People on this base need to get off their damned high horse.
Let me lay out what happened:
One of the women in my office received a phone call from her counterpart in another department, asking for us to pass around an envelope for the retirement of a worker (who will go unnamed). She stood in the middle of the office and announced so much.
Now, keep in mind that this is a large naval base - around 5,000 people work here, counting the contractors (such as myself). Still, in almost 2 1/2 years here, I feel like I have a pretty good idea of who a lot of the movers and shakers are, who not to cross and who to go to get something done. And this gentleman's name was one I had never heard before.
Still, the guy's retiring, so the moment shouldn't pass without some recognition, right? 30+ years in the federal service, probably making $30-$35 an hour for doing very little. (Just hazarding a guess; he might be one of the poor grunts who makes only $27 an hour. Like I said, I'd never heard the guy's name before.)
Taking all of this into account, I asked if anyone had change for a dollar.
*****
Next thing I know, I'm being called into Doom's office. He told me not to make remarks of that nature "because some people are sensitive to things like that."
He then told me to consider myself reprimanded.
I said, "Yeah, but did you get a chuckle out of it?"
He said yes, then snorted as I walked out of his office. He said, "You kinda said what I was thinking, but you still shouldn't have said it."
Which is pretty unbelievable, really, given his weakness for making comments about my comparative lack of hair. (Which happened again last Friday. Some people are sensitive to things like that, too, you prick.)
But I digress. I'm just saying that if a guy is apparently entitled to make $25-$35 an hour through a cushy federal job and retire with a pretty nice pension, then I'm entitled to make an offhand comment about needing change for a dollar to donate for a retirement gift for some fucker I've never heard of.
(Which, actually, as a contractor, I probably shouldn't do anyway, since it crosses some sort of ethical line that forbids things of that nature. The feds, as well as my employer, are touchy about crap like that.)
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
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I'm only now starting to piece together that you hate your boss. Luckily I haven't been in that situation in a while, as high school principals, or at least the ones I've worked for, tend to stay out of the line of fire by being generally elusive and shadowy.
ReplyDeleteMy current boss is, on the whole, fairly decent, but has some annoying traits. For instance:
1. How he treats you depends on his mood. If you catch him in a bad mood and ask him an innocent question, he'll bite your head off or scowl and ignore you.
2. He asks questions to appear interested, but actually isn't. Now, I know this is true of 99% of us, but he's really obvious about it. He'll ask the question, then, as you answer he'll A) stare into the middle distance, B) interrupt you with something that he wants to say that may or may not be relevant, or C) turns around and starts walking away. C is especially useful when he is confronted with something that is too complex for him to immediately understand, which is often.
3. A, B, and C also occur when you actually have something fairly urgent to talk to him about. I've learned to either e-mail him (to which he invariably answers, "THAT IS FINE") or else just let the issue drop, but there are certain feisty female teachers who keep thrashing against the brick wall of his skull. They think he doesn't take them seriously because they're women, but really, he doesn't take anyone seriously that he doesn't have to. That's the privilege of being the boss.
Yeah. He's a bit of a fucker, ol' Doom is. #1 on your list above is part of his M.O. #2 happens on occasion as well. People who work for him actively wish for his death - I'm not kidding; they'll say things like, "I hope he dies in a car wreck tonight," or "I hope he drowns on his fishing trip." And they are serious.
ReplyDeleteI'm past the point where I say, "That's awful, don't say things like that." He was having chest pains the other day - I guess it just ended up being a muscle spasm, but I was rooting for an embolism. Which is why I need to depart from there post-haste. I don't like that about myself, thinking those things.