Monday, May 17th, 2010
I’m not sure what it is about positions of power that make people lose their minds. They can be normal one day, make them a boss and the next day they’re a douchebag. It’s a mystery to me. I’ve had my share of crappy bosses. Admittedly, my personality doesn’t really mesh well with anyone telling me what to do, but I seem to have had more power trippin’ psycho bosses than your average person.
My boss in Japan was the most social awkward idiot I’ve ever come across. How he ever made it to a managerial position is beyond me. American, from some backwards place in the Southern states, there was nothing this guy wasn’t right about, in his not so humble opinion. Every single member of staff hated his guts. I tried to have as little interaction with him as possible. One day, we had the misfortune to share a lunch break. I tried to read my book while he talked at me for minutes at a time. When I politely told him, I’m reading he said ‘fine, you don’t wanna talk to me, I’ll just play my computer game as loud as possible.’ The reaction of your average four year old. True to his word, he dicked around on his Gameboy, with the volume all the way up for the rest of the lunch break. I went and sat outside to avoid showering him with bitch slaps.
My boss in Toronto, became assistant manager out of pity. He’d applied so many times and failed, they just gave it to him in the end. When the manager went on maternity leave, he was promoted by default when no one else applied for the position as they didn’t want to work with him. An underachiever in every sense (dropped out of university, still smoking weed even though he’s over 30, face like a cobbler’s thumb and the personality of a dish rag, he’s destined for a life of singledom). He clung to the word ‘manager’ because there was nothing else in his life. On one of his days off, I went to a doctor’s appointment first thing in the morning, letting my coworker know I’d be a few minutes late. When my ‘boss’ came back the next day, he called me into a special meeting to inform me that I’d undermined his authority by not asking his permission to go to the doctor’s. I choked on my frappacino and may have actually said the words ‘bitch please!’ out loud.
Eventually, he was transferred. What made his transfer even sweeter was that he was stripped of his managerial role and had to go back to his original salary. He was given the option to quit, but he chose that. He couldn’t even quit with style.
There’ve been many more and it saddens me to say, the women were worse than the men. Women have a ridiculous, school playground attitude to leadership that is just cringeworthy. I’m glad that I no longer have a job where I have to play the game, dance the dance, pretend that I respect someone who wouldn’t be good enough to clean my toilet in another life. I’m not much good at faking it.
Tags: bosses, douchebags, power
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