Who’s wants to be the boss? Not many, apparently.

Well, today, you may be shocked and/or amused to learn, is National Boss Day.

Personally, I don’t recall ever receiving or sending a “Happy Boss Day” card, being taken out to lunch, taking anyone out to lunch, or otherwise feted on the Big Day.

In fact, if I even knew such a day existed, I had mercifully put it out of my mind. I’m sure there are other Hallmark holidays out there that are just as gacky as this one – National Prison Guard Day, National Hedge Fund Day – but being the boss is not something that, to my mind, bears celebrating. There’s no avoiding that element of sucking up, and that element of pressure if you happen to work in an environment where The Boss would expect something – and some brown-nosers would deliver.

Oh, I’m sure that there are some workplaces where the underlings want to recognize that their bosses are great. But the mental picture I have here is some petty tyrant in a white, short-sleeved shirt and too-wide tie, who has a plaque in his office that reads:

If you work for a man, in heavens name work for him!If he pays you wages that supply you your bread and butter, work for him speak well of him, think well of him, stand by him and stand by the institution he represents. I think if I worked for a man I would work for him. I would not work for him a part of the time, and the rest of the time work against him. I would give an undivided service or none. If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.  Elbert Hubbard

As a waitress, I actually worked for a man – who was known as The Boss – who had just such a plaque posted in the waitress break room. He was not a petty tyrant. He was a major tyrant: irrational, vicious, mean, and drunk. I do believe that at some point I removed said plaque from the break room wall and may, in fact, still have it in my possession.

Not that I advocate employees spending all their time badmouthing their boss and/or the place they work. If it’s that bad, and there’s no way to make it better, you need to get the hell out at some point. But if you work for a man who’s a major tyrant, there’s no way in hell you’re going to “think well of him.”

No, the Elbert Hubbard sentiments speak to a different world, in which employees and their managers had different relationships. (And when people had names like Elbert Hubbard.)

Like the 1950’s world inhabited by the woman, Patricia Haroski, who dreamed up the idea of Boss Day– quite sweetly – to honor her father, a State Farm Insurance man who was also her boss.

It certainly seems that, in this day and age, National Boss Day should have run its course. Today, the boss had better be more of a leader than a dictator. The role that needs to be played is no longer so much handing down orders as it is communicating what needs to be accomplished, helping (if needed) come up with ways to get those things accomplished, removing barriers when the pop up, acting as a sounding board and mentor when needed, etc. Oh, there’s still all that stuff like giving reviews, figuring out raises, putting names on the layoff list. But, at least if you’re in any of the places I’ve worked, being the boss is definitely not about command and control

There were actually a few things I liked about being The Boss. I liked mentoring. I liked problem solving. I liked getting out of someone’s way. I liked helping decipher the company strategy, and communicate it to “my folks.” I liked acting as the firebreak between irrational, fire drill requests from upper management. I liked it when someone told me that someone on my team did a great job. I liked providing opportunities for junior employees to get more visibility in the organization, if they wanted it.

The best managers I worked under did all of that, and more.

Interesting, the very best manager – in terms of how I was treated personally - that I ever had was someone who was incredibly controversial and widely disliked. If he took a dislike to you – and that could be for an entirely arbitrary reason (he thought one guy in our group looked like an SS officer) - well, look out.

But, for me, it worked. Especially since he was someone I could also sit down with and call-out if he treated someone miserably because, say, he thought they looked like an SS officer.

Anyway, there were other things I liked about being a manager. I liked getting invited to meetings I wouldn’t have gotten to go to if I hadn’t been The Boss. I liked knowing things early. I liked being known. I also liked getting paid and bonused to be a manager.

But managing is not all sweetness and light, and I hated dealing with problem children, with petty tensions. I hated when I had to perpetually look over someone’s shoulder, or intervene when they’d pulled some decidedly bone-headed move. hated when I had to tell someone, even if they were a poor performer, which was by no means always the case, that they no longer had a job.I hated the incessant bitching and complaining about who got paid more, who got more credit, who got better things to work on. I

I always had an open door policy, but some days I just wanted to barricade myself in a Safe Room

These days, I’m glad I’m no longer The Boss. Too much psychic energy needs to go into it…

(Funny, before I became a manager, I had a boss that I was quite fond of, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was that he did. In fact, my colleagues and I would some times scratch our heads and ask ‘what does Bill Z do all day?’ Only when I myself started managing did I figure it out…)

A lot of folks apparently feel the same way.

As I saw in an article on Boston.com that cited a survey from OfficeTeam (part of Robert Half, the staffing company) that found that:

…76 percent of employees polled said they have no interest in having their boss’s job

Astonishingly,

…65 percent said that they didn’t think that they could do a better job than their boss.

This I find completely shocking! What red-blooded American worker doesn’t feel that they could do a better job than their boss. Certainly not many that I’ve ever known.

Maybe things have changed more substantially in the workplace since I was a pup. Maybe today’s workers actually do want to celebrate National Boss Day.

Which I will celebrate in my small way by saying that a number of my projects come from people who at one point in time reported to me. I used to tell them that I wanted them to be successful so that, when I wanted out, they’d hire me to do freelance work for them. Damned if it didn’t work out that way.Thanks, Boss!