I Hate My Boss and Here's Why...

I've worked for "Jerry" for nearly a year now, and it's always been a strained relationship. He's a Northwestern/Kellogg grad, and he reaks of that pseudo-entitlement that permeates that organization and seems to infect everyone who attends it. In his soul he knows he's superior to nearly everyone he meets. Truth to tell, he's very smart, and probably very good at his job. Still, the fact that I sit four feet in front of him without even so much as a cloth partition between us is clearly galling to him.

Every now and then "Jerry" will decide that he needs to make an effort to be sociable with me. It's painful for both of us. Still, he's my boss and I guess I appreciate the effort. The other day, however, he told me a story that I think completely typifies who he is.

Several weeks ago, we had a death within the company. Our company is made up of primarily people who've known or worked together in previous companies. The death of this person, while not unexpected, was still a shock. He was very well respected and had many friends and business contacts. "Jerry" mentioned that "Linus" knew that our employee had died, and had not said anything to "Jerry."

"Jerry" wanted to touch base with "Linus," who explained had never really gotten along with "Jerry." "Linus" wasn't one to send gushing e-mail messages, and had actively campaigned against "Jerry" being hired by our company. Naturally, "Jerry" didn't appreciate this. Still, "Linus" is a figure of influence and "Jerry" wants/has to maintain a superficially cordial relationship.

"Jerry" told me that he was particularly annoyed by people who signed their e-mail messages with "Warmest Regards." The qualifier just annoyed him and came across as insincere. He told me that when he wanted to slyly tell someone he held that person in contempt, he'd sign his e-mail messages with "Warmest Regards." As he was telling me this story, he was laughing his ass off.

As he's telling me this story, all I could think was that this was the proof from the horse's mouth that my boss is a passive-agressive asshole.

All I could do was smile.

Redux

Last night I had a nightmare. That's an event, because I never have nightmares. I never dream of monsters coming from the bed or people dying or anything like that. All of my dreams are pleasant, or at the very worst boring.

But last night I dreamed I went back and relived my sophomore year in college. That's the year of my first real regret. But in the dream everyone knew that I was reliving that year and kept coming to me to find out what happened next, and all of the information I gave them was dull stuff. Like: "...and then we had lunch over there..." sort of crap that. All the stuff that people are barely interested in the first time around, let alone reliving.

Still, even after I woke up this morning I was still in the dream. I was plotting on how I would do things differently, what I would say at key moments. So much of what happened in the following five years, if not the rest of my life, stem from a handful of significant moments from that year. I'd recount the details here, but they're not important. They're gone if not forgotten.

It's interesting how something that happened more than twenty years ago can seem more important than anything that happened yesterday.

So, I've decided that for today I'm going to act as if I'd played those key moments differently. I'm going to rewrite history. The moments I'm talking about aren't significant to anyone but me, and the other people involved are no longer part of my life, so I'm just going to pretend they didn't happen the way they actually happened and see how my life would be different.