veraliar

Thanks for the much appreciated advice fellas.

Meridia, you're right, I should treat the matter professionally and officially. The problem is I had no written terms when I took the job and put my trust into the guy not taking advantage of me. He saw it as an opportunity to take someone with no experience, underpay him and teach him the ropes as a reward; alas, he hasn't taught me anything, it was all (like I said) on my own doing.

To give an example.. the day the T mobile rep came to discuss rates it was the end of the quarter and he said he would give us great discounts to meet his quota if we file by that day. But instead of making the decision, my boss spent entire day looking at coffee makers (he's big into coffee) to decide which to get... not only that but he spent no less than an hour deciding between the same exact model from one company over another simply because one company was cheaper something like 30-40 bucks cheaper but charged 15 more shipping.

My suspicion is that it's simply his personality. He likes to micromanage and has been doing it all his life; we had a meeting about 2 months ago where he admitted he wasn't sure how to use me. Personalities at 60+ are hard to change and I respect that but like I said, at this point, it's getting a little beyond the "oh ok boss, I'll work with you" and starting to feel pretty disrespectful. He's been asking more and more of me, and doing less and less for me.

I'll think about the letter after I discuss the matter with my mentor/advisor this week.

I will also definitely take your guys' advice and might tell him I sold the car to afford the commute or tuition or books or whatever.

What worries me is if I push too many buttons he'll just replace me with some 70-80k salaried executive know-it-all because like I said he has zero problems handing out money left and right when it comes to big bucks. Since I lack vast experience and a list of huge references he probably still thinks he's doing me a favor more than anything by taking me on and it's not easy to disput the fact simply by pointint to a list of things I've been doing. Without an official written contract as to what my duties are, he can pretty much legally use any excuse and he already has a firm that he pays like 50-60k a month to to handle most of everything. I like the written letter idea where we clearly state what my duties are and I tell him if he wants me to keep scheduling conferences, making coffee, keeping his calendar in order, then that's cool but if he wants me to do more (without even teaching or guiding me in any way), I'm not gonna put in my own free time to do it w/o extra pay so his options would be either to fire me and hire a guy who can do all these things (doubtful an 80k assistant will want to make coffee for a living), or hire 2 people, 1 to take over my simple duties and 1 to take over the hard ones. At least that's what I suspect, I don't claim to be versed well enough in business to know how the whole thing can pan out.

As many people tell me, I'm naive and trustworthy and people will take advantage of that, I guess I'm starting to learn this the hard way.