h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am in doubt once more.

This morning, as I was handing over to a new shift leader at the place where I work, I was struck with a fit of impatience. I actually hate the woman to whom I was handing over, and I found it very difficult, after a twelve-hour shift - with several things that had gone partly wrong (although nothing wrong enough that I'd needed help to deal with it) and which it would have been good if I'd been able to tell her without interruption or condemnation (which is what she usually treats me with) - not to become angry at her. As she sat down and began her usual process of scrutinising every detail of my recorded shift performance in order to comment critically upon it and badger me about what I had not recorded, I simply snapped, and said, in what I thought was a reasonable if slightly tense voice:

"Please understand that I find you very difficult to tolerate, at all, and in this situation I'm..."

Before her reaction (something similar to "That's fine!") interrupted me, and I began, for want of anything else to say, to describe what had happened on my shift.

My doubt is caused by the unreasonable amount of power this woman wields in our organisation, and no knowledge of precisely how this revelation (and I believe it was a revelation to her, in spite of the fact that I have not hesitated to tell anyone who didn't disagree directly with me that I despise her, for most of the year that I have worked in this place) will cause her to act. The boss considers her senior to me, and worthy of my deference. I know that I was far more restrained than I could have been, and that all I wanted to do in the first instance was make her cognizant of the fact that I wanted to leave that place with no unnecessary delay (which includes, to my mind, stupid questions about "whether or not" I have done things that she thinks I should do). I succeeded in getting the shift handover out of the way unusually quickly, and was off to catch my bus, still fuming that I had allowed myself to compromise my good humour.

It will be an interesting couple of weeks, in the wake of this misfortune...