You Can't Spell 'Idiot' Without a 'T'

The peril of having a job but no career is that you become the natural prey for that breed of small businessman who devours human souls as though they’re so many smoked trout canapes at a golf club luncheon.

It’s why I don’t mind being accused of a crime so long as it’s the crime of lèse majesté. Not all small businessmen are incapable of scratching their arses while whistling a tune but it’s been proven that many of them are closer to single cell organisms than they are to anything with an opposable thumb. There will come a time when they’re overthrown and I hope to be leading the charge armed with a staple gun. I say let the revolution start here with a few facts about our enemy.

I realised that my Boss was an idiot at a early stage of my professional career. One day in October last year, I arrived at the ‘business headquarters’ of The Company in the heart of Manchester. From the way My Boss had described his business over the phone, I had expected to find an entire suite of air conditioned offices in a Richard Rogers designed tower block. Instead, I found three cramped rooms in a building of several hundred serviced offices. The place had the aroma of lemon grass and the appeal of a Vietnamese paddy field filled with long forgotten American landmines.

My Boss greeted me in the lobby. His hands were large and dry and he proceeded to compliment me on my timekeeping as he loosened ligaments in my shoulder. I think he just wanted to see how much physical trauma he could cause with a handshake.
‘We’re very relaxed around here,’ he said as he began to explain my duties to me.
‘You are free to work any eight hours you wish between eight thirty in the morning and five thirty in the afternoon.’

‘And I can take lunch at any time?’ I asked, still believing that this man in Pringle and tweed was really quite friendly.

His teeth broke through his smile. A fist couldn’t have done a better job of disillusioning me as to its real meaning. ‘Take all the time you want,’ he answered. ‘After all, lunch is your own time. I don’t pay you to eat. Just give me my eight hours...’

‘...between eight thirty and five thirty?’

‘Precisely.’

Blood welled up from the incision I’d made in my own cheek. I could see that there was no room for negotiations. When he handed me a contract, I signed on the dotted line. The ink seemed to run blue from a vein.

It was then a matter of meeting the rest of what My Boss called his ‘happy band in Lincoln green’.

The fact that it is a truism doesn’t make it any less startling to discover that good people always work for bad bosses. Without a doubt, my colleagues are some of the finest people put on God’s earth to shuffle papers and take abuse. Our office has a staff of seven in addition to myself and My Boss. The only two I met on the first day were Jason and Sally. The rest of the staff were away meeting clients, which happens with a surprising frequency whenever My Boss declares that he’ll be in the office all week.

Jason is the smartest guy in the nine of us. He’s the person that everybody turns to when they need help with technology. He’s a rabid supporter of Manchester City, which I made sure to hold against him at every opportunity. Jason suffers more than most because it’s his job to keep the computers, printers, and internet functioning. This regularly brings him into direct conflict with My Boss who, being a comprehensive idiot when it comes to IT, insists that technology can solve every problem.

Sally works at My Boss’s PA. Broken by years of service, she has the kind of demeanour that belongs in a Bible account of some meek soul about to inherit real estate. Beneath her quiet, unprepossessing way, she has a caustic sense of humour. Unknown to My Boss, the problems he has with his rental cars has much to do with Sally. If he demands performance saloons, she ensures he’s driving something economical and French. He wants a room with a king sized bed and he’ll be lucky to get something fit for a midget.

It was Sally who told me the story of one of My Boss’s finest moments. It was during a push he recently initiated to increase efficiency in the workplace. My Boss was discovered one morning prising the keys from Sally’s keyboard.

‘Good morning my dear,’ he said as he used his letter opener to whisk off a few more vowels. ‘No doubt you’re wondering what I’m doing.’

Sally said that she was a little bit confused and asked him why he was pulling all the keys from her keyboard and piling them on her desk.

‘I observed you yesterday,’ he replied, ‘and I realised how much quicker it would be if you had all the important keys under your right hand. I’ve swapped the “E” key for the “P”. You hardly ever need “P” and I’m moving the “A” and “S” over too... I can’t make up my mind about the “R”. How often would you say you use it?’

Sally had mentioned something about how useful it would be to have all the letters of ‘arse’ under one hand. Then Jason appeared and it was left to him to explain to My Boss that the plastic key covers have no bearing on the electronics of the keyboard and that an ‘E’ in the place of a ‘P’ would still produce a ‘P’ on the screen. My Boss gave his usual response and blamed everybody in the room for inhibiting progress.

‘Cretinous baboons!’ he cried before running off for lunch and a quick nineteen holes.