9 to 5

Have I told you about my new boss?  Well, it's already been a couple months, so not that new...  He's 80+ years old and wears a hearing aid in both ears.  He also vacillates from sweetheart to curmudgeon in 0.3 seconds - which only exacerbated my recent hormone-induced moodiness to the point where all my other coworkers are now deathly afraid of both of us because we yell at each other all day, everyday.

You see, my boss sits right next to me.  The whole time he's at the office - from 9:30am to 4:00pm, with a half-hour break for lunch.  He's right there. His desk is at a 90-degree angle to mine and when we're both seated at our desks with our chairs pushed in, our shoulders are a mere 2-feet apart.  Some of the time he's (way) over at his desk making phone calls on his cell, in this CMU pit of reception we call our home away from home.  I swear I've looked at my phone before and had NEGATIVE bars, the reception is so bad.  Suffice to say, when my boss is on the phone, he has to yell and repeat himself a lot.  When he's not on the phone or composing emails on a notepad for me to type up & send, he sits next to me, literally shoulder-to-shoulder, with a makeshift pointer made out of an old Bic ballpoint pen shaft and inverted cap so that the plastic clip part is the pointer.

Anyway, my point is that this makes for a somewhat stressful work place for me.  And since he is a bit up in the years, he has his senior moments.  Here's, verbatim, a very common conversation we have:

Boss:   OK, put this brace 10' off of that one.
Me: [Cheerful] OK [clicks mouse, types some stuff, clicks mouse again]
Boss:  Great. Perfect.  Print that out for me.
Me: [Hits Ctrl+P & hands printout to him]
Boss: [After studying it for a bit] What's the spacing on these braces here?
Me: 10' on center.
Boss: [Scoffs] What? That won't work - why'd you space them out so far? They can't be over 7' apart!!
Me: [Demurely] Oh. I thought you told me to space them 10' apart.  I'm sorry... [Click, type type, click]
Boss: Yeah! Good.  Now fix it and print me out another copy.
Me: [Diligently] Ok!

So that's how that conversation went in August, when I first started working for him.  Lately, however - what with my extra-sunny disposition - the "conversation" quickly disintegrates as such:

Boss: OK, put this brace 10' off of that one.
Me:  [Incredulous] 10'? Are you sure? I thought 7' was the max.
Boss: [Scoffs] Well, yeah it is.  But let's just show it at 10' for now.
Me: [Click, type type, click] OK. 10' on center.
Boss:  [Pauses, staring at screen, breathing loudly] OK, what happens if you move them 3' closer together?
Me: [All cool be lost] [Exasperated sigh] Oh, you mean, so that they're 7' on center? The max? OK, let's "see". [CLICK CLACK, BANG BANG, CLICK]
Boss: Ok, yes. That's better.  You shouldn't space them 10' apart like that...
Me: [Fuming]

I'm sure customers of the printing portion of our office must think I'm the most horrible person in the world. They'll be sitting across the room, waiting for copies, and all of a sudden they hear my shrill younger voice verbally abusing this frail old man.  Thing is, he's not frail.  And he's certainly not innocent.  The man is crazy! He yells at me at least as much, if not more, than I yell back at him.  And usually in the end, we both either calm down and laugh it off - or it just dies down and we keep working as though nothing happened.

So, really, it's just the way it is.  The way it has to be.  We've achieved a delicate balance of high-volume conversation, disagreement, and compromise.  The cycle repeats itself hundreds of times each week.  And, yes, if you were to walk in on us, without knowing anything, you'd probably think we were inches away from killing each other.  But we're not. 

We quite like each other, actually.