is it worth continuing to work for a terrible boss if I’m getting my tuition paid for?

A reader writes:

I work in a museum for … let’s say antique Scandinavian teapots (made up to keep me anonymous). The museum was founded about 20 years ago by a married couple who are major collectors. In the past few years, the couple has decided to make our museum their lasting legacy. They have set up a generous endowment and stepped aside so a fiduciary board can take the reins. Our staff has doubled and now includes seasoned professionals with nonprofit and museum experience. Amazing, right?

Less amazing is Fergus, the founders’ right-hand man of 30 years. Fergus is a world-class expert on Scandinavian teapots. The founders trust him implicitly with their prized (and very valuable) collections. So, when the museum began, it made sense for Fergus to become a collections manager. As time progressed and executive directors came and went, Fergus became the de facto museum director and is still in the C-suite.

He is a very nice man who has what I can only describe as a pathological fear of making decisions. This man could not organize a group lunch order. He would be so afraid of making someone unhappy with the choice of restaurant or not knowing, say, the full menu of every restaurant we might want to pick, he would waffle and wring his hands until five minutes before lunch. Then he would say, “Well, I guess going to the nearby gas station for boiled peanuts is the only option … since there’s no time!” He would rather create an emergency to force his hand than make a definite decision.

This character flaw was manageable when we were essentially a small, part-time museum run by the founders’ family office: a small cadre of long-time employees would simply make decisions behind his back. But now? We’ve got departments. We need procedures. All the lovely proposals and policies we’ve been asked to write up get sucked into the black hole known as Fergus’s desk, never to be seen again.

When I first joined, I gave Fergus the benefit of the doubt: he’s overwhelmed temporarily because we’re undergoing huge change! Maybe the founders are secretly unreasonably jerks behind closed doors!

Now I have been this man’s direct report for five years, and I have worked closely with the founders for just as long. Fergus is a monster of his own creation. He is a Godzilla of ineptitude who, alas, also has total budget control of my Tokyo.

I know Fergus will never get better. I suspect he’ll be around until the death of the last surviving founder. I just don’t know if I can wait that long. The new executive director brought in an executive coach to help Fergus: no change. They restructured and hired a new VP so Fergus could have his direct reports reduced from 12 to 3: no change.

I was ready to walk away last year. But Scandinavian teapots is a small world, so instead of saying, “Fergus can suck a bag of dicks,” I simply said I was looking at going back to school full-time. They were so desperate to keep me, they offered to pay for my entire degree if I’d stay in my role and go to school online instead. I thought it would be foolish to pass on that deal! But my daily experience managing Fergus from below is making me feel like a fool for staying.

Here’s the thing: the educational benefit is structured so I’m not legally on the hook for repaying the museum if I leave, I’d just piss some people off. Plus, I can afford to pay out of pocket to finish my last couple of semesters. I could probably find a job at another museum … but not necessarily a teapot museum, and I love teapots. I am one of few very women working in Scandinavian teapots and the first woman ever at this organization to have a title higher than administrator. Fergus isn’t abusive, and he still has value for the organization. I continue to learn from him about teapots! He’s just unfit for management.

I used to dream about running this museum one day. Now I don’t wonder if I should leave, but when. How do I know the right time to do it? Is working for a wet dishrag costing me more in opportunities than I am saving on tuition?

Oh man. I can’t tell you if you can stick it out another couple of semesters without losing your mind, but I have worked with a Fergus and I watched management above him go through very similar contortions to try to keep him (outside coach, fewer direct reports, etc.) without doing the only thing that would actually have solved the problem — removing his management responsibilities entirely — and I can tell you that if you are someone who likes to get things done and has a low tolerance for ineptitude and inefficiency, you do risk being driven out of your skin by working for someone like this after a point.

I get why you’re uneasy about leaving when they offered to pay for your degree if you’d stay, but … how long is that agreement supposed to last for? Just until the end of the degree? Or would they be just as upset if you finished the degree and left soon after? (My bet is they might be more upset if you did that, because it would look like you just waited until they’d made the last payment before leaving.) So it might not be a matter of sticking it out for your last couple of semesters; if the goal is to avoid upsetting them, you’d probably need to stay for a while after you have the degree too.

If you do think the only agreement was that you’d stay for the duration of your degree and you only have a year left to go … well, ideally I’d say you should just get through that year before you leave, as long as you can do that without destroying your mental health. But if they’ll expect you to hang around afterwards for a while too, or if you can’t handle the thought of another year, you might as well just pull off the band-aid now. Tell them you really appreciate the offer they made and you tried to make it work because they pressed you to, but at this point you do need to part ways.

If you’re not willing to explain it’s because of Fergus, say you’ve realized you need to focus on school full-time for your last two semesters (and will of course take over the tuition payments from this point forward). But I’d encourage you to think about whether there’s any way you can tell them it’s become too difficult work with Fergus. They clearly already know there are problems with him; maybe this would be an additional push to finally deal with the situation. Or not — but there’s merit in telling them if you think the cost to yourself wouldn’t be high.

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