Wise mumsnetters, any views or advice? Apologies in advance if this is long but I'm desperately unhappy about this and could really do with some views.
I recently returned to work after a while as a SAHM and at first I loved it - I prefer working to being a SAHM and I'm very happy to be out there again. The job is a six month contract. I work in finance projects and suspect the dept for which I'm responsible will be closed down by the end of the year (hence the contract - I replaced a perm head). It's a sizable dept and I'm responsible for millions of pounds and a fairly large team.
The crux of my problem is my boss. He's very rarely in the same office as me so (my instigation) I send a brief weekly summary and a full prioritised listing of all issues and tasks outstanding and we speak on the phone sometimes, although he's so busy this is rarely possible.
In the 5 weeks I've been working for him I've seen him twice. One of those times was today and wasn't pleasant. Despite the fact that he has about 15 direct reports, each responsible for depts of between 4 and 50 people, he's insisting on micro managing me (don't know if he does this to others). This means I'm unable to make the smallest decision without his approval. This might be ok were he accessible but he's absolutely not and getting an answer isn't always possible. Still, I've mostly been doing it.
On one item however I didn't - the display of some stats on a white board in our office. I changed these 3 weeks ago and told him, via my weekly progress report and listing, that I'd done it. The report pointed out that the previous stats were unreliable/incorrect, needed review and showed where this review was on the priority list.
However, today I came back from lunch to find the stats board wiped clean. On asking my staff, it transpired that he'd held his hand over a member of my staff's hands while she wiped my figures off (she initially said she didn't want to change it without talking to me). As far as I'm concerned this undermined my authority in front of my whole department and made me look stupid and incompetent (I'm not, honest!). When I went to ask him why he hadn't spoken to me and asked me to change these figures if they needed changing he said 'well, I could say you didn't talk to me about it when you changed them.' Err, actually, if you read anything I sent you you'd have known I carried this out 3 weeks ago. When I said I was concerned that he'd just sent a message to the whole dept that he wasn't able to talk to me he said 'well, I could say you didn't talk to me since I didn't know you were going to change the statistics'. Aaaggh, it was in the f report you f**wit. AND YOU'RE NEVER HERE! I did point this out, politely. But hey, maybe he wants a fairly expensive dog whilst barking himself. What would you do? I'm torn between:
- Phoning in sick tomorrow for breathing space and to see what else is out there in terms of contracts. When I was looking for work it didn't take too long for this to come up. The pay's ok but it's further away than I'd like (40 miles and 1.5 hrs/day commute)
- Going in and telling him where to shove his micro management, crap interpersonal skills and poxy job and looking for another asap (I have to give a month notice so it would give me time)
- Going in and asking how he proposes to manage me in a more acceptable way over the next 6 months. I know this is the mature option but atm I'm still incensed at his childish and petty behaviour. I'm used to large company culture and professionalism and this aint it.
After this incident one of my staff asked me if I had his approval when I asked her to do something, so it has had an impact on people's perception of me.
What would you do? Congratulations if you got this far, sorry it's so long.