The Boss

There are days when it’s awesome to be Boss of Everybody. Those days usually include handing out bonuses, and announcing new clients and hiring new staff.

There are also days when it sucks out loud. When you have to let someone go, or announce an unpopular policy, or when you have been specifically instructed by someone else – like, say, YOUR boss (because generally, even Boss of Everybody has a boss) – not to answer certain questions at this time.

As the saying goes, however, it is what it is. You have to take the good with the bad and hope that it balances out.

It usually does.

Sometimes, though, it doesn’t.  And sometimes,  you can’t hand out as much good stuff as you want to, and then people forget there was EVER any good stuff, and start to think of you as the source of the suckage.

I’m okay with this.  I’ve gotten used to it and generally just think of it as part of the job – because that’s what it is. A job. It’s not what defines me as a person; I learned the hard way when I stopped teaching that wrapping your identity into your career is kind of a bad plan, and have held onto the notion of separation of career and self pretty carefully since then. My job is not me, though I do tend to have a bossy personality. I am not my job.

This is not to say that there are not days when I don’t take job related things personally. While I can externalize my job related functions as “just work, not me” I am also human.  I’m a human who, actually, works quite hard to make sure that when all of my team comes to work tomorrow, they still have a work to come to. I want them to be happy to come here – that I don’t always succeed at that is something I acknowledge; I also know that I’ll do whatever I can to get them what they want, but that sometimes I fail at that as well because, well … you know how the song goes.

It shouldn’t be personal. But sometimes it becomes personal.

And on those days? Being Boss of Everybody is a drag.