This is why I hate working. Nothing is ever good enough for bosses. They always want more work done for less pay. And they want you to feel grateful to them like they did you some kind of favor by keeping you employed. To me, work is not a source of "emotional and personal satisfaction." It's merely a means to a paycheck; a necessary evil to keep from being hungry and homeless. I hate all the work place politics, favoritism, backbiting, gossip, and stepping on others to get ahead that goes on. If others here have jobs that they absolutely love, they need to feel blessed, I suppose.
Well, I've never really worked for crazy bosses and only small organizations, or simply for myself. I've had a demanding boss, but that's different. My main employer for years looked at it as 'get the work done if it needs to be done'. When something had to get done now, I would stay and make sure it got done. Otherwise, it was pretty easy going.
I had a boss like that, years ago. His attitude was that the work had to be done but as long as the work got done he didn't really care what we did or how we did it. Company policy was no personal phone calls but his attitude was that if we needed to make a personal call go ahead and do it, but if we made so many that he heard about it from telecoms then we'd soon be hearing about it from him. I had another boss who was about as dogmatic as it was possible to be. When it was hugely difficult to get into work because of train strikes I had a lot of documentation to write, so suggested I could work from home to save the hassle of travelling. He decided it was more important that I attend the office so I could be seen to be working (apparently he wouldn't be able to see the result of several hours of writing documents). No prizes for guessing which boss got substantially more work from me.
Aside from the jobs I held as a teenager, I've been lucky enough to work with people who don't care how I work as long as the work gets done (properly). I'm wondering if Tango used to work for Yahoo!
The manager at my is the perfect example of the further up the corporate ladder one goes, they have to willingly give up the ability to use common sense, logic and critical thinking. (Yes, I realize that many times this is not the case, but here, most times I just shake my head at the ideas he has to "help us work more efficiently") I not necessarily anti-corporate thinking/mindset, but sometimes one needs to use their brain.
Luckily, my industry has learned that most people are at their most efficient when they are left alone to work as they like (particularly remote workers). There's no trouble with people who take advantage of that freedom as they're easily discovered and invited to leave.