Clueless

That inner voice, the hairs raising on the back of your neck, that feeling in your stomach that makes you pause.

These are all signs that you have that feeling. That inkling you get that makes you stop, turn around, and decide NOT ask your boss that question you were going to bother him with. You get these feelings because you’ve picked up on his vibe. You heard him sigh, heavily, and with an attitude.

I can hear that sigh from my desk, 20 feet away. It’s like it is being broadcast over an megaphone. Your ears are keen to that noise, even when you are knee deep in work. Like when you are sitting in traffic with the music blaring, and you hear that ever so faint Fire Engine or Ambulance siren, you turn the music down and you are now on alert. Where is it coming from? What’s the emergency? Same thing with picking up on the signs.

Rarely does Little Boss ever just blow up. You get levels of warnings and it’s all about paying attention to them. Here are a few of the warning signs:

• Huffing or Sighing loudly, with attitude
• Banging on the keyboard
• The expression “Oh, Come ON!!” when his computer doesn’t cooperate
• The expression “Give me a break!” when some program or his email won’t open
• The way he calls people in to help him. If it’s a “Heyyyy, IT Guru? Can you come here for a second?”, then he’s ok. If it’s a “Captain Obvious! Come here!”, that’s a bad sign.
• “Why did you do that????” with major attitude, bad sign, goes from level 1 to a level 10 quickly
• Walking hard and loud through the halls
• When he walks up behind you and doesn’t wait for you to finish your phone call, which is always with a customer and he RUDELY stands behind you until you are done
• When he’s throwing his hands up in the air and isn’t doing it for someone to see, he’s just so irritated he’s reacting
• When he throws anything onto your desk
• The face. No explanation necessary. Think 14 year old girl with attitude, rolling her eyes and rudely smirking

Any of these signs spell disaster. So with all of this knowledge and the frequency of how often we see these signs, you would think EVERYONE knew when to steer clear of him.

Not when you’re The Wanderer! Simply clueless! She always knows the exact wrong time to approach Little Boss and the wrong thing to say to him. She’ll walk in to bug him when he’s in mid-huff!! That should be a HUGE sign and would make you want to turn around and say to him “I’ll come back later!”. Nope, not her. She can’t see past her own hand to realize when it’s the wrong time to bring something up. I believe it comes from 2 things: 1) her inexperience with men and 2) her inability to read people because she’s unknowingly too focused on herself.

In mid-rant, The Wanderer walks into Little Boss’ office and his response was “Can I help you?”. Hello, HUGE red flag, and yet she STILL walked in! “I have a very useless question to ask you that will only further spiral your inappropriately unprofessional behavior, but I’m still going to ask it”, or at least that’s how I heard it!! She asks him a question that I could SWEAR she’s asked him a few times before. But that’s how she makes herself useful, she asks the same questions over and over again just to get folks to help her or do the work FOR her. But I digress!

So, I’m guessing Little Boss is hearing his own snotty attitude and tries to be a little more helpful and asks The Wanderer, “So, how are you today?”, but he doesn’t REALLY care, he’s just making conversation. He picked the wrong question and the wrong person to ask this of!! He hasn’t realized yet that she’s so needy, this question evokes her life freaking story!! She takes a big breath and says “Welllll, I’ve been really tired lately! I think it’s my diet, but I met with a nutritionist and he says I have to give up all glutens and sugar and that might help me out. But I went to Whole Foods and met with their nutritionist and……”. Hence, the life story. Meanwhile his eyes are glazing over and he’s praying for his phone to ring! But he’s so blunt, he just cuts her off with a “Sooo, did you have anymore questions? No? Okayyyyy, thanks a lot!”, and then dismisses her by turning back to his computer! This scenario happens almost EVERY time! The Wanderer doesn’t get that HE’S NOT ONE OF YOUR GIRLFRIENDS! You just say to Little Boss “I’m doing great” when he asks how you’ve been, then move on!

Who has a Wanderer in their office? A simple good morning turns in to a “Dear Diary…” moment??

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