Locking horns with my Boss

Whenever I am given an intellectually challenging/stimulating job to do (or I voluntarily engage in one). I turn into what I call acute-autopilot mode, where I am more conscious inside my mind than in the physical world. There will be voices in my head helping me to work out the problems which works a lot like multi-threading and in that mode those friends in my head are usually more interesting than some useless gossips I hear at work (So if you come to me with gossips and small talks when I am in that mode…. please be realistic, you can't compete for my attention with those voices in my head). With that, symptoms like anti social, disregarding rules, isolationist, don't care about peoples feelings and giving a direct and unfiltered answer is what everyone will notice. Quite a few times being in that mode got me into social misunderstanding. This nature of mine led me to an incident with my previous boss.

Running on autopilot mode I came to work as usual thinking about the architecture of the finite element program. I was writing it in C++. There was a memory leak somewhere in a 15000 line subroutine. My boss called me in to his room as I was about to log in to my computer that morning. Reluctantly I went.

"Sit down Benjamin. Recently you have been strolling into work an hour late and leaving an hour late or latter consistently every day. Although your job gets done rather efficiently and well, you are not respecting the company's policy and the rules set. I feel disrespected and disgusted by your attitude"

I looked at him shocked by his comment, because being in autopilot mode at that time all I was thinking in my head was this- Are you stupid? You don't expect me to waste time in the traffic jam do you? So I answered this.

"Time is just relative to me, the only thing that matters is getting the project done perfectly on time, which is paramount. I don’t like wasting time, so I adjust my schedules accordingly to miss the AM and PM rush-hour traffic. The more traffic I miss, the more time I can have to think about the issues at hand. You should feel disrespected not because I am not honoring your work rules but because I think you are not at all smart and competent. If you were smart and competent, you won't get so uptight about getting your stupid little feelings hurt by your efficient and high-performing employee breaking the rules to produce better results."

Upon saying that I was feeling pissed because at that time what I told him to me is basic stuff and if you can't figure that out on your own you are so dumb you don't deserve to live. I also marveled at that time at just how a dumb fellow like him can get so high up the corporate food chain.

He stared at me, I could see beyond his eyes that he was shocked and probably pissed with what I said. As he crossed his arms I could see nervous tapings with his fingers. After about 10-15 seconds of cold and painful silence he took a deep breath and turn away from me and faced the window. He then said in a mysteriously calm voice.

"Get out of this room"

Latter I felt that he was about to fire me but he held himself back. At that time my mind was so focused on finding that memory leak in my program that all I cared was solving the problem and perfecting my algorithms. It was only after I finished the project that I thought I was bloody rude. Since then he never spoke to me directly, it's usually through someone. I know that being in that mode has extreme pros and cons…. and honestly to do a good job I will hate to compromise on my work just to be out of autopilot mode. I must say that was a close call. In normal mode I am generally friendly and tolerating to a fault sometimes, but in autopilot mode, I have zero tolerance for stupid opinions, time wasting small talks and gossips. I will be a complete stranger even to myself. With every good thing, there is always the other side of the coin.