Annoying Dock - O(For F***)SX

I'm not talking about the white plastic thing you throw away when you get your iPod Touch.

The more and more I use the Mac at work, the more and more I find the dock annoying.

I'm sure if it's used at home, I'd love the way it magnifies and admire at the way files can come out in stack fashion.

However, since a lot of the software I use at work has status bars(with functions) at the bottom of each window, except safari, the dock just gets in the ($%&'& way.

I've tried reducing it's size, turning off the bounce, magnification and it feels like it works and then sometimes it doesn't. I've moved it to the side of the screen and it's solves the problem a bit.

I am getting used to OSX, but I just hate getting used to the way OSX uses it's screen estate. I need that full screen.