Recently, after witnessing two people fighting -- two friends -- I had thought to myself 'Man, I'm glad my friendships aren't that twisted,' then to come up quickly as my mind cataloged my relationships to realize that each has their own brand of conditions and caveats and maybe end up being just as plenty twisted.

I've been thinking about the relationships I have with some of my bosses.

Up until my career at BIPC, I had pretty much worked only for women. One boss from the days I worked as a bookkeeper was extremely intelligent and particularly self-restrained. It was like working for a dormant volcano and as I sat in her office one day, she erupted. She was reviewing one of those huge (and now quaintly anachronistic) ledger-books hand-filled with rows and columns of colored pencillings. Suddenly she bore down on the page so hard she snapped the pencil, slammed shut the book cover with a fire-cracker bang and then threw it and the pencil across the room and against the glassed wall opposite: "This work is an abortion!"

(Thankfully it wasn't my work!)

I had nother boss who was a guy. I was his assistant in a jewelry-making factory, and he was nothing but nonstop fag and AIDS jokes. When he wasn't punishing me with his jokes, his biggest pleasure seemed to be in knowing he was a year younger than me and still my boss. At the time that meant he was 22.

I can still see now the look of panic in his eyes when I walked in to my work area and caught him kissing our company's salesman. "I'll pretend I didn't see that," I had said. The two of them stood there, immovable. I turned and walked out. No more fag jokes after that. (But now I wonder at being laid off not too shortly after.)

As interesting as those snippets are, I am thankful to not have bosses and boss-stories like that from my career with BIPC.

Or at least I don't think so.

This last week my boss was in town. It's not accurate to call him my boss anymore. You see, since the beginning of the year, a level of management has been sandwiched between he and I, so now I report to someone else and he is really my boss-once-removed. They were both here.

My boss-once-removed and I are friends -- I think. I had never considered any of my bosses friends, until boss-three-removed. That boss, my first at BIPC, was very shy and invited me to his wedding, and while I know office propriety and politics calls for this, I was still flattered: He didn't have to do that. I was the only one from BIPC who mingled with the other guests (and mostly because I found all my coworkers and their significant others to be intolerably boring drunks). We might have been 'friends' before but after we were *friends*.

Boss-two-removed transferred me here. He was a very nice guy, but, in my oh so humble opinion, not extremely competent. Here's a typical call, filled with the usual hemms and hawws,

"Uhm, have you -- did you -- have you had a chance to complete that report I asked from you?"
"I sent it to you last week, didn't you see it?"
"You did? Are you -- sure?"
"Yes. Here it is, I sent it to you on Thursday. I'll send it again."

Or:

"Uhm, don't you think, that if you did *this*, don't you think that it would be better?"
"So you'd like me to do this?"
"Uh, nooo-o, I'm not saying that. But maybe -- you might *want* to consider doing this..."

and so on and so forth.

Oddly enough, we really did become friends after the reorganization that took him away from being my boss. I still don't think he's much of a boss, but he is a great guy.

Boss-once-removed and I broke new ground in my history of boss/worker relationships. We have fought. And by fighting, I mean raised voices and strong words. The last fight we had was in February, when I was out west visiting.

Boss-once-removed had just returned from a business trip that took him to certain second- and third-world countries. I was in his office where he was telling me about it, and then, like my earlier boss with the ledger-book, he began to lose it.

"I'm tellin ya, America better wake up because you see these people sitting at their desks, roomfuls of folding tables and no windows and with those plastic garden chairs, working like fiends, like fiends, making 2 dollars a day and you go out into the streets and see people lined up, begging for money, with missing legs and deformed arms and lining up to die, lining up to die in the streets and America cannot compete against a society that is that hungry to succeed. That 2 dollars a day is a king's ransom because it keeps them out of a hut and they are grateful because it gives them indoor plumbing and puts food on their table and if they can do it at one-tenth of the cost of an American, there is no way, no way, that America can compete in a world marketplace against that."

I had never seen my boss get so worked up.

"So, when people start complaining to me about their 2% raises -- something I can't do anything about! -- they need to wake up and take a trip to India or the Phillipines and see what folks are willing to do for a fraction of what we pay here, and with a smile on their face! Upset at the rising cost of health care? These folks have no health care! The next person who comes in here to complain about their raise or their health costs, I'm going to tell them where to get off."

I said that I hoped he didn't think I had been complaining about my raise, and the second I heard myself saying it realizing how obsequious it must sound and so it should have been no surprise to have the staff turn against me.

"No. With you, all I've heard you do is complain about how you hate your job --"
"I don't 'hate' my job!"
" -- and about how you hate where you live. I've heard about it for the last two years and there's nothing I can do about it! I'm here to tell you -- or anyone -- that it's time to shit or get off the pot!"
"No one's asking you to do anything about it! The only person that can do anything about it is me -- and I'm doing just that! I'm not going to tell you the details of my job search! Is that what you want? You have completely misunderstood everything I say!"

Well, it got very childish after that point, I believe it was along the lines of "Did so!" and "Did not!"

That night, I was having dinner with Boss-two-removed and his partner, and Boss-two-removed said, "Uhm, well, I happened to converse with [Boss] today and he *may* have mentioned you two had a, ahem, heated exchange."
"Oh?" I pretended innocence, "That? It wasn't that heated and he had some important things to say." I paused, "You know, actually, I feel really bad about it. You know, I consider him my friend, and maybe that's not good to be with work."
"Oh, but he feels just terrible about it," said Boss-two-removed, "and I *know* he considers you his friend."

In town this last week, Boss-once-removed calls from his office: "I'm so busy, I don't know if I have much time in my schedule to see you."
"Whatever. Drinks, happy hour would be fine, if you want to make it that."
"No, I don't want happy hour, I was hoping for dinner."
"Oh, well... There is one place I think you'd like..."
We go out to dinner and have a great time, and when he calls after he has returned out West, he says, "It was really good to see you," twice.

Thinking about it, it is an example of another relationship that is just not at all simple.