On the day that my Boss left, or "was invited to leave and pursue interests outside the firm," my head spun into an uncontrollable frenzy, which, among other things, ruined my lunch. You see, I saw this coming for quite sometime, but failed to properly prepare for it happening. I had barely been with the firm for a year. A whole ten months and now, under new circumstances, I’m forced to essentially grow up.

When I was younger, all thorough elementary and middle schools, and later in high school, I always had someone, anyone to lean on to, to help guide me when I got a little lost or slightly off course. Sometimes it was a teacher to walk me through an assignment or my father to commit to all of my adult dealings, like car repairs. And later in college, I had an advisor who watched over me like a hawk, making sure I got in all the right classes and had the proper professors for each class. After college, I went into the workforce and then I had my Boss. Now she was gone, with no one to take her place.

It wasn’t long in the new building when her true feelings started to rise. I had been with the firm for a couple of months by this point, and was settling in well. I had been thrown onto this project that holds the core of the firm’s business and creativity. It was a big project, a big responsibility and a huge challenge, but I saw it as my opportunity to flourish and prove my worthiness to the firm. But like any big project, it didn’t go without its problems. One of the marketing managers was a ball buster and not a very good one at that. His image had always been different from everyone else’s and of course he considered his visions to be better. It never was, of course, he just felt that way. Jeff had made a stink about an issue on the project. It wasn’t a big issue, but he made it out like it was to be one.

"I want the documentation placed in electronic form up on the ftp site," he said one day.

"We’ve never done that," my Boss fired back. "We never publish an editable format. That deals too heavy with copyright laws and regulations. It gives our competitors easy access to our docs. Not gonna happen."

"But we want our support team to be able to direct a client easily to the ftp site and be able to download a file when they need it," Jeff argued. "This will make life a lot easier for our support team."

My Boss shook her head and her eyes started to bulge as she became more fierce towards him. "No, we don’t do that. You know we don’t, I’ve told this to people a thousand times, no electronic versions of documents are to be distributed!"

Jeff backed down fast. He was afraid of my Boss, she had a reputation of being ready to strangle at a moments notice. "Hey, talk to Harry, it was his idea," he said directing the heat towards his own boss.

"No, I’ll go talk to Norm and Mark and they can shoot you down," she said as she started to stomp away. I quickly followed behind, papers in my arms. We got twenty feet down the hall and turned the corner when she blew a gasket.

"I’m gonna quit. I swear to God, I’m gonna leave. I’ve told them a thousand fucking times about stuff like this and they never listen," she said trying to keep from screaming.

What do you say after that? I’d been there only a couple of months, what could I say? I think I made a small joke, trying to help lighten the mood. It didn’t work, it didn’t even help a little, but what else could I have done?

We had a woman in our group who caused us some trouble. Ann was older than the rest of us, and we’d like to believe that it was just a conflict of personalities, but when the whole firm hates your guts, its more likely that you have the personality conflict. She started about a week before I did and the shit rolled down hill after the new building. The first indication of her problem was her temper. She once yelled at me in the cafeteria at 8:30 in the morning for not changing the toner cartridge in the printer. Right in front of the damn Director of Human Resources, this woman yells at me for something that she could have easily done herself. But, because I was printing out a ton of pages for this big project, it was my responsibility to maintain the printer. She never considered herself who was always running the printer out of paper.

Ann’s gripes continued until she started to accuse a member of our group of harassment and my Boss and Vice President of coercion against her. She claimed that they were plotting to have her canned at the first possible moment and that she couldn’t talk to our Vice President Mark about any of this, since my Boss "controlled" him. My Boss was accused of not being able to organize, schedule or maintain a group she was supposed to manage. My Boss supposedly had it out for Ann, that she was jealous of her wonderful work and that she could manage better than my Boss. And she said all this in an overblown two hour meeting with the President of the firm.

"Basically, Bob wants her gone," my Boss told me of the president. "Ann has no future in this firm. She isn’t well-liked by anyone and quite frankly, she has insulted me. You wouldn’t believe how much more effort it takes to manage her over the rest of you," my Boss pointed out to the other four members of our group.

"How will we manage if she is to leave?" I asked in a concerned manner..

"We’ll manage better without her," my Boss explained. "Basically, I haven’t been able to concentrate on any of my own work with all of this going on. "I’ll tell you, she makes this job not worth coming in for. Sometimes, I’d rather just work from home and other times, not at all."

A few weeks later, Ann "left the firm to pursue other interests" and for a while, things were quiet and calm. For a while. Slowly, people started to talk about how insane Ann’s actions were and that many people had refused to work with her, making it impossible for my Boss to schedule any assignments at all. A couple of us pillaged her office and swiped some diskettes and the remaining computers. Life went on and the atmosphere around the firm improved, especially in our group. But things don’t last forever.

I came back to lunch one day after the Christmas break to an e-mail message from one of the support personal. It read:

I started to reply to Casey, explaining that it would have to be in DocMaker format when I remembered my Boss’s policy on electronic copies of docs. No way. I told him that I would have to check with her, as I did on everything else. The e-mail was sent. There was no reply.

I caught my Boss coming in from lunch. "I got an e-mail from Casey over in Support, he needs an electronic version of Hard Target for a customer,-" she let out a deep sigh "-but I said I needed to check it out with you first."

My Boss sat back in her chair and gave a disgusted look as she stared at nothing in particular for a few moments. Then she spoke. "Why doesn’t anyone ever listen? I’ve been through this before with Support, no electronic versions. Jesus, what does it take?"

"Maybe I should just give him a hard copy for now and go and explain it to him," I said. I hoped she would cool down over this.

"Just give him a copy of the document, I’ll catch up with him later," my Boss replied in bitter monotone. I left her and headed for the support area, only to listen to the Support Engineer for a half an hour about how ridicules my Boss was with the copyrights and trying to keep the competition away from our material.

"Shit, I can call up as `Joe Blow` from `Such and Such` firm and order a copy of this shit and no one will know," Casey explained. "I don’t know what her problem it, she’s severely behind the times. Today, everyone offers electronic versions of their documentation. Even the big, big firms, they all have online access to documentation, even the government. I think by not going online, we’re defeating our purpose. We’re supposed to be the leader in new ideas and innovation and we’re not showing it." The argument went on and on for a whole half hour until his phone rang. He made a lot of good points, most of which I tried to shared with my Boss, who couldn’t have cared.

"I’ve had it. They can do whatever they want. I just don’t care anymore," she said. The end was closing in.

Several months ago, long before my Boss left the firm, she went to the operations Vice President. There, in his office, she bitched and moaned and bitched some more about the product manager Jeff and his antisocial behavior.

"I swear to God, I’ll jump ship if he doesn’t get off my ass," she explained. "Every time I look around, Norm, this jerk is on me about one thing or another. And he’s got some issue with electronic versions. We don’t distribute electronic versions. You and I both know this and I don’t understand why he doesn’t."

"Look, Jeff’s just trying to keep the company moving, He has the firm’s best interests in his mind," Norm said.

"I don’t give a shit what his intentions are," my Boss said. "He harasses my people, he gives them projects that I am supposed to assign, he goes over my head, he tries to manage me. I’m telling you, I’m going to jump ship if this shit continues. I’ve had it with him"

"All right, all right. Look, I’ll have a talk with him. I’ll get him to calm down and not to get so fired up. Listen, I know what he’s like, he’s a rude dog, but he does the job well enough for now. Right now, there isn’t anyone else to do it. I’ll get him to calm down a little bit, will that make you happy?" Norm asked.

"It has to be a lot a bit, Norm. "We got rid of Ann for a lot less aggravation it seems sometimes," my Boss replied. Norm agreed and Jeff was well behaved from then on. There were no more "special assignments" or surprises or anything like that. Jeff was well behaved and my Boss was a little happier.

On the day my Boss left, she was actually in early, about 8:30. We usually have a meeting at 10:30, but she called it for ten in a conference room, normally we usually have it in her office. Suddenly we were joined by our Vice President and a couple of other managers.

"This is our last meeting together," she said smiling. The four of us in the group were in shock. It had been a year this very week when the Contract Recruiter called me to come in for and interview and now, a year later, my Boss was planning to leave. "This is my last day." She’s leaving sooner.

"Basically, I am being invited to leave the firm and pursue interests outside. Someone has invited me to join their company," she said smiling even brighter. We were all still in shock.

"It came down that we needed to cut some revenue," our Vice President said, "and she has volunteered to be the one laid off. It has nothing to do with performance by any means."

"This is a good thing," she said. "I’ve worn out my stay here and I’m bored. I’m leaving to go to a firm where I can make a difference. Here, I no longer can."

There’s numbness in my toes. I think I’m having a stroke.

"I want you all to know, that I would not be leaving if I didn’t think all of you could handle your work," she said giving us all thumbs up. "All of you know what you’re doing, you don’t need me, but if you do, I’m not far away."

Yup, she’s leaving. This is a leaving speech. I think I’m paralyzed.

"This is a good thing for me to do. It’s time to move on and all of you need more breathing room and there is nothing left for me here."

And so she left, and I was left with an empty feeling. Now, I know exactly how the Doors felt when Jim Morrison announced he was leaving to live in Paris. They just seemed have no direction, no idea as to where to go from there. I felt the same, just as if I were in a trance and was just looking into the world and not really absorbing it fully. My head spun and I grew dizzy. She hugged us all good-bye, Morrison hugged the Doors good-bye. He swayed by them and replied, "Maybe someday we’ll make a film, black and white." My now ex-Boss did the same, but said, "Maybe someday we’ll do a CD-ROM, on a Macintosh."

We watched her drive away just after noontime and then we all went to lunch. When we came, we pillaged her office, like we did to Ann’s. There was no reason to prolong it, besides, I wanted her Pentium. It all made us feel a bit better, etched it in stone if you will. But I still can’t get over the fact that my Boss has quit on me. She just left with a two hour notice. In a way, it was just like when a parent has a heart attack and dies in an afternoon. These things happen, more often than not.

But I’ll always remember the fight she gave when I stare into her old monitor and think about how much happier she is in her new job. And one day, I will be the Boss who quits. But not today. Today, I need to keep marketing from making electronic files of our documents.

-end-