My boss is the biggest pain in the ass

My boss is the biggest pain in ass. Well, that’s the problem, he’s not really my boss. He’s my punk-ass supervisor. My real boss hired Beamer because he was kinda spineless and we could all talk him into doing anything. So he hired Beamer as an enforcer.

This morning I got to work, and while I was checking my email, Beamer wandered in and asked what I was doing, and then told me he was worried that I had been there for 45 minutes and he hadn’t seen me do any work yet.

Later in the day he asks me about my “attitude, lately.” Fuck. Well if you’d quit giving me shit jobs to do, I’d quit having an attitude.

Here’s the real problem, though. I can’t actually get mad at him for being on a power trip, because even though he _is_ on a power trip, he’s technically right.

Tech workers on the whole have a casual attitude towards work. Tech teams tend to be low-key. No one really cares how you work or when you work so long as the important shit gets done. A friend of mine explained that tech workers do an average of four hours work for every eight hour shift. I disagree. I think it’s closer to 20 minutes, but the point remains. Tech workers tend to have an expectation of a certain amount of freedom to goof off, so long as they get their work done.

So in comes Big-Man-Beamer, with his expectations that I will do eight hours of work in an eight hour shift, and not take my lunch break the instant I come on shift, even if I am coming on shift during lunchtime, and demanding that I not groan and roll my eyes when he gives me shit jobs to do.

These expectations are fine in a normal job. They’re what management types like Beamer are trained to have, and in most jobs they work out fine.

So my problem is that I can’t expect to tell Beamer to lay off me because as far as he’s concerned, my saying that means that I’m not meeting expectations, and I have every reason to expect that he would fire me, since he already fired my buddy for basically the same thing.

I don’t want to get fired. I’m moving in three-four months, and this is a sweet job (except for Beamer). I’m making decent money and I can pick my hours and the work is easy. If I get fired, I’d have to find a different shit job, with lower pay just so that I could work for the next few months before I move. That would be a dumb move. The smart thing is to keep this job.

All my tech friends are telling me to stand up for myself to Beamer. That’s easy for them to say, though, since they all have programming skills and can get a better-paying job with lower expectations at the drop of a hat. I’m just a web designer. I can’t necessarily do that.

I have every reason to expect that standing up to Beamer would cost me my job. I hate the way he acts, but at the same time, technically what he demands isn’t unreasonable from a job, it’s just that most tech jobs have lower expectations, and that won’t hold up (”we have higher expectations now. that kind of behavior is no longer acceptable,” I can hear him say. CRUNCH go his teeth as I hit him in the face with his fancy telephone with all the buttons. “YOU are no longer acceptable!” I cleverly retort, as I kick his broken body).

aaaargh. Fucking Beamer.

:: hatelife is your supervisor expecting you to do your job ::

Edit - 9/8/2008: Wow, talk about cringe-inducing. I’m shocked I didn’t get fired with this attitude. I know if I had some college kid working for me today who acted like this, I’d kick his ass to the curb. I’m leaving the post up as a reminder to myself not to be a dick.