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Three Things I Miss About Having a Boss

It’s been about a year since I last had a boss.

The boss I had at the time that I made the whole steady career to full-time entrepreneur change wasn’t a nice one. He was passive aggressive, liked to embarrass people, always blamed me or someone else if anything went wrong, and gave very little credit if things went right. I never cried at work – mostly because I think it’s bad for women to show so much emotion in the workplace – but I often ran to the bathroom or came home on the verge of tears from dealing with him.

Not having this person in my life has been a relief. But let me come clean and tell you that sometimes I really miss having a boss. Yes, even a boss who drove me nuts for five years. And here’s why:

I miss knowing that if things go wrong, I am not the only person to blame. Even if your boss doesn’t like to accept responsibility, he or she is responsible, at the end of the day. And while this sounds like a total cop-out, it’s nice to know that all the responsibility doesn’t rest on your shoulders. That if you lose a client or if your product isn’t successful, there is another person who had something to do with that — and who is going to stress about it. They say it’s lonely at the top — and I can now attest that whoever “they” are, they are right.

I miss being told what to do. OK, I can envision my husband or my parents reading this and falling off their chairs laughing. I am not someone who generally likes being told what to do. (The next time I can’t figure out why my daughter won’t listen, I should remember this, I think.) But however self-sufficient, self-driven, and determined I might be, it’s really nice to sometimes be told what to do. For another person to come up with an idea, to do the hard part of figuring out which direction to move into or the details of how to accomplish something, and for me to just follow through and execute. It involves work, of course, but a different kind of work, an easier kind of work.

I miss having someone to bitch about. I do complain about myself to my husband a lot — how I should be better organized, how I should network more, how I need to slow down the way I talk to people because I can be overwhelming. But it’s not nearly the same as having a boss to complain about. When I was working for this aforementioned boss I’d have daily bitching sessions with a friend who worked for the same company. Sometimes these took place in the bathroom, the hallway, via email (if he was standing right there) or over a lunch-time Cosmopolitan if things were really bad. As much as he made my life unpleasant, complaining about it was cathartic and a great relief.

I know reading this isn’t going to make you like a boss you hate, but the next time he or she makes you want to tear your hair out, realize that it could be worse — you could be the boss that makes you want to rip your hair out.

Check out our related discussion: Top 3 Best (& Worst) Things About Being Your Own Boss

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