MICROMANAGER
6/22/04. 9:23am CDT. Home.

It's not so much that the boss is a criminal mastermind. He's just a hard guy to work for.

Oh, sure, things were great when I first took the job. Great benefits package, better pay than my last job, big office parties -- particularly that time we got the big laser online. He was pretty happy with that one, especially after we tested it on that little island in the Pacific.

But did anyone get a raise out of that? No way. Just bigger demands, changes to the designs, always bigger, faster, bolder, brighter, blah blah blah.

He is ALWAYS second-guessing my work. I send out a memo, I get back a new version with minor phrases and numbers changed. Nothing crucial, none of the facts change, mostly it's just wording. I write "it was a fair trade," he changes it to "it served them right," you know how it is with these guys. If you want every memo and email to be in your words, you should write them all yourself. Just because he's an evil genius doesn't mean he can treat the rest of us like idiots and not get on our nerves.

And talk about a closed-door policy! Not only have I never seen his office, I don't even know where it is. I'm not even sure it's in the building anywhere. Some of the guys in I.T. say he's got a bunker down below the sub-basement, but you can never tell when those guys really know what they're talking about. My friend Frank worked here 20 years, and said he knew where the office was, but he couldn't tell me. Office policy.

I always wondered what Frank's real name was, but I never asked him. Office policy.

But the bottom line these days, you gotta treat people better. Yeah, we'll work all night to get your grand plot up and running, and we'll bust our humps to make sure the doomsday device works, but you can bet we're gonna want some time off after that. No more of this "nice job, here's the next target" crap. We need benefits. We need a 401k. We need vacation time. We need a union.

Those were all the things Frank was talking about the last day I saw him. The next day he was gone, just disappeared, not even a memo to say he was leaving. Office policy. I never did find out where he wound up. Not completely sure I want to know anyway.

It's not so much that the boss is a criminal mastermind. He's just a hard guy not to work for.