system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Dealing with advisor's (empty?) threats

This morning got off to an awful start. I'm in my hopefully last year of my PhD and so far it's been rough. I have a review paper to write which is on the critical path to my graduation and am on a project which is less critical for me. However, this project is a multi-million dollar grant for my advisor. 

For some context, my advisor is the caricature in PhD comics. He is disorganized, consistently changes his mind and unfortunately thinks he's the opposite. The multi-million dollar grant project was supposed to be a neat little final project for me to wrap up my PhD. Between monday and today, it has become a blue whale which I think I won't be able to finish at all. Less fortunately, I think I'll do all the grunt work (unpublishable) for some other person to do the cool bits and publish because I have to graduate next April. 

Yesterday, I told my advisor that I'd really like to contain the scope so that I'm able to finish everything while I'm in grad school. This morning, he added another bloaty analysis bit. At this point I told him I'd spend half my time on this and the other half writing the research paper to finish. He then threatened to cut my salary in half because and I quote 'im paying you full time to work on this project'. Now, this is classic douchery on his front and he's done similar stuff before. He pays me for 13.5 hours a week but let's be real, I'm working a lot lot lot more. But I'd like to show my deep displeasure without a raging showdown. Help?
gpt
It sounds like there was an early expectation that you'd finish this project, but you feel like it's not possible with the timeframe you have in mind. So this needs to be clearly communicated and agreed on by both (a meeting of the minds). Otherwise, it just sounds like he's got a certain perspective in his head of what's critical (the project is the important thing, regardless of your 1-year timeline), while you're got another (finish in one year, regardless of the project). You should get his agreement of what's acceptable in writing (at least email him to confirm, after a meeting, to give him a chance to correct any misunderstandings).

If you don't finish it, and do the grunt work for someone else to finish, that sounds like what you'd prefer right? You can't have your cake and eat it too -- you don't want to finish the project, but you don't want someone else to finish it?

Why does he think you're paid to work fulltime on this, while you are only paid 13.5 hours a week? Seems like a huge discrepancy, so there must be a misunderstanding there to clear up. Same problem as the project -- it sounds like there's not a shared understanding.