How to handle my silly boss

My boss is such a pain in the ar**. She is the co-owner of the hedge fund but she handles everything apart from investment, which is handled by her husband.

The reason why

  1. Our office hours are 9am to 6pm, but she wakes up around noon and start sending emails from home. She then comes to office at around 5 or 6 pm everyday.

  2. She expects staff to stay late to meet her to get things approved by her and no external email can be sent without her approval. We usually line up outside her room to wait to see her.

  3. She does not allow attachments in emails to her, either we have paste the excel spreadsheet on the email or print it out. Once I had to join 4 A3 papers to present the excel to her, she even didnt look at it.

  4. She has no manners and just shout at everyone, even her husband in the office.

  5. The office is classified in three parts, front, middle and back. She favours the front, and unforturnately, I am from the back of which she can torture.

  6. The company has a high turnover and now I realised she has no respect for people who came for interviews. After the interviews, she jokes with others about what the interviewees have said.

I should have sprank her a long time ago but given she is a qualified lawyer, its best not to.

I am staying because I want to accumulate the year of experience and have time to prepare for the exams. I will give my resignation notice by the end of this month. The notice period is two months, which means I have three months till the last day of work. I have not found new work but I can’t stand anymore.

Please suggest ways how I can survive these three months and leave work at 6pm sharp everyday.

what does “I should have sprank her a long time ago” mean?

Are you saying you’ve never “sprank-ed” anyone before? Geez man …

i had a difficult boss before. just suck it up and keep throwing punches. 3 months is a walk in the park. also, work your hardest at the end and act like you want it more than ever. bend to every single demand. do it because you hate her then leave. the end result is you will feel better about yourself. btw, is she hot? if so, take some pics of her and post it here.

Your place is a joke and she sounds like a complete nightmare to have to work for. You either have to get in with her or move on. You will likely have to work on the personal side rather than the work side to make waves there from what you said if you do a u-turn and decide to stay. That would transform you from a bad situation to a very good situation. It still sucks though. So, given your plan A, once you have resigned, get a calendar out and tick the days off… and make a daily comment about how many more days you have left and grin broadly to your colleagues. I bet they feel the same. If you are lucky (and this approach will definitely help), you will be released early… FYI there is an infamous hedge fund that was run by a husband-wife partnership. A myriad of problems which were then compounded by their divorce.

Make sure you get your backup job lined up before you give notice. Being unemployed in this environment for an extended period will quickly trump all. And for the record, I agree, there’s no excuse for not spranking her long ago.

Sounds like my last boss. She was a mid-manager though but still had everyone (VPs) eating out of her hands. Can’t beat 100% turnover - every analyst lasted 1-2 months. 1) Like Frank said, “Suck it up.” Every challenge and threat, can be an opportunity to grow in character or learn something new… 2) Under promise, over deliver. E.g. something you can get done for 4pm, ask for 6pm. If questioned, say you always add in extra to double/triple check… 3) Look at the glass half full. Everyone has at least 1 good trait, even if it’s something you hate. E.g. this person is really good at delegating and/or influencing others. Find 1 strength to imitate and maybe let her know… 4) Try not to take it personal… 5) Don’t burn your bridges no matter what. Don’t have to kiss butt, but be civil even when exiting. The one bank that’s always hiring here I cannot apply to, or get a decent reference from. Even giving the standard 2 weeks is a nice gesture considering most people don’t… Peace.

i had to deal with a poor manager for years. the way I looked at it was I am not the one that is wrong. and as the years went on, i realized everybody felt the same way. its hard to work for women imo.

Thanks for the encouraging advise. She was okay during the probationary period, she would listen to ideas, but once that was passed, everything is turned into hell and everyday I live with fear hoping something sh*t does not happen. The excuse she uses for the no email attachment policy is that her Blackberry cannot download email attachments. Everything has to be printed and binders created because rumours are that some resigned staff deliberately deleted files due to frustration of her. It does not matter whether things are properly done or not, she disliked everything or she only appreciates staff staying very late at work such as midnight or those coming to work during off days. I think one of the best way is to pretend stupid till my resignation. I tried to send her attachments but she would just not reply.

Do people get fired there? Is this your first job? Who stays till midnight?

Why don’t you just quit?

I have submitted my resignation and my last day of work at this company should be end of January 2012. I have yet to start to look to new job as I am awaiting for FRM results due on 4 January 2012. I did have high hopes when I first started work here but the way she handles things left me no choice. She has told me to have meeting with her to discuss my current tasks on hand and probably why I am leaving. What should I say to her?

nice. I once left a horrible job myself without a secure position waiting for me. I don’t regret it

tell her her style and yours doesn’t go together well. don’t be spiteful.

As horrible as the job is, never burn bridges. You don’t have to lie, but try to be proper about it. You never know where being spiteful will come back to haunt you down the road.

^ that’s true. As tempting it is to tell someone off because they made your life absolutely miserable and made you hate every hour of every day, just swallow it and move on…

My boss is pretty cool, I got him this mug for year end so people will know he means business in meetings: http://www.thabto.co.uk/mug.htm I told him the instructions are pretty simple, just break the mug over the first offender’s head then keep punching until they all agree.

unless its truly horrific and only if you have money to sit on the sidewalk for a bit (not good time for that either!) stay until the exams, then start looking for a job and when you find one go.

OK I looked up “sprank” and found this http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sprank The only one that seems to fit for a boss is definition number 2. I absolutely guarantee that if you have your boss read that definition and then tell her you want to “sprank” her, you will not need to worry about the notice period.

I’ll never figure out why some people in finance feel they can act this way. I’ve seen and experienced worse things at a bank than I ever did in the Army. I feel your pain but the longer you stay in a position like that the more you realize you can get away with. In the end the joke’s on her: You’re the one being paid to look for a new job.