Boss' Day: 'I was unable to take this torture and quit'

On the occasion of Boss' Day on October 16, Vijay Nair, author of The Boss is Not Your Friend, recounts why he quit his numerous jobs and decided to become an author.

Must take Quiz: Is your boss a Vicious Viper or Horny Harry?

Also Read: 'The boss is Dumb, Very Dumb or Unimaginably Dumb'

I was really upset with the person who thought of a silly concept like Boss' Day until I learnt that it was a lady secretary who wanted to give her Boss a special gift on his birthday. The Boss happened to be her father. So she registered the day as a special day and the tradition of giving a holiday on this particular day continues to date. Girls are always attached to their fathers and I have no quibble with her. But as usual we Indians have been quick to adapt to this foreign tradition without understanding that even the Americans today disparagingly refer to this day as a Hallmark Holiday, an occasion for card printing companies to mint millions.

I don't think any Indian organisation gives a holiday on this day. But a lot of schmoozing of the Boss goes on in most Indian companies and Boss' Day is one more opportunity for the managers to lay it on fast and thick. I have a natural distaste for Boss like I have for Creepy Crawlies. And once I have shared the experience I have had with different Bosses in different organisations during my years as a manager, you will understand why I react so strongly against them.

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I started my career in a Mumbai company owned by a family that belongs to a unique community known as much for their enterprise as they are for their eccentricities. My Boss belonged to the same community and was related to the owners.

He was a nice man except he had a strange quirk. He would call the managers who reported to him to his chamber and start on an excited discussion. He will talk non-stop for the first 10-15 minutes and when it was their turn to respond to him, he used to put a finger in one of his ears and make obnoxious sounds from his throat.

Politeness demanded I had to wait for him to get over his physical discomfiture and start on my narration again only to be interrupted by his throat clearing noises. I was unable to take this torture after the first few months and quit. He didn't spare me even in the exit interview meeting and continuously made the throat clearing noise, finger firmly in his ear.

I was asked to act in a play a few months back and my role was that of an eccentric academic. The director wanted me to affect some gross mannerisms and I recalled my first Boss' and tried his gesture. The director was happy but members of cast and crew stopped talking to me during rehearsals.

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After I moved out of my first organisation, I went to work in a steel company in Bihar. The Boss I had in the new company greeted me with 'Sab line up ho gaya ji' (Is everything in order?) first thing in the morning. Not knowing how to respond to this open question, I used to keep quiet.

The cheerful greeting didn't stay for long. He will be sullen with me for the rest of the day.

An experienced colleague educated me after a few weeks that my new Boss was a very literal kind of a person and if you responded to his greeting by saying 'Yes, Sir! Sab line up ho gaya, (everything is in order)" he will not be moody and temperamental.

I took his advice and things were smooth sailing for the next few months. However my Boss was petrified of his Boss who was the Director-Personnel of the organisation and every time he was summoned by his Boss, he used to start sweating profusely. His fear was so palpable that I started worrying that if I was promoted I will end up like him and I quit because of my irrational fears.

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Next I joined a Kolkata based organisation and my Boss was a process worker. For the uninitiated, process workers are a set of half crazed phoney psychologists who conduct Personal Growth Labs. These labs are nothing but a way to hoodwink a set of gullible participants to share intimate details of their life that the process workers use to turn the participants into their personal disciples.

My Boss was very good at prying and I decided to teach him a lesson.

After a year, when it was time for him to have the performance appraisal meeting with me, I made up a lot of stories about misery and deprivation when I was growing up. He gave me a score of perfect 10.

He told me that he was very proud of the personal breakthroughs I had made on that day and deserved to be rewarded.

I realised I was on to a good thing and never wanted to leave the organisation. But he left the organisation and I was head-hunted by another Boss' working in another organisation.

This one was all sugar and honey when we started out until I realised he had cheated me by lying about the grade structure in the organisation so that he can fit me into a lower grade than I was entitled to.

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I am unable to understand to this day why he did what he did after assiduously wooing me to join the organisation. The Biblical lesson of 'Do unto others...' holds good and he too was head hunted by another organisation within six months that promised him the moon but eventually expected him to downsize the workforce of the organisation.  Soon he earned the nickname of 'Yama' (the messenger of death) among the workmen of the company.

After he left, the man who replaced him was a cheap crook who would demand a commission from trainers and consultants who were the vendors of the organisation. After some time the entire department started acquiring a bad name and I quit in disgust.

They say managers don't leave organisations, they leave their Boss. But the Bosses I had made me bid adieu to organisational life altogether.