[Work Rant] My awesome boss is leaving

Part of me doesn't know why I bother making a thread about this. I guess it's just because I'm so pissed about the situation and simply don't have enough people to rant to to get it all out.

In my experience, a good three-quarters of bosses are very crappy, in different sorts of ways. And it's amazing how oppressive work can be when you have a crappy boss.

Well, the boss I've had for the past year or so... is perfect. She has 10 times the knowledge of almost anyone else at the company, she works absurd hours, she puts in hours and hours of work even when she's on family vacations. She doesn't micromanage me or anyone else. She gives constructive criticism without ever making it personal. She never takes credit for someone else's work.

So this past year... work wasn't so bad. I almost even enjoyed it some days. And I thought "this can't possibly last." Yep.

From what I can tell, her boss (who will henceforth be known as "Psycho b****") thought that another one of her direct reports (I'll call him "Useless *******") walked on water. Except, everyone hates Useless *******. Because, well... all he ever does is get in the way. Seriously. I've never seen the guy make any contribution to anything, ever. But for some reason Psycho b**** thinks he's great.

For extra fun, Useless ******* was also giving my boss some abusive language, with a little sexual harassment mixed in over the past several months in return for her trying to call out how useless he is (I never witnessed this, but I don't doubt her word at all). She was even pulling together some documentation to possibly take him to court before she finally threw up her hands and decided to leave instead.

So it appears to me my boss was probably the fall guy for Useless's *******'s many, many failures. There's just no ****ing justice in it.

I guess I have to just throw up my hands and say "that's corporate America." And I don't feel bad for where my boss is ending up, because she's taking a high-level executive position at another company. She'll be fine, better than she would've been here. But I can't help but feel morally outraged on her behalf at how she was treated.

Useless rant over, I guess...

 

Maybe. I haven't had time to ask her about it because I just got decked with all this right before we both left for the day today (her last day is this Friday). Still trying to get through being shocked before I think clearly about it and get my thoughts together, I guess.

Truth be told though, my job is pretty decent and I'm good at it. I like the company in general. I will probably just watch how things shift in the next few months. Psycho b**** may get canned for all I know. And if not, I have several good friends in other departments who'd be thrilled to have me over on their side.

Fortunately I won't be reporting to Useless ******* in the meantime. That will actually be another friend of mine who's awesome, and has unabashedly told me she knows nothing about how to do my job. So she will give me free reign to do whatever needs to be done for the time being. But if I end up reporting to Psycho b**** or Useless ******* later, I don't think I'd be able to take it... I'd look for an out.

Corp HQ of a large retailer.

 

This is actually exactly what I did. I went out to her LinkedIn page and "endorsed" a bunch of her skills as soon as I got home.

And yeah, we're doing a farewell lunch tomorrow with a smallish group (none of the assholes invited).

Yeah, like I said, for me personally things could be a lot worse. Heck, I've known the person I'll be reporting to for 5+ years. No issues with her at all. If she has a "flaw," it's that she's too honest sometimes about work politics. So my only worry there is that she might be as pissed as I am and not hide it very well. Things really would suck if she ended up leaving too.

Yep. I've had "only" around 10-ish bosses in my lifetime, and yet it's staggering the range of dysfunctions most of them have.

I still remember my first boss out of college... seemed cool at first, but he ended up being a guy who was really good at the work itself but was awful at managing people. He couldn't handle more than about 3 direct reports before he started ignoring all but a couple favorites and mostly ignored everyone else... forcing us to take our own initiative to get things done. Which sounds great in theory, until you realized he reamed you out afterwards every... damn... time... because you weren't psychic enough to know exactly the way he wanted it done, even though he never told you "his way" because he was too busy with his favorites.

But the funny part was, this guy was so arrogant that he believed he was great at "developing" people. So even though in my opinion my performance got worse in subsequent years of working for him (felt so damn demotivated), he kept giving me better performance reviews because his ego couldn't let him believe that he wasn't "developing" me.

Ugggggggghhhhhh. It's just terrible to go through years and years of bad bosses, finally get a great one, and I only have her for a year before idiots push her out. I know how good I had it. I just hope eventually I'll work for someone else I respect as much. Some day.

 

That must be nice.

But yeah, we're a 4-man team that should be a 10-man team. We sit 5 feet from each other. So in this situation a good boss makes a big difference.

I was wondering how long it would take someone to say that.

And no.
(You can apply that answer to... actually, pretty much every statement or question in your post. Damn I'm efficient. )