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.

Ugh, Consuela, what a nightmare.

But good advice for Julie. Really, don't overplay your hand. And don't expect that having a place to air your grievance is necessarily a good thing for your career.

Jeezo pete, Suela. Fucking people.

Scrappy is wise in this. As in so many things.

No one hangs in LJ land anymore?

I see and talk to plenty of people there. But YLJMV.

However, if you have substantive things to say and can present them intelligently, it can be a really good thing. I have gotten more than one promotion and/or change in protocol that way.

I may have done a dumb, but I couldn't help myself.

My stepdaughter's FB post was all "Don't buy the Pepsi in the new can with the Pledge of Allegiance! They didn't include Under God! We can't be indivisible if we're not under God!"

So I wrote. "Under God was added in the '50s. The Pledge was written in the 1890s. The writer of the pledge was a socialist." Because dammit, if she wants to consider me family, she can listen to me pointing out the idiocy of her ways. I'm the grumpy stepmom, it's my job.

I love Facebook, I can pretend not to see things if I don't want to deal with them. And I normally do ignore her inane, naive burblings. I don't know why this one triggered me.

Aside from it being a 10 year old load of malarky? [link]

Yeah, that got mentioned by another person, and she admitted she should have checked it out.

Juliebird,

In addition to what others have said, I have a question: is it possible for you to look for another job? I don't think that's an okay environment for you to be in if your boss is that bad. And I don't mean to be Negative Nancy here, but let's say your boss leaves, might they hire someone just as bad?

If I were in your position, I would start taking notes regarding this person's behavior, keeping a log, noting the things Scrappy has mentioned.

At this point, my justification for keeping the log would be to ward off attacks from my boss rather than going to her supervisors. Your boss sounds like a nightmare, and I'm not sure if she is capable of doing something negative to you (see Suela's anecdote). Keeping a log could be a nice defense in case something like this action would happen.

This log might also help you feel somewhat empowered in the meantime and not feeling like you have to be under this boss' thumb.