My Boss Is A Complete Asshole.

To all of you who found this blog by searching for variants of "my boss is an asshole"...Hi there! Welcome! I didn't realize there were so many of us out there, but fully 15% of my incoming traffic is from this search term, so....we're clearly not alone. So...good to have you here. Stick around and read some more, why don't you? It sure beats working.... --GJC, 17 Oct 2008

I am beginning to wonder if I am a maladjusted worker, or if I just find myself working in jobs with asshole bosses, or if there are just no other KIND of bosses. But today, once again, I have incontrovertible evidence that My Boss Is An Asshole.

The plot: As I've mentioned, there are four of us; myself, "Max", "Alex", and "Erwin". Max and Alex are the senior techs, Erwin and I are the junior techs. The distinction is minimal, really; Max and Alex get the "challenging" users and the long-term/complex projects, while Erwin and I get the normal calls and everyday projects. Erwin, for reasons no one has explained, has been given the lion's share of the task of building new systems; though all of us do builds, Erwin gets the most of them. I don't think that's terribly fair (though there's some consensus that it's because Erwin can't really do crap-else EXCEPT menial, repetitive tasks. I can't speak to that, personally, but I CAN speak to the fact that he's a whiny, petty little nit who has been known to bring meetings to a complete standstill by digging in his heels and stating that he opposes some minor policy change. Also, he's generally a jerk.) and will occasionally offer, when I hear him complain about how many builds he's got to do, to take one of them off his hands. (He has never done the same for me.)

Today, he spent the morning bitching every time a new ticket came across his desk, and so, after lunch, I said "Hey, Erwin, if you want to tell Joe (our boss) to give me one of your tickets, go ahead."

About half an hour later, I still hadn't gotten any new tickets, so I went into Joe's office. He got Erwin on the phone, and put him on speaker. Erwin read him the number of the ticket he wanted to give me--strange, since no one's usually that formal about tickets--we usually refer to them by the user name. I asked Joe, "Who's the ticket for?" and he just brushed it off: "Oh, just a user." My stupid self clearly wasn't thinking like an Asshole, because I just accepted it and went back to my desk.

A couple minutes later, I pulled up the ticket and discovered who it was for:

The ticket was to build a new computer...for The Crazy. Our big boss.

We had all known there was soon going to be a ticket for this build, and it had been made really, really clear that no one wanted to be the one to get it. First of all, she's THE BOSS, and nobody wants to be put in a position where any mistake will instantly be under her nose. Further, she's very particular, and then too, she has a list of annoying, complex software to install, archives to move, and general high-maintenanceness. It was the Hot Potato of builds, and not ONLY had Erwin handed it off to me, Joe had LET him--had AIDED AND ABETTED him, actually.

Now, it's my belief that if someone offers to help you with something, you--just as a common courtesy--don't give them the worst task you've got. If someone offers to help with your yardwork, you don't tell them "Hey, yeah, you can help--the septic tank hasn't been cleaned out for eight years now..." You give them something easy, or at least something average-to-middling. That's just basic human courtesy.

Well, apparently that doesn't fly, where I work. While the guys, including Erwin, laughed at my reaction, I said "oh HELL no," and darted back to Joe's office. "You let Erwin give me The CRAZY'S computer??" I yelped.

Joe? LAUGHED. (Keep in mind: this man is supposedly a manager.) "Hehehehehe...yeah." Said in the typical schoolyard-bully bullshit "sucker!" tone I remember from when I was, oh, TWELVE.

"Come ON, Joe. That's not right," I said.

He switched to the "affronted innocence" mode. "What? What are you so mad about? God, you're so whiny--you sound like Frack." (Frack--the guy at the other building who does nothing but complain.)

At that point, I just decided to shut up and deal. "You know what? That's fine. Where is the computer?"

"WHAAAAAAT??? Why are you getting mad at MEEEE? I didn't do anything....Erwin was the one who told me to give you the ticket!"

"That's right. But you--being the boss--could have vetoed it and told him 'Nah, give her another build instead'." (Which I thought was an eminently reasonable response, especially since he was acting like a bratty schoolkid, not a manager.)

"God. What EVER." (turns to student worker, also in the office) "Do you hear her whining??" (back to me) "Do you want me to give the ticket to Max?" (Notice--COM.PLETE.LY not dealing with the real issue; red herrings, allegedly-"humorous" comments. He has a habit of deflecting criticism this way. Not from The Crazy, of course--with her, he just grovels--but with the rest of us.)

"No. Just tell me, where is the computer, so I can just get started?"

Conversation goes back and forth, while he a)takes out the keys to the storeroom, which is where the computer is, but makes no effort to get out of his desk and actually LET ME INTO THE ROOM, which is his JOB. For FIFTEEN MINUTES I stand in his damn office listening to him bantering with student workers, help desk people, colleagues, whatever, and meanwhile I want to fucking STRANGLE this man, and everything I say is met with variations on the theme of "I don't know WHY you're so ANGRY."

So finally, he got off his ass and let me into the storeroom; I got the computer and went back to my desk and just got back to work. Later on I made a comment to Alex, who's the acknowledged brat of the department, and he laughed--but I know WHY he laughed. It's the old pie-in-the-face construct: it's funny, as long as it's not happening to YOU. I would have giggled too. Same with Max; walking home, though he admitted it was funny, he also agreed that it was a shitty thing for Erwin to do in the first place, let alone for Joe to go along with it.

So basically, the lesson for today, boys and girls: When someone makes a good-faith offer of help, the best thing to do is to take complete and total advantage of their good will. After all, if they weren't suckers, they never would have offered to help, would they???

I will not. EVER. offer to help Erwin again, for any reason, under any circumstances. If he were on fire, I would not even bother to muster enough spit to put it out. And as for my "manager", Joe--there is a phrase of which I hope he is aware: it's called "killing the golden goose". His total lack of good sense, regarding when to be a good-buddy-boy and when to be a fucking MANAGER, has accomplished exactly that. No longer do I feel subject to any mandate to "keep him out of trouble" as he has so often said. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact; anything I can do to subtly draw attention to his managerial incompetency and total inappropriateness, I will do. Not in a way to make myself look vindictive, mind you, or to depreciate in any way the quality of my work--quite the opposite, in fact. Joe and Erwin want to bitch and whine and play junior-high playground games? They can do that. I'm here to do a JOB, and to do it well--and I've found that sometimes, just doing your work damn well draws attention to those who don't. Not always--but sometimes. Regardless, from this point on, I am only looking out for those who look out for ME.