My new boss starts next week. My former boss is really leaving me and us in the lurch, plus he is being lazy and selfish. So, I'm not taking his calls.

I am answering his e-mails, but he is getting frustrated I won't talk to him. Is it a bad idea to send him a mail that says, "I'm afraid of what I will say to you on the phone, so I'm asking we keep it professional and via e-mail?"

I have nothing nice to say.

Has anyone avoided their boss for any length of time? Mine has just been since Friday, but he is really persistent.

I speak only Polish, spanish, german or japanese to mine when he p*sses me off. (Nothing in the handbook against it)

Really iritates him.....especieally cause he knows I am talking mad s**t to him.

I'm my own boss...but I'm hard on him anyway!

The secretary is having fun with it I think.... but I told her if she's not comfortable to put him through. The funny thing is... he has my direct line but he keeps calling the main number.

Methinks Krupa.
That even if the Handbook said no speaking in tongues.
You would utilize your language skills anyhoo :-)

I always avoid my boss as much as possible. He is a little weasel....

What, specifically, entails "lazy and selfish"?
Leaving y'all in a lurch? How, because of the mere
fact that he's leaving? Or not participating?

My boss looked for another position even before he took over. Then he hid it from the courts and gave only two weeks. He was then upset it took lonher than two weeks to find a replacement for him. He agreed to stay on as a figurehead, so to speak, but in his mind he was doing everyone a favor. He has done very little work, but is still taking in his full salary. I do most of his job. He moved out of town.

He is now refusing to take a case a few miles away from him due to "personal obligations" despite the fact he lives two hours from here now. So, he wants to do the case after he is no longer the boss plus bill per hour to do it. He has done nothing to earn his full salary. His reasons are personal for not taking it, and he wants me to empathize. So, he's getting (take home) around 4500 a month to do nothing, won't take a case that's due the 16th and wants to bill us hourly to do it after?

It's unanimous ... I wouldn't talk to him either :)

I think that's a perfectly valid way of handling things.

ditto's for trusting ur instinct, even though all the "bad" you are afraid would come out, no doubt he needs to hear, for one could not have such pent up thoughts, thought to need restraint over, unless many things he was doing, all of yourself could easily see were lacking in integrity and fairness, and not of common good for all concerned....

of course, each one is the decider of all the variable or potentials that can come with speaking one's whole mind, and such is not the encouraged practice within society, but if one holds back, it's own wisdom, which be it's own insight, from the it's own mouth, then oneself insert itself into it's own self prison, for what cannot speak freely, cannot feel free, nor live as free....

again, ditto's for following your instinct, as there is no greater wisdom, than to access one's own limitations accurately, and accessing all the potentials that may come from any given situation that self decide to speak up about....

if courage to speak the truth was commonplace, no untruth could exist, and to speak the truth, in many cases, can cost oneself dearly, but the pain of not doing so for self, far outwiegh the benefits of subdued silence....

the wisest women in the universe, fight as well the greatest battle, of no longer being able to be cowed, persuaded, discouraged, enticed, to believe their own instinct and brain is somehow not accurate....

I haven't heard from him today... but the day is young!