You're Not The Boss Of Me

Sometimes the days at work stretch out before me endlessly and I cannot wait for a vacation (sometime next month or the beginning of August). Most of this restlessness is due to the ebb and flow of my job. I work at a religious institution/high school and during busy times (registration, graduation, parents’ weekend), there is so much activity that there is barely time to breathe (though I do work respiration into my schedule, as it seems important), let alone get bored. Then, there are other times, weeks at a time where there are regular activities (weekly announcements, weekly letters, phone calls to make and return) that only seem to occupy a few hours of my whole day. Then, I have too much time to reflect on things I could be doing at home, messes that need to be cleaned, child who needs to be taken care of.
Adding to the confusion of my days is the inescapable fact that my boss is . . . difficult. There really isn’t any other way to describe it. Not a funny kind of difficult like Michael Scott or David Brent, but annoyingly difficult. I have had a few different jobs and very different bosses, so maybe I don’t really know when a boss is being bossy and when he/she is just being difficult. I have found him difficult since the beginning of my tenure here, but after getting pregnant, have found him to be impossible at times. For example, I told him as soon as I knew that I was pregnant, approximately when I would need maternity leave, etc. For a long time, he didn’t say anything. Then, suddenly he had to go out of town for a conference a couple weeks ago. He called from an airport in Detroit and wanted me to let him know exactly when I would be taking leave. Of course I don’t know – I can only make a guess, but he decided that he wanted to go over the entire fall/winter schedule with me over the phone, even though we see each other every work day and had plenty of opportunity to actually do that face to face. But, whatever. Whenever he is out of town, he always tells me to call his wife to let her know that he has made it safely. Now, he has a cell phone with him, but he always chooses to have me call his wife. Likewise, she will call and ask to leave a message for her husband to call her, even if he is sitting in his office. She says she doesn't want to bother him.
Then, last week I was making copies in our tiny conference area between my office and his. I managed to drop my copies behind the copier as he was talking to me. So, I had to move the copier, but still couldn’t reach the copies without also moving his refrigerator. In order to move the refrigerator, I had to move the conference table – all while my boss was still standing there talking to me. Of course once I got behind the copier to retrieve the papers, I got stuck back there, the copier wedged against the refrigerator. As I attempted to push my very obviously pregnant self out, he walked closer to me, handed me a pile of papers and said “These need to go in my tax file.” Then, even though he had watched me through this whole ordeal, he proceeded to ask “Did you drop something back there?” “No,” I replied. “Just felt like moving really heavy furniture by myself.” The phone then started ringing and he looked at me. I just looked back and he actually answered the call himself. It took some time for me to work my way out and replace all the furniture.
Granted, I am not a model employee. Many days I am not entirely sure what I am doing. I am sarcastic and occasionally insubordinate. I know this and am not proud of it. I am not a consummate professional, but I do come into work every day, get work done and work well with my coworkers. What drives me crazy more than anything is having two or three hours of downtime in the afternoon, then 15 minutes before the end of the day, my boss will appear at my desk with a project that has to be done right away. Twice I told him verbally that I had a doctor’s appointment this past Tuesday and I also did a memo so he would have something in writing. Sure enough, at 2:15, fifteen minutes before I need to leave for my appointment, he came to my desk. “This needs to be done right away,” he said. “You do know that I am leaving at 2:30,” I reminded him. So, we began working on the project (trying to figure out grade point averages for several students’ past four years – in short, not a fifteen minute project.) At 2:30, I told him again I needed to leave. He replied “We’re almost done.” That was it. I cried. Frustration + hormones = crying fit in front of my boss. It was not the first time that I cried in front of him either. Still, it was very embarrassing. A coworker who works in the building behind mine recommends just affecting an I-don’t-care attitude and not taking him too seriously. Of course, she was offered the job to work directly under my boss when the former employee quit, but she declined that job, even though it was more money. That should have told me something.
Just a frustrating situation and I really need to vent about it. The next two weeks will be awful and stressful because of impending graduation (yes, graduation is really this late into summer), but after that, things will calm down. At least I hope so.