In which He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

My job, she is not going well. My co-workers and I think our boss might be losing his mind. He has been erratic and unpredictable and we are all walking on eggshells.

(PS I am writing this on July 5, the day after July 4th. I was at work. I was at work because I work for an organization that does not give July 5 as a holiday. We are not retail. We are not entertainment. We are boring corporate headquarters. My boss was happy we had today to work on the strategic plan. "We'll really be able to concentrate!" he said. "It will be really quiet!")

We think maybe he is drinking. Or is taking medication that is affecting him. Or that he had a small stroke. We don't know but he is acting weird.

1. We had a meeting in which he decided to praise everyone on our team. That in itself was bizarre - "Like a eulogy!" one co-worker said. For everyone else, he said things like, "Good strategic thinker. Broad business background. Developing new markets/products. Speaks Spanish and has traveled to Brazil."

For me, he said, "Gold Digger is on the phone all the time!"

1a. I am not on the phone all the time. Maybe twice a week.
1b. That is not exactly high praise.
1c. My co-worker who speaks Spanish? I, too, speak Spanish AND I worked in South America for two years, which, no disrespect to my co-worker, trumps a two-week business trip.

2. He had the financial report for the board of directors three weeks ago. The BoD meeting was this week. He waited until the day before the meeting to review the report and query me about all the numbers.

2a. I had too many footnotes.
2b. Why was I showing a variance of 26% when the 2013 number was 221K and the 2012 number was 176K? I finally had to explain that 221 divided by 176 is about 26%.

3. He announced a team lunch for today.

3a. We are not a lunch-going group.
3b. We all have other things we do at lunch, like going to the gym or for a walk.
3c. Now we can't do what we want to do but have to go to lunch instead.
3d. He picked a horrible chain restaurant, even though there are lots of good local restaurants as close as the chain.

4. He has paid 150% of my salary to headhunters for two positions. The organization has an HR department and a recruiter. Yet he doesn't go through HR to find new people. He is ready to spend three times my salary for a consultant to do what I have spent the past several months doing even though it is not clear that the consultant would add any value.

I am cranky cranky cranky.