A Different Point of View

Thanks for the entries everyone, I hope you had fun coming up with things you would rather be doing than working in a cubicle. My personal favourite, and therefore the winner is:

"I'd rather pluck out my eyelashes one by one with a rusty pair of scalding hot tweezers than work in a cubicle."

Thank you CELLOPHANE GIRL for that one.

A little bit about myself, and a stress remedy anecdote.

I used to work for a company in the UK called Dixons Photographic. (They are now Currys) Retail photographic, HiFi, televisions etc.

I was the manager of one of their shops. I had two direct bosses: a regional manager, and an area manager.

Monday morning invariably heralded the arrival of one or other, who would give me instructions on how the shop should look. What products were to be advertised, which should have pride of place in the window, how much space to devote to product XYZ.

Thursday or Friday, I would receive a visit from boss number two, who invariably contradicted whatever boss number one had said. He would get all bent out of shape, and would always ask the question, "Who the hell told you to do that?"

I would always answer, the same thing every time. "the other boss." the reply was always the same. "That's bullshit, do it the way I've just told you."

So I, and my staff would spend another day re-arranging everything the way boss number two wanted it. Needless to say, the staff were not amused, having slaved over the first arrangement, and understandably held me responsible as the one now telling them that everything they had done was wrong, and now needed changing.

Of course, I would then look forward to another visit from boss number one, and the bollocking that would follow for not doing as he'd asked, and then the familiar, "Who the hell told you to do that?"

And so on it went. To this day, I don't know whether or not they did it on purpose, just to fuck with me and the staff, but after a while, I just gave up, and stopped doing what either of them told me to. I just did it MY way, and because they both came and saw something "The other boss" had told me to do, they gave me the usual shouting-at, and left.

I was happy, as I had half as much work to do. My staff were happy for the same reason, and both bosses were happy as they got to give me a bollocking for not doing it "their" way.

Neither of them managed to work out what was going on, or if they did, they never said anything. The shop was successful, and turnover continued to increase, to the point where my commission level had to be reduced, but that's another story/rant.

The moral is, of course, that sometimes pleasing yourself MUST take precedence over pleasing your boss. Sometimes it's appropriate to look after yourself first, your boss second. And if you can't look after yourself, how can you be expected to look after anybody else?

This weeks competition/stress reliever:

"My boss is such a complete bastard/bitch, I would like to see them XXXXXXX"

Try and keep it funny, and PG 18.