The American Boss (REDUX)

Monday, August 07, 2006

(reprinted with permission from The Old 3rd Movement Rant & Reckon Blog)


The American Boss
by: J. Graeme

I'm going to shamelessly complain for a while. I think I’ve earned the right. Maybe you have too? Read on and find out.

Due to the potential for public embarrassment and prosecution, sexual harassment, as it was known in its heyday, is on the decline… rapidly. In its place we have seen the rise of a new demented typical American Boss. He’s ugly. He’s mean. He’s aggressive. He’s everywhere. He is the abuser you have come to know and love.

I have already had several of these bosses in my 10+ years of being out in the formal workplace. Oh, lucky me!

The first master of mistreatment took the form of a gruff old shipyard worker turned bastard-ass college facilities department painter. He liked to yell and scream and make up excuses for why he couldn’t read. He is only boss I have ever had that I actually thought he might physically abuse me. He didn’t. He chose… wisely. Instead, he took out his excess aggression on his god-knows-how-old partner in crime. That poor bastard ended up with heart disease, cancer and a colostomy bag. He’s probably dead by now. The nice thing was that this particular boss and his little crony had furnished their houses with items and money all stolen from the college itself. Nice touch.

The second evil boss was a world-class jerk stuck in the recesses of his failing ego and sexual deprivation. Terrifyingly enough, people actually trusted him with their money. He got off on pretending to yell and swear at people while he had the phone muted. He loved to make fun of me because he knew I had to take it… I had no choice. I needed the money. He actually used to say that to me.

Next, I found myself mixed up an extreme right-wing overweight man whose personal life was crumbling all around him. In fact, his terrible demeanor earned him a first class ticket to Divorce Land! At one time, these guys were partners. However, an imp can’t partner with fiend. It’s doomed from the start… as they were.

After those two, there were a series of late-90’s business egomaniacs who, because they had started a dot com here or a tech company there and captured some investment dollars from the suckers who bent over and took it like real champions, thought they were the greatest things on Earth. They were really cocky. None of them could see the world past their own noses and they all ended up with a failed business plan, a divorce or, no doubt, an STD. I watched their butts get kissed more than a lottery winner on payday. It was sickening.

Soon after that run, I had a repressed homosexual who took out his aggressions by demanding that I complete silly and meaningless tasks. Next, I enjoyed the oversight of a hardcore metrosexual who loved to pick on my apparent lack of fashion sense by insulting me in front of other people. The sad part was that he never understood that you don’t crap on the people that do your work for you... especially when you pay them far below their actual worth. He’ll end up getting pegged in a unisex bathroom a trendy New York nightclub someday. I’d put money on that.

Brace yourself for this next one. He is the case-in-point for this article. Two years ago, I had a boss that was a big burly freak of a man. A former hockey player and master of building and destroying small companies, he calls Viagara “The Heat” and looks like a cross between a cokehead and a bulldog. He has a new girlfriend and gets off on having sex with her while her kids are in the house and his friends listen in on the speakerphone (she has no idea, of course.) He treated me like his best friend one minute and his own personal bitch the next. Among his many daily explicit shockers, he told me the following:

a) He estimates he had spent over $100,000 on prostitutes in the past 17 years. (note: he was married for 17 years and he was once extremely mad at me because I refused to have sex with a prostitute in NYC while he and the VP of Sales watched.)
b) Several times, he told me that if during sex “you make a woman piss on your face, you own her forever.” That one made me shudder.
c) While married to another woman, he sodomized his neighbor with the flag pole in his office and then fucked her on the flag itself. God bless America!
d) When he was younger, he used to drink vomit, urine and eat feces for money. I didn’t believe him until he had a friend unequivocally confirm it as true. I’m not sure if I was supposed to be scared or impressed by that one. (by the way, he was recently diagnosed with a sever case of diverticulitis.)
e) I could go on and on and on and you simply wouldn’t believe it.

And then we come to my last boss. The worst. It gets WORSE you might ask? Yes, it does. However, let me start by saying that I have no issues with female authority. My current boss is a woman and she is fantastic. I love this job. I love my boss. I love this company. Etc. etc. etc.

But, my last boss… oh god, she was so evil. She was the biggest, nastiest life destroying mean spirited bitch the world has ever seen. I mean it. I’m a pretty tough guy and, for reference, I am 6’4” tall, I weigh 265lbs and I can be extremely intimidating. But, my god, one day this bitch reduced me to tears because I just couldn’t take her anger management disorder anymore. She mentally beat me and beat me and beat me until I cracked. I told her I was going to crack and then I cracked. It was ugly. I cried like a baby.

Check this out: she’s had a 200% employee turnover rate in her department in 2 years because people can’t deal with her unending shit.

Finally, after I realized that my personal life was crumbling, the medications and therapy weren’t helping, I quit. With a very pregnant wife, no job prospects and nothing lined up whatsoever, I walked in, slapped down a letter of resignation, told them I wanted two months salary and benefits (in exchange for me NOT suing for verbal assault in the workplace) and that my last day would be that following Friday. Then, I had another one of my employees quit along with me. Fuck her. FUCK. HER. The sense of relief I felt on that Friday afternoon was among the greatest sensations I have ever felt.

Honestly, I really can deal with all of this. Sure, it frustrates me from time to time, and can even require drastic measures to be taken, but it’s not a big deal to me, personally. What I can’t deal with is being treated like a child. Now, bear in mind that I know many people who have to deal with this kind of typical garbage or something along the lines of “people acting like idiots in the workplace.”

My guess is that, at one time or another, you too have dealt with this nonsense.

You know, I have a pretty sold resume for my amount of education and exposure to the professional world. Funny enough, most of my experience, which helped me to literally land my dream job and put me on a successful career path, is owed to these very people. Of course, my wife and family will tell me that everything I have is all because of me, but I know better. All I did was to learn how to appease these bosses long enough to get what I wanted. I accumulated a vast amount of knowledge and “knowledge is power!”

It had its price, and I paid it… and then some.

What I am trying to say is that The American Boss spews out abuse and nonsense that we’re expected to arrange into useable pieces of data and instruction and, in turn, we learn how to navigate through the pile of drivel that is the New World Workplace. I have a borderline useless college degree and yet, I am currently running the marketing organization for a $110MM segment of a $1B public company. I have learned to suck in knowledge faster than a broken hearted teenager swilling booze on a hot summer’s night.

So, what’s the point? Well, if you hear words like loyalty, trust, raise and bonus being tossed around your office when the door is shut and your boss is talking to you one-on-one (especially if this has happened several times in a row and nothing ever comes of it), I would take a long hard look at where you are and think about moving on… soon. In the meantime, get as many free lunches, expensed cocktails and valuable working knowledge as you can and then go get a higher paying job somewhere else. Don’t make a big deal about it. Just learn from the past and move on. After that, call me and let’s get good and drunk! (And then I’ll get you a fantastic job. Trust me, I know that game better than anyone.)

After all, we deserve it more than they do. Right? Hell yeah we do.

Why? Because, we’re an entire generation of lost souls who are forced to report to soulless losers, and we have seemingly no choice but to keep on keeping on. Well, times are changing and I believe that the revolution we’ve all been waiting for is right on the horizon.

You can see when you close your eyes at night and picture a better life.

Now, get back to work.