A Trip Down Memory Lane: The Bosses Wife

One day, for whatever reason, I was thinking back to a time in my career where my only complaint was… the bosses wife (we’ll call her ‘Barb’). No, I didn’t want to ‘get to know her better’. Hell, I didn’t even like her, but I liked my boss (we’ll call him ‘Tom’) and we worked well together.

I was writing a promo piece for the division hyping career paths, communications, how the company ‘valued’ every employee… and all that good shit. Seriously, it was eight pages of fluff; just what was needed to pacify the whiney-ass ‘neglected’ off-site engineers. I dropped it on Tom’s desk for a read-through, and left for the day.

The next morning, he came in to my office (yeah, pm’s had offices back-in-the-day) and sheepishly handed it to me and said: ‘Barb edited it’. I nodded it with a weak smile and he left.

It seems that the ‘never employed’ Barb didn’t like the phrase ‘Career Pathing’ and circled it in red ink, calling it a ‘no-no’. I’m supposed to listen to a grown woman who actually used the term, ‘no-no’? Not fucking likely. There were three examples of the no-no bullshit, all on accepted advertising terms. It was obvious that her creative crayon box was totally empty!

When I came sauntering into Tom’s office he shrugged sheepishly.

I simply said, ‘what the fuck?’ I asked him if he’d read her edits and he said ‘yes’, and that she was just trying to help. I showed him one of the corporations standard sales pieces that used all the ‘objectionable phrases’. I then told him I’d make all her corrections, but I’d put his name on it instead of mine. His eyes widened and said to go with my original draft.

I smiled and asked, “a no-no?”

“Yeah, I hate that gooey shit, too, but what am I supposed to do?”

“Maybe, keep company work away from her?”

“Yeah,” he moaned. “I’ll let you know how that works out.”

That day I realized I worked for a total pussy. I still liked him, but he was none-the-less, a pussy.