Boss is being a royal pain in the...

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...you know...I work for the federal gov in IL, but I live in OH. I have an apartment in IL where I stay during the week, and come home on the weekends to be with my family. I am off tomorrow (federal holiday) and I would be making my usual 5 hour drive back to IL tomorrow to be ready for work on Tuesday, but the forecast is calling for snow here, in IL, and everywhere in between for tomorrow. I sent my boss a text to give him a head's up that I may have to take Tuesday off (leave) if the roads are too bad for travel tomorrow. He suggested that I head back today, but my car is at my mechanic's and I won't get it back until tomorrow morning. He said he wasn't going to approve my leave. I told him I wasn't going to risk my life trying to drive back on dangerous roads, and if I didn't make it back, I would just have to lose a day's pay. He didn't respond to that. I've been doing this drive for 13 years, and I think my boss has always had some resentment towards me because I never moved close to work, and his way of dealing with it to give me an extremely hard time when I need to take leave due to bad weather. It doesn't happen that often...in fact, it's only happened 3 or 4 times over those 13 years. I'm not worried about getting my leave, I will just go to his boss, and he always sides with me on these issues. That also makes my boss mad, but I say tough. He has always given us techs a hard time when it comes to taking leave, and he almost always gets overruled by his boss. You'd think he'd stop being difficult, but he just keeps at it...maybe this time his boss will tell him this is enough...I've only got a little over two years left until I retire, and I think my boss is going to do his best to make that time as miserable as possible...
 
Originally Posted By: salesrep
....dang, too bad. He sounds quite small.


Quite the opposite...he weighs like 380...but I know what you mean...
 
Years ago I read and implemented techniques from a $10 book titled Leadership Effectiveness Training : http://www.gordontraining.com/wp-content/uploads/LET eBrochure-2012.pdf . Anyone with a bit of gray matter between their brains can do this without taking the entire program.

"If you’re here because you’re tired of power struggles and need a new way of interacting then we might be for you. Imagine if you could create a climate of collaboration where influence and respect triumphed over aggression and “just do what I tell you”.

I've used it on some pretty severe egotistical people (College Profs.) and they melt like putty and don't even realize what happened.
 
Do you have union representation, AFGE?

What about using sick leave instead of annual leave?
 
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Originally Posted By: nickaluch
In 13 years I have to ask why u never moved the family closer to your job.

Who in their right mind would move to The People's Republic of Illinois?

For once I commend Grampi for using good Judgment.
 
Originally Posted By: grampi
Originally Posted By: salesrep
....dang, too bad. He sounds quite small.


Quite the opposite...he weighs like 380...but I know what you mean...


It’s like the opposite of Napoleon syndrome.
 
Sounds like my boss. It could be a blizzard and a foot of snow and we would still have to travel. Thought I was going to get written up for turning around the other week when weather turned (FWD Transit Connect with less than stellar all seasons...). Sometimes you gotta do what you feel is right despite making the boss mad.
 
I've been that boss. Reading your post I wondered what is the nature of the job? Is your area one deep or do others have to step in when you aren't around? Is the boss uniformly disliked or only you with your self engineered special needs. In other words are you the only one he draws a hard line with or does he treat everyone the same. If it's the former you have a grievance. If the latter he's just being evenhanded. Also his boss is not helping the friction between you by not backing his manager.
 
We didn't move there because we had only owned our home for less than a year, we bought at the height of the market, and the bottom dropped out right after we bought, making it impossible to sell without losing a ton of money. We tried two more times, putting the house on the market, but the market was still bad and we just couldn't get out without losing a boatload of money. So we stayed and I commuted. Now I'm glad I did because we won't have to move when I retire.

As far as my boss goes, he's always given all of us techs a hard time when it comes to taking leave. It's because he doesn't want to be on hook in case something breaks while us techs aren't there. He can do the job, but he doesn't want to. I can't call in sick because he already knows that's not the case. Besides, tacking a sick day onto a 4 day weekend just looks fishy, but I could've gotten away with it if I hadn't been honest with him to begin with...either way, if the roads are too bad tomorrow, I'm taking Tuesday off, mad boss or not...
 
Originally Posted By: faltic
I've been that boss. Reading your post I wondered what is the nature of the job? Is your area one deep or do others have to step in when you aren't around? Is the boss uniformly disliked or only you with your self engineered special needs. In other words are you the only one he draws a hard line with or does he treat everyone the same. If it's the former you have a grievance. If the latter he's just being evenhanded. Also his boss is not helping the friction between you by not backing his manager.


He gives all of us techs a hard time over taking leave, but the second he knows I need it due to bad weather, he goes into super douche mode and just refuses to work with me. I know he's doing it because he hates being on the hook if something breaks, and because he resents me for never moving there. We have a fairly new tech in the office whose been there for just over a year now and he asked me if he (the boss) has always been this much of a pain when it comes to taking leave...I told him he better get used to it...
 
Go over his head to his Boss and mention that you are being harassed. Because you are! I work as a DOD contractor and I am around Government workers all day long. They have the most lax Bosses on planet earth. I used to have a Boss like yours. He threatened me with three days off without pay for taking too much time off. Time that I had on the books. I told him to Bring it on! He turned red faced and got real mad but I never had another problem.
 
Sounds like your boss has zero respect for his employees.

Your last day on the job make sure you call him a piece of [censored] in front of fellow coworkers. I'm not kidding.
 
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