And a very Merry Christmas to you too OR More reasons why my boss should retire.

There are some people out there for whom nothing is ever good enough.
My boss seems to be one of those people.
She waddled into work this morning after a council meeting last night and, when I asked her how she was, the response was:
"Tired."
Well, how's that for positive reinforcement...
She followed it up with:
"I think sometimes I get tired from thinking about all the work I have to do."

Oh, for god's sake.
We're all in the same frikkin' boat - and really, it's not as bad as you say it is.

She told me the other day that she had "never been more stressed in her entire life than she was right now."
Really. Wow. How's that working out for you?

And to top it all off, she vetoed a story one of my colleagues was going to do on homelessness in the local area.
Like anyone who makes a decision they haven't properly thought through, she gave a range of reasons that were completely disjointed and ill-informed.
Among them:

1) Homeless people are homeless because they choose to be.

2) Those that didn't choose to be are drug addicts or alcoholics anyway.

3) We don't have that big a homeless problem in Rockingham anyway.

4) I don't want you putting yourself at risk by approaching homeless people in the streeets - they're desperate.

5) If we do a story on a homeless person, even if they agree to have their name and photo in the paper, it's an invasion of their privacy.

At this point I turned around and said "That's the whole problem with homelessness. It's too often swept under the carpet. It needs to be given more exposure as a community issue."

She turned to me and said: "You don't know much."

I was shocked. I was speechless. I was fucking outraged.

THEN she followed that comment up by saying that because she was 64 and I wasn't, she knew much more than me about everything.

At that point I realised I wasn't going to win, regardless of what I said. It's a shame, but she is actually seeming more and more like she is starting to lose it lately.
The problem is, I just have to grit my teeth and bear it until she eventually decides to retire.