The trouble with working for myself is that my boss is such a hard-ass.
She is so unforgiving of my mistakes. Never satisfied with my work. Never gives me compliments.
Unbelieveable pressure. Expects me to work on weekends. Expects me to think about work problems in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep.
Expects me to do whatever work lands on my desk, even if it’s something I have no idea how to do. Just learn it, she says. Accounting and QuickBooks, video editing, web design, project management, statistics, new software suite, marketing, whatever. Just shut up and learn it.
I can’t call in sick, and she had a major fit when I demanded family leave to take care of Tom. Only last year, after years of campaigning did I finally get to have holidays and weekends off, but she capriciously overrides that, too.
There’s no friendly chitchat in the morning over the coffee pot. In fact there’s no chitchat at all.
The boss expects me to sit down at my desk and go to work and not screw around. She inevitably catches me when I steal a few minutes to look at Amazon or vacations in Hawaii.
I would actually welcome a performance evaluation, like normal employees have. You know, where you have an agreed-upon list of necessary tasks and skills, and the boss marks off boxes for Meets performance standards or even a few Exceeds performance standards. And then you have a discussion about your accomplishments, and your boss asks how she can help you advance in your career.
Oh, no, not this bitch.
She never takes a minute to say, Hey, you really did a great job on that proposal, even when my teammates all say so. Only a few times and under duress has she acknowledged, You’ve done well. You’ve accomplished a lot, acquired a long list of technical and professional skills, and you have helped a lot of people too.
No, from this boss it’s a steady stream of complaints about what I haven’t done. She’s constantly raising the bar, so that I can never meet expectations.
And what a cheap-ass company! No bonuses and no benefits. This year because of some change in tax law, I won’t even get reimbursed for what I spend on my crappy health insurance.
Don’t even think about asking for a raise…!
On the plus side, I seldom have arguments with the boss.
But maybe I should. Yeah.
It’s high time.
I will just march into her office on Monday and say,
YOU’RE FIRED!!!!
Today’s penny is a 1996, my first year of self-employment.
Wonderful piece. And a description not very different from the worse boss I actually did have. He suffered from manic-depressive disorder. We never knew which person to expect when he walked into the office. I felt sorry for him but… happy to say, like you, we got him fired.
Lordy – I have the same bitch boss! But, I will say she never complains when I work in my jammies all day long.
True. My boss seems completely uninterested in dress codes. So there’s that.