Goodbye Boss Wack

If you are among my legion of fans who check my blog daily for a new post (Hiya, Gumbeauxgal!), you might have noticed I've been AWOL for, like, two months. There's actually a good reason for this: For about two years, I've been dealing with an increasingly hostile situation at work that recently became intolerable. In a nutshell, my boss was an idiot.


Oh, I know what you're thinking. "Oh, come on! It's the same all across corporate America. Everyone's boss is an idiot, and the same problems exist in every company, and you're just a whiner, or this is your very first job."


Ahem. I'm sorry to disillusion you, but this situation was truly so. fucking. special. (Apologies to Radiohead).

Over the last two years, this boss nearly toppled our entire organization. It almost would have been easier to take if Boss Wack were evil. Instead, BW is pathetically unqualified to perform the work expected. And, unfortunately, BW was too incompetent to carry out the very good advice (even specific instructions) of the many employees who wanted to see the organization (and by association, BW) succeed.

As the situation declined over the years, several of BW's employees developed both emotional and physical symptoms of stress, including digestive trouble, chronic migraines, high blood pressure, anxiety, and depression. Of course, our loved ones advised us to simply "leave work at work" and detach our emotions from the office. Unfortunately, we are all highly ethical, committed to our customers, and invested in quality. Our work is too big a part of our lives to be able to compartmentalize in that way.

Numerous complaints to the higher-ups and traditional HR channels resulted in naught . . . until last week.

As of last Friday, BW is no longer our boss. Several of those who remain likened it to getting out of an abusive relationship, because that's what it essentially was. There was obviously no physical abuse, but there was emotional abuse, and many levels of inappropriateness. None of us has experienced anything quite like this before, and we all have many years of experience in corporate America.

So, the tides have turned, the wall has come crashing down, and a bunch of good people are suddenly happy campers with the weight of the world off our shoulders. We don't know exactly what will happen next, but the future is rife with opportunity and hope.

And that means I have my energy for my personal life back again. I can be happy and funny, and, of course, brilliant again. Let the post-athon commence!