The Ballistic Critic

I think I have a pretty crappy boss! I have yet to find another job but I am very actively searching. I am a mechanical engineer working for a small Fortune 500 company. The catch here is I do very little engineering and a whole lot of editing existing technical documents.

When I interviewed with my boss he gave me the impression I would be designing and refining our products, after all, my title is Design Engineer. Anyway, cutting to the chase, today I edited a document which involve aspects of our product I was unfamiliar with. I did my best and brought the document to him for some critiquing. Oh, it was critiqued alright.

When I looked up as he was standing at my desk a page zinged by my head! Then another, and yet another. He was so disappointed that I forgot to change the color of a cell in Excel that he was literally ripping the pages off the stack and whizzing them at me like a frisbee. All the while mumbling something to the effect that this was an "obvious error that should have never been overlooked." Now, mind you that I was unfamiliar with the document's contents to begin with and just wanted some insight as to whether or not I was heading in the right direction.

I have seen him go ballistic often and it is usually about something minor. He is a mechanical engineer from Harvard. You think the guy would have more tact, patience, professionalism, and, above all, maturity!

He believes that departmental meetings are not productive and refuses to hold them. He is the only one allowed to attend the informational meetings on current projects and ongoings of the company as a whole. He refuses to share the information he gathers in those meetings with the engineering department which causes us to be inefficient.

He misplaces documents on his own desk and accuses the engineers of not getting them to him, only to find it on his desk and offer no apology whatsoever. Is this the boss from hell? I think so. He has a condescending attitude toward all the engineers under him and instills no confidence nor does he offer any sort of encouragement to make the engineer better. I'd better quit now as I could write a book about all my experiences although I have only worked here for 10 months.

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