Not Lean Enough
10 Signs Your Boss Doesn’t Respect You
He’s just not that into you
- When you walk into the office on Monday morning privately proud of yourself for not calling in sick like the other half of your team, your boss just grunts and tells you that you will have to pick up the slack today. Were you looking for appreciation? Maybe a ‘thank you’? Possibly, a ‘well done for getting out of bed today…would you like a lolly?’ No dice. Brace yourself for twice the volume of customers today, sucker.
- During your performance review, rather than tout your excellent communication skills and your masterful handling of irate customers under pressure, your boss can only think to say, ‘your attendance is very good…well done on showing up every day…but I guess that’s why we pay you.’ The last time you heard something this inspiring is when you listened to a recording of the glorious, trembling voice of Martin Luther King give his ‘I Have A Dream’ speech.
- Your boss calls you on your one day off in over three months to tell you they are short staffed and need you ASAP. Nothing about ‘sorry to have to call you on your one day off.’ Just, ‘come ASAP.’ Are you a dog? Maybe a welcome mat? Something to wipe your boss’s shit-stained shoes on?
- Your boss asks you to cover for him as acting Team Leader on the day he needs you to break the news to your colleague that her job has just been made redundant. ‘You can do that for me, can’t you? I promise I’ll make it up to you when I get back from Bali next month.’ You are simply too fucking speechless to say anything in response.
- In the ‘career development’ part of your performance review, your boss announces ‘time’s up,’ as he’s got another meeting to go to. He tells you as he walks out the door, ‘You like your current job anyway, and we need you right where you are.’ Took the fucking words right out of your mouth.
- When your boss asks how your writing is going, just as you are about to take him at face value and tell him what you are working on, he looks at his mobile and says, ‘shit, I’ve got to take this call.’ Don’t expect him to follow up on this question at a later date, Shakespeare. Now go deal with your next customer.
- Instead of a Christmas Bonus for all your hard work, the boss buys you and the team a gigantic box of stale sugary doughnuts that will surely be the final straw that gives you diabetes and eventual organ failure. ‘Thanks boss, I don’t know what to say,’ you reply. ‘Don’t mention it,’ he casually says, ‘Don’t ever say I don’t care about my team. Now, get to work.’
- After getting screamed at and verbally abused by an angry customer who was denied both a refund for a faulty product and denied an escalation request to speak to your boss who was not answering his phone, rather than ask if you were OK, your boss says matter-of-factly, ‘thanks for handling that. I was on the phone with my physio. I really could do with a massage about now.’ Why is he telling you this? Is the lazy fucker now asking you to give him a massage?
- When the annual ‘pulse’ survey comes around, and you are asked to anonymously give feedback about how well your boss is doing in making sure you remain motivated by actually acknowledging your hard work and caring about your career development, your mind draws a complete blank. After 15 minutes of being stumped by this profound question, you write that ‘it has been well over a month since the last time I felt sexually harassed by him in the elevator.’ Is this the best thing you can say about the coward?
- Your boss is absolutely glowing the day he brings the company’s newly hired and very expensive ‘lean’ consultant to ‘cut off the excess lard of productivity time wasted.’ Does he see you and your colleagues as a bunch of lazy cattle? Is this his way of saying, ‘Thank you for all of your hard work and getting me out of so many jams, especially while I was away in Bali.’ You repress your urge to walk over to him and punch him in his large, smug, smiling face.
© Carlo Zeno 2023
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