Awkward

I think I have made it abundantly clear here on my blog that I do not like my boss. She is rude, she is unprofessional, she does not deserve my respect. For the last 5+ years, I have bitten my tongue and kept my head down while she allowed her personal issues cause difficulty after difficulty at work. It has been very difficult.

About two weeks ago, some things she has said and done came back and bit her - HARD - in the backside when one of my coworkers called her out over the entire situation at a meeting. Within moments, the boss was nearly in tears as several staff pointed out her lies, manipulations, and casual cruelties.

It was a blast. I was so proud of these normally timid staff for standing up for themselves and not allowing her to back them down. I, amazingly enough, managed to keep mostly out of it. Only when Big Boss Lady asked me to defend her by lying did I say anything, and even then I kept it to just agreeing that the other staff had a point and refusing to help her out.

Last night we had my annual review.

Big Boss Lady skimmed through the "me" portion of the review in about 2 minutes, and immediately brought up the mess from the meeting. She looked at me in the eye and honestly asked what she needed to do to make things move more smoothly at work.

So imagine me sitting there with 5 years of mistrust, anger and bitterness stored up in that special vault inside us all that keeps such things fresh and vibrant. It would have been so easy to unleash upon her the Wrath of Barefoot.

And I didn't.

Oh, don't lose faith in your little Barefoot. I was honest with her. I told her that her backbiting and gossiping ways set up a situation where it was very easy to believe that she would say cruel things about any of us. I told her that she was pushing good staff out the door. I told her that I thought many of the things she said and did were terribly unprofessional, and that she was the cause of much of the confusion and apathy seen in our staff.

But I didn't have the heart to jump down her throat with all the pain she has heaped on the rest of us for all these years. I didn't have the heart to throw in her face specific examples of times she has lied to me, or set us all up to fail.

Just recently an old friend told me that I was a "nice lady". I laughed at him, thinking that neither of those terms particularly applied to me. Now I wonder. Am I a nice lady? Or just a fool?