Job Insecurity

I have been at my current place of employment, a for-profit social service agency, for two years now. My job used to be pretty cool. I had lots of independence and flexibility; I felt valued and respected; and I was getting paid enough so that I could overlook the shitty health insurance my company offers.

That was the first year.

This past year, my job has sucked royally. The for-profit agency I work for is tanking big time and the rats (i.e. my co-workers) are fleeing the sinking ship. I liken my agency to those cartoon images of drowning people...remember how when (insert cartoon character here) would drown, he/she would hold up their fingers and begin a slow ten count? Well, my agency is somewhere around eight, and there's no life preserver in sight.

About a year ago, the eldritch, Lovecraftian entity known only as "The State" took an interest in our program, as we had grown exponentially in the previous year. Although we are for-profit, we are subsidized by "The State" and we had been lacking in our sacrifices to this blasphemous, amorphous monstrosity; to wit: the beast found our pitiful records to be inadequate. It shut us down completely; we entered a kind of stasis where we could admit no new people to our program but could continue to provide services to those already admitted. The State began a vile, soul-shattering ritual known to the initiated few as an "Audit"; it began inserting, poking and prodding its slime-kissed tentacles and loathsome pseudopods into every crack and crevasse of our records. "I do this for you," The State intoned in a booming, maddening, sanity-blasting voice, "that you may better please me in the future."

And so The State instructed us on what we were doing wrong, with clear instructions on how to go about atoning for our transgressions and appeasing it thenceforth. In other words, it told us what was unacceptable and showed us how it wanted us to document things from now on.

Well, all that would be great, if my boss wasn't such a fucking idiot.

I have written about my boss before. For those who need a reminder, I wrote that I could list the past two years on my resume as managerial experience, because my boss has shown me every day how NOT to be an effective manager. He is a control freak. He is a small person who does not like to be questioned. He changes his mind every day, so that there is no such thing as a coherent "policy" for our agency; "policy" is arbitrary and changes with the boss's mood. There is no such thing as delegation as my boss doesn't want anyone to outshine him or even appear remotely competent, so he insists on being the first and last word on everything. Everyone needs to run everything by him all the time, which would be fine if he didn't simultaneously affect this annoyed attitude whenever anyone asks him what the policy du jour is.

For example: I have a situation with a client, so I go to my boss and he tells me to do A, B, and then C. Next month, I have the exact same issue with another client, so I do A, B, and then C...and my boss tells me I should have done B, A, and then F, because that's the way we always do it. That's annoying enough, but it gets worse, because sometimes he'll tell me to do A, B, and C...and I tell the client that's what we're gonna do, and then a week later, after A, B, and C have been done, my boss changes his mind and makes me do something different, which basically pisses off the client (and me) and makes me the bad guy.

In short, to borrow a great term from Dr. Mantodea, my boss is an asshat.

See, although The State has been gracious enough in its omnipotence to tell us what we are to do, my boss has decided that he doesn't like being told what to do, so we're gonna do things his way (which is what got us in trouble in the first place). In other words, fuck The State.

Of course, we exist purely at the whim of The State, who could (and would) obliterate us utterly with but a thought, especially if it found out we ignored its advice. In fact, the only reason we're still here is because of my former officemate, a lovely lady who is well-versed in the proper way of appeasing The State, as it's what she did before coming to work for us. Since starting with us she worked long, thankless hours to get us in compliance with The State and trained everyone in the proper way of doing things.

My boss, while needing her, hated her. She was, after all, competent and knew what the fuck she was doing. It's because of her and no thanks to him that The State saw fit to allow us to open for business again. So she asked for more money. She deserved it. She also asked for more responsibility.

My boss told her there was neither more money nor room for advancement for her at our agency. So, after a week of deliberation, she very professionally gave her two weeks notice in a resignation letter that I, The Angry Piper, typed and proofread for her.

Upon receipt of said letter, my boss the asshat told her she could finish out the day and leave.

It's hard to express in such general terms what this meant, but I can't get more specific as I still work there. You see, with that incredibly idiotic decision, my boss the asshat did something so unbelievably contrary to the company's best interest that he pretty much ensured our demise. In the weeks that followed, we have slowly started to creep back to the bad habits that angered The State in the first place. And all this because my boss is a petty man who feels threatened when anyone knows more than he does about anything (and believe me, there are a lot of us who run mental circles around him). In this case, my officemate knew more than he ever will about how The State wants things done, so she basically got shit-canned.

My boss wasn't always this way. In fact, he was actually pretty cool. As long as you did your work and informed him of any problems as soon as possible, he had no problems with you. He wasn't the type to be looking over your shoulder. I loved my job, and I had worked for worse people. While that's still true, over the past year my boss has turned into a real dick.

Now we're on borrowed time, and most of us are looking for new jobs. No one has received a raise in over a year. My officemate is gone, and I liked her an awful lot. Now I have a fucking Fundamentalist, born-again Christian who has been in my office ONE DAY and has already informed us that she won't be going to see the new Harry Potter movie because of all the witchcraft contained therein. Now, I'm no Harry Potter fan, but that's just stupid and ignorant.

Even though she's a nice enough person otherwise, fuck her. And fuck my boss, and fuck the place I work.

I just hope I can find a job before I'm forced to.