Being a boss

I’ve never really been a boss. Not until about a year ago. Now I’m the boss of many. Not sure I’m into this boss lark. You have to put up with everyone’s whinges. You have to fire people and be responsible for their tears. You have to say no to their delusional demands ‘I think having a PA would really help me in my job’, ‘NO’. You can’t be too nice or they take advantage, so you keep a cold distance so that you can fire them and not cry with them. You have to look as impeccable as possible to not give them more reasons to slag you off. You have to bite your tongue and not say things like ‘well, if you don’t like it, you know where to go *then point your eyeballs at the door*’ or ‘just chill out you fucking moron’.

Of course there are good things too. But that’s not the point of this post.

You have to be all leader like and motivate their sorry asses. You turn into a nagging tidy obsessive because you want them to use a drawing pin for each corner of a notice on a notice board. You have to explain that just because they bought a house on a mortgage they can’t really afford is not a reason for a payrise. You have to talk to them about personal habits that are not appropriate in an office environment, ‘Bob, you may not be aware of it, but you touch yourself a lot and we all find it disturbing’. You have to tell them that wearing hotpants isn’t appropriate when you’re client facing, unless you work in Hooters for example.

*bangs head on desk*

You have to look concerned when there is a panicked crises or they think you don’t give a damn. You may not give a damn, but you can’t show that in your face. All majority of problems can be solved in this life.

You end up giving life lessons to people twice your age who should know better. You have daily moments of frustration because you realise your staff can’t be arsed to have any initiative whatsoever to solve problems.

I’ll end there. I envy supermarket cashiers.