Thank you, no.

Sometimes, the stuff your boss does simply makes you want to ralph during your lunch break. Here are some simple yet creative ways to deal with such a situation without having to visit the porcelain.

1) If your boss is trying to get under your skin, your job is to refuse to play this power game by not letting things get to you. "Oh well" is a good attitude to take. Continue to excel at your work performance, and don't let your boss push you around emotionally.

2) Sometimes, it's appropriate to let your Emperor--I mean, employer--be consumed by blue Force lightning and fall down a dark hole. Like, for example, when he demands your firstborn or is intent on turning your son to the Dark Side. (I've never had to resort to this myself, but I have a friend who went through it once.)

3) Always have a contingency plan. If you can't stand your day job, look elsewhere in the meantime. That way, when your boss is making life suck for no apparent reason, you can politely inform him that you've found something else and quit. (Note: Make sure you actually do have a new job before you quit your old one. Low dough is better than no dough, and the rent on evil lairs is getting darned expensive.)

Being the Boss

Since I have had the opportunity to be a terrible boss as well as have one, I may be overqualified on this subject... but, here goes.

How to Be an Evil Employer

1. Give your employees crappy hours until they quit. That way, you won't have to give them unemployment benefits!

2. Make sure that they know they are expendable. Feeding them to a rancor may not be a good idea, since you can get sued for that nowadays, but keeping them worried about their position will be beneficial to you. You'll get their best efforts in hopes that they won't be fired, and you can chuckle in satisfaction after you fire them anyway.

3. After you have already written the work schedule and posted it in the employee break room, change the schedule without telling your employees and blame them for being late.

4. Put cookies in the break room, and when they have all been eaten, fly into a rage and berate your employees for eating them. They were yours-- what were they thinking, eating YOUR cookies?

5. Befriend your employees on the Book of Faces, snoop through all their personal info, and then de-friend them.

6. Treat your employees unfairly. Your favorite employee can do no wrong, no matter what. Everyone else is in the wrong, no matter what.

7. Treat everyone fairly. Why terrorize just one person when you can mistreat all your employees?

8. Change the rules on a whim. Tell your underlings how things are supposed to be, and when they follow your orders, tell them they were doing it wrong. Repeat cycle.

9. Overwork your best employees. Underwork your worst employees. This will create an amazing level of employee dissatisfaction and provide you with the best of dramatic entertainment.

10. Don't let anyone take a vacation. Alternately, if you must give them vacation time, make their lives miserable during one week before and one week after their vacation.

11. Don't pay your employees. Alternately, if you can't pull this off, either give them terrible pay or make it really difficult for them to get their paychecks. (Make up silly rules regarding paychecks: only you can hand them out, on a certain day, during a certain hour, and you'll be conveniently gone during that time...)

12. Make yourself scarce. You'll be too busy with your plans for world domination to listen to anyone. Instead, make everyone talk to one of your idiot underlings. This will frustrate your employees very nicely.

13. Watch the original Star Wars (TM) trilogy for tips on handling underlings. Darth Vader's use of the Force chokehold is particularly effective.

14. Refer to Peter's Evil Overlord List as often as possible.

Winning at Work

Ahem. Hello, I'm Dr. Alfred Yancey, and I'm a scientist. However, during most of my life, I had a dead-end job that paid the bills... but that was all. If you're like I was, and don't have the opportunity to quit your job and find one that you really like, the following suggestions may help you stick things out until you can find something else.

1. Don't take it home with you.
No job is worth getting emotional about-- what happens at work stays at work. Once you've punched out, you can move on to other things-- like fine-tuning your plans to take over the world, which is one of my personal favorites.

2. Treat your time off like a vacation.
Even if you don't get to go anywhere fun, use your time off productively. Take up a new hobby, like knitting or wood carving. Write a blog about something you're genuinely interested in. Craft a story. Paint a picture (or purchase a wooden chair secondhand, and paint it with acrylics!) Take a class locally for something you've always wanted to do-- like ballroom dancing, martial arts, or pottery. Remember-- "life is what happens when you're busy doing something else."

3. Get your finances under control.
Sometimes a bad job can seem worse if your checkbook's not balanced or you're in debt. Stop using the credit cards and work out a budget for things you actually need. Don't spend money on fancy toys like yachts, computers, or the latest-and-greatest cell phone. Avoid impulse buys, especially candy at the register (that's what it's there for). Those little things can add up and get you in serious financial trouble. If you spend $3 a week on candy bars, that's $12 a month, which is $144 a year that you could have been put towards something more important. I'm not saying you can never ever have fun-- just to budget your spending money so that it's not mysteriously vanishing.

4. Make time for relationships outside the office.
No amount of money can make up for quality relationships with your family. No one ever says on their deathbed, "Oh, I wish I'd spent more time at the office!" While doing well at your job may be important to you, there's also more to life.

5. Have multiple sources of income.
If you have a wide variety of interests that you think could bring some money, but they aren't enough for you to live off of... keep the job you have that pays the bills, but try something else on the side as well. You never know when the economy will change, and not having all your eggs in one basket will certainly help.

6. Keep looking.
You never know when you're going to find a job opening that you'll really like.