When the boss starts pushing, what do you do?

I generally let him/her edge me back, at a very slow, comfortable pace.

When you notice that your being pushed into a corner by your boss, what do you do?

Up until now, I can't say that I've been backed into a corner by a manager, supervisor, etc, so I can't honestly say what I will do. I can say that it's not comfortable any longer and something my dad taught me a long time ago is starting to edge it's way into my every day thought process; when you're pushed, push back.

I know my father was referring to bullies, but it's starting to feel like a bully-type situation. I'm pretty much at this person's mercy. I'm not worried about getting axed, but I am worried about having everything that I actually enjoy about the job getting taken away from me. I've already had one thing yanked, will they try to take my personal project away next?

The answer to that question is ... maybe. I was informed today by a coworker from a completely different team (who is also my counterpart on my personal project), who was in turn informed by a person from my team, who was informed by my supervisor, that they had appointed someone to work with me on my personal project weeks ago. News to me! Especially since my supervisor's manager and I had worked out a deal where my personal project belonged to me and I could appoint anyone I wanted to it, as long as it didn't interfere with their other responsibilities. So, that's what I did, I appointed my counterpart from the other team, and let him choose his assistant, and I chose my own assistant from my team. That was the deal, two people from each team taking on this project and they would be my team.

Ok, let me backtrack a little bit here. This project did not start out as mine alone, this was a collaboration between me and another coworker, who has since left the company. We went through everything to get it set up and spent hours of our free time (be it lunch breaks, regular breaks, after hours, whatever) getting everything set up. We even asked for approval from our supervisor before going through with this to which. he readily agreed (more on that later). We went through a completely different site to get our much needed resources and troubled a lot of people to get it all set up in the process. We then found out that our supervisor had not told his supervisor or manager about this project. Needless to say, those people were not happy and we almost (well, not really) lost the project. Once that was all worked out, we worked everything out with the supervisor's manager and off we went.

Ok, back to the supervisor readily agreeing. I have found, over the past few months of his tenure, that this person loves delegating, then taking credit for everyone else's hard work. He does it with PowerPoint presentations, posters, and I believe he wanted to do it with our project. What I was told today almost confirms that suspicion. This supervisor has to have his hands in everything. Not all the way, but, just enough to claim the credit if everything goes well and completely wash himself clean of the situation if things go sour. It's easy for anyone with work experience to see this. He gets himself assigned to as many tasks as he can, then appoints several people to work on these tasks and does little to nothing to help. Then when the task is completed, he looks at it and claims it as his own if it's good, pushes it off on others if it's not. I've seen it happen with at least two of the tasks he's appointed to me.

Ok, I'm done bitching and moaning about this now. I'll write more later. Comment if you think I'm a whiny bitch who just needs to do his job and shut up and I'll let my boss know there are people who would be a perfect fit for his style of management.