Facing difficult situations and personalities in the shop is never an easy task. But when those situations and personalities are those of your supervisors and/or managers, you may get the feeling that you’re in a hopeless, winless predicament.

Nothing, however, could be further from the truth.

Within this month’s issue is an article written by Wanda Salyard specifically outlining that most nerve-wracking, frustrating and annoying of all personalities ... the impossible boss. Written to the technician, Wanda’s approach is to identify the basic personalities encountered in a shop and to offer specific examples of how to effectively deal with them.

Of the advice offered, the most helpful may be the observation that yours is not a unique situation. “You are not alone,” Wanda writes. “Impossible bosses can be found in any business and under any circumstances.”

Ms. Salyard, a human resource consultant for small businesses and contributing writer for NAILS, was particularly interested in this topic, to the point of working the assignment into a very busy and impossibly overcrowded schedule. At the time of its writing, Wanda was in the throes of a hectic rehearsal and taping schedule for a local television show, in the midst of moving as well as staying on top of her consultant demands. The result, however, is concise, and educational ... and finished several days ahead of our deadlines.

No doubt Wanda has faced the types of personalities that she writes about, although at this point, as a consultant, she is very much on her own. So in a certain sense, she is lucky she is her own boss, and not having to put up with one ... except herself. Perhaps the most impossible boss of all.

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