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.

Oh No He Di-n't: STFU, Drew, Part 2

(background here for non-Chicagoans, or for Chicagoans who slammed bricks through their TVs, radios, computers and newspapers long ago)

Is there SERIOUSLY no depth this individual will not plumb?

(inarticulate burblings of rage)

See, here I was all ready to feel sorry for myself (we may or may not go there later) and then I found this:

The Infantilization Of America Takes Another Exceedingly Wacky Turn

Because I know you all hate clicking on links: This story details a ban on mail addressed to "Any Wounded Soldier", which in many prior conflicts was used to send holiday wishes to recovering military members. One of the main rationales given for this ban:

USO spokesman John Hanson said that like the military, the nonprofit service organization does not deliver unopened mail to unspecified recipients. He said the USO worries about security as well as hateful messages from war critics. "We just want to make sure it's not, `Die, baby killer,'" he said. "There are people out there who act irrationally, and we don't want anyone to get a message that would be discouraging."

Now you all know I'm rabidly anti-American, and...wait, what???

No. Hold on. Lost my train of thought there.

Seriously: we can send adult human beings to entirely different countries, on largely-specious grounds, for the purpose of killing those with whom we disagree; can send them there to be killed and maimed by hostile factions, some of whom weren't even hostile until AFTER we got there; but by God, we must protect the eyes of our fighting men and women from the war critics' nanny-nanny-boo-boo?

We can lie to them about the death of their comrades, and have them shoot others full of holes as revenge for things that never happened; we can give them nonfunctional and inadequate protection against the attacks we're causing them to face, and point fingers at political figures from years past as the excuse; but dagnabbit, we're gonna make DARN SURE that no pinko commie lib'rul long-haired anti-Amurrican idjit calls our boys names by mail???

Jeebus Chesterfield on a dancing can of tuna-fish, have we LOST OUR EVER-FRAKKIN' MINDS???

Here Goes Nothing

Last step before moving: pack up the cats.
Second-to-last step before moving: pack up the computer.

Hopefully, by the time I have internet access again, the memory of the past 24 hours will have vanished from my mind; this will spare my readers the most profanity-laced post in TSOW history, because...

Let's just say I am so, so, so very done helping people, ever.

EVER ever. From this point on, I plan to nurture a carefully cultivated streak of total jerkitude and self-centeredness, so as to avoid ever, EVER going through ANYTHING like this again, EVER.

Last thought on this before I take the requisite deep breath:

When you live in someone's house rent-free for a year, should it not be customary to assist with projects without complaint? Or even better, without making yourself out to be some kind of tragic hero for successfully "balancing the wishes of two entirely different people"? Especially when one of these two disparate parties is doing NOTHING for the cause, is in fact DISTRACTING at every turn from the process at hand; and the other party is THE PERSON IN WHOSE HOUSE YOU AND THIS DISTRACTION HAVE LIVED RENT-FREE FOR AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME??? Wouldn't you tell the distraction, "You know, babycakes sugarbooty bumpkin pie, after tomorrow, I can give you every moment of my undivided attention forever and ever--which is what you seem to require in order to continue operating as the barely-functioning individual you are, bless your cute widdle heart--but just for today, I feel like I owe this to a person who's helped both of us quite a bit"? Instead of "This is what amazing, wonderful, self-effacing people like me do for their friends. Look how heroic and wonderful and long-suffering I am"???

Firefly, I apologize, but I gotta use the V-word here: the whole thing makes me wanna vomit.

Every choice, every plan, and every decision I have made through the course of this move--everything from where to stack stuff, to whether to tape certain boxes shut, to what time I could go to bed (!!!), has been debated, argued, contradicted, and second-guessed. Last night, I just snapped--several times, in fact--and by the time I finished with the requisite tears of nervous exhaustion and total fury, and finally DID get to bed, I was so tense that it took me about an hour to fall asleep.

I have to stop ranting now and put the computer away. In a few hours, this move will be done. But since Tim and Squeaky have walked out the door to go to work/wherever--the worst is over.

See you all on the other side....

:::set fades to black:::

Things That Can Bite Me

Things That Can Bite Me, Tech-Support Edition:

1-347,325: Microsoft.

Microsoft can bite me because:

1. Office 2007. "Hey, Bob, here's a great idea! Let's take the normal, intuitive menu structure, the neat layout, and the uncluttered feel of Office 2003…AND CHUCK IT OUT THE WINDOW! We can make a…..a….I know! A BIG UGLY BUTTON where everyone has to click to do everything! And then? Get this…we can make cluttery, redundant TABS! EVERYONE loves tabs, RIGHT? And we can hide ALL the useful features."
   

   "Gee, Mr. Gates…do you think that's what the users want?"
   

   "USERS? Screw the USERS. They want what we TELL them to want!"
   

1. So I get this ticket at work, see. We just upgraded our people to Office 2007. Most of our users also have some form of Adobe—generally Adobe Professional 7 or 8. About a week ago, one of the users said she could no longer create or combine PDFs with Adobe 7. She would rather not update to 8, but she would if she had to.
   

   I spent hours on this ticket. I spent hours at her desk, I spent hours at MY desk, I spent hours on Google and on Adobe's website, trying to find out what the problem was. At one point I printed out a list of about 15 pages of steps to take, in order, to solve the problem.
   

   Today, as I was discussing it with my cube-mate, who claimed that updating to Adobe 8.1 would definitely solve the problem, I got an e-mail from the guy in the next cube, who'd heard us talking. It was a forward of an e-mail one of the OTHER techs had sent out a couple of months back, in which she explained a solution. I read it, and thought "That is SO not gonna help. Something that simple, that ridiculously unrelated to the problem—nah. It's not gonna help. But I'll try it…maybe it will help something else."
   

   I had another call for the same issue, by this time. I went to this user's office and tried all my usual steps, the ones which hadn't worked for the first user; they didn't work here either. I told her I'd be back tomorrow when I had a chance to do some more research.
   

   As I walked away, I thought of the e-mail. "Let me try this one more thing," I said. "I doubt it will work, but…"
   

   I clicked on the big stupid Office button—the source of all menus—and clicked Word Options. There was an item on the list that said "Popular", which I clicked. There, at the bottom of that screen, it said "Personalize your Copy of Microsoft Office", followed by a space for the user's name and a space for the user's initials. I filled them in—Jane Doe, initials JD--clicked OK, and clicked the Acrobat tab to create a PDF file.
   

   
   

   And damn it all –it WORKED. The lack of a stupid NAME and stupid INITIALS was causing a whole myriad of "unexpected error"s across two entirely unrelated applications. If that is not the STUPIDEST, most outstandingly DUMBASSED thing I've ever encountered in my ENTIRE LIFE as a tech-support person…
   

   
   

   I think I need to calm down.
   

   
   

   (But I mean, SERIOUSLY!)
   

   
   

2. "Um, Mr. Gates, sir??"
   

   (sigh) "What is it now, Bob?"
   

   "Got a question. I'm setting up the updater for the new version of Office for the Macin…"
   

   (Turns on him, eyes narrowed)"What did I tell you about saying that name in my almighty presence!"
   

   "Sorry…sorry, Mr. Gates. Anyway, I'm working on Office for…well….you know, that other company's computer….and I've noticed that after they install it, there are like ELEVEN individual updaters they have to run, one at a time. They've got to click on each, then enter their name and password…I was just thinking, couldn't we create a cumulative update? I mean, it would save them time…"
   

   "They don't NEED time. What they NEED…what they NEED is a good LESSON. Eleven individual updates? It's a small, small penalty for their betrayal. Let them suffer."
   

   "Yes sir, Mr. Gates."
   

   
   

I love my job—truly I do—but oh, how I hate Microsoft.

OMGZOICKSBBQWAFFLEPONIES!!!11!!ELEVEN

For the love of all that is good and holy,

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE MAKE HER SHUT UP AND LEEEEAAAVVVEEE?????????

My hai blood preshurez and tenshun heddakes--let me show u them.

More details to follow. Pray for me. :)