Rant warning.

I woke up yesterday, tired but giddy about finally concluding the hell week, all full of TGIF relief. Two hours later I was bleary eyed and waiting for the liquor store to open. The first disappointment came in the form of an email, telling me that the ICPMS was down UFN, so I would not be able to run my samples/acquire my final data. This, it turned out, may have been for the best, given what happened next…

Important background: The prior day, I’d missed a breakfast meeting with another group member and an interviewing post-doc. I’d gotten home from lab at 4 a.m. and passed out cold, and remained comatose through both my loud-as-hell alarm buzzers and TFB* calling my cell phone wondering where I was. Luckily (or so I thought then) I woke up in time to call the girl who was picking up me and the interview-ee to tell her I wouldn’t be able to make it, and to apologize for making her wait at the park n’ ride. And luckily (or so I thought), she was able to pick up another friend and the interview-ee on time for breakfast.

Flash forward.

My boss calls me into his office and tells me to have a seat. Ooooohhhh sh*t, I think. I dislike any conversation with my boss that begins with “have a seat” because the “have a seat” talks always leave me feeling completely deflated and I usually have to struggle to keep from blurting are you completely insane – er – I mean, keep my composure in the face of ridicule, which is never fun and usually leads to me to crying out of utter frustration. So I take a sit across from the boss and brace for impact.

“I’m really, really unhappy and disappointed in you. When you tell someone that you’ll be at a certain place, at a certain time, it is your responsibility to be there. When you blow off a guest like you did yesterday with breakfast, not only is it disrespectful to your group members, but you make us all look bad.”

my stomach was sinking at those first words, but then I felt hurt and angry that I was being raked over the coals for the buggering up breakfast, which wasn’t actually buggered anyways. and then I felt the burning creeping up to my eyes, because I knew there was nothing I could say in my defense. See, these little sit downs with my boss are not witness interrogations, but character assassinations. Apologies are useless, never mind the circumstance. And yet, I’ve just been told that I’ve botched something up, angered and disappointed my boss, disrespected TFB and my group, and made them all look bad by being irresponsible and inconsiderate. Vertigo of the mind and soul doesn’t even begin to cover how felt to sit there and let all these feelings smack me in the face one-by-one. The closest description I can think of is being cemented up to your neck while shit is dumped on your head, knowing that there’s nothing that you can say or do to stop the shit storm, and you really wish you could just not say anything, because you don’t want to open your mouth when shit is being dumped over your head. But you have to say something, knowing full well that it is only going to lead to eating dookie.

“Sir, I didn’t ‘blow it off’. I didn’t get home from work until 4 in the morning, and I was passed out so cold that I slept through my alarm.”

Wanna know something insane? My boss knew that I had been up until 4 a.m. that night, because I had already told him and TFB about the circumstances and apologized for messing up. As I previously said, this talk was never going to be about my explanation.

“You didn’t call ahead, you left someone waiting. What that says is you can’t be bothered to show up. That’s ‘blowing it off’.”

“I got home at 4 a.m. I’m not going call someone at 4 a.m.!”

“Then you set two alarms.”

“I did set two alarms. I’m sorry this happened. I was up all night, I…

“I stay up all night writing proposals all the time, but I don’t blow off my 7 a.m. deadlines.”

That just about did it, and feeling my eyes welling, I stood up to fetch the tissue box – yes, I know where the tissue box is in the boss’s office

“I’m sorry, I tried really hard to make it, but I just wasn’t able to do that. I made a mistake, and I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

“There’s nothing else to say. I want you to be able to participate in these important meetings, and I need to be able to trust you to keep your committments, especially when we’re flying someone out to interview for a post-doc.”

I told you this was never going to be about my having to answer to the boss. I am obsolete in these “discussions”. I guess it’s understandable; when the boss says he wants to talk to me, theres not much else to it: he talks, and I eat dookie.

“Well, I’m sorry I let you down, and that it means you can’t trust me. Like you said, I can’t say anything about what happend, and I guess, all I can do is tell you that you’ve made it clear to me that I’ll have to decline participation in these events when I know I’ll be up late the night before.

“You need to learn to manage your time better.”

I turned around and walked out of the office. Fully expecting a second round, because I don’t think my boss was through with the verbal beating, I grabbed my laptop and purse and headed home via Spec’s.

I’ve made up my mind to leave the group as soon as I’ve finished my master’s and the paper I’m working on. I’ve been my boss’s punching bag since mid-spring, and I’ve worked my ass off at my job since I got here. But once the bossman makes up his mind, it is clearly hard to change. I hadn’t slipped up majorly at all, I’ve earned his praise for my recent work and effort, and yet one minor slip up and I’m untrustworthy, irresponsible, and a lously group member.

What I loath the most about the man is the effect that his ridicule has on me, never mind that he is being unprofessional. I’d like to consider myself a reasonable and considerate person, and as such, when someone – such as my boss – tells me that I’ve been inconsiderate, untrustworthy and irresponsible, I will always try to be reflective and ask myself, “have I been inconsiderate, and all those other things? Am I a bad gorup member?” Even when I think he was in the wrong with how he treated me, the fact that his unprofessional and personal berrating made me question myself in such a way makes me feel unstable and insecure about myself.

I spent the next few hours calming my nerves. I bought some bullets, which I will shoot tomorrow at the range (“group therapy”) and some beer. I was really nervous and upset, because I don’t think my boss will write me a decent recommendation, and I’ve done good work for him for the past two years. Then I talked to the bf, who told me the first thing that made me feel better:

“You won’t need his recommendation. you’ll have a thesis and a paper, and when an interviewer asks you why you don’t have a recommendation, you can drop those on the desk and tell ‘em that your boss was a lunatic who drove you out of the group, and then you can say ‘and if you’re unsure of the kind of worker I am, I put up with my boss’s heckling and here’s what I was able to get done.’

“and just think of how surprised you’re boss’ll look when you tell him the reason you’re quitting is that he’s a raging asshole.”

*TFB, by the way, stands for two faced bitch.

*BOHICA is Bend Over Here It Comes Again

Stay tuned! I’ve decided that I will celebrate my thesis/candidacy/and or freedom by shooting a copy of the manuscript with this:

I’m going to start a shrine to this beautiful, awesome  round.