Peons

6-16-21

I don’t altogether like my boss that much. That’s an eloquent way of saying he’s not great, but certainly not the worst. My frustration comes from the fact that I’ve worked remotely longer than I’ve worked in the office and he still wants me to come back. It’s only so they can keep an eye on me.

Why do I need to go in if the quality of my work hasn’t changed? He says it’s to build a relationship with my team (the people I “manage”) but we have a great working relationship. I tell them what jobs they’re doing and they do it. I manage the data, they manage the gathering. It works because I let them be humans instead of workers in the machine. It bums me out.

In the end it’s not as if I don’t like the people in the office. It’s just that he always tries to change things so they work the way he expects them to. However, he doesn’t do every job. He simply is the CEO, and even then I don’t know what that entails. He helps pay people, mainly. Keeps us up to compliance. Changes things that don’t need to be changed so that way there’s a “standard operating procedure.”

He’s so patronizing about it, too. As if I don’t follow SOPs every moment of my work day. As if I don’t have 2 years of experience in a repetitive job. I know what it requires. I’m no expert, but I’m good at my job. Good enough to be trusted. Good enough to not have to be in whatever place he wants me to be so he can see his peons whenever and wherever he wishes.

Some people take boss as a leadership position and others take it as a point of power—a way to control. I’ll let you guess where I think he falls.

-E.B.