So, how 'bout this weather?

I am hesitant to turn this blog into anything that resembles the foibles and complaints of modern society as a whole. For instance, I’m not going to write about the awfulness of the tax code, or being behind on bills, or the latest calamity put forth by the ACLU, or how dumb my NCAA bracket turned out, or the latest bad beat I took at the poker table. I’m even less interested in writing about them than you are in reading about them, and I know that your interest level in reading such things ranks somewhere between “unanesthesized root canal” and “boiling oil enema.” Besides, there are plenty of jackasses out there who will write e-mails or post blog entries or talk around the water cooler, thinking they’ve struck a nerve by kvetching about same (or many other things). It’s all very trite, and highly irrelevant to everyone except for the person doing the bitching, who is more interested in hearing himself talk and trying to earn someone’s sympathy than in keeping anyone else’s interest. Long story short, I try to write about things that I think you’ll care about reading and keep coming back to read more about.

In adhering to this rule, I also try to avoid writing about bad bosses. Most of us have worked for someone who we thought fit to a T the dictionary’s definition of “retarded,” or at the very least, “mouth-breather.” They’re really a dime a dozen, but for the most part, they’re not as bad as we make them out to be. The Dilbertization of corporate America – that is to say, the feeling that we are smarter than and superior in all respects to our superiors – is something that really annoys me. I think there’s a reason that a lot of these genii haven’t advanced to a level somewhere above themselves, whether it’s to a supervisory position or to CFO – I’m sure you know that you can do the job better than the chimpanzee with the corner office, and you know this solely because you haven’t considered the constraints involved and all the people to whom you would have to answer, whether it’s stockholders or four other bosses that the position has a dotted line to. (This isn't the case in all situations, but I would venture that it's the case in at least one.)

Are there bad people in business? Of course there are! There are unscrupulous, unethical, unsavory, just plain awful people in business who do their best to get ahead by stepping on your head – just as there are in every walk of life. There are those types of people in business … and religion … and sports … and politics … and liberal activism … and entertainment (but I repeat myself!).

To a person, all of my bosses have been very good, or at least mildly competent in some respects, and have been generally pleasant to work for. I’ve never worked for anyone who I thought was the product of a drunken tryst between Satan, Hitler and bin Laden. No, maybe I wouldn’t want to go have a beer with some of them after work – doesn’t make them bad people.

All that being said: I need to vent for just a moment. I work for, though am not employed by, a boss with whom this conversation would not be out of the ordinary should it ever happen:

Me: “O Fearless Leader, I impaled my head on a rusty metal spike over the weekend; the wound got infected and I have tetanus in my brain. The doctors say I have 18 hours to live.”

Fearless Leader: “You think you’ve got it bad? I hit my funny bone on the coffee table this weekend, and it hurt!”

Or:

Me: “O Fearless Leader, a meteor hit my house last night while I was in town, leaving my 3 acres a steaming crater. My family’s vaporized, everything I own is gone, and I’ve dug out a hole in the side of the crater to live out the rest of my days. Oh, and it might have been radioactive, the meteor … I think I feel myself mutating right now … oh, there went my torso.”

Fearless Leader: “That’s nothing! I had a gallon of milk in my fridge a few months ago that was a couple of days past its expiration date, and before I poured it out, I took a whiff of it – man, it smelled awful!”

Yep, he’s one of those people for whom conversations with other people are a constant game of “I Can Top That,” for whom every minor incident is a personal tragedy on par with the Hindenburg disaster. Oh well – for some people, sympathy is like crack, and they ache, yearn, need to gain a sympathetic ear about something. I confess to being guilty of enabling him; I can tell a person to "suck it up!" in print, but not really in person. (Hypocrite! I know.)

My other quibble with ol’ Fearless is with the fact that the verbal jabs and snipes tend to get a little personal – specifically, with the fact that I don’t have as much hair on my head as a man my age should otherwise have. This is something I hear about on average of three times a week from him, but it’s picked up more as of late.

Hey, I'm a good sport. I don’t have a problem with it … once. Even twice. OK, I get it, ha ha, I’m losing my hair. Good stuff, sir – that’s classic! Thank God I’m not getting chemotherapy, huh? Hee. I love refined humor like that. Take my wife, please. Rectum, damn near killed ‘em. The world’s smartest man just jumped out of the plane with my knapsack, et cetera, ad infinitum, altius mobius veritas.

But the constant picking and sniping gets old. Quickly. I’m just afraid I’m going to come back one of these days with something along the lines of, “Shut up, Fatty, your son’s adopted! What’s the matter, were you shooting blanks? Or are you just incapable of an erection? They make drugs for that, you know. VIAGRA! HA! HA! HA! I said ‘Viagra’!”

So, anyone got any other “bad boss” stories? Cause I just love hearing them! Post them to the comments section, plus any stories about your three 10s getting rivered by an inside straight draw. I’ll take the best ones and ignore them.

That is all.