just pay to get the things that he wanted. So if there was anything that was annoying, some set of rules or regulations, he was like, oh, I'm going to pay this person, and it will all be dealt with.
So he had multiple consultancy companies working with us, and he was expecting them, oh, they're going to lobby the government, they're going to get these bills changed, we're going to get certain groups to be on our board.
And that created some very awkward relationship dynamics. And again, I was 25, I'd never dealt with these people who had had huge careers, you know, very respectable careers in politics or different areas of government with very high billing hours.
And he was not professional with them at all. He expected them to do exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it. So he would get frustrated and angry.
I was oftentimes like the intermediary between conversations. And I was like, oh, oh my gosh, this is so unprofessional.
30:54
Manipulation and Abuse
So not only was he pretty intense to work with in a work situation and in terms of other professionals, but he was also very personally manipulative and could be quite abusive. So he could build you up, and then he would tear you down.
And you never really knew which version of him you were going to get. And in his emails, you know, he could be quite effusive, but then he would turn it on a dime and be blatantly rude.
So something like, you're amazing, but you're actually quite stupid.
And the number of emails I received titled Confidential in all caps, where he would say that he didn't like talking about employees, but then he would go on this huge rant about somebody that we were working with.
It was just this very uncomfortable walking on eggshells. Does he like me? Does he not like me?
Is he gonna be nice? Is he gonna be rude? Am I doing something wrong?
Am I doing something right? It was this environment where you start to question everything, and you don't really know how to be. And then he would do something like, I sprained my ankle one weekend when I was at a triathlon.
And when I came into the office, I mentioned this. And then he's like, oh, I'll look at your ankle. So he looks at it, he wraps it properly.
He even offers to get me some drugs, which maybe is questionable. He's like, do you need some heavy painkillers? But he was different versions all the time.
It was like, he was always on the surface. And if you poked him, you just didn't know what you were going to get.
And when he realized that my boyfriend and I were actually together, because at the time there was the three of us working, it took a few months. He's like, oh, you're actually together. He started to find very specific ways to separate us.
And almost pit us against each other, which was really odd. I remember him taking my boyfriend out for drinks once, and being very elusive about it, and don't tell Sarah. And at this meeting, he told him, he's like, oh, you have so much potential.
And he saw all these big things for him. And I'm so glad you're working for me. There's something really special about you.
And there was a few occasions where he'd send him specifically like random messages late at night, requesting, oh, we need to talk tomorrow about this thing. You know, don't say anything about it to anyone.
And then there were these rare moments where I was alone with Dr.
G in the office, and he might offhandedly say something very cutting, you know, about my boyfriend and that he had a big head, or he's like, oh, he thinks he's so much better than he is. Like, he could be very cruel.
So he was definitely going about things in a very personal way that was hard to ignore, that created tension and discomfort, and again, made you really question what was going on, what was real, what wasn't, what's safe, what isn't safe.
And there was a time when he straight up yelled at me in my face. It was something that I just won't forget because, I don't know, it was quite rare. I don't know if I can think of another time up until then where maybe that had happened to me.
I had done a huge ad buy and put all of these different ads that I'd created into different newspapers, and there was a big national ad that had just come out, and he came storming through the door of the office. I was the only one there.
It was quite late. I was still working on something, and he throws the paper down on my desk, and he comes right up to me, his face. It was bright red, like it was very scary.
And he just yells in my face, you stupid girl. How could you be so dumb? And I just kind of froze, and I tried to hold on.
I was like, whoa, this is really scary. This older man, this person in power, like, why is he being so angry? But I kind of already knew what it was about, because I had created all of these ads for this conference.
And it's interesting because I left his logo out of the ads, which maybe does, yeah, that is stupid. Why would I have done that?
But at that point of working with him, it was like my energy and my soul didn't believe in what he was doing, and I didn't trust him. And like deep down, I knew that what we were doing was kind of not real.
Like he was lying about things, and I didn't want anything that I was building or created that felt true, that came from actual credible people and organizations, all of these things I had built with this conference, I didn't want it to be associated
with him. So I still look back on that, and I'm like, oh my gosh, so I had made this mistake of leaving his logo out of this advertisement, but maintaining all these other organizations' logos in promoting this conference.
But it really wasn't a mistake. Like I did it on purpose because I viscerally could not put his logo next to these organizations. So anyway, he was very angry about that.
And of course he was, like I can understand from a very logical point of view, but all of it was just so insidious, and he was so angry.
So yeah, to have someone yell at you like that and call you stupid, and she's like, you're a stupid girl, you know, you dumb girl. You're so young, you're so inexperienced. And I will never forget that.
So he could be very angry and abusive as well. And for me, I don't know, over this whole experience, I did what I've tended to do before, which was, I don't know, I've always been a bit of an absorber and an observer. So some of that is innate to me.
And then some of it's just a coping strategy for dealing with really difficult people or traumatic situations. And with him, I would always be observing him.
I would notice everything, everything he said, what he did, the way he looked, each situation or explanation he'd have or his weird behavior, it would enter my brain and I would file it away. And in the moment, I would just act normal.
I wouldn't say anything, which again, I think is quite normal because you're like, what is happening? There's cognitive dissonance. You're like, I'm in a professional environment.
This person is saying these things, but doing this thing. But it was like I was acting normal, but my brain was furiously working over time in the background trying to assess, what is going on here?
It's like I was seeking a pattern to this madness, trying to figure out the truth of like this person and this job and this vision, because something always felt off. And I could feel these undercurrents of like, what's going on here?
What's not being said? What is the reality of this job I'm in, this person I'm with? Because I could always feel that, but it's like I couldn't grasp onto anything to hold or explain or make sense of this weird puzzle.
And the volume just got turned up. Every day, I was in that scenario, working with him, I felt the volume get louder and louder. And I was like, oh, I'm so confused.
Like, it was like being in a complete mind F, like I just didn't know what was happening. And with him, I started to realize that the pattern was that he didn't actually have a pattern, like nothing was adding up.
It was almost like he was purposefully scrambling the field of communication, like he was throwing out the most random bombs that we were just supposed to pick up and carry to the finish line. And in a way, he was hiding himself in this chaos.
It was like a mask. There was this cloud that he was operating within, and he was always acting on the surface, but he himself, he felt like a void.
And I don't know if that does it justice, but it's like the closest I've come to that sensation with someone before. I'm not gonna be able to do it justice, but he felt empty. He felt, yeah, like this black hole, this void that had nothing.
And so he was just acting out on the surface, all of these things, and none of it was tethered, and none of it made sense. So over the course of about a year, I worked there, well, 11 months, let's be exact, 11 months, I worked with him.
And I worked harder than I ever had before, and I did it amidst all this chaos. And one of my main jobs was to produce this national conference. And having worked on other events locally, you know, there's always a team, right?
You assume a team is necessary to create an event that is quite large. But no, I was now producing a national conference, and I was one person creating the whole thing.
So this meant I was doing everything, like from logistics, like booking and finding the venue, the catering, the entertainment. I was meeting with vendors. I was building a website, designing graphics, doing ad campaigns.
I was doing all the marketing. I was buying advertising. I was obtaining sponsors.
And the most challenging probably being building these relationships with organizations to add credibility for the conference, because Dr. G was this unknown person. He didn't feel that way, but it was all about how can this be credible?
Why is this one guy putting on this national conference? Like, what is, this doesn't make any sense.
So I was the one who was reaching out to organizations like the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada, and trying to build relationships in a very short amount of time. Like, why would they trust me? Who am I?
Who's Dr. G? What is this all about, right?
And I had to do things like research and create lists of speakers and reach out to all of these people who are going to be at this conference, who are going to speak, all of these government officials and doctors and regulating health bodies.
I had to organize all the activities. And all of this had to happen in under 10 months. While I was also helping with all of the other projects that Dr.
G had. Each of us who worked for him had something huge and then worked on everything else together. And I will say, producing that conference, again, is a sole person who hasn't done half of those things ever.
It really started to take a toll. And working with him in that environment, I just felt so confused, and I kept thinking it was my fault. I was like, oh, I just need to be better, I need to be smarter, I need to work faster.
Like, I would come home and I would just like berate myself for not keeping up or keeping it together. And I kept questioning like why I felt so stressed out, and yet it was very obvious why.
But again, to be an employee and to be working for this person, I really felt like, well, this is what work is, this is what a job is, I have to do my best. But every day was this new encounter.
And I was pushed out of my comfort zone, which again, that can be really great, right? You can learn and expand and do so much more than you ever think you can when you're pushed.
But it was at this level that was not good, it was not healthy, because underneath all of this responsibility and these new experiences, and everything I was building and learning, I felt that lack of foundation and safety, like we were all
shouldering this burden. And I was actually terrified of the person who was giving me this burden. Like I was like, he's leading us into the deep end. I don't trust him.
And yet, I'm carrying all of this for him to my demise. Like, why am I doing this? Like, he was unhinged, he was manipulative, he was purposefully evasive and, you know, abusive.
And I was just kind of living in this daily scenario that I felt I could not get out of and it just wouldn't end.
And I just felt like everything that I was doing, all the good work that I was doing, because it was coming from the right place, I was getting things done, I was actually building this conference, right? These things were happening.
But I had this feeling like, hmm, as it kept going on, I'm like, I don't think I actually have control over any of this.
Even though this is actually my reputation on the line and all my effort that I've put in, actually this guy is in control here, and I don't think he has my best interest out for me at all.
And so I started to form new habits like while I was working there, just to kind of deal with these feelings. I found I had to like wind down after work. I'm sure many, many, many people can relate to that.
I started drinking after work. I would buy these like frozen cans of daiquiri or margarita concentrate, and then I would mix them with like cheap rum or tequila.
I would go shopping a lot, and I would try to almost use the money I was making to put together like outfits that would make me feel smarter or more professional. It was like I was almost deceiving myself into believing like I was up for this task.
Like, well, if I dress for success, then I will be successful. Like, I will be able to be the person who gets this done and who handles it well.
And at one point, I had somehow finagled a meeting with someone who's very important, this person who had like organized these really big conferences.
And I was able to get a meeting with her, almost like in a mentorship capacity where she was being very gracious with her time and her energy and her schedule.
And I remember waking up in the middle of the night realizing that I had completely forgot about the meeting.
So I had stood her up, like she had been there and I had not shown up because I was like drowning in this mess and stress to the point where I missed probably the most important thing that I had in my schedule at all.
Because I was just, yeah, I was in it. I was beyond my capacity. And I even saw a counselor, you know, a few times and she did seem shocked at a lot of the things I was telling her about my boss, about the work situation.
But I just couldn't see a way out of it at that point. It truly was like being in a really horrible relationship. And that power dynamic of feeling like you are lesser, you are stuck and you have to keep going.
And it's your fault. So I had had that play out in many different scenarios in life. And here I was again doing it with this abusive boss.
And I felt so tethered to the commitments that I had made and the work that I had done so far, let alone the paycheck.
And now that my world revolved around this man and his crazy whims, I just felt so beholden to someone and to a situation that was actually set up for me to fail.
And I knew that, and I felt that, but I kept looking around and thinking, but it's happening, like we are doing this, like we're building this crazy thing, and like maybe it will all be worth it. I don't want to miss out.
And oh, I'm so grateful for this opportunity, you know, and for this salary. Those were all the feelings that were coming up that were preventing me from taking any sort of action. Now, there was a bit of a turning point.
46:55
Dr. Gʼs Past Revealed
At some point during those 11 months, I found the diaries. Now, what are the diaries? Well, when we first found our office space, Dr.
G was moving some of his things in, and he had this huge suitcase. And he brought it in and made a big point about saying, oh, this is my special suitcase, and it contains all of my secrets. And I remember being like, okay, that's kind of weird.
And then at certain points in time, he would move the suitcase around in the office, and he would put it somewhere else. And he's like, oh, I'm moving my special suitcase with all of my secrets. I was like, okay.
He wanted us to notice that he had this thing that had all of this special information about him. So at one point, I opened up the suitcase, and it was filled with all of these diaries, all of these journals. And I closed it.
We all knew what it was. We left it there. But at some point, maybe it was six months in, I was like, I have to open the suitcase again.
And one by one, I took his diaries home, and I read them. It took me weeks. And I definitely wrestled with the fact that I even opened the suitcase, and that then I decided to read the journals.
Like that was a very big deal. And you know what, maybe I will have karma to pay for that later. But I remember thinking, this, I'm going to do this.
Like I made a conscious decision. I'm like, it's okay. He's this guy, and he's being very abusive, and I wouldn't do this in any other circumstance.
But I need to know. And like he has made a point of being very vocal about what's in here. If these were so precious or so private, why would he bring them to his office space and leave them here for all of us to see?
You know, there was something about that. So, yeah, I read his diaries. They were disturbing.
They were illuminating. And I learned a lot about what type of a person he was. Again, it's kind of unfair to, I don't know, judge someone based on their diaries.
As someone who keeps journals, I would say that I write in them when I have a lot to say, which isn't always when you're like emotionally regulated or, I don't know, he just gave away a lot. It was very helpful for me.
And beyond how he treated women, beyond how he treated his relationships with people, with his children, like there were a lot of things that happened or that he did that I was like, okay.
He was very open about how he felt about life and how his emotions worked. It felt like he had a lack of emotion, which was very clear.
Beyond that, at some point, because I had to try and line these up in some sort of order so I could have like a timeline of his life, I realized that he had done this exact thing that he was doing with us.
He had done it multiple times, and he had set up a clinic over and over again in his past.
And it was shocking to read how this, like the same disaster that I was in, it had played out in another timeline, in a different location, and with different characters, but all in the same roles, like it had played out multiple times.
So he had done it in Alberta, he'd done it in Toronto, he'd done it in New Zealand. He would move to a new city or area. He would find a team of random people.
Typically, they were very young, without a lot of work experience, which is interesting. And then he would try to set up a clinic to, quote unquote, change the world.
And he made it seem like his ideas and his practice, and he himself was revolutionary, the way that he talked about himself, the way that he talked about doing this venture.
He was very impatient and arrogant, and he paid very little attention to policies and practices around medicine or things that were put in place to protect people. And he loved to throw around his clout as a doctor.
Like his ego in reading how he talked about himself, he held himself in very high regard. He would call everyone else stupid. People didn't understand.
They weren't smart enough. They didn't see his vision. It was like his specialty might change.
Like there might be some slightly different thing about his vision at the time when he was opening a clinic somewhere else. But he was always going to be the CEO.
He was going to be the man in charge, and he just wanted everything and everyone to revolve around him and his image.
So as I was reading this and putting the pieces together, I'm like, oh my God, he's built this vision multiple times, and it's completely failed. Like he's messed it up somehow. He's hurt a bunch of people.
He's been out a bunch of money, and he would inevitably like run away. Like he would leave this huge wake of destruction, and then he would disappear, go quiet, and then he would do it somewhere else.
He was doing all sorts of destructive behaviors all the time.
And as I was reading these entries through, his distorted personal lens, I could just see how the clinic and the vision that I was working within was definitely gonna falter under his leadership and his definite limitations, his ego, his short
sightedness, even just how he charged ahead, you know, taking and using everyone and every system to his advantage to build something that then he could hang his hat on. Yet it always failed because it wasn't based in integrity.
Like he was not tethered. He was not an individual who it felt like truly wanted to help people. He wanted to say he helped people.
But it seemed pretty apparent based on what I'd read and what had happened many times before, was that through this pattern was like this was going to catch up with him.
The façade is going to fall at some point and there's going to be one thread of untruth that's going to lead to the next one, that's going to lead to the next one, and he's going to fail. We're all going to fail, and then he's going to run away.
And I remember writing at one point in my own journal at the time, oh my gosh, like I want to quit this job so bad, and I just want to read a screenplay based off of all of Dr.
G's diaries, because it was just so shocking and entrancing, even the way he brought them to our attention, letting us know this is what's here, that was his sense of grandeur about himself.
If only he knew how important I am, my story is so important. So after reading those diaries, I definitely knew that I wasn't crazy.
I could validate myself that what I felt from the beginning and how things didn't ever make sense or how he was entirely self-obsessed or he was running this insane venture, all these different businesses into the ground.
I realized, oh, all of that is real. And I figured at that point, if I could just get through the conference, I could just see that to the finish line, ensure that everything I did, like all that hard work, it would just pay off.
Then I was like, okay, then I will quit. I can do this. Well, shortly after, about a month out, Dr.
G just decided to cancel the conference on his own, and then he fired me. So I spent my last few days scrambling to send out notices to all the vendors, the speakers, all the organizations and partners. I felt so embarrassed.
And Dr. G was just completely removed. He was indignant.
He's like, well, they're charging too much anyway. And he would just shoo me away like a child. He's like, oh, you know nothing.
I've done this before. He just threw away everything that we'd worked on. And it seemed like at some point, he realized that he didn't actually have the money that he thought he did to cover any of it.
And the accountant actually later told us that he had been spending exorbitant amounts of the business's money on shopping sprees.
So many of the exact dates where we were waiting for him to show up for a really important meeting, or we thought he was overseas at a medical conference, it turns out he was only a few blocks away from the office buying thousands of dollars worth
of, like, artisan shoes or luxury kitchen utensils. So that's kind of how it ended. It just ended really quickly. And I mean, thank God.
But at the time, it was pretty devastating because of how it ended, even though I had felt it coming. But a couple of years later, he actually reached out via email.
He had moved back to Alberta, and, surprise, surprise, he had opened up another clinic. And he wanted to bring us back to work for him. And he was like opening his doors.
He's like, I have patients coming in two months, and I need all the material created again. He needed the binders, the CDs, the letterhead. He needed the letterhead again.
I'm gonna quote something. This is from the email. He says, the work you two did cannot be matched, and it was terribly unfortunate that the Victoria office was too soon in business development.
I am approaching you before anyone else. You have a gift for this, and I felt I wanted to ask you first. So like there are moments, like even as I reread this, maybe it's like water under the bridge, you know?
And maybe all that went down, like it wasn't really anyone's fault, you know? It wasn't a big deal, and he actually valued what we did, like he's saying it was like really great.
But then I like stopped myself, and I'm like, okay, discernment, discernment tells me that he's just like unbothered by his destructive wake.
Like he is actually going to keep doing this to make sure that he can feel the way that he wants to feel, regardless if what he does harms others or not.
And truly from my experience working with him, he was really willing to say or do whatever he had to, to keep his lie going. And I don't know, sometimes I look back or I flashbacks of that year, and I kind of wonder if it really happened at all.
I don't know if I've done a good job of explaining it. It's kind of long winded. It's a little bit confusing.
They're basically a bunch of jarring little experiences that I kind of put together to be like, what was that, you know? Like maybe it wasn't really a big deal.
But at the time, like I had really no way or very little amount of energy to process what was happening and what did happen because everything was moving at such lightning speed.
And like many of the things I've experienced that have felt, you know, painful or jarring, I would wonder like, am I too sensitive? Or am I making some of this up? And that goes back to when I was a kid and when I was younger.
And a lot of the things that were said to me like, is it really that sad, Sarah? Like are you really that sad? Or was it really that big of a deal?
You know, so I learned from a very young age to really question how I felt and how I feel. Like minimize it, file it away for later.
And my job is really to endure what's happening, when it's happening, and then just obsessively figure it out in the background. And I think I've been doing that for the past 15 years. I've slowly been processing all that's there.
Like, hmm, what got me into that situation? Why did I stay? How did it like really make me feel?
And like, why would someone treat me like that? And then I'm like, well, what have I learned about people? What did he teach me about people?
What did he teach me about power? A lot of that is really uncomfortable. And I think disempowerment being one of those themes in my life that I've really reckoned with is why this really hit a chord for me.
And I think witnessing and being a part of people who use their power or their status to inflate their egos or get what they want without any concern for others is just so yuck. But now I know. And I always knew really that it was off.
I knew that he was off even if I was only 25, even if he was twice my age and he was this medically accomplished doctor. When he stared right through me, when we first met, there was something missing there. And energy is important.
You know, feelings are alarm bells. And our internal guiding system is everything, especially, I think, especially when you have nothing else to go on.
And the power and the status and those dynamics, when they're not working in your favor, what you do have is that feeling, that energy, the things that just don't match up when you're like, this is not making sense.
And that was something that I very much had learned to override, even though it was bothering me like crazy. And funny enough, I googled him recently.
So when all this is kind of coming back and I'm thinking about him and that experience, I googled him and I found a couple of intriguing things. The first thing is that he is a keynote speaker at a national conference this year.
And I noticed that his bio has really taken on much more grandeur than it had before. So, you know, he's a world expert on pain management. He's an international pioneer in the virtual medicine field.
And his legacy, he uses that term a lot. His legacy continues. And then I looked a bit deeper.
I'm like, oh, he's actually a chairman of the organization that's hosting the conference. And he's business partners with the president of that organization, who's another doctor.
And when I looked deeper, that doctor has actually been reprimanded for overprescribing opioids, and has faced suspension of his medical license on more than one occasion. Like all of this just came up when I Googled him.
And then I found a media release posted by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, stating plainly, and I quote, Mr. G, not licensed to practice medicine.
And it goes on to state that he no longer has a medical license, and has not been approved to practice medicine since early 2024. And it warns anyone who may have engaged in his medical care to alert the college immediately. So, I don't know.
There you go, like nothing has changed. It's a lot of smoking mirrors. And I do feel seen.
Like even just reading that, I was like, I am not crazy. Probably, unfortunately, a lot of other people have experienced his chaos. I likely was not the only one who was sucked into his orbit of lies and manipulation.
And I've met and worked with many people who have unbridled ego, but Dr. G was something else. And I've said it before, he was missing something.
Energetically, he was like a black hole. And getting that close to his orbit was extremely eye-opening. I don't know.
I truly believe he would do or justify any behavior or action just to get exactly what he believes that he deserves.
And bearing witness to that when I was in it, and even when I was coming out of it, I just didn't want to believe it was true, that people would abuse their power like that. But they do. And he did.
And he still is, apparently. So all I have to say is, yeah, thank you for listening. I don't know if any of that made sense.
Very long-winded and chaotic, but that's actually what it was. And I think that's why it's taken me so long to really put it together. I will definitely be putting up some pictures on my website to go along with this episode.
Maybe just to show some of the chaos a little bit. I've got a few things from my email, so I'll put those up there if you're interested. And I do have another boss story that I want to share.
So when I get to it, when I process whatever that mess was as well, I will share. So stay tuned. So thank you so much, and I'll see you next time.
