Take this job and...

It is such a cliché to hate your job. I have spent my adult life trying to avoid saying things like "Mondays, eh?" and "Thank God It's Friday" and yet, I still have my fair share of stupid boss stories.

My current boss is reminiscent of The Devil Wears Prada, or so I'm told by friends I relay my anecdotes to. One of her chief characteristics is the need to micromanage then complain that she shouldn't be bothered about every little detail. Inconsistencies in her priorities is also a source of stress; use of the office printer requires her approval but withdrawing $12 from her account does not. Needless to say, I'm on the lookout for better prospects.

In the meantime, a trip down memory lane:

• In one of my previous jobs in which I laid out a publication using QuarkXPress, I liked listening to the radio to pass the time. The quality of my work was not affected by my listening to CBC Radio One - a work friendly radio station. My co-workers were not affected either. Yet, my boss stopped by one day and stated, "I don't listen to the radio when I'm working and I don't think anyone who works for me should either." This is the same man who decided to take a golf vacation instead of training me during my first week of employment then complained when I was not familiar with office procedure.
• While working as a counsellor for a day camp, I contracted bronchitis and was pretty much bed ridden for a week. While I experienced severe headaches, fever, and non-stop coughing, my boss called me to beg me to come in on the Friday to work for "a few hours". I refused on the basis that my commute via public transit took four hours and that I was still sick and contagious. My boss demonstrated her spite on Monday when she failed to ask about my health and proceeded to place me in a camp with six year olds. For three weeks, I tried not to spew disease into their adorable little faces.
• This same boss did not have the balls to stop some of my fellow counsellors from ending their contracts early to go on holiday before school started. Instead, she held a meeting where she put the decision in the hands of the remaining counsellors, such as myself, who would be stuck with clean up duty. Faced with my pleading co-workers, who had already booked vacations with their families, was I supposed to heartlessly hand them mops then work side by side with their simmering resentment towards me? Never before had I felt more like Cinderella in those last weeks as my vindictive boss found an endless list of things to do before she would let us enjoy the last few days of August.
• During my first week at my current position, my boss threw a major funding application, which was due in about a month, in my lap. Never having dealt with this sort of project, or claimed to have any knowledge of it, I struggled along. A highlight of this hopeless endeavor was the following exchange:

Me: How do I tell the difference between a refereed and non-refereed contribution? All your Presentations (Peer-reviewed) and Invited Lectures are listed together.

Boss: Just use common sense. Obviously an Invited lecture is not peer-reviewed.

Eventually, a PhD student was hired to take the project out of my shaking hands.

I am pretty sure my work experiences are easily trumped by many out there. While watching the Office Space scenes where the employees are forced to argue why they should not be laid off, I laughed heartily because it was quite amusing. My mother, however, cackled in a way that I had never heard before then said bitterly, "That's exactly what is happening in my workplace." She survived 25 years+ in an environment that I would have quitted from in the first week.

Feel free to share some of your delightful anecdotes! TGIF!