*** boss

you are at liberty to define what *** means.

i have a boss who gave me the following instructions this week:

• i wrote an email to check with a department head about some issues that i would like to discuss and as there was a background to this issue, i wanted to document this conversation to provide for an audit trail. naturally, i copied my boss cos he was a person who always insisted on email documentation of correspondence. next thing i knew, i was summoned to his office. you must know that you cannot send email to senior people to ask these things, you should talk to them first before you email them... he said, sounding somewhat unhappy. kinda weird for him to give me this kinda advice considering the fact that this was what he had been insisting of us and for that matter, doing to us. and most funnily, he should give me such advice, considering my seniority... but well, let's just take it that i look young (ahem... haha...)

• my boss had expanded my jobscope to cover recruitment - something that my colleague had been handling. and he had been superbly kancheong (anxious) to have me take over this asap. last week he emailed and voiced his displeasure when he noted my colleague was still doing it. then, i had told him that his directions was for me to take over fully by aug and i had already started understudying. i added that the plan was for me to handle new cases and my colleague would complete the cases she had initiated. he agreed to this plan. then suddenly out of no where, he wrote an email this week chiding me for not doing what i was "supposed" to do and demanded that i take over all recruitment immediately. my colleague, cleverly just dropped everything and threw it all to me. and then suddenly, i was loaded with a whole pile of backlogged cases that my colleague did not do. overnight, i have about 15 cases to handle. i noted that my colleague had been very disorganised and all her data was all over the place. even the form she designed was not robustly designed and so, i started to organise things. with a clear end in mind, i worked out a referencing system and started given case numbers to the cases and i told line managers that they should quote me these case numbers when talking to me about their recruitment needs. and as demanded, i cc my boss in my email. next thing i knew, i got an email chiding from him that i should not ask line managers to use case numbers and that i should talk to them person-to-person. these are people and we should talk to them direct and not ask them to quote case numbers, he chided me over the email. wtf... and the whole irony of asking me talk to people and not via email when he email such instructions to me.

• as mentioned, my colleague had a total of 5 cases that was surface since 2 weeks back but did not act on it and today, everything landed onto me. the line manager called and check on the decision cos she needed to reply to the manpower provided with an answer today. now the documentation was a mess other than an email that showed the department c-staff having approved it. i needed to sort out the documentation process before i process it further, but since the input was rather urgent, i went to my boss to seek his views and whether we can give an initial input to facilitate ground actions first. next thing i knew, i ended up with him giving me a 10min chiding as well as his unprofessional comments and snide remarks about line managers and the department c-staff. and as he chided, he got more and more angry and started banging table. i simply kept quiet and let him went on. and when he stopped, i tried to explain again. again, he was not receptive and continued scolding. this went on for another 10min before i decided it was futile to say anything further. i simply told him i'll get back to the line manager. moving ahead, i do see this happen again and again. but if it kept going on this way, i will simply ask the line manager to talk to him direct. i don't find myself value adding and it is so unproductive to always end up with him scolding despite checking...

what bloody nonsense right? *** boss. 

so what do you think *** should be?