system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I am in my thesis writing phase, and cannot stand working with my adviser anymore. How do I best handle this situation?

Nothing is special about this situation. In fact, google can produce enough articles about bad managers / bosses to let me know that people go through this all the time. I might as well learn how to make the best out of this situation.

The things that I am upset about:

* They are narcissistic. "The Little Prince/Princess" package.
* On the surface they appear to be very well accomplished, well rounded, ... After many months, when all of that peeled off, I realized that they know how to squeeze ideas out of one person, look for another person to develop them, and they either take all the credit, or write themselves as a co-author. They are always name dropping, lying about their contributions, ...
* They have personal qualms with many researchers in the field who can see through their facade, which is not my business. My problem is that I was used as a useful idiot for a while. (For example, they made me work on something, and add it ad hoc to a paper, and submit it to one specific referee in a journal. The referee praised the paper, and had problems with the part that did not fit in. I later realized that my adviser wanted to show off in front of this person, got pissed off that they shot his ideas in my paper down, and now I have to apologize to the referee, pull my paper, and submit it somewhere else.)
* Whenever they get upset, they refuse to write me recommendation letters, tell me that they are not going to discuss my work, that I am free to publish in small online papers, ...
* They ask me to do work that is related to a project they are working on, but not research-related. I wrote and handed brochures, created websites, ... All quid-pro-quo ("do X and I will write you a good recommendation letter", "do Y and I will tell your committee that you are doing well", ...)
* I was harassed by some of his other students who realized that as long as you are giving them admiration and results, nothing will happen to them. I checked with the university, and was told that I could escalate this if I wanted. I recognize that this is going to make things worse.

I do not want to work with them. I have my projects and thesis problems, and am going to finish in time. I am starting to get known by others in my field, ... I just want to survive the remaining year, and prevent them attaching their suckers to any of my ideas / projects. I only need them for recommendation letters. :(

It goes without saying that I am not taking this personally (but still do want to maintain boundaries between me and them), and that I want to choose my battles very carefully.

What do I do?
gpt
Be around and available enough that you do not appear to be flaking/not showing up to work, but no more. Blend in and do your best to be invisible, while still being responsible and responsive enough to not provoke anger in the vein of "where have you been?". Make sure all important decisions are discussed and decided well ahead of time when everything appears to be far away and not stressful (and there are no random immediate threats to be made at you).

Depending on how well your boss responds to this kind of thing, you can also set very specific schedules and deadlines well in advance. Of course, research doesn't work that way and the deadlines will be largely meaningless, but it gives you a very convenient excuse such that when random last minute things come up, along with random threats of pulling your rec or whatever, you can always say you are already working 24/7 towards important X deadline.