Bum Deal For The Boss

Out of university, I started working in engineering in this small, family-run company. The boss/owner prided himself on being the local Steve Jobs because he also started the company in a garage with a friend and kept it running for a good thirty years (forget about never letting it grow past ten employees like the real one did…).

Boss was the stereotypical micromanager: he would not trust any of us with doing things right and would always check our work and correct it, which, considering he would always change his mind on how things needed to be done, would always result in things being done wrong and fixed “thanks to him”.

One fine day, he needed to undergo surgery to fix a problem with hemorrhoids, so he would have been off for some time: recovery from that surgery required spending a good length of time, one week or so, lying on the tummy with the “dark side of the moon” pointing up in the sky to limit pain.

First day after surgery goes well: we are actually crunching work at a fast pace because we don’t need to fix imaginary errors, and we are all in a good mood because nobody is grumbling behind our neck that we can’t do anything right.

Day two rolls in, and a couple of hours after opening time, the boss limps into the office, screaming that he must be there to save the company “else nobody will do any work.”

He then sits at his desk with just a donut pillow and starts his routine micromanaging with the visible struggle of handling the pain he was inflicting on himself.

We all at least found it ironic that he was finally experiencing first-hand what a pain in the ass he was.