What would the opposite of "Career Builder" be?

I know you’re not supposed to write on your blog about the place where you work - it’s like those kids who rag about high school then get suspended.

Of course, the troubled teens often threaten to bring weapons to class or, at the very least, write bad poetry about the people they hate.

And until Friday I had a perfectly good week. I went to a play, an outdoors show, a cooking store, got a personal tour of a water park and got to ride on the slides and arranged a visit to a comedy club. Believe it or not, it is all legitimately part of my job.

What fun I have, I thought. I am a lucky guy.

Then Friday rolled around. A 2:30 p.m. meeting. There were only five people at the meeting including the boss, who started out by thanking us all for the hard work we’ve done the last few months while we were short handed.

Then she handed out manila folders to the four of us, each with our first names written on them and each with two handouts, one a personalized list of critiques, not one of them positive, the other a survey.

We’re supposed to e-mail our responses back to her by Wednesday. Things we like and don’t like about our jobs is on the survey.

Now the catch is, do you actually risk being honest on such a document - in light of the fact that at this meeting the boss implied that if “things don’t change, there will be consequences.”

Funny thing is I talked to her boss a couple months ago, when she was last having management issues, and he used the same phrase.

Hmmm.

What’s frustrating is this boss rarely gives any feedback at all on the work I do, work, mind you, that me being major league anal retentive, typically have done well in advance, meaning if it is not of the quality she wanted she hs had ample time to rectify.

Nay, she decides to pass out folders, the second time during her reign she has gone the handout route.

Needless to say, nobody is really happy right now about working for her.

If this weren’t irritating, it would be funny. Or maybe it is funny because it is irritating.

Of course the guy who is the boss of her likes to sit in his corner office with the lights off.

He also recently banned cell phone use from the office. I understand that some rings are mighty annoying, but apparently putting the phone on buzz is not supposed to be an option.

I learned the value of the cell phone with a sick parent over the summer, so I am not going to listen to him.

After all, fair is fair. It’s not like they are listening to the rest of us.