Here's a topic that can be embraced with vigor. It's almost as easy as enumerating "favorite things" in that song from The Sound of Music but without the schnitzel with noodles. The only question is where to begin. Who hasn't had an IT manager get on their last nerve? Since I am an IT manager of sorts, this exercise is rather cathartic as it not only brings back some painful memories, but exposes some of my own flaws. Why did I bother? Because I've spent some time nursing hard feelings about IT staff behaving badly. Sometimes it's good to remember it's a revolving door. Some of these were hard to type without adding a parenthetical (yes I'm guilty of this, but here's why...)

IT Managers who:

1. Do your evaluation but don't understand what you do.
2. Ask you to draft an email explaining a situation or project, but feel the need to proof and change it before it’s sent out.
3. Keep looking at the computer screen and occasionally type while the two of you are in the middle of an important discussion.
4. Walk in your office with the air of "whatever I'm about to say is more important than whatever you're doing right now" when you’re working on a problem with a coworker.
5. Have insecurity issues because they realize your skills are more marketable than theirs.
6. Correct your punctuation and spelling in project documents that will only be seen internally.
7. Tell you to get to the point.
8. Don't respond to your request for time off so you don’t know whether you can make plans or not.
9. Habitually expect for work to be completed by unrealistic deadlines to give you incentive to try harder.
10. Latch onto the latest buzzword.
11. Ask you to provide a project estimate, but then disregard it when setting the target date.
12. Ask you to train the person who makes significantly more money than you do.
13. Seem to be trying to mold you into a cloned mirror image.
14. Evaluate projects with unusual twists in retrospect, with the benefit of hindsight, and ask, "Why didn't you plan for that?"
15. Tell you to "focus on the big rocks" while assigning you a steady-stream of minor incoming service requests that require your immediate attention.
16. Nurse an arbitrary coding style preference that is different than yours.
17. Talk about other staff members in your presence, leading you to believe that you have at one time been the subject of conversation.
18. Do not keep up with industry changes and see no need to upgrade development tools that "get the job done."
19. Tell you dismissively not to worry about something when you know from past experience it will come back to haunt you if someone doesn't.
20. Seem more concerned about your caption alignment and tab order than whether your application actually works.
21. Take themselves too seriously in everything they do from the way they dress to the country club they join.
22. Call way too many meetings that are way too long.
23. Seem more concerned that you document it than do it.
24. Morph into Dr. Phil, taking opportunities to work in "coaching moments" that make you want to throw up.
25. Have selective memory.

IT Managers lives aren't easy and they can't be perfect, bless their hearts. I could make a laundry list (and maybe I will some day) of the crap that IT managers protect staff from that goes unseen and therefore unappreciated. But today is for venting.