The Boss Man

I'm a quick person. Everything about me is fast. I walk fast, I talk fast, I do my work fast, I think fast. I get frustrated with people who cannot think fast. Normally, this doesn't matter. Despite what my husband will say, I do manage to hide my frustrations sometimes, especially at work.



Just when I thought things were getting better between my boss and me, they actually got worse. For a variety of reasons, he lost any respect I may have had for him within the first 2 weeks he was my boss. I mean, c'mon, he can't even remember my job title. At least twice he's threatened to take away a promotion to my OWN job, on the grounds that I am lower level than that. For the record, I do have a promotion coming up, but he doesn't have a say in it. Also, it's a promotion to Project Architect, not a promotion to my current level.



Among other things, he's the slowest person I have ever met. When I'm stressed, I speed up even more than normal; today I was stressed about a deadline I needed to meet at noon. When he took 10 minutes to answer a 1 minute response ("Go ask someone else, I don't know.) I got frustrated and rude. I'm not normally rude to my bosses. It's a bad idea to piss off someone who will evaluate you. On the other hand, I don't want to work the way he does. 10 minutes to answer that he doesn't know the answer is extremely excessive and a waste of both our time.



In response to my rudeness, he hauled me off to the conference room for a "discussion" of our conflict. The discussion turned out to be him yelling at me for being snippy. Ok, ok, I was being snippy. To quote Alanna "If you are going to be rude, do it for a reason and only if it will get you the right results." Unfortunately, these were not the results I wanted. He spent about 20 minutes yelling, including multiple threats to fire me and shaking his finger in my face. (In my face! Really!) Actually, he does not have the ability to fire me. In addition, when I talked to the HR manager, which is the first place I went afterward, it turns out they are actually pleased with my work. Good to know. The HR manager sent me for a walk. Then she talked to both my boss and the department manager.



Anyway, I don't feel the conflict is resolved, but I'm glad I talked to HR about it. This isn't the first time he's had a "private discussion" with me, and I'm sure it won't be the last. At least this way it is being recorded.