The Boss

This week and next I am the Boss. Not Bruce - and sadly I cannot come up with an appropriate Springsteen lyric to go with this piece - just the boss of my office. My boss has gone on holidays and I�m in charge. This has happened before, but for some reason it felt different this time, and it took me most of the week to figure out why.

For many years, since we started the business, it was just the three of us. The Boss, me, the notional second-in-command, and Steffi, the notional assistant. And while there was technically a hierarchy, really it was just a three person team and we were each good at our own things and effectively in charge of our own area. So when the Boss would go away while I�d technically be in charge really it would be me and Steffi handling our own areas and bouncing stuff off each other. There was no way either of us took on the mantle of Boss.

But this is the first time the Boss has gone away since Steffi had the resign earlier in the year. Now we have a new assistant, who is genuinely an assistant, both because she�s new and because she doesn�t have nearly as much as experience as Steffi did. And we�ve recently taken on a new person, effectively a trainee, and the very nature of her job and experience means that everything she does needs to be supervised. Which makes me the supervisor.

Which is not entirely weird, but also not entirely comfortable.

I clearly haven�t yet embraced my inner megalomaniac.

The first half of the week I had too many things on, too much actual work to do to supervise beyond what was absolutely necessary. Interruptions to sign letters were a pain - though I did manage to pause long enough to suspect I had the same exasperated expression on my face that the Boss gets when I interrupt him to sign a cheque or something.

The second half of the week was more interesting though. My deadline pressures eased a bit, which as usual meant that my motivation went immediately out the window and I had more opportunity to look around the office and make sure other people�s stuff was getting done.

I was pleased to see that mostly it was, and while I had to pick our assistant up on a few things, and make some massive corrections in the trainee�s work, that stuff was really more par for the course than any type of problem. And I even managed to drive through some of my own motivational problems and get a few things out that I had really thought would get put off until next week, and I�m quite pleased about that. Of course there are still half a dozen other things I should have been able to achieve but didn�t. But my powers of procrastination are quite stunning, so that�s not really a surprise.

More of a surprise is the three days this week that went by without any type of contact from the Boss himself. See, while I can�t yet totally get into the role of Boss, he can�t ever totally get into the idea of actually being on holidays. Even if he�s only taking a day or two off and the office will run entirely smoothly without his presence, not requiring any of us to call him for any reason, he can�t go a whole day without calling up to check in and make sure no one needs anything, that nothing�s gone wrong. And if he�s gone for longer than that he gets bored and wants us to send him work after about three days.

But this week he�s been doing better. He did check in today, at the end of the week, but that was after several days of silence. Which is great. Most of the time I encourage him to take a break - unless he�s timing it so that I get dumped with more than both of us could handle - and he�s just incapable of doing it. If nothing else it makes me feel less guilty when I want time off.

A couple of months ago I went away for two weeks where I didn�t check my email, and was somewhere that my phone didn�t work, and I didn�t take the computer with me. It was the first time I�ve done that in about three years. All the trips over recent years have either had worked tacked on one end of them, so I automatically had the laptop with me, or I checked in on a regular basis. And I haven�t been complaining. I really don�t mind doing that. I�d certainly rather do that than walk back into a shit-storm. But this last time I proved myself still capable of cutting myself off and the minute I left the office I forgot about work for ten days. It was brilliant.

The Boss can�t do that though. Maybe because it�s his business, and he�s been used to being in business for himself for a long time. It�s my business too, but not in the same way, and I�m not sure I want it to be. I still want to be able to cut myself off from it when I want too. I don�t need to do that on every trip, but I�d like the opportunity to still exist.

In the coming year or so I�m going to have to make a decision about how much more I want it to be my business, and I�m far from being reconciled as to which way to jump. After this week I think I�ve confirmed that I can be the Boss (how�s that for jinxing myself for next week. Something�s bound to blow up now!), now I just have to figure out if I want to be.