Bonzai: Thoughts and Expressions

A Working Theory

My current ‘supervisor’ is an ego-driven power-hungry monster that has recently started to lose his grip on reality. My cohorts and I have been discussing the issue of his mental health at length and we came up with some interesting possibilities. At first it was just a fun little bashing session on the boss, but as we went on a bit, we think we may have hit on something that fits like a glove.

There is a condition that exists that has been described as a “mild form of autism”. It is known as Asperger’s Syndrome and the more we look at the case studies of the condition, the more it seems to fit my ‘supervisor’. I want to say right off that I do not wish any ire on – nor am I making fun of – those afflicted with this condition. That said, when you combine the general personality traits of a person with Asperger’s Syndrome with the absolutely asinine behavior of my ‘supervisor’, the result is a highly contemptible and utterly unlikable bug floating in the gene pool known as the human species.

Instead of complaining about him, we have been scheming on ways that could make life more “interesting”, at least for us. One of his little traits is a hang up on loyalty – to the extreme. He can’t seem to understand the difference between being loyal to the family vs. being loyal to a company. Also, he doesn’t distinguish any degrees of separation on the topic. This is why we suspect he ran to a shrink and melted down for 4 days when I told him that I wanted out of his department. This was obviously not in order with his views on loyalty and he didn’t know what to do with it.

Another little quirk is that he must have rules to abide by. He can’t function without them and requires all of us to use the same rules as he does – at least so far as he knows. The truth of the matter is that we all think he is whacked and do what we feel needs to be done to remedy a given situation. We later sort of translate what we did so that it fits into his little ‘rules schema’ and he is fine. Lately we have been having fun just doing things seemingly at random, which is totally screwing with his head. Understand that we still do our jobs to the same level of quality as before, but the boss’s head is swimming.

Subtlety is completely lost on him, as is humor of most types. He understands the mechanics, but just can’t get his mind around it and is therefore uncomfortable in situations where intuition, humor or subtlety is involved. His answer to this is to put us out in front of the people and he hides behind a desk, refusing phone calls from all but the managers that he is unable to blow off. Taking this into account, we have been having some fun here by talking in vagaries and alluding to things that don’t exist. Then we make a joke about it and assume he knows what we are talking about. Because his ego is so big, he won’t admit that he doesn’t understand what is going on and just smiles and goes along. Our ‘fearless leader’ is being ‘fearlessly led” whenever we see fit to mess with him.

If too many people hit my ‘supervisor’ with too many things all at once, he quickly becomes overwhelmed and incapacitated. This could be anything from a group of people talking all at once to multiple people speaking at once on a conference call. His reaction is classic meltdown and if he can’t get hold of the situation he quickly withdraws from it. Obviously, this is a fun one to do with him when we want him out of our hair. We just come at him hard and fast and don’t back off. Instant meltdown – off to the shrink. See ya!

Is it any wonder I put in for a transfer? I can honestly say that I have not learned a single thing from this so called ‘supervisor’ of mine since I have been on the job. He stands by as we make improvements to the systems and then takes credit for the work and concepts. He will make feeble attempts at something and when it fails miserably he pushes the blame off on one of us. As amazed as I am that this condition continues, we all still have a little fun at his expense whenever we can. As always, I’m open to suggestions on future torture techniques for my addled ‘supervisor’. In the mean time, I’ll just wait patiently for my transfer to go through and watch things unfold from a distance.

posted by Bonzai @ 9:59 AM