Group Writing Prompt: Bosses

My first boss in the professional working world was a good-natured woman named Suzanne, who had a full figure and the mouth of a drunken Nantucket sailor. She was always at the ready with a brilliant new business scheme or the latest corporate gossip, and had an uncanny ability for knowing how to make inappropriate conversation seem completely appropriate.

I was part of a small department of eight, and she made all of us feel like we were the most important people in the organization.

One morning, apparently fed up with the corporate politics with which she somehow managed to buffer us from, Suzanne burst into our offices with an urgent announcement. “Come on, we’re all going to the movies,” she said, gathering her things off the desk. “F- this f–ing place. They’ll get by without us for a couple hours. It’s my treat.”

Just like that, in the middle of the work day. So we dropped everything, forwarded the phones, put a sign on the door saying that we were at an important off-site meeting, and off we carpooled to the theatre to catch the first matinee show.

What else could we do? It was a direct order from the boss!

We returned a few hours later to our offices feeling only slightly guilty, blinking from the sunlight and burping up buttered popcorn. We went back to our desks, and never spoke of it again.

I guess this was Suzanne’s version of acting out and getting revenge on the higher-ups while drawing her own team closer together. And this is exactly what made us love her – the feeling that we were with her in the battle, no matter how wacky things got. She cared about us.

I still keep in touch with her, as she has closely followed the careers of each of her former employees with great interest for the last twenty years.

Since then, I’ve had nine other bosses. They have run the gamut of boss archetypes: there was the Too-Nice boss; the Incompetent boss; the Solid Career Mentor boss; the I-Don’t-Give-a-Rat’s-Ass-About-You boss; the Out-of-Control Narcissist boss; and the Ideal Godly Christian Leader boss.

I learned something important from each of them – about myself, about living out my Christian faith in the grit of corporate life, and also about navigating the all-to-real dynamics of the organizational world.

What about you?

Did you ever have a great boss?

Or a bad boss?

How about a crazy boss?

What did you learn from that experience?

Our next writing project at the High Calling Blogs is on the subject of “Bosses.”

Write about your own boss story, and drop your link in my comment box by Sunday, July 4.  I’ll choose a couple to feature and we’ll compare notes at the High Calling Blogs on Tuesday, July 6.

Photo by nAncY, used with permission.