My Boss, My (almost) Nemesis

Not too long ago, I loved my job … Well, loved is probably a bit over the top, but I was definitely happy. I mean, it hasn’t all been wine and roses the last three and a half years, but it’s been pretty damn good. If it weren’t for the issue of being underpaid … I could have easily seen myself living out the rest of my career years there. Well, that’s probably a bit over the top too, but you get it … I liked my job (the keyword here folks is liked).

So, you are probably wondering what I do? Well, I’m an editor for a magazine. Not one you probably ever read, but it’s still a bona fide magazine job, which is hard to come by with the lack of formal job experience I had at the time. Beyond that, I can’t say much about my job as I want to be able to dish freely without the fear of being fired … For as miserable as I am now, brotha’s still gotta eat. Know what I mean?

So how did my job go from hero to zero in one fail swoop? Two words: new boss.

I knew it was coming, in fact, I knew for quite some time as my ex-boss made his intentions clear a year before he left, and in that time I made my anxieties quite clear to him as well. (I tend to be a bit of a worrier by nature.) I tried to assuage my anxieties; I assured myself I was being unrealistically pessimistic and that as long as my ex-boss had a say in the matter that his successor was no one to fear. Towards the end, I even convinced myself that having a new boss would be a good thing; in fact, a new boss could really come and shape the ship where the ship needed shape and a new boss could teach me new things, and well, change is good, right? … and then came the new boss, and with him went my hopes … and job satisfaction.

Ok, ok, it could be worse … in fact, one of my former coworkers that just left for a PR job now has a boss that is the archetype for “worst-case-scenario.” I mean as much as my new boss sucks I never, much like my ex-coworker, got an e mail from him telling me to not use the bathroom when clients are in the office nor has he ever attempted to read and then quote from my personal e mails. So, yeah, my boss sucks, but it could be worse. Unfortunately, could be worse doesn’t get rid of the knots in my stomach or the nasty tension headache he caused me the other day. And, well, could be worse doesn’t get rid of the fact that he sucks … hard.

How does he suck, you may be wondering ??? Well, first let me explain a bit more (without revealing too much) about where I work and what my ex-boss was like. I work for a pretty small company, meaning if one of the sales guy in the other corner of our office is talking, I can usually hear him. Ok, he is pretty loud (come on, he’s a sales guy … isn’t that a job prerequisite?), but still, you get the point–small company. Not only is it a small company, but it is a family-owned company, which is run by a brother-sister team. (I am sure you can imagine what that dynamic is like.) I could write a blog about that dynamic alone. Anyway … overall, my work environment is pretty laid back. Meaning, no one questions me and I don’t feel restricted. As relaxed as my company is take that and cube it and multiply it by one million and there you have my ex-boss. Now, don’t get me wrong, just because he is laid back doesn’t mean he was lazy or had a loose sense of quality. Quite the opposite. On top of that, I learned a lot from him and he instilled in me a sense of integrity for the magazine. Bottom line, he was someone I enjoyed working with and for, someone I liked, and someone I respected, which is important in a tight-knit editorial team of three. Personality is king … although the last associate editor taught me otherwise, but that’s for another post. Fortunately, the current associate editor hates our new boss just as much as I do. Thanks to him, this last month with professor pain-in-the-ass has been made bearable, and after the initial frustration ebbs–comical.

So, back to how my boss sucks … Well, the only way to really explain how he sucks is to show you how he sucks, and well, that would make for an unbearably long blog post. So, over the course of Office Tells I will parse out daily anecdotes from the present and from the past (I have some good ones … too good to not share). And, I’m not only going to bitch about my boss … there are plenty of daily office shenanigans that have nothing to do with him that make for a great read. I’ve always thought that my office is the stuff that reality tv shows and tell-all blogs were made of, it just took a little extra incentive, namely an unbelievably shitty boss, to throw some fire under my ass. So, while my job satisfaction has gone down, my entertainment fodder quotient has gone up. Not the trade off I wanted, but I’ll work with it.

Also, I don’t want Office Tells to be all about me … I want this to be a place where others like me can anonymously share their thoughts about their unbearable bosses and ridiculous workplace antics. So, vent away!

I’ll tell you mine, you tell me yours.

(Oh, did I mention my boss bares a striking resemblance to G Gordon Liddy, just saying.)