Career Path Counseling

I had this ridiculous conversation with my manager (T-Rex, as my friend Elle calls him) today. It was supposed to be one of those career path/future goals-type meetings where I expressed what direction I wanted to grow in and how he could help get me there.

Well, how are you supposed to tell a guy that you're just here for the paycheck? That you don't really care for his managing style or his personality? That if you could, you'd switch departments in an instant but there's no where else to go? That you're concerned about the direction of this company because its leadership is so F'd up?

How do you tell a guy his overly exaggerated attempts to get to know his staff are seriously a no go. We (my co-worker and I) don't want to be all buddy-buddy with him. Is it so hard to understand that? I'm not going to go all verbal diarrhea on him and share my deepest, darkest secrets. It just ain't happening dude so back off.

It's so annoying that he pretends not to get the hints that my co-worker and I throw at him. No, we would rather not get all personal and touchy-feely thank you very much. I know he's not dumb or naive so I know he gets it. He just ignores it and continues to do his best to become our newest BFF.

T-Rex proceeds to ask if I'd be interested in pursuing new areas such as database management, market analysis, media relations and whatnot. He speaks as if all of this is currently being done and that it'd be a new adventure to me. Um, yeah . . . last time I checked no one, not even him, in our three-person department was doing any of this. So who exactly is going to be leading the class on database management or market analysis? Certainly not him as he's not even organized enough to have an inbox on his desk. And honestly, I don't have confidence in him as a manager to teach me anything.

Another rather irritating thing about this dinasaur behemoth is that he always uses either unnecessarily large words or industry terms in order for him to sound smart. He can never speak plainly and be straight to the point. It takes several attempts before he can even go head with what he's going to say. Sometimes I feel like slapping him on the back to help him spit it out.

Usually, you're supposed to be inspired and look up to your manager. If you can't even respect your manager, where does that leave you?