Vacation Interruptus

Some people think they are intelligent, brag about being intelligent, take pride in being intelligent and … are actually intelligent. (I’m one of these humble people and I’m here to tell you it’s no cakewalk!)

Then there are the people who think they are intelligent, brag about being intelligent, take pride in being intelligent, revel in being smarter than everyone around them and … are actually the dumbest people in the room.

Some people are dumb and they know it. Then there are the people that are so stupid, they actually think they are the smart ones.

In other words, this is yet another post about my boss.

It might seem lofty and pretentious to refer to a three-day weekend as a “vacation.” In my life, however, a three-day weekend is as good as it gets, so the word “vacation” will have to suffice.

Coffee house ceiling.

Last weekend my wife and I three-day vacationed with a road trip to the big city. I had taken a day off on Friday and now it was Saturday morning and we were chilling in a coffee house that had apparently being converted from an old automotive garage. It had concrete walls a pipes in the ceiling. It had a very grunge feel.

We were on the sofa sipping our coffees and reading the local negativity newspaper (which I loved) when my wife said something that chilled me to the bone.

“Your boss just left a message on my phone.”

“Oh God. Holy shit!”

I pondered that information then said, “This will be interesting. This will give us an opportunity to scientifically conduct an empirical experiment. The goal of the study? Determine what criteria the boss uses to reach a decision that it is acceptable to disturb an employee on vacation. My hypothesis? His criteria will be bullshit.”

There was no way in hell I was going to call him on the phone and actually speak with him, though. So we had to wait. We had to wait three minutes until my iPod chirped. An email from the boss had arrived, thoughtfully delivered by the coffeehouse wifi.

“Now we get to see,” I said sagely, holding up the phone.

The boss had screwed up our website. Not the primary website, mind you. Our test website. This was a website that was currently online and receiving about 17 paid clicks per day as part of testing. It wasn’t officially “launched” yet. It was mildly irritating to be called about a “test” website but I could at least understand the logic. It was somehow legitimate in a tiny, miniscule, obscure sort of way. Sure, it could wait until Monday, but then we’d have wasted a whopping $2.40 in cpc fees. Horrors!

My hypothesis had been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. There were two kickers that made this a thermonuclear explosion of delight.

Earlier in the week I had attempted to show him how to avoid the problem. He couldn’t be bothered to give me 30 seconds of his attention. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” is the exact quote of his response.

Then, I had attempted to train him how to fix the problem. Just in case, you know? He pretended to watch and didn’t take notes.

And here we were. The boss believing this incident was an “emergency*” and totally unable to cope with it on his own. Or recognize that the problem was so small it could easily wait until Monday.

I fired up my iPod browser, logged into our website, and spent two minutes fixing the problem and writing him an email so he wouldn’t have to “worry.” I then made a mental note to charge him 15 minutes on my time card.

I never heard back from him with any sort of acknowledgment or “thank you.” (A phrase that isn’t found in the boss dictionary unlike “emergency.”) It reminded me of the other day when I was trying to be nice (don’t remind me!) and I brought food into the office at my own expense. He snatched it out of my hands and wolfed it down and never said “thank you” then, either.

Oops. Gotta run! It’s time for me to leave to spend my whole day with him again. No vacation for the weary!

*Never in my entire life have I ever heard a boss use this word correctly.