they envy your youth and your intelligence. they probably look at you and see all the potential you have that they lack and it scares them senseless. the only reason people act catty like that is when they wish they had something that you obviously have.

i hate them, too.

as far as the job driving you crazy...when i worked with a woman like that, i put up with it for a little over a year, figured out that it wasn't going to get better and decided to leave. leaving hurt me way more than it hurt her. i had to take a pay cut and i'm sure it didn't look good to the company i was with at the time. but then i had to ask myself why the hell none of my superiors had bothered to help me. i had given them plenty of documentation of the problems, problems anyone else would have been fired for, but they were too lazy and stupid to do anything about it. in the end, i had to get away from her to save my mental and my physical health (i had started to have panic attacks and was almost always sick to my stomach, i used to go into my friends enclosed/locked office and lie down on the floor during my lunch breaks). i still resent that this was the only solution for the problem, but even looking back on it now i realize that it truly was. if it isn't worth the money they are paying you and no one is going to discipline them for acting inappropriate and unprofessional, then maybe you should hightail it out of there. we all know you deserve better.

you want i should beat them up for you in the mean time?