I am in a bad place concerning my attitude at work (not the attitude I show, though I know it can't help but leak out in some ways, but the way I feel), and, since it doesn't look like a change of employer is meant to be, I need advice.

It started in January when a personal employee of one of the owners of my company was promoted to boss over my department. She had no higher education, didn't know a thing about the industry, and had no management experience, but I (who had been a one-woman department until this time) had to train a complete newbie and call her my boss. She consistently screws up hugely & publicly in front of the whole department, but my "think about the team" manager insists on treating her more specially than me.

Then last Friday the same manager undermined me for the umpteenth time when I was attempting to obtain information in compliance with a federal regulation b/c doing so was annoying an important client. Now I am not allowed to talk to that person, and of course New Boss jumped in and offered to "help".

I feel like I am being thrown to the wolves in favor of someone obviously undeserving, and I am just SO resentful! What should I do?

You should make work hard for her.

Do your job only and anything that you think has her name on it, give it to her to do. If she asks for help, laugh and so "yeah right, like YOU need MY help" and basically ignore her pleas for rescueing.

I have a similiar thing, but rather people at my work, it's my customers that aren't doing their jobs properly. Sounds funny, but my customers are supposedly people that are educated - I work in print, and the work I get comes from "graphic designers" that think they can set things up for print. I've slowly learned to throw stuff back at them that isn't set up right.

I work for an offset printers but we also have a copy centre attached to us. I work in pre-press but do design work as well. So busy at the moment it is insane. I'd love to do the same work but working for myself someday, but at the same time, there a many reasons why I don't want to work for myself.

I guess time will tell. I figure get another year or 2 experience at this job and try the job market again to see if I can get better pay. If not then I will start working for me.

Oh and I hate training people that are getting paid more than me. When I was still in high school I was getting youth wages - about $6NZ an hour. I had to train a lady to do my retarded job. She was getting paid $10 an hour to do the same stuff because she was an adult. Sucks. If I'm not good enough to do the job don't hire me. Don't just hire a young person because they're cheap. Hire someone because they can do the job.

Inky, I've just extracated myself from a similar situation.

I was doing all of the work and someone else was taking all of the credit.
I went off 'sick' for a few weeks, the whole plece fell apart
It was a huge ego boost to know that the company will fall apart without me.

I'm handing in my notice on Monday, they can stick that in their collective pipes and smoke it

Maybe you should get sick, or take a holiday.

I put up with it for nearly two years, now I wish I'd done it sooner.

When I actually started looking (about a month ago) a whole slew of jobs came in.
I start something new in a month.

When you actually start looking and people know you are available, things start to happen.
Remember, less than half of the jobs available are advertised.