• Once you hand in notice you can start playing games so that they hustle you out the door with alacrity; you won’t have to stay for months.

    First, the old tried and true tool: work to rule. Do your job, as described, and no more.

    Second, the incompetence gambit. Do your job BADLY. Do what’s asked of you, but make dumb mistakes, do things slowly, “accidentally” hand in first draughts (with the correct draught already on your computer so you can produce it when they spot the problem…if they spot the problem in the first place!). You know, that kind of thing. If you’re training your replacement, key pieces of misinformation are always fun to insert.

    Third, make sure all communications are in something more substantial than speech. If they tell you something vocally, follow up with email summarizing the conversation and what action items you took from the conversation. Ask them to confirm that your understanding was correct so there’s records instead of he said/she said. (This is both protection for yourself and fun.) Tinpot dictators really hate being held to account (it’s why they favour only verbal communications!), so torture her.

    Finally you can play the tardy/absentee game. Come to work increasingly late. Leave work increasingly early. When the complaints start, you can make a subgame with the third technique, driving your nemesis to distraction as you roll this activity back … only to roll it forward again to test resolve and boundaries.

    I mean what’s she going to do? Fire you?