So, my boss got pissed at me today. Naturally, I wanted to die. At lunch immediately following, a coworker picked up that I was upset even though I tried to play it off and gave me a hug that made me want to cry more (I was already at the stage that if I talked I would cry).

My initial emo reaction was "JC, am I allowed no wiggle room to make decisions about my time usage at work? Should I start a log of every coffee break, conversation with a coworker whether it be related to work or not, pee break, email-checking, how long it took me to walk the fence perimeter of a thirteen and a half acre lot, whether I stopped to accept a call from my mom, etc.? Have I finally tested the waters and learned that no, my boss does not want me to have a mind of my own?"

After reflection, it was a miscommunication of what we agreed on when we said "no prep until after Thanksgiving" for an upcoming deadline. In my head, that meant not the nitty gritty that I was itching to do but knew would be sill and even more timeconsuming, and she meant *anything* involving the project, up to and including plotting out a schedule for myself and volunteers (I won't be at work at all next week, and need to hit the ground running the Monday after T-day).

I spent 20 minutes gathering things that I thought I would need to be efficient the next Monday I'm in. She FLIPPED. How much time had I wasted? Hadn't she explicitly said not to waste any time doing prep? (No, we'd casually discussed that I wouldn't go crazy and dig out and catalogue the elements I'd use to prep for our house tour. There was no absolute "no prep OF ANY KIND!!! proclamation on her part").

Now, granted, she'd just wasted half her day playing friend-maker to the local club that gives us money for grants and such and tends one of our gardens gratis, and had had one of the members dis the clubs contributions to our organization. And I know that she is a butt-clencher when it comes to wasting time and is completely unable to roll with punches.

So maybe, on any other day, she wouldn't have blown up at me.

I know her personality. I know she's a control freak. I know that she tries to be as efficient and as spartan as possible, which is admirable since we are a nonprofit. We've worked together for over a year now, and even now, I'm sstill unsure as to how much she wants me to be and independent entity capable of thinking for myself (after all, I did run the place for two years without a director) and her grunt who simply asks "how high?".

A part of me says "you've gotten too used to having no oversight" but another part of me says that even so, I should have some leeway in how I go about carrying out assignments, and that she has no clue how long such a task would take since she's holed up in her office 75% of the day.

The kicker is, I know that she's not a personality that will bend. That she says that she knows she's get too much, and that she needs people to bark back at her to let her know she's gone too far, but I'm sorry, if you know that about yourself, you need to control yourself and not expect your subordinates, who's job-safety and raises you hold in your sway, to do it for you.

I can't imagine, if I were to quit, if they'd find someone who could take her management style, and I'm a giant pushover who has quite a lot of experience rolling with the punches and asking how high.

She just seems to be asking too high.

I guess, at the end of the TL;DR rant, given her personality type, if it's best just to bend and carry on and try to give up any initiative, to push back and broach all these issues (if she's the type of person who would even be receptive in the long term to my grievances), or to just start looking for a new job.

Because, after all that bitching, she is quite awesome, and I'm not totally sold on throwing in the towel, but I'm also not a fan of confrontation (again, I cry and lose the ability to communicate like a sentient creature).

lisah, you can totally do stats! I had to take general statistics, which did make me cry, and then quantitative analysis in social sciences, which I LOVED. I mean, I loved that shit. And then I got a job where I worked with psychometricians and editors on standardized tests. Super fun.

The math end of the stats was challenging, but the analytical end was phenomenal. LOVED.

I made 4 dozen cupcakes for a bake sale for the March of Dimes. They have lavender colored frosting and decorative sugar. And doodads that say "BABY" on it. The MOD is doing bake sales at pump stations for Prematurity Awareness Month.

I wish I were a little less aware of preemies.

also, juliebird, if you think she is otherwise awesome, is her need to control doable for you?

It's doable in the sense that I am capable of putting aside my own ego and buckling down to keep doing the job that I am doing. Yet I'll still be resentful. And I also wonder what kind of job skill I'm learning by doing so, for my own future. If I move on, will I have handicapped myself? Is mine the type of personality that survives in the workforce into retirement? Is there any growth keeping my head down? And then there's the part of me that has no self-confidence or self-worth and I'm just wrong wrong wrong . . .

Again, she'd had a bad morning, and usually she's receptive to my counter-suggestions, and sometimes she listens and shoots them down. And sometimes I keep my mouth shut and we wind up in a bind because my priorites aren't her priorities and it bites us in the ass because I've worked here for five years and she hasn't. But when she's stuck with a time-wasting task, she freaks out.

Especially today, when what she suggested I do (there was actually an and/or in her notes for today,suggesting that I had a choice to blow off one or the other until tomorrow) was something we pay a contractor to do, we're closed to the public until February, meaning that storm clean-up really can be done in January, and what I spent that 20 minutes on was something that has a soonish deadline.

I'm caught in a bind, even now, of just nodding my head and letting things go to shit when I could have prevented it, or butting heads and forcing my way on my boss, because from time to time, I DO know better.

Again, I CAN keep working under her, but SHOULD I? Or, should I broach the issue and have it, at best, do nothing, or at worst, make my job stability less stable if she takes it into her head to find someone more agreeable?

When the boss yelled at me, I used to think I was the only one so incompetent that a boss would be driven to yell at me. I'm not sure it's better to think "He's an asshole, but he still controls my income", but at least it's better for my self-esteem.

Oh god, Connie, that made me laugh, and feel a little better.

I wish my parents had yelled at me more as a kid, so I wouldn't be such a wimp as an adult.

Congratulations, Nilly! The world can only be made better by Nilly children.

This is the Nazi version of One Tree Hill, eh?

Adolescent drama among Hitler Youth?

Being yelled at as a kid just made me pathologically conflict avoidant.

Being yelled at as a kid just made me pathologically conflict avoidant.

I'm pathologically conflict-avoidant even after not being yelled at as a kid.

OK, I am now officially on vacation. Eleven days without having to deal with The Nemesis, yay! (I shall ignore all the other unpleasant stuff I shall have to do in the next week...)

Being yelled at as a kid has not made me terribly conflict avoidant but, if someone yelled at me now, I'd walk away from them or, I hope, have the presence of mind to go very quiet and stern with them. Probably walk out of the room though.

After 5 days of no accidents, puppy has had two accidents today. In the same place and just pee but now I'm feeling a bit, like, "ack a puppy! I don't know how to raise one!" I'm used to accidents from senile incontinent dog who is not going to learn anyway so you just clean up after and move on. This baby can learn not to pee where she shouldn't. But we have to learn how to teach her.

Being yelled at as a kid just made me pathologically conflict avoidant.

Well, I guess I don't have to resent my parents for being nice to me, then.