Consuela is totally right here, Juliebird.

What does not effect the bottom line, limit productivity or otherwise damage the organization's efforts, is generally of no interest...even though it sounds like you are being asked to squeal.

Being a difficult/unlikable/ineffective boss is unlikely to garner much interest among the brass.

It sucks, but it's true.

Taking absolutely every bit of personal hurt/disgust out of your comments is crucial to your concerns being taken seriously.

I know that is hard to do when you know you are right about how wrong someone else is. This woman being a jerk may actually be what the organization wants. I hate to say it, but I've seen it many, many times.

God, I'm so glad I asked. I had a feeling that my relief at having an outlet for my grievances was too good to last.

It probably isn't a trap, but you can never be sure in situations like this.

Vent your spleen elsewhere and then answer whatever questions they have honestly, but dispassionately where ever possible.

Yeah, sorry, Juliebird. If you want to keep working there, don't talk shit to your boss's bosses.

Does the size of the organisation make any difference? We're a small staff of 9 (now currently 8) people.

If you want to keep working there, don't talk shit to your boss's bosses.

Hah! Now isn't that the Big Question. I like my job and my coworkers just fine except for this one person who has no clue what my job is or entails.

Frankly, I think it is worse in a small organization because everyone is exposed to everyone else. Even 'family' organizations have trouble hearing the truth about personalities.

Yeah, worse that it's smaller, sorry. ALTHOUGH, I have generally found that the big bosses do know what's up, when I can't figure out why my terrible boss still works there. In the worst case, no one ever got fired because they were concerned about the overall turnover rate, but of course everyone else was always quitting because of my terrible boss. But they knew she was terrible.

But they knew she was terrible.

I worked as an organizational development consultant and am STILL flabbergasted by the numbers of organizations who knew they had bad apples and yet refused to do anything constructive about it. There were as many rationalizations as where were crappy bosses, but the pattern seldom changed.

If that one awful boss left, invariably, someone remarkably similar was hired in his/her place. That's when I realized organizations are often the way they are because they choose to be that way.

My naive, 'if the big bosses only knew' fantasies went right out the window.

Fortunately, now I can look at it as choice rather than idiocy.

Frankly, I think it is worse in a small organization because everyone is exposed to everyone else. Even 'family' organizations have trouble hearing the truth about personalities.

I think it's worse also because a small organization is likely to have less in the way of institutional protocols for management & counseling employees. And in a group that small, it's likely that anyone you talk to might be good friends with anyone else, and they will report what you said back to the person you're complaining about.

A story from long ago:

Once upon a time, I was a contractor located on site, working directly with and for the client, as if I were a direct employee (rather like the current situation, actually). I had a boss who over time became more and more difficult to work with. Nothing I did was good enough, he treated me pretty badly, he took projects I invented and handed them off to less-qualified staff members. He lied to my face about my projects. He also behaved in what I thought were ethically-dubious ways. And when it was time for my review, he didn't do it: he just sent my contracting firm a statement that I was inflexible and difficult, and so I didn't get a raise that year (although I kept the job).

So I summoned up the courage to go talk to the ethics officer there. Who I didn't really know, but hey, he was the ethics officer, right. And I sat in there and poured my heart out.

While I was in there, my boss' best work friend walked past the ethics' officer's office, saw me in there through the glass window, and sent my boss an email asking why I was talking to that guy.

By the time I got back to my desk, I had been relieved of all my subtantive duties, including a multi-million dollar national project I had been hired to run: I was told to hand it off to a junior staffer.

Nothing was ever done to rectify the situation, although I absolutely complained. But my boss had been there for years, I was relatively junior, and I was a contractor. There was no avenue for remedy. I ended up spending the last six months in that job making Power Point slide shows for other people's presentations.