Dooce or Be Dooced

Tell you what, I'm taking a risk here, but I don't care. I have a couple of things I want to get off my chest about my recent experiences with our management, and if they want to fire me, I'll have my lawyers call them (or possibly eat them) for lunch.

Here are some things that are bugging me this week:

1. That our large group now has only one boss (let's call her PHB) running the show; she's way up in the stratosphere, everyone else is on a relatively equal level
2. That she's running it from halfway across the country and consequently knows nothing about what any of us peons do from day to day
3. That PHB thinks she knows better than the people who do work with me what I'm capable of
4. PHB asked me my greatest fear and then saw to it that that fear was fulfilled (maybe we should call her Dr. Lecter)
5. PHB can change our job descriptions at the drop of a hat, then see to it that we get demoted if we don't measure up (this is insider information as a warning to any of my coworkers who might read my blog: Look OUT!)
6. Demotion might not mean anything anyway, since our titles are now meaningless-- not to mention useless on a resume. Catch-22.
7. With apologies to Monty Python, this whole "every serf is equal" idea is just bogus; it's a pain for the junior worker bees who now have to run to catch up, and now that my job means nothing more than anyone else's, I feel like I've lost the past 6 years of experience and any appreciation therefor.
8. That the job I got passed over for doesn't involve as much responsibility, work, and, well, pains in the behind as the job I have now. Yet, "they" (PHB and her devoted henchwoman) claim I'm "not ready" to do that level of job. Did I mention "What.Ever."? See #3.
9. The current workload for all of us "equal peons" (see also: communism) is impossible to accomplish effectively, so failure is inevitable.
10. PHB takes our concerns about the impossible workload as a complete unwillingness to work at all and tells us to stop being such slackers.
11. In one meeting last week, PHB asked what the difference is between client-side and server-side programming. It worries me that she's the one in charge.
12. When she was in town last week, she showed up just as a lunch meeting was ending, asked why we haven't written ourselves up for awards, then spent the next several minutes berating us for having low self-esteem. We laughed so hard we cried and pounded the table. The fact that she was serious just made it funnier. In a tragic way. AND she used this as an example of how we're always trying to get out of doing more work.
13. WHAT THE @&$(#@& DOES SHE DO ALL DAY BESIDES MICROMANAGE AND INSULT PEOPLE?!
14. The staff is leaving the sinking ship, and she doesn't seem to care.
15. [Updated: My newly resigned boss is a total rock-star of this particular world, but as soon as she's out of the building, the PHB and company are dissing her for... are you ready? Not saying "No" to new work often enough!]

The thing I hated the most about my former "um, friend" Richard was his telling me in all seriousness, "You're special... and so's everyone else." This situation reminds me so much of that one, I feel twice as angry as I might have otherwise.

And just on an "Isn't that cute?" note, one of my coworkers (who is, yes, quitting any minute now) used the phrase "stab PHB in the eye" so many times last week that I lost count.

I just want to be the first to say,

"The Empress has no clothes!"

Go ahead: Dooce me, baby.