The Westmonster Daily

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Not-so-good things that may or may not have happened to me. I think they may. But not because I let them but because they didn’t even ask.

They have mostly to do with a boss or bossess.

The other day I received another strikingly typical email from my bossess. It was loaded with typos, significantly lacking in content, and really captivating in its completely random use of punctuation marks, adding to the confusing nature of the whole thing.

So after I had spent about half an hour trying to decipher what she had intended to write and looking up all kinds of things in search of hints as to what the hell she was referring to, I decided to formulate three simple questions about matters I wanted to be sure of, because they were assignments the completion of which required quite some expenditure of time if taken on seriously.

So I mailed her my questions (they were along the lines of “did you mean this author when you wrote that name?” – “when you write ‘network’, which one of these do you mean?”).

What I received in reply to this were some marginally serviceable answers to my questions and a really helpful hint to “not just execute orders but to use my brains”. That so totally made my day. And left me without any intention of actually using up too much of my brains for this task – and how could I? After all, I had spent almost all of them already, trying to decrypt her first email. What was left went into devising a witty, yet calm and innocuous reply I never actually sent, indicating my inability to not use my brains, because they’re just there.

I’m almost sure she didn’t mean it the way it sounded to me. But the woman teaches leadership, for Christ’s sake!

I have surprisingly little to complain about my bossess these days.

She used to write extremely interesting, even hilarious (to me and my colleagues), emails, but at the moment she is very calm and unobtrusive. I don’t even hear funny stories from my co-workers about her banging her keyboard on the table because she is incapable of delegating anything worthwhile to us and therefore constantly overworked. I’m sure she is still constantly overworked, but since I hardly see her, I’m not affected by the results.

So this section of my blog stays comparatively empty for now. Let’s hope it stays that way. Although one of these days I just might dig into the “noteworthy correspondence”-folder I set up in Outlook and let the world partake in some very fond memories from way-back-when the bossess inspired me to name a section of my blog after her.

Bosses and their female colleagues, bossesses, are funny little things, now, aren’t they? The things they do… (please picture me smiling to myself and benevolently shaking my head).

Okay, there are times when the things they do aren’t actually little, or funny, or a little funny, or anything anyone ever invented an adjective for. Sometimes they’re downright frustrating and make you lose your faith in mankind. And it’s those times in particular, when you have to stay amused and not let them infiltrate your serious thoughts too much! Easier said than done, I know. But let me help you. It’s what I’m here for. It’s where I flourish.

The next couple of posts might deal with Emails or comments I got from my bossess over the years. And I will try my worst to give them a funny spin, put them in perspective a little. In the grand scheme of things, emails are just the result of someone vigorously tapping little plastic buttons with their fingertips and some electronic thingamabob transporting stuff from here to there. How could that be significant? And comments, spit at you from across the room during a meeting? – nothing but air trying to get away from that sharp tongue as quickly as possible and eventually hiding in the coils of your (and everyone else’s) ears. S i g n i f i c a n t ? Hoooow?

There you go. That’s the topic we’ll be exploring this semester. Lookin’ forward to it. Or am I?