Tales of the BossLady is a series of rantings and ramblings that I wrote several years ago. I was employed by a pair of Realtors, one of whom was relatively normal and one of whom was a constant source of eye-rolling, head-shaking, and double takes. I present these entries as they were originally written in my private journal, in the present tense and with all the geekier-than-thou superiority of my former self.
I was once asked (well, I partially volunteered) to make a system for BossMan and BossLady to keep track of certain sales leads in a certain way. Because I’ve got some experience in creating and maintaining databases online, I thought this would be relatively simple, but BossLady’s hosting provider is a little different from mine in how they set things up.
In an attempt to temporarily get away from making a lot of technical comments, let me tell this story via an analogy. It’s a food-related analogy that I think a lot of people would understand.
So let’s say, rather than an online system to track leads, I’m supposed to make a certain chili recipe. BossLady knows I’m good at this sort of thing, even though she has never made chili from scratch herself. (She always just buys the ready-made stuff.) And so I do my best to make the chili, but then I realize that I don’t have all the ingredients I need. So I say to her, “Well, I’ve got a problem here, I don’t have the right kind of beans to make this chili recipe.”
Her response will be, “There’s a can of tuna right here in the pantry.”
I’ll shake my head and go, “Huh?”
And she’ll repeat herself, “There’s a can of tuna right here, what’s the problem?”
Me: “That’s not what I mean, it’s the BEANS that I don’t have.”
BossLady: “If you don’t know how to open a can of tuna fish, I can show you.”
Me: “Huh?”
BossLady: “See, here’s the can opener, and you just open the can, and there’s your tuna, and you can add the mayonnaise and the relish, doesn’t matter which one you put in first…”
So I’m standing there, trying to make chili and knowing that I don’t have what I need, and here’s this person who I thought knew at least a little about the basic components of chili even if she can’t make it herself, and she’s my BOSS so I can’t just call her a moron and forget about it, but I can’t make chili with tuna either and I’m between a rock and a hard place.
Ultimately she decides that I’m the moron and makes her own stupid chili with tuna, and it sucks, but she’s proud of herself.
This happens all the time, except instead of beans versus tuna, it’s HTML versus DNS or Outlook versus network configuration.
The thing that really gets to me about these exchanges — and they really do happen with alarming frequency — is that she always makes those little comments like, “If you don’t know how to open a can of tuna, I can show you.” I don’t know if she really thinks I’m an idiot or she’s just puffing herself up so she can feel smarter. Considering the unfettered delight that she expresses whenever I actually do something wrong or don’t know something, I’m guessing it’s the latter.