I heard that today was "Get Back At Your Boss Day". I had about 34 managers in my career at XYZ and most of them were completely unqualified to lead ants to a picnic, let alone a department full of employees to success and profit. So just for my own catharsis, I thought I'd get a few things off my chest on this special day:
1) F.T.#1: you bloated pompous ass. What was your problem? Remember the time that you let everyone else go home early for the holiday and informed me that I would have to stay and finish my work? You really thought that was a dig didn't you, but I left anyway because for your information I had finished my work hours ago, and was working on someone else's job to help out. Then there was the time that the Data Center was being outsourced and you sent out a note that any regular employee could transfer out except for me -- but I found another job and got out anyway in spite of you. Whatever mysterious grudge you had against me, you were not even man enough to tell me. But you turned me in to upper management for not saying, "Hi" to you, wow, another mighty blow -- not. I suppose it never occurred to you that someone might not see you, or hear you, etc. No wonder that you got kicked out of your previous job for "people problems" in Bldg.501, and were buried in the Data Center dungeon where they "thought" you might not cause any further problems. Wrong.
2) B.G.: you played favorites like it was some kind of game to make you popular, regardless of how you hurt people in the process. We know that you were totally henpecked by your wife, your neighbors told us. So you have to come to work and get all the tech guys to like you by promoting and favoring only them, and punishing and holding back the females in the department, I suppose because you hated your wife. And when I had serious health problems you made things even harder for me and treated me as if I was faking it -- but when one of your favorite guys gets the same exact problem, it's OK for him not to show up to work for a month and not even call in sick?! Then during the layoffs you said that you would be right there with us, you weren't going anywhere...next thing we hear from Vermont, that weekend you're up there skiing with your new boss so that you can escape the layoffs in our project and leave us behind. When you left, everyone saw you as the liar you were.
3) J.D.: different guy, same story, bigger jerk. What is it with you tech managers and your hatred of women? Do you think that your favorite male employees who you give all the raises and promotions to are good XYZ employees? For your information, these are the guys who are stealing company supplies for home use every week, like cases of Q-tips, giant rolls of paper towels, computer parts, tools, the list goes on. They also falsify their time-cards and brag about it, as well as constantly coming in to work over-time when there is no work. Can you really be that stupid that you can't see these things? Yet the honest women you never see in any favorable light. You never even gave me a chance to get ahead, and you put every possible obstacle in my way to prevent me from succeeding. You claim that it's your brief military background that makes you strict, well you are the farthest thing from an example of military leadership as anyone could be. Like Eisenhower said in so many words, there's a big difference between a leader and a dictator. And yes, we all know about the guy who shot himself in the parking lot because of you.
4) F.T.#2: or should I say J.D.Junior...when did you have the operation to have your spine removed? Because every day that you came in to work, you never had one, it was completely impossible for you to stick up for yourself or your employees against another manager. You seemed to like me well enough when I was working for you as my engineer, and when you became our manager the first couple years were fine. But why did you set up a big award for our group and leave out all the technicians in the contributions? You let the engineers on our team get in on it, but you kept it a secret from us, even though we did all the grunt work that got us the award and you know it. Then the year my father died and I had to take some time off to bury him during an important project period, all of a sudden you decided to treat me like I was a gold-bricker and you never again gave me any credit for any of the good work that I did. You are the reason that I left, you were the final straw that broke the camel's spirit. In spite of everything I was still loyal, but you don't deserve loyalty. And do you think that you get loyalty from your "buddies" like the one who every day goes to the gym at 10:30 for an hour, comes back and takes a hour lunch, and then leaves two hours early? When that guy gets caught, you're going to get fired because it's happening under your watch.
5) E.C.: I only had you as a manager for a short period of time. Just enough time for you to confuse the heck out of me and others. All I can say is that you too better watch closely the guys that you think are your friends, they are no good and will take you down with them when they get caught screwing up. Oh, and thanks for ruining my last day at XYZ after 32 years. I'm sorry that my retiring interfered with your busy day so that you had to push me out the door so fast that I didn't even get to say goodbye to my friends, or to savor the profound and monumental moment for me that it was. You'd better shape up pal, and start listening to the one person left in your department who actually knows what's going on under your nose, even if you don't like her for all the wrong reasons...i.e., because she has the wrong chromosome.
Okay, that felt gratifying.
