My boss is a twat
Oh, how I dislike my manager. He is an idiot. I have already written and rewritten my resignation letter/speech in my head a number of times. I may or may not have the guts to say it, but it runs like this:
D, you need to rethink how you interact with people. You can’t decide if you want to be liked or respected, and so you fail at both. Your staff resent you, both Japanese and foreign. You treat your Japanese staff like shit because you can, because there is respect accorded to Westerners because America rules the world, and you abuse that respect. You order them around, talk over people who are twice your worth and complain about Japan often enough that I wonder why you are still here. And after you order someone to do something, you look at the foreign staff – maybe you don’t realise you do this, but you do – with this look that makes it seem like a contest, a clash of cultures, and you’re doing your best to Help the White Race. But you pay us a tiny wage for difficult work and expect us to act like real employees when you make it clear we are Businesspeople and Contractors. You’re a borderline megalomaniac, pompous and full of your own self-importance. You do a nice imitation of appearing open to new ideas, but then you shut them out with a few cursory sentences and replace them with your own. It’s embarrassing to watch you verbally fellate the company president. You are never wrong. Credit where it’s due; you’re a successful self-made man, you’re good with kids, you speak good Japanese and you work hard. But you really, really need to change the way you interact with your employees. It might help with the high staff turnover rate.
Oh, I would really like to say this to him. See, my boss thinks he deserves respect because of his position, but he has to earn his employees respect every bit as much as we have to earn his. He thinks that because he pays me, I have to respect his power over me, but there are plenty of other jobs I know could get which pay better and have less commuting time. At present, I’m staying for the kids and my co-workers, but that might change. He thinks I have an “attitude problem” (according to a fly on the wall) which is a new label for me. I think it may translate to a reluctance to smile and agree while he fucks me over. He encourages meekness and pliability in his staff. He boils easily and his eyes get twitchy when he encounters resistance and I don’t respect this man at all. He is a twat. He has a large belly, which makes his shirt look like it is being slowly inflated, and his mobile dangles from his neck, bouncing on his stomach as he walks. The ostentatious mobile is a mark of his importance, his Means of Contact, the symbol of the managerial class. He constantly talks over and rudely cuts off the headmaster of my kindergarten, a quiet Japanese man who speaks five languages, has a number of degrees, makes jokes and is liked by the staff.
My dislike of him was fine in the abstract, when he lived in the ivory tower of head office and rarely contacted me, but it’s recently blossomed into a fleshed out dislike, and may one day, if I work at it, grow into a solid, enduring and violent dislike. He’s told me off two times this week for being late. Yes, I was late, four days out of five. Two were my fault – I missed trains, and I know that’s bad. But on Monday, I was very late because I tried a new sequence of trains which he told me would be quicker and was in fact a good half hour slower. But the boss is never wrong, of course, nor the customer, which leaves the balance of responsibility on humble employees such as myself. On Thursday, I was running a bit late and stressing about it, packed into a train full of strangers who were becoming intimately acquainted with each others armpits, when the door opened and trapped a poor salaryman’s arm in the door. He let out a shriek, we milled uselessly around him and I tried to keep the door open which just resulted in more pain for him. The driver sprinted down the platform, freed him and dusted him off. As a result, I was late and hence deserving of punishment. God, I hate criticism, and especially from people I don’t respect.
Here are some extracts from the manual he wrote for contractors, written as a guide to help us become “successful businesspeople.” As “independent proprietors,” we are responsible for the “maintenance of our skillbases.” But we mustn’t forget hygiene in the schools – “cleanliness is next to godliness is not an exaggeration” [sic]. And unless we “enjoy the intense pain of food poisoning, it is best to refrain from semicooked meals.” Nice patronising tone. Oh, and “any display of sexual harassment or discrimination will be followed by immediate termination of contract and possible prosecution. What used to be known as ‘office humour’ is now being viewed as being in poor taste.” That last is rampant hypocrisy.
He’s got that brand of superiority which pretends not to be superiority, he pretends to listen before there is this curious tipping of his head, his eyes, away, like blinking but more, his shoulders, and then he returns, he surges back over the top of you and says yes yes but no. His potbelly overpowering his belt, another signal of difference – it is quite hard to be fat in Japan, sumo wrestlers really have to work at it – and the mobile hanging over it which he professes to hate, this his instrument of Middle Management Power, his wand, a comfortable man with a Japanese wife and kids, the very picture of adaptation. His contractors equal in name and culture but nothing else. But the way he treats his Japanese employees! Snatching phones, bellowing terse Nihongo, talking up and over and always looking at us afterwards, he does it for us, the supremacy of a threatened culture, a minority culture of firsts amongst seconds, wannabe Americans. See, he knows he’s not accepted and that his staff have to defer to him – he is Western, a god made flesh, to be imitated, even though he is anathema to their politeness and reticence, and they resent him, you can see it curdling in their eyes, being amassed only to be talked about to drunken strangers and spouses at safe hours, resentment to die with, stomachs full of it.
---
Oh, I am such a bitch, such a big big bitch, but it is really quite rare that I manage to dislike anyone this much, and in such a short time, too. While I’m thankful that he was born a manager so that I don’t have to be, why is it that the people who gravitate to jobs of authority are so often the people who shouldn’t be doing that work? Prison guards who thrive on sadism, kiddy fiddlin’ scout leaders, charismatic and lethal politicians, managers who could easily be autocrats in a tinpot country.
Oh, how I dislike my manager. He is an idiot. I have already written and rewritten my resignation letter/speech in my head a number of times. I may or may not have the guts to say it, but it runs like this:
D, you need to rethink how you interact with people. You can’t decide if you want to be liked or respected, and so you fail at both. Your staff resent you, both Japanese and foreign. You treat your Japanese staff like shit because you can, because there is respect accorded to Westerners because America rules the world, and you abuse that respect. You order them around, talk over people who are twice your worth and complain about Japan often enough that I wonder why you are still here. And after you order someone to do something, you look at the foreign staff – maybe you don’t realise you do this, but you do – with this look that makes it seem like a contest, a clash of cultures, and you’re doing your best to Help the White Race. But you pay us a tiny wage for difficult work and expect us to act like real employees when you make it clear we are Businesspeople and Contractors. You’re a borderline megalomaniac, pompous and full of your own self-importance. You do a nice imitation of appearing open to new ideas, but then you shut them out with a few cursory sentences and replace them with your own. It’s embarrassing to watch you verbally fellate the company president. You are never wrong. Credit where it’s due; you’re a successful self-made man, you’re good with kids, you speak good Japanese and you work hard. But you really, really need to change the way you interact with your employees. It might help with the high staff turnover rate.
Oh, I would really like to say this to him. See, my boss thinks he deserves respect because of his position, but he has to earn his employees respect every bit as much as we have to earn his. He thinks that because he pays me, I have to respect his power over me, but there are plenty of other jobs I know could get which pay better and have less commuting time. At present, I’m staying for the kids and my co-workers, but that might change. He thinks I have an “attitude problem” (according to a fly on the wall) which is a new label for me. I think it may translate to a reluctance to smile and agree while he fucks me over. He encourages meekness and pliability in his staff. He boils easily and his eyes get twitchy when he encounters resistance and I don’t respect this man at all. He is a twat. He has a large belly, which makes his shirt look like it is being slowly inflated, and his mobile dangles from his neck, bouncing on his stomach as he walks. The ostentatious mobile is a mark of his importance, his Means of Contact, the symbol of the managerial class. He constantly talks over and rudely cuts off the headmaster of my kindergarten, a quiet Japanese man who speaks five languages, has a number of degrees, makes jokes and is liked by the staff.
My dislike of him was fine in the abstract, when he lived in the ivory tower of head office and rarely contacted me, but it’s recently blossomed into a fleshed out dislike, and may one day, if I work at it, grow into a solid, enduring and violent dislike. He’s told me off two times this week for being late. Yes, I was late, four days out of five. Two were my fault – I missed trains, and I know that’s bad. But on Monday, I was very late because I tried a new sequence of trains which he told me would be quicker and was in fact a good half hour slower. But the boss is never wrong, of course, nor the customer, which leaves the balance of responsibility on humble employees such as myself. On Thursday, I was running a bit late and stressing about it, packed into a train full of strangers who were becoming intimately acquainted with each others armpits, when the door opened and trapped a poor salaryman’s arm in the door. He let out a shriek, we milled uselessly around him and I tried to keep the door open which just resulted in more pain for him. The driver sprinted down the platform, freed him and dusted him off. As a result, I was late and hence deserving of punishment. God, I hate criticism, and especially from people I don’t respect.
Here are some extracts from the manual he wrote for contractors, written as a guide to help us become “successful businesspeople.” As “independent proprietors,” we are responsible for the “maintenance of our skillbases.” But we mustn’t forget hygiene in the schools – “cleanliness is next to godliness is not an exaggeration” [sic]. And unless we “enjoy the intense pain of food poisoning, it is best to refrain from semicooked meals.” Nice patronising tone. Oh, and “any display of sexual harassment or discrimination will be followed by immediate termination of contract and possible prosecution. What used to be known as ‘office humour’ is now being viewed as being in poor taste.” That last is rampant hypocrisy.
He’s got that brand of superiority which pretends not to be superiority, he pretends to listen before there is this curious tipping of his head, his eyes, away, like blinking but more, his shoulders, and then he returns, he surges back over the top of you and says yes yes but no. His potbelly overpowering his belt, another signal of difference – it is quite hard to be fat in Japan, sumo wrestlers really have to work at it – and the mobile hanging over it which he professes to hate, this his instrument of Middle Management Power, his wand, a comfortable man with a Japanese wife and kids, the very picture of adaptation. His contractors equal in name and culture but nothing else. But the way he treats his Japanese employees! Snatching phones, bellowing terse Nihongo, talking up and over and always looking at us afterwards, he does it for us, the supremacy of a threatened culture, a minority culture of firsts amongst seconds, wannabe Americans. See, he knows he’s not accepted and that his staff have to defer to him – he is Western, a god made flesh, to be imitated, even though he is anathema to their politeness and reticence, and they resent him, you can see it curdling in their eyes, being amassed only to be talked about to drunken strangers and spouses at safe hours, resentment to die with, stomachs full of it.
---
Oh, I am such a bitch, such a big big bitch, but it is really quite rare that I manage to dislike anyone this much, and in such a short time, too. While I’m thankful that he was born a manager so that I don’t have to be, why is it that the people who gravitate to jobs of authority are so often the people who shouldn’t be doing that work? Prison guards who thrive on sadism, kiddy fiddlin’ scout leaders, charismatic and lethal politicians, managers who could easily be autocrats in a tinpot country.
posted by Doug @ 4/10/2005 10:08:00 pm
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