When enough is enough

Well, it's been a while since I wrote something, but today I reached a limit where even I became highly aware was unusual for me.

Let me explain myself - there are normally three kinds of bosses you can get:

Boss No. 1: The incredibly easy going boss that is more like your mate than your boss!

Boss No. 2: The perfectionist boss - one that has high standards and can loose his temper from time to time because he is passionate about his work but one you highly respect, admire and look up to.

Boss No. 3: The complete impestious prick that feels that he has to keep everyone under his thumb and feels the only way to succeed is to exert his authority. He is one who you can't work with in a team, who you can't learn anything from, is completely useless of even doing basic tasks and is a complete arse wipe.

Well you see my current Boss is Boss No. 3. I can get quite passionate about my work and if I was to be a boss in the future it would perhaps be Boss No.2. However, today I reached the end of my tether with my boss. When I first came for the interview to work for him I was promised full training, a pay review after three months, and managementcontrol of my jobs and tasks.
To this day, I haven't seen anything. Full training - his idea of full training was to hand me a book, stick me a corner and ask me to read it for a day. It turned out he didn't even read the book himself. If he did, he would of found that it was utterly useless.

Pay rise? No review after 3 months ever came along. I accepted a decrease to my last job because I was promised full training. After 6 months, I was told that the firm was in tight finanial grips and therefore they could not increase my pay but would like to offer me a bonus to thank me for my work. My bonus? £250 which was also taxed and national insured. My bonus turned out to be a measly £100.

And control and management of my work? Well, that's not happened. Seems I do all the work but have no control. He likes to exert his control and likes to take all the credit.

My point being is that today finally reached my tether. You see, I have been designing something for a client which they have been more than happy with. We won the pitch to work with them last year and again, this year. However, last year we didn't make a profit. Why? Because this client in quesiton is a good friend of my boss and as such he feels they should get preferential treatment in comparison to our other clients.

e.g. Design Time of actual work costed for = 2 days
Design Time of actual work done to which the client loves = 1.5 days however....

I feel we should give our client an extra two days free as we spent 4 days last year and I don't want them to think we are not spending less time with them this year. I would like to give them a variety of options

So infact you are saying - let's spend two days of my time wasting it when it will be a waste time designing more stuff or do changes that the client will not be interested in . This wastes my time when quite in fact it could be used more wisely of things which are actually required.

So last week I spent my two days of design time -I was then made to spend an extra days work doing meaningless changes becuase he wanted to give the client a variety of options. It turns out that he didn't even bother sending through the variety options but one of each. So in fact the client didn't even get to see the variety of options. No only this, put when I asked him which option of each the client decided on, he point blankly lied to me and pretended to read aloud an email which was 'supposively' from the client, deciding on the options. How do I know this? well the pdf which was supposively received from the client was made on the 19th of April at 5:30 pm. This is exactly, 15 min after I gave my options to my boss. We never received an email from the client informing usof their decision until today (23 April 2007).

And that's what pissed me off. I wasted another day of work and was lied to. Normally, being quite a passionate person, I let it all bottle up and blow. This time however, I went past the point of blowing, I realised I was talking calmly and firmly to my boss without even shaking but in a very monotonous tone. I went beyond the point of loosing my cool and turned and walked away. I didn't even want to dignify his presence with a response.

So I came home today and decided then and there that enough was enough. Work is half your life. Work is about developing yourself and working as a team. This job was deevolving me and it is now time to get out.