Happy To Have A Horrible Boss

Baring teeth, head shaking side to side, a drawn looking face and eyes seeing red! These are the typical symptoms seen in an employee exiting the boss’s cabin after having a “session” with him. This session usually depicts the boss grilling the employee with hands flying in every possible direction and the worker saying, ‘Yes Sir, No Sir, Okay Sir and Sorry Sir’ with head bowed down. While the bosses keep blowing the trumpets of ‘look-who-is-the-most-powerful’, it is the employees that take a blow suffering from stress, low self-confidence and lack of passion for work. So, how are we happy to have a horrible boss, you wonder? Well, why concentrate on all the negatives when you can see the benefits for having a bad boss, if you shift your focus jussst a little bit? A little bit more, a little below. Yeah, there you see all the benefits!

• Be Responsible

  You tell yourself. Having a horrible boss pushes you to be more responsible. You take complete responsibility of the entire project/work that has been assigned to you. Right from defining the objectives, executing them to reviewing the completed project and preparing a report, you do it all. You look into every minute detail to not give your boss a chance to belittle you. You tend to give your 100% and sometimes a little more than that.

• Capabilities are tested in the darkest hours

  Calling it the darkest hours might be going a little overboard, but nonetheless, horrible times with bosses test your capabilities. It elbows you to improve yourself and do better everytime. You go that extra mile to achieve perfection which lets you know that you are so much more capable than you gave yourself credit for. Evidently it helps in your betterment.

• A big NO to excuses

  You just stop giving excuses, even the genuine ones. You know your boss is anyway going to trash them. You try and overcome every other problem in your way to make your work a success. You leave no leaf unturned to solve the issues that have the potential of turning into excuses in your boss’s hand. You become accountable for all the hurdles facing you.

• Humility is the best policy

  A bad boss inadvertently makes you humble. Humans have a tendency of thinking very highly about themselves. A little taste of success and we start gloating, flying high on the wings of smugness. Horrible bosses keep us grounded. One discourteous look from our boss clearly saying, ‘what crap is this’, and we realise it is time to return to our dear Mother Earth.

• Opportunity to show your mettle

  Having a horrible boss can sometimes place you in extreme situations. This is the time where you get a chance to show your spirit. It takes a lion’s heart to carry on through difficult times but they are also potent to make you rock solid.

  Now that we have seen the benefits, we can safely conclude that having a bad boss can be seen as a boon than a bane. And would it be too wrong to wonder whether behind all the rude façade that bosses put up, their underlying aim might be to see everyone working under them perform well in every aspect of life? Yeah, does sound like a compelling figment of imagination, but it is a compelling one nonetheless. So, the next time you are pumping your chest and boasting to your colleagues about how you “showed the boss”, take a peek at your boss to see if there is a little of Elon Musk, the Tesla/SpaceX Founder, in him/her