My problem has not been with meanness it’s been with stupidity. I had this guy tell me two days before my wife died, “John, you've been spending too much time at the hospital. It's going to affect your raise next year."  So I'll get 1.8 instead of 2.2%? Who gives a rat’s ass! I'm 25% under market value now. 

This guy is supposed to direct our programs and get new funding. Instead he tries out every new computer management tool that is released. He asked me for my resume. I’m thinking, "Does he know something I don't?" Next week they announce that HR has developed an electronic resume system. Next week I get an email with the message, “a report has been made that you might like to be aware of." it turns out that this boss had reported an improperly stored visor in my LSM area. (That's right ES&H functions; OSHA, etc. have been pushed down onto the employee). Never mind that the employee had gone to the bathroom and I was in another building. It turns out that HR had developed another electronic tool he just had to try out.

This manager walks around making sure important things are done. He fishes aluminum cans out of the trash so they can go into the recycle bin. He even told one employee at lunch he should peel his naval orange pole to pole instead of around the equator. Our company eliminated time cards about fifteen years ago but he has a sign in sheet. He also expects me (not anyone else) to knock on his door and tell him I have arrived even though I have been working for another engineer for the last three months. There is this whole elitist strata going on and I don't have the letters PhD after my name. If I did I could come in naked and go to the bathroom in the office plants and he would not say anything.

We just blew $1500 on office moves because we can’t give up prestigious positions on the first floor, but no one knows if we'll have any money in our accounts after March. We don't have the money for his new laptop every other year or his two trips to France. When he got a $900 desk chair with a Kevlar back we joked he wanted a bulletproof one. We are supposed to get refills and replace the cores of our gel pins when they run out. I’ve pointed out that at $150/hour (not what I'm paid, what they charge the customers for me) If we take the time to change them our $2 pens become $5 pens with our added labor. In the meantime, our main roots pump is dead. Four big furnace systems are down because of it. Do we get a new one? No I scour the resellers for a deal and present him with quotes for rebuilt units. He says let me think about it. About two months later he tries to place an order and wonder of wonders all the units are sold. We can repeat this process two or three more times spending enough money to buy a new unit. Every time we are ready to make a decision he gets cold feet and checks again to see if he can get something cheaper. We need to concentrate all our efforts on things that only we can do, make a decision, and go foreword.