I read something small, a piece titled Bosses from Hell and all it said or tried to convey was that a Boss is a pre-existing condition and cannot be altered and therefore should be suffered and endured till another more suitable is found.During my trips to Tokyo the funny thing I noticed was groups of men discussing bosses and getting drunk night after night on work days and carry on in solitude on holidays.Funny thing is in the same bar you find executives at different levels deferentially bowing and discussing at all levels about their bosses from hell.

I recall my younger son when he was in junior high told people who asked him what he would like to be as a grown up and his answer was simple I want to be a Boss.

Do not worry too much and spoil your peace and health always think about being a Boss and you will be one and then don't try to be a good one and if you do you are missing being a Boss.

First, and most important, if ALL your bosses are terrible, it's not them. It's you. If you've had several bosses and none of them were good, then probably you're not a good employee.

In a 30+ year career, I had only one "Boss from Hell". There were others that I had problems with occasionally--and I must acknowledge that I usually was part of the problem.

Here are Ann's recommendations for dealing with the Boss from Hell.

1. Don't bitch to your coworkers. You will set up a dynamic of us versus her that will make all your lives more difficult. Don't get into the "You'll never guess what she did to me today!" mode. Pretty soon you'll be slanting minor stuff into tragedies to make good stories. When you have to bitch, bitch to someone outside the field who can say "Poor baby" and pat your hand.

2. Develop the skill of Constructive Manipulation. For me, when I was a case manager, I knew more about my field than my new boss and he/she was always telling me to do the wrong thing. At first, I tried not to get his/her input on my cases but that made things worse. Then I figured out that I could go to him/her on benign issues that he/she would get right and then handle the tricky stuff myself. So, we staffed a lot of my stuff that didn't really need his/her input. Worked beautifully. My boss no longer thought I was ignoring his/her advice.

3. Don't go up the chain of command (except for cause--sexual harassment, illegal or unethical acts), even when you're leaving. A friend of mine did that in her exit interview. It just gives you a bad rep right when you need to look good.

4. Stay polite and even friendly with your boss. Do not brown nose, just polite and friendly. It makes you look good and frankly, you never know but 20 years in the future you may end up interacting again in a totally different venue. This happened to me and not having my old Boss from Hell having negative feelings about me made my life much much easier. Never burn bridges. Ever.

5. Think of it as a game.

Even good bosses have spells of being the Boss from Hell. Work is not always fun. Sometimes it is just work. I found that doing something with real meaning for me gave me a reason to put up with crap. (I spent many years with a state agency, so if you want a job with crap, try government.) I learned to appreciate most of my bosses and when I ended up a boss myself, I took the good and figured out what not to do from the bad.

All over the world, men and women are working for people that they don't like. They are sucking it up and doing their best because that's what they are getting paid for!

From the sound of your letter, you are both very young and you work for a non-profit. Non profits tend to attract less competent managers, because they pay less at the managerial level, so the extremely competent managers go to the for profit organizations. At YOUR level, the differences are pretty much not there, but the fact remains that, good boss or bad boss, she's YOUR boss, and it's up to you to deal with it.

As a veteran of the last crash and also having lived through the hell LW describes I can say this: When economic times get hard, companies get mean. They make strange sacrifices to the economy gods by enacting oddly humiliating performance reviews and finding new ways to make sure they squeeze every last bit of juice out of the worker's soul--the praise worthy work you did before is no longer good enough. The social grease between employer and employer wears away. This is what happens in bad times. Workers become corporate food. It's a cultural superstition that treating employees meanly improves profitability but its a modicum of control for management when they don't know what else to do and fear for their own existence.

I don't know when LW is going to find a new position but it is imperative that she find some way to focus on any good she can see in her current position and minimize any thoughts she has about her boss. The anger and depression her situation is causing is going to thwart her ability to either find a new engagement or transform her current one. Because times are hard, she might find that any new position she gets has similar problems and she could find the same lousy boss in a different body.

Is this your first job, LW? It sounds as if it might be. Well, welcome to the world of work.

Your boss is not that bad. She is not a good manager, true, and has some issues that make her annoying. But on the bad bosses list, she's not even a blip. There are some monsters out there. As others have said, detach. Stop letting her get to you. Your reaction is under your control. When you see her behaving in ways that you dislike, think "Oh. She's at it again." And you move on mentally to something else. Avoid her as much as you can, while being perfectly kind and pleasant to her face. Or...make friends with her, if you can. Schmooze. If it is necessary to apologize to her about something you might have said about her, well, what's the harm? Perhaps you over-reacted. You can find something nice to say. You can find something nice to do. Make it easier on yourself by getting along with her as much as possible. This can be a growth thing for you. You cannot change her, but you can change how you deal with her.

You complain about gossipping, but that is standard in most workplaces, at one level or another. Office politics is also standard--learn how to play that game or learn how to deal with it. If you can't stand it, perhaps you need to do something else. Not in an office or a multiple-person work environment. Housecleaners, for example, rarely deal with gossip, I imagine.

You have not said anything about the job. Are you doing something you rather like, or could enjoy? Are you competent at it? Are you upbeat and energetic? Is there more you could learn at this place? Focus on your work and figure out how to do it very very well. Can you, if you shine, move up--and hopefully away from Ms. Gossip? (But, I assure you, at every level, some people will irritate you. That's why you need to work on you, and learn how to let irritants just not matter.)

Chat with your co-workers without complaining. Find some people with whom you have things in common or whose personalities you like. Can you make them laugh? Can they make you smile? Have lunch with some. Make some friends. It's amazing what workplace friends can do to make a place more than tolerable.

Continue to look for another job. But use this job to add to your resume. Add skills, projects, abilities. Take some courses to make you more valuable. And, next time, ask for more money. Often you will be stuck at the level you came in, so make sure you negotiate for a level of pay that feels right. Do your research so you know what is a good salary for that position, and don't take the job unless they come close--or else you will feel resentful (as you do now.) It is on you to make sure you get paid appropriately from the start. (If you truly want a particular job and don't care what it pays, then don't complain later. But, better, ask for what you want. Most bosses respect that, even if they cannot give it to you.)

Keep job interviews on what you can bring to the job. Do your research on the company so you can personalize it to their needs. Never complain about the last job. Never bring up misgivings or issues at an interview. Be smart, relaxed, happy, competent and likable--people will hire people that they think are easy to deal with. Try to connect with the interviewer. (I have had job interviews where we didn't talk about the job at all. They had already seen my resume. The interview was more about whether the person thought we could work well together. We laughed and joked, and I got the job.) If you are offered a job, at the right salary, then you can decide whether to accept it.

(On a side note, if you are looking for work and some employment agency person tells you a potential boss is a bit difficult, believe them. A boss has to be insanely horrible and abusive for this to come up. Say no unless you want to experience true misery.)

Breathe. Enjoy what you can.

Good luck.