Boobs AND a brain? Impossible!

"Show me the pages you've put together for ProductA and ProductB", demands the MD. I dutifully show him the pages my team has put together from the designs he provided. "No," he says "I don't want that for ProductB".

"We put it together from the design you signed off from ProductB's head of department" I said.

"I don't care about anyone else's opinion. This is what I want" blusters the MD.

Off we go and work to satisfy the MD, using his thoroughly documented requirements - 2 print-outs of the pages with scribbles all over them. I'll have to rely on my spidey senses to work out what his untidy scrawl actually means.

"OK" he says "now change around points 2 and 3, remove these words, change that image and rewrite this paragraph to read like this" and he scribbles more on the new designs.

Finally, after several iterations of this, we managed to get a final version out that he sent to ProductA and ProductB's heads of departments. It wasn't long before I received an email from ProductB's head asking why we hadn't incorporated her design like she had asked.

"Ah, Ms Product B, it's quite simple. You see, the MD doesn't really care what you've said or how much effort you've put in. Sorry about that, love."

How I wish I could have said that. It drives me completely insane that he takes up valuable and expensive development resources with petty little web-design requests, whilst still demanding that Our Big Project stays on time. If he'd approach us like other people do and seem reasonable and calm, I'd probably be happier with processing his change requests. Unfortunately, his enormous cocaine habit and years of boozy lunched on company time and dime have obviously whittled away that part of his brain that makes him reasonable.

How to people like this end up in power? In the past 2 weeks, I've had to deal with 2 completely irrational and unrealistic directors. Is it exactly that attitude that put them in a position of power or have they just let it go to their heads? I'm not sure if any of them actually realise the effect of the actions on their staff. I'm a pretty tough cookie, but even I start to feel demoralised when everything I do is wrong and I get interrupted mid-sentence. I've been hired because of a particular area of expertise so surely they should be prepared to listen to that?

A part of me wonders whether being the only female senior member of staff counts against me. It's become disappointingly clear that the world is just not mature enough to get past the fact that I have boobs and curves as well as a brain. Obviously I'd be better off keeping my ambition in check and playing the typical role of a CEO-shagging secretary. What fun!