“Figure It Out” — Famous Last Words

I’m a battalion-level officer in the army reserve. While I was getting my Master’s, I took an overnight gig doing unimportant things. My coworkers were mostly nineteen- to twenty-two-year-olds in college or just out of high school. The pay was good and I could focus on my studies all night. I graduated with my Master’s in 2018, but the job market for my field in my area was hard for a while. I had a good relationship with the owner of my company and the pay was really good, plus the army had me working in my field, so I just decided to stay.

Fast forward to this year. I’ve been here four years now. Every manager or supervisor has nothing but praise for me, and I’ve made zero mistakes that cost the company any money or time.

I get a new boss. He’s a good guy. He’s flexible and works with people to get people the schedules they want. But over time, personal issues or something gets in his head. I suspect he doesn’t like struggling to schedule around my military duties, but who knows? He starts name-calling, being condescending, or ranting and raving at me for unclear reasons every time he sees me. He wants things “cleaned up” but is never able to quite articulate what that means, and my attempts never satisfy him.

One time, [Boss] ranted at me for sweeping wrong. Another time, he ranted at me for calling him when nobody showed up to relieve me for an hour past my shift, and the guys on the schedule said they were told they didn’t need to come in. When he does manage to give a specific instruction, he’ll show up the next day and rant and rave and yell that I didn’t do it before he told me.

Now, my comfortable, well-paying job is no longer peaceful, and I have better things to do than listen to a man-child be angry at the world every day. So, I hop on [Job Posting Website] and apply for a couple of jobs in my field. By now, I have my Master’s and six years of experience doing it in the army, so I land some interviews, and within a few weeks, I get an offer for double my salary.

Soon after, as I’m still working on the onboarding process for the new company, [Boss] becomes enraged that a garbage can is dirty. I kid you not. A garbage can. Is dirty. I listen to him rant and name-call and all that fun stuff, and the next day, I roll my eyes and wash the garbage can. He responds by yelling at me some more because I didn’t wash it before being told to, calling me some names, and then threatening to fire me.

I shrug and write up my two-week notice and hand it to him the next day. It turns out that threat was a bluff. He is now VERY short-staffed, and he blows up again. Yawn.

The next day, though, I notice something peculiar on our work app. I filed a time off request months ago, specifying that it was for upcoming military orders. It has been denied. I laugh it off because, obviously, that’s a misclick on [Boss]’s part. But, uh… nope.

I come in for work again, and [Boss] very smugly informs me that I will be working through the whole next week.

Me: “Uh… I have military obligations.”

Boss: “I don’t care. I denied your time off request.”

Me: “I have orders from the military. I can’t be here.”

Boss: “Nope. I denied it.”

Me: “Uh… You can’t do that.”

Boss: “Yes, I can! This is what you get for not respecting me and acting like a child! I’m denying your time off request, so figure it out.”

Me: “Can I have in writing that you’re denying me unpaid time off for military duty?”

Ladies and gentlemen… if asked for something in writing, a smart man would stop and reconsider. A smart man actually would realize WELL before talking to me that trying to tell an army battalion that they can’t have one of their captains because a thirty-five-year-old civilian middle manager is being petty is a REALLY dumb idea and that it is, in fact, illegal. But my boss is not a smart man. Maybe he once was, but he is now an angry, vengeful, petty man who, at this point, believes he has won a mighty victory over his enemy. So, he puts it in writing and then walks off with a confident swagger, shouting over his shoulder:

Boss: “FIGURE IT OUT!”

If you insist.

After my shift, I waited for our main office to open and I called the company’s owner for the first time since this new boss had started. We had a friendly chat, and then I told him I was calling just to warn him that his manager was trying to pick a fight with the Department Of Defense and that I wanted to let him know and get it resolved unofficially. The owner thanked me for calling him, assured me that I would, of course, have those days off, and asked me what my perceptions were of the new boss. I gave him my opinion that he was once great but had turned into the most toxic, abusive person I’d ever worked for. We wished each other well, and then we hung up.

I don’t know what happened next, but I suspect the owner politely and calmly informed [Boss] that small businesses don’t like their managers picking fights with the federal government, because when my new schedule came out, I had my drill days off, and my boss avoided me after that.

I’m taking a vacation after drill and then starting my new job as an expert in my field, working autonomously with clients, and he will remain there, angry, frustrated, and stressed.

I figured it out, bossman.