The Lactivist

My boss is a public breast-feeder. Now don’t get me wrong, I
understand that breastfeeding is by far the best way to nourish
babies. My boss however, is an activist, or rather as she likes to
call herself, a “lactivist.” She waits until the most inappropriate
times, then she whips out her boob for the whole world to see and
shoves it into her baby’s mouth. Sometimes the baby won’t even latch
on because it’s not hungry and she’s just doing it to make a point.
She doesn’t attempt any discretion whatsoever and makes it a habit of
taking half her shirt off rather than unbuttoning a few buttons. Once
she’s nursing she glares around the room, waiting for someone to
either look uncomfortable or avert their eyes, then she makes a big
deal about it. Also, she is still nursing her last kid in addition to
the new baby, which wouldn’t be so bad but the kid is in kindergarten!
It is quite a disturbing sight.

The Denial Rate

I work in a typical office with what seems like hundreds of others,
reviewing medical claims for “medical necessity”. Keep in mind, that I
have a Bachelor’s degree in nursing and have worked in clinics and
doctor’s offices for over 20 years. Needless to say, my boss, I’ll
call him, Phil, because his name is Phil, wants us to have a 32%
denial rate of all claims that have been already approved by the
initial reviewers. Even with my expertise, which I base on education
and experience, my boss refuses to accept my professional judgement.
He comes up with some of the wackiest reasons to deny claims,
regardless of the illness/injury. He is mega religious and thinks that
people need to rely on the power of prayer to heal themselves. Phil
and his wife have 9 kids and he marches up and down the aisles of
cubicles ranting on about sparing the rod and spoiling the employee.
He will say things like, “I can’t spank you but I can make you sit in
the corner.”

When I didn’t meet his 32% denial quota, he told me that I
would have to sit in the corner of his office to eat and that I
couldn’t eat in the cafeteria. I laughed at him and he started
grinding his teeth and got this incredibly ridiculous look on his face
and told me that he would wash my mouth out with soap if I was one of
his kids. I spent a good part of my lunch in the HR office that day.

Robot Love

I am the departmental secretary for the electrical
engineering/computer science program at a mid-sized university. I
admit, I know very little about science stuff, but my job doesn’t
require any sort of specialized knowledge. We have a professor in our
department who has been working for years on a robot. He is trying to
make a breakthrough in robot sentience, sort of like IMB’s Watson,
only more human with emotions and such. I have heard him have very
heated debates with people about the interconnected future of humans
and robots. He has a firm belief that one day humans and robots will
fall in love and be allowed to marry one another. He’s so bizarre.

One day I had to deliver a time-sensitive message to him one day so I
had to go find him in his lab. As I approached the door I could hear
him talking to someone, so I waited to go in so I wouldn’t appear
rude. I realized as I stood there waiting that he was having an
intimate conversation with his robot. I knocked and he beckoned me to
come in. I quickly handed him the message and high-tailed it out of
there, but not before stealing a glance at his robot. It appeared he
was halfway through, I’m not quite sure how to describe it,
“decorating” her with realistic, porcelain-white faux skin, and he had
given her enormous breasts with abnormally large nipples. I don’t
think I can look this guy in the eye ever again.

Backups

Before I took my job as an IT guy for a relatively small company the
boss had outsourced all of that work to a very expensive, $150 an
hour, consultant who naturally fixed things but never really deployed
any permanent solutions. Before I had arrived he had set up a tape
backup system on site that would back up the server. I was told to
swap out the tapes every day which I did.

I also went a little above and beyond and checked the system logs to
ensure it was running smoothly which it was reporting it was. Now the
boss was a pretty dim guy when it came to technology and he also had
this issue where he would trust all the wrong people. During my time
there I recommended improvements to the process like buying a safe for
the tapes, setting up off site automatic backups, and things along
those lines.

One day the boss had called in the consultant on an unrelated matter
as he often did needlessly and the consultant decided to tell him,
“The backups aren’t being made.” Now, mind you I cut this guy out of
our budget to the tune of over 100k a year easy money. My boss panics
and demands an explanation. No problem, I pull the tapes, the logs,
and the email correspondence between him and I showing that I’m not
only conducting the backups but proactively attempting to improve
them.

He stares blankly at the information with a “we’ll see” look in his
eye and tells me he’s going to have the consultant review this and
take action depending on that. The moron decided to have the same
consultant advise him on this. The same consultant that established
the backup system. The same consultant that would now make 100k a year
easy money if I was fired. Needless to say I was let go, the
consultant is now making a ton of money again, and the bosses business
is still in the crapper.