My Boss (story)

I wrote this in January 2004 and forgot all about it. It's not finished, and it probably never will be, so here it is, maybe it will amuse someone.

My boss drives me barmy. She tells me to take initiative but when I do she changes things back to the way they were. Without telling me.
She is short and doesn’t have a college degree. For some reason this fact weighs heavy on her mind and she insists on pointing out how people with college degrees are not necessarily all that clever. They lack the experience, she insists. I just shrug and smile, each time a notch less sincerely.

My boss likes to correct my spelling mistakes. She pours over my writing and delights in any fault she can find. Missing articles are her favourite, but she is happy to change the content too.
I wrote something for public release the other week and she rephrased it while I was away. Now people mock me behind my back because they think I wrote it.

Her facial expressions are a thing to behold. I never really know what feeling they betray, but their richness is undeniable. Often, perhaps when tired, My Boss will deliver the most perfect manifestation of a Basset hound. At such times I make Herculean effort not to stare, but it’s hard.

Under the furrowed brow droopy eyes will fix vacuously at some point just behind my left ear. The skin on her cheeks will suddenly lose all elasticity and two sacks of papery skin will hang either side of her face pulling her lower jaw downward. The overall effect is that of a daydreaming Basset hound being told something very important, yet experiencing certain amount of trouble abandoning his reveries.

Sometimes I’d be able to go away, perform a task or two and come back, and My Boss will have only just recovered from her ‘Bessy moment’ (as I now privately refer to them). Experience has made me realise that in her personal universe, thinking is not a task undertaken lightly. Perhaps this is why she often answers my “What shall I do about it, then?” questions with “Whatever you think is right.” Presumably my impatience upsets her and she’d rather I wasn’t around putting pressure on her to come up with an answer, or, even worse, criticise the suggestion she makes.

I am not very good for getting the subtle messages, but I really ought to have got the message when the very first thing she told me upon hiring me was, “I believe it’s inexcusable putting one’s superior on the spot,” right after insisting that this was “a non-hierarchical organisation”.

So I go and do ‘whatever I think is best’, only to find things have inexplicably been altered when I wasn’t looking. Invariably, on investigation, it will transpire My Boss was the one who gave the conflicting instruction. When I ask her about it, she gives me an obviously well practiced look and says, “Well, it needed fixing, it wasn’t right.”

I just sigh and roll my eyes as soon as she isn’t looking.

Long before I came along, My Boss was doing my job as well as hers. Then, the company grew and they needed more people. Before me, two other people did this job but were demoted after two months or less in the role. One of them even had a postgraduate degree to their name. Now, this young woman gets to make drinks for the visitors and run errands for everyone else. She thinks My Boss is fantastic. I guess it’s true that not everyone with college degree is all that clever.