Dealing with an Aging, Senile Boss
Jan 24, 2009 18:26:53 GMT -5
Post by Mikey on Jan 24, 2009 18:26:53 GMT -5
I am at my wit's end with my boss and I am crying out for help, because I'm in a really awkward spot. I'm simply hoping someone here has been in the unfortunate place I am currently sitting in.
Most of you know I manage a toll bridge. I have been working under the same boss for seven years now. For the first five of those years, we made a pretty good team, having run the gauntlet of about every kind of situation a small business can see: record setting profits, bad P.R., successful major equipment upgrade, faulty IT work, sexual harassment within the organization, racial tension, deaths in the family, and the current broad issue, the alienation of our customer base via downright shitty decision making from up top. We've seen a lot together - in some ways, we're no different than an old married couple. I look at the man almost like a second father, as he's helped see me thru some really hard times. He is a retired Air Force colonel, former Thunderbird pilot, Vietnam vet - I'd put him right there along with my late grandfather as one of the smartest men I've ever known.
But he's 72 and he's losing his mind. And I don't know what to do about it. He drives me absolutely crazy with some of the most trivial and dumbfuck shit, and every time he screws something up - which has been often in the last six to twelve months - I clean up the mess every time.
I rarely have a day off when I don't get a phone call or five from him. He doesn't understand our new toll system, where to find things, how to correct errors, etc. Hell, there was a day last week where I got two separate calls from him because 1-he didn't know how to make numbers add up automatically (read: the SUM function) in Excel and 2-he didn't know how to fix line spacing in Word. (I was just going over my cell phone records, and from October thru December, I received 63 calls from work. Keep in mind, I'm there 5 days a week, so I don't get calls then. That's 63 calls on roughly 20 days off.
Random screwups such as the bitchy ass lady who wrote us a bad check: regular customer who hates me for no adequately explored reason. She wrote a bad $50 check last month, so we have to collect that, plus the $30 NSF fee for $80. The boss mails her a letter saying as such. She comes in Friday with $60, tells me that's what she was told. I have a copy of the check saying otherwise - sure enough, he typed the wrong amount down on the letter. We had to eat the difference, and I had to eat crow over it.
He has completely overblown - and thus, intensified - a night shift problem in the last four months. In the 6+ years I've been in the office, I'd had to come out and cover a night shift ONCE. Since August, EIGHT TIMES, and likely a ninth tonight... all because he has ZERO perspective on actually covering the shift. he's worried about "employee morale" and "company poison," as if waiting til next week to can a guy is going to mean certain destruction of the facility. The man overreacts to EVERYTHING now - something happens, he wants me to drop everything instantly and work on the problem de'jour...
...and making sure to take 20 minutes to tell me why it's a problem, how "we" can fix it, why we should fix it, when we need to fix it by, and on and on and on. I have NEVER met someone who loves to hear themselves talk more than this man. If he posted here at Pun's, he'd make Lucky seem to be posting one liners in contrast. Oh, making sure to use four and five syllable words, too. He will ALWAYS take 4 or 5 times the amount of time necessary to make a point. This is the most annoying thing of all.
His boss, the CEO, doesn't see it because he's based out of Detroit and sees him once a month, communicating primarily via e-mail, which the boss will take two hours cranking out a nine paragraph e-mail. According to everyone I talk to, the CEO is very high on me, and the topic of retirement was brought up in a meeting last month, to which my boss said had been bumped back due to the economy. He told me years ago that he planned on retiring this spring, he's now saying it probably won't even be next spring.
I'm not upset because I feel like he's holding my job (even if I KNOW I could do a better and far more efficient job then he can right now). I don't plan on hanging around long anyway after I get my degree in December - or next May, whenever. But the man is making life miserable for me when there's no real reason for it to be as such if necessary changes were made.
I have NO clue as to how to handle this. I WANT to go to the CEO, sit down, and explain the situation. I have numerous colleagues, employees, even customers, who can back me up on this. The consensus across the board here locally is that it's time for him to go. But nobody really knows how to press the issue. I'm ready to get the ball rolling because this thing affects me more than anyone else in the company.
The stress level via work is greater now than its ever been before.
Most of you know I manage a toll bridge. I have been working under the same boss for seven years now. For the first five of those years, we made a pretty good team, having run the gauntlet of about every kind of situation a small business can see: record setting profits, bad P.R., successful major equipment upgrade, faulty IT work, sexual harassment within the organization, racial tension, deaths in the family, and the current broad issue, the alienation of our customer base via downright shitty decision making from up top. We've seen a lot together - in some ways, we're no different than an old married couple. I look at the man almost like a second father, as he's helped see me thru some really hard times. He is a retired Air Force colonel, former Thunderbird pilot, Vietnam vet - I'd put him right there along with my late grandfather as one of the smartest men I've ever known.
But he's 72 and he's losing his mind. And I don't know what to do about it. He drives me absolutely crazy with some of the most trivial and dumbfuck shit, and every time he screws something up - which has been often in the last six to twelve months - I clean up the mess every time.
I rarely have a day off when I don't get a phone call or five from him. He doesn't understand our new toll system, where to find things, how to correct errors, etc. Hell, there was a day last week where I got two separate calls from him because 1-he didn't know how to make numbers add up automatically (read: the SUM function) in Excel and 2-he didn't know how to fix line spacing in Word. (I was just going over my cell phone records, and from October thru December, I received 63 calls from work. Keep in mind, I'm there 5 days a week, so I don't get calls then. That's 63 calls on roughly 20 days off.
Random screwups such as the bitchy ass lady who wrote us a bad check: regular customer who hates me for no adequately explored reason. She wrote a bad $50 check last month, so we have to collect that, plus the $30 NSF fee for $80. The boss mails her a letter saying as such. She comes in Friday with $60, tells me that's what she was told. I have a copy of the check saying otherwise - sure enough, he typed the wrong amount down on the letter. We had to eat the difference, and I had to eat crow over it.
He has completely overblown - and thus, intensified - a night shift problem in the last four months. In the 6+ years I've been in the office, I'd had to come out and cover a night shift ONCE. Since August, EIGHT TIMES, and likely a ninth tonight... all because he has ZERO perspective on actually covering the shift. he's worried about "employee morale" and "company poison," as if waiting til next week to can a guy is going to mean certain destruction of the facility. The man overreacts to EVERYTHING now - something happens, he wants me to drop everything instantly and work on the problem de'jour...
...and making sure to take 20 minutes to tell me why it's a problem, how "we" can fix it, why we should fix it, when we need to fix it by, and on and on and on. I have NEVER met someone who loves to hear themselves talk more than this man. If he posted here at Pun's, he'd make Lucky seem to be posting one liners in contrast. Oh, making sure to use four and five syllable words, too. He will ALWAYS take 4 or 5 times the amount of time necessary to make a point. This is the most annoying thing of all.
His boss, the CEO, doesn't see it because he's based out of Detroit and sees him once a month, communicating primarily via e-mail, which the boss will take two hours cranking out a nine paragraph e-mail. According to everyone I talk to, the CEO is very high on me, and the topic of retirement was brought up in a meeting last month, to which my boss said had been bumped back due to the economy. He told me years ago that he planned on retiring this spring, he's now saying it probably won't even be next spring.
I'm not upset because I feel like he's holding my job (even if I KNOW I could do a better and far more efficient job then he can right now). I don't plan on hanging around long anyway after I get my degree in December - or next May, whenever. But the man is making life miserable for me when there's no real reason for it to be as such if necessary changes were made.
I have NO clue as to how to handle this. I WANT to go to the CEO, sit down, and explain the situation. I have numerous colleagues, employees, even customers, who can back me up on this. The consensus across the board here locally is that it's time for him to go. But nobody really knows how to press the issue. I'm ready to get the ball rolling because this thing affects me more than anyone else in the company.
The stress level via work is greater now than its ever been before.