Busy Does a Bossy Good

The boss is a very, very busy man. We know this because he takes hours out of his day to tell us all about it.

Tom,

WIDGET-424242 Premium has the wrong color listed.

It should be “Brown”

Please correct both color attributes and the name.

thanks,

Marquis

Note the subtle capitalization and punctuation errors. Like a boss!

I should be used to this by now. But still I sat there, stunned, staring at his email on my screen. He could have sent a shorter email. “Widget 424242 wrong color. Thanks.” But he didn’t.

I thought about hitting “reply” and asking a simple question: “Will there ever come a day when you don’t feel the need to include that extraneous sentence at the end?” I heard it can be beneficial to dream. Well, I have my dreams, too.

He went ahead and listed the correct color, even though I could have figured that out on my own. Maybe we can give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was just trying to be helpful. He saved me the bother of having to look it up in the catalog.

But WTF is up with that next sentence? He just told me the color was “wrong.” I know what that means. It has to be fixed. If I really strained my brain cells enough I might even be able to extrapolate, like an Eistein smartypants, what should happen next. We have to correct the wrong information on the website! Am I right, am I right, Alex Trebec? What do I win?

Luckily, though, the boss is ever vigilant and at the ready to provide more than enough information. Apparently he thinks we’re so damn stupid we won’t know to wipe our own asses unless he’s there to point out the obvious. “And use toilet paper next time!” That might also explain why he walks into occupied bathrooms without the courtesy of knocking first. It’s because he’s so damn smarter than us idiots. No doubt that’s why he hired us.

“You going to send that letter in the mail? You’ll have to put on a postage stamp. The post office won’t deliver it without one.” Are you fucking shitting me? (And, for the record, I’m not making this up. This is an actual verbatim from the boss to me.)

I can’t help but wonder. What if the boss was in charge of other stuff? What would that look like?

“Fire engines 1, 2 and 3, and EMS, please respond to 666 Douchebag Lane, residential structure, fully engulfed in flames. You are instructed to put out the fire and render medical aid to injured persons. KMG-365.”

In the engine, en route to the scene, the crew is grateful. “Thank God they told us to put out the fire. We would have never thought of that. And providing medical aid to injured people? Brilliant!”

The other day my coworker had a problem. The paper cutter was a piece of shit. It basically disintegrated during use and the jury rigging installed so carefully by the boss had failed. It was a complicated system of paper clips and rubber bands and required coworker to balance on one foot at a 45 degree angle for paper to actually cut.

Coworker took a few moments then gingerly approached the boss. “The paper cutter has had it. It’s shot. I looked and found a brand new one on the internet for only $30 with free shipping. Can I get it?”

“Can it be repaired?” the boss asked, implying that coworker had just lied.

“No.”

Boss leaped out of his chair like Tigger having just consumed a case of Red Bull. “Let me take a look.” The wonderful thing about Tigger is that he’s the only one. The unwonderful thing about bosses is there is a veritable plethora of them.

So coworker stood there, head bowed, looking forlorn and feeling like an idiot while the boss ripped the thing out of his hands to verify if, in fact, the thing was actually damaged beyond repair like coworker had claimed.

Now, I’m not making this up. You’ll have to trust me. It was a full thirty minutes later when the boss finally admitted defeat. He reluctantly agreed with his employee. There was no hope for the bloody thing. This fact, of course, was not acknowledged by the boss.

But he wasn’t finished yet.

He ignored the fact that coworker had ever spoken and said, instead, “I have a spare at home. I’ll bring it in tomorrow.”

There is no problem too small for the boss to rip it out of an employee’s hands and take a shit on the employee’s face. All at the same time. This is called “multitasking.”

The boss, who complains about how busy he is, could have responded different. He could have spent a whopping two seconds and used one of the following responses to his helpful employee:

• Make it so
• I’ll bring one in tomorrow

We don’t live in that universe, though.

I can’t help but wonder how busy the boss would really be if didn’t extrapolate every two second task into a 30-minute employee minimizing experience. Methinks he would be bored?