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!

OMGWTFPOLARBEAR!!1!

If you are a fan of Lost and a fan of funny, you will like this. I command you.

Miss Mouse

You, Miss Mouse, are the young woman who refused to let me in on the jammed freeway entrance with four converging lanes yesterday morning, even though my car was half a length ahead of yours, and you risked scraping the sides of our cars together in your desire to win your car-length of advantage over me in traffic that was not moving.

I will confess to some momentary pettiness on my part. It's true that I had the "courtesy" right-of-way and that I would have had to do a bit of maneuvering to avoid sideswiping the car on my right to let you in safely, but I could have managed it, I'm sure. But your insistent creeping on my left opened up a little hidden pocket of road rage left over from my younger days, abruptly ending my iPod-induced chair dance.

When the car ahead of me moved, I crept up into the space it left. Of course, you did too. I wondered whether I would finally find out what happens if neither driver gives an inch. If we collided, no matter whose fault the crash turned out to be, I would have to talk to you. The prospect was not appealing. Once you pulled up even with me, I looked at you, thinking to confront my nemesis eye-to-eye.

That's when I noticed you are a mouse. Not just because of your mousy hair or nose. Your entire demeanor mewls, "mouse." You felt me looking at you, so you looked down and away to avoid the terrifying gaze of a complete stranger in another car on the freeway. What could I have done to you? Given you a disgusted look? Flipped you the bird? Shaken my fist? I suppose it's possible you believed I was a gun-toting freeway psycho, but that would have meant your insistence on displacing me was suicidal, not just stupid. I rejected the idea.

Then I had my revelation: That car-length advantage was all you have! Not just over me, but at all. If you can't face the driver you're trying to squeeze in front of, whom can you face? What possible challenge could you surmount? Your hunched posture, your nondescript ponytail, and your misunderstanding of the place of denim jackets in a stylish wardrobe conveyed to me everything you don't have. And with that realization, I began to catalogue everything I do have:

• Confidence
• An impact in this world
• A great family
• Many wonderful friends
• An ability to use makeup stylishly and with a sense of whimsy, rather than as obvious compensation for overplucked brows
• Respect
• Good hair
• Nice manners on the freeway (usually)
• An excellent bra
• Talent for developing consistent bulleted lists
• A creative streak that allows me to turn a minor freeway annoyance into a blog entry

So, I stopped. I held up the people behind me. I let the drivers on my right confusedly push past. And finally, you looked at me long enough to see me wave you in. Quickly, you looked back down, pathetically shaking your head as though to indicate you think I'm pathetic. But I basked in my benevolence, knowing I had given Miss Mouse her one opportunity to be a big shot -- by overtaking a stranger's car in stop-and-go traffic.

Five minutes later, when I passed you further up the freeway, I barely noticed because I was so busy chair dancing.