Bosses

Post Reply New Topic

I'd like to get people's opinions on a few questions:

How is your relationship with your boss?

Does anyone have any tips for dealing with difficult situations?

Does anyone have people reporting to them? If so, what's it like?

I'll start. My relationship with my current boss is good, we have a lot of mutual respect, and I have enough space to get my work done. The most frustrating situations for me tend to be when a boss likes to micromanage. In those situations, I try to wall off at least some of my areas of responsibility, so that I'm responsible for the final result, not the intermediate steps. That doesn't always work though, so any tips are appreciated.

I've had a couple people report to me during a short transition period. It was a pretty stressful period for me. Our group's reputation was very bad at the time. I didn't like the work I was doing. The hardest part for me was reconciling the external expectations of our group with what we were able to get done. I had a good relationship with the people working for me though (at least I like to think so :-p).

q. how is my relationship with my boss?
a. tolerable. he tells other people that he can not do his job without me and he has fired people for messing with me.

q. do i have any tips for dealing with difficult situations?
a. unless it is an immediate and direct life-threatening situation it is not worth being involved. walk away from stressors.

q. do i have people reporting to me?
a. i have had five assistants in the last ten years.

q. what is it like (to have assistants)?
a. each one eventually believed that he or she did not have to take orders from me. all but the last one was fired or quit. the current one has stopped listening to me and is sucking up to my boss. he will not last much longer.

Thanks for replying, Mark.

Your work situation sounds pretty good.

I have a hard time walking away from stressors. I can force myself to avoid 95% of the conflicts that aren't productive. That still leaves the 5%...

I just saw this link on the stickied thread today: http://www.heartless-bitches.com/bi/bit ... un06.shtml. That's going into my favorites.

Most of my bosses and supervisors have been quite good. One or two I strongly suspected of being AS themselves.

I've only had two that I've ever had real trouble with. One was just a jackass, who couldn't be bothered to do his own job most of the time, spent much of his day playing games instead of working, and was well-known in the company for his temper and attitude problem. The other was okay professionally, but was way too much of a frat-boy type, and didn't care for "freaks". It never became a serious conflict; but it made working with him uncomfortable to say the least. Particularly when he decided to enforce appearance and "appropriate behaviour" policies very selectively (as in, only on me, not on anyone else in the department, many of whom looked and acted the same as I did). But it never went so far as to affect my ability to do my job, and he definitely appreciated and commended me on the quality of my work.