I hate the VP

I hate vice presidents. Not one VP in particular, not political VPs - although Dick Cheney can kiss my ass. I'm talking about corporate vice presidents. Almost every time I have a problem with someone at work it's a vice president. For example, there was one office I worked at years ago where the VP was an asshole to me every day, the guy made no secret of his dislike for me. This was an office where we would go out for drinks on Friday nights after work and the company would pay for it. I used to go out with the office crowd have a few drinks and then meet up with my own friends and go dancing. One Friday night, I invited a couple of the girls from the office to come dancing too. And that VP, who treated me so terribly, drunkenly hopped in the cab with us when we were leaving bar where we'd been drinking with the office crowd. The guy, the VP, was getting married in a couple of weeks, and was hitting on one of the girls from the office so badly that she decided to leave early. When we got to the bar things took at turn for the worse when the drunken VP got out on the dance floor and started dancing, terribly. Then he started to take off his shirt and ended up dancing on a riser twirling his shirt over his head showing all the world his moley pot-bellied body. And it wasn't the kind of bar where that kind of behaviour would be a regular occurrence either.
Now that's an extraordinary case of bad VPism, but generally, I think the problem is that the VPs don't feel secure in their position of authority. They want their asses kissed, and I'm not a very good ass kisser. I'm more of a 'we're just all folks' kind of a person at work. This goes over with the president of a company, generally, because the novelty of having their asses kissed has worn off. But the VPs are like silver medalists in the Olympics. I read a study that said that Olympic gold and bronze medal winners are generally very happy with the results and feel satisfied with their achievements. The gold winners, for obvious reasons, and the bronze, because they are pleased with getting on the medal podium at all. But the silver winners generally had a much lower level of satisfaction, because they didn't just squeak into the medal standings like the bronze winners and they didn't get the top spot like the gold winners. This is the VP situation perfectly. You have some power over your own staff, but you're not the boss and so you need someone to reaffirm your bossliness, so you pick on the little guy, the low man on the totum pole.
I've been thinking a lot about that this week after one of the VPs at my new office complained to my boss that I wasn't deferential enough towards her. Not that I was rude to her, because I wasn't, but that I wasn't deferential enough! I'd be embarrassed in this day and age to ever say such a thing. Anyway, I like my new job OK, and the rest of the people here are fine except for the VP who wants me to grovel.
So this morning it's my turn to go into the office early and open, the Christmas party was last night - I didn't go, and I'm creeping in about 5 minutes late, thinking no one will be there before me because they're all at home sleeping it off. Unfortunately, to get to my desk from the back door, I have to walk through the executive hallway. So I'm walking along looking into every office to see if anyone is there to notice my tardiness and as I'm looking the other way I walk past the office of the VP who wants me to be more deferential, and I hear "Hello!" Not the 'good morning, nice to see you kind of hello, but the kind of hello you'd say to a waitress who had been ignoring you for 45 minutes. Chilling, busted, awful.
I usually have someone in the office that I love to hate, my office nemesis. But that position has already been filled by someone much more fun to hate. I don't like hating the VP at all. So I'm putting her, and all other VPs, 'On Notice.'