I got pissed off at my boss today. I’m vacationing in Hawaii, yet I’ve got strong enough work ethic to check in and make sure my customers are taken care of, checking in on work email and responding to people who need assistance. The one thing that my accounts love about me is whatever they need, I get it to them promptly. I take customer service and satisfaction very seriously, which is why I’m the newest salesperson but I’m already one of the top salespeople. One customer is having a big issue because one of our salespeople looks like he made an under the table offer to their partner, and it’s screwing up their deal with this company. So I got a panicked email from him saying he feels like there’s more than one story floating around and he feels like he’s caught in the middle of our own office politics. This is not good. I called my boss to let him know that this is something he has to take care of, but the guy is so non-confrontational and a terrible manager. So here I am, on my vacation, letting him know that we have a customer who is unhappy, a customer who also represents a huge amount of potential business. So what does he do? He tells me to just tell the customer that he must be mistaken and to not worry about it. I tell my boss, no, that’s not going to cut it. We need to clear this up on our side first so we don’t lose this guy’s trust that our company is stable, because nothing makes a company look more unstable than a lack of internal communication, inconsistent policies and internal backstabbing. So my boss gets flustered and tells me to deal with it, and I straight up tell him he needs to talk to the other salesperson to find out what he told his customer, and find out if he’s cutting a deal under the table, so I can go back to my customer with a definitive response. So my boss gets mad and says, fine, I’ll talk to him, with a tone like I just told him he’s gotta go clean his room. I asked him if he could keep me updated so I could keep the customer in the loop and he gets mad and says, I’ll call you when I’m ready, I have your number. And hangs up.

Let’s keep in mind that this is the same guy, when he gets stressed, if you come up to him and let him know about an issue that needs to be taken care of, he’ll stare out the window and not acknowledge you until you walk out of his office. He actually told his assistant that’s his strategy for when he doesn’t want to hear things he doesn’t want to deal with. It’s completely bizarre.

I’m sick of this shit. I’m on fucking vacation. I’m taking care of business, because I handle all of my boss’ accounts so he can dick around and only come into the office 2 days a week while he hangs out with his daughters and takes them to Disneyland, acting like he’s semi-retired. So when he talks to me like he’s doing me a favor when I ask him to actually manage our office, it drives me crazy. Why am I helping this guy make his life so ideal, while it’s like pulling the teeth of a tantrum-throwing little boy when it’s time for him to take responsibility of our office? I know I can’t do anything about what other people do, only what I do. I’m starting to think I need to stop backing down when I’m unhappy and wanting to leave this job, but they throw a little bit more money at me, and I back down. My mom overheard everything today and said, your boss is a terrible manager because he didn’t earn the company’s success, he was given his position by his older brother (our president). So he’s a terrible manager and he avoids responsibility, but you have to ask yourself, why would you want to work for someone like that? But he knows he can act like that, because as soon as you get fed up, he throws a little bit of money at you and you quiet down. That’s your fault.

Yeah, it’s my fault. More and more, if I can be bought out for money, it makes me a whore. I think I have to leave. It’s the only thing to do for me to respect myself.

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance