Happy National Boss Day? Or is it National Bass Day?

In the fine print on the paper calendar I still keep - it really does let you see a month at a glance - I noticed that today is National Boss Day.

Actually, when I first glanced the very fine print I thought it said "National Bass Day", which pretty much makes as much sense to me.

I never worked in an environment where this "holiday" - if we'd even known it existed - would have been met with anything but mild scorn. We were always a bit conflicted about the opposite number -  National Secretary's Day - which somewhere along the line became National Administrative Assistant's Day.  Half the admins thought it was condescending if we recognized the day; the other half got snitty if we forgot about it and they didn't get paid some tribute: flowers, small gifts, lunch.

As for National Boss' Day, it's easy to imagine that there are some folksy, small town "It's a Wonderful Life" types of settings where people might actually observe this day with some earnestness, chipping in to buy "The Boss" a monogrammed letter opener, or a desk plaque that says "The buck stops here.", or one of the other equally cheesy "business gifts" that are no doubt being pushed as appropriate for the day.  And this year, when there are so many who are just grateful to have a job, there may be more people inclined to acknowledge the "specialness" of their boss, even if in general their attitude is fear and loathing.

Personally, I'm my own boss, so I'll be celebrating by not celebrating.

But the notion of National Boss Day did get me reflecting on my own mixed bag experience as a manager.

In the early going, I was in complete avoidance mode on problems.

One of the first people I had working under me - the only person on my "team" - was someone I hadn't wanted to begin with.

The situation was this:

I was given a req to hire an assistant product manager to work with me, and began interviewing. I found someone on the "outside world" who was perfect for the job. Then I learned that there was an internal candidate who I needed to consider. Fair enough.

When I interviewed "Al", I discovered that he had absolutely no interest in the position whatsoever. What he was interested in were the products, that provided stock market data in near real time (when this was not generally available, other than to brokers and traders with Quotron boxes) and analytics. He had a small side business going as a money manager, and the idea of having access to market data completely appealed to him. The job - writing product specs, overseeing documentation and QA, going on sales calls - didn't. And he made no bones about it.

So I decided to take a pass on Al.

I was then told that if I didn't take Al, I'd lose the req.

Foolishly, I took Al.

While I personally liked the guy a lot, he was a complete disaster as a product manager.

As I had predicted - and he had pretty much warned me - he liked the job because he could follow the market. Which is what he did all day.

Occasionally and grudgingly, he would do a lick of work. Occasionally. Grudgingly.

Yet when my boss asked about Al, I covered for him, and once went so far as to rewrite the product requirements doc that Al had done such a half-assed job on.

Come lay-off time - and at Wang lay-off time was always coming - my boss took me off the hook by getting rid of Al. The next day, Al sent me flowers. He was just as glad to be gone, and he went on to become what he wanted to be: a stock market guy. Quite successful, too, I might add. (We lost touch after a few years, but I googled him a while back, and he's doing just fine.)

Although I didn't make the same mistake again, i.e., hiring someone who flat out told me they didn't want to do any of the work associated with a position (d'oh), there was another mistake that I made three times - all with disastrous results. And that was hire someone whose references said that they were "happy that someone was going to give  X a chance."

X1 I hired despite my boss warning me that he thought there was something "off" about the candidate. I thought he was being sexist and did an over-ride on his quasi-veto.

Turns out he was right. What was "off" was that X1 suffered from bipolar disorder in the extreme, and, even when she was in "up" mode, her work was erratic and never seemed capable of delivering anything. After one particularly unfortunate episode, when she blew up at me for asking her to take care of the most trivial of tasks, we sat down and put her on notice that if she couldn't complete a task by a certain date, we would have to part company. The required task was modestly challenging, especially for X1, but she took the opportunity to find another job before she had to deliver.

As one of my colleagues said when he learned that X1 had given her notice, "That's addition by subtraction."

X2 was an even worse disaster.

An internal transfer who was stepping up from a job as an admin to that of junior product marketing person, X2 was ticked off from the outset that, while she was making more than she had been (as a decidedly junior person, albeit with reasonable potential), she was making less than others on the team. That she was in learning mode, and not capable to working autonomously, this made her crazy. Especially since some of those making  a lot more money were her age.

I will not get into a full chronicle here about X2, but she was difficult and disruptive from the outset, and managed to protect herself and cover her tracks by whining to HR about every perceived slight sent her way by any (man) in the group. ("He looked cross-eyed at me, which made me feel really uncomfortable.") I believe that she felt her string of complaints would make her invulnerable to lay-off, but she managed to engineer her own, personal lay-off when she was apprehended faxing a list of all the people in our business unit - names, e-mails, phone numbers - to a head-hunter friend of hers. (This was in the pre-dot.com bubble burst hiring frenzy.) So we had to fire her.

In the meantime, she had been talking to me about a job she was interviewing for outside the company that would pay her about $35K more than she was (quite fairly) making at Genuity. While I wouldn't have been sad to see her go, I did point out that, at that new salary, she would be expected to deliver, to work independently, and without the close mentoring and oversight that she was being offered in my group (when she wasn't running to HR to bitch).

Shortly after she was fired, X2 called me with the news that she'd taken the job.

She lasted a few months there. (Another long story, which she called to tell me about...)

X3, my final really bad hire, was also an internal transfer, and also a smart and ambitious admin that I was happy to give a hand-up to.

X3 was also - and there is no other word for it - a little sexpot, who outrageously flirted with guys to get what she needed to get her job done. (She was a project manager, so mainly what she needed was to get everyone's status report.)

I pointed out on several occasions that she might be better off comporting herself more professionally, as the kitten act was not one that would age well. I though this was reasonable, as she was always complaining that people didn't take her seriously or think she was smart. Showing less cleavage and canning the 'come hither' gestures and looked might have helped...

Still, I really liked X3 and thought she had tremendous potential.

Too bad she blew it by getting caught up in a situation in which she and a security guard were nabbed for a string of outrageously inappropriate and sexually laden e-mails. (They were found out when the security guard was investigated because he'd been accessing porn on the 'net.)

X3 was reprimanded for this and, as I pointed out to her while she was in tears in my office, this was just the type of behavior that would get you on a lay-off list.

Next round, off she went.

Mostly, though, I had good luck as a manager. Mostly by having people on my team who made me look good. (A key ingredient to being a good manager.)

In return, I gave them autonomy, visibility, opportunities to shine, advice and help when they needed it, and all the credit in the world.

No wonder the good employees liked working for me.

Still, I'm not expecting any cards or gifts for National Boss Day.

I will say this, however.

I used to tell people in my group that I wanted them all to go on to successful careers so that they'd hire me when I got older and wanted to freelance.

Damned if it didn't happen....