16.09.2026
The Boss
Your boss doesn’t shout. He doesn’t humiliate you in front of anyone. He does nothing you could repeat afterwards that would sound bad.
There is simply no way to please him.
You hand in a piece of work and get half a smile and a list of what could be better. You propose something and he takes it apart, not because it’s bad, but because he can always find the flaw, the risk, the reason to wait.
And here is what makes it genuinely unbearable: he’s nearly always right. He sees angles you missed. His criticism improves the work.
If he were wrong it would be easy. You could despise him quietly and get on. Because he’s right, you can’t, and you come out of his office feeling small even when you’ve done it well.
A few weeks ago we talked about the other kind of boss, the one who decides badly and takes credit for your work. This one is the opposite, and that’s why it stings differently: this one is good at his job.
The first thing is to separate three things you carry stuck together.
The post, which holds real authority and which you don’t argue with while your pay comes from it. The man, who has his own limits, his own pressures and his own blind spots, and who is not the one who decides what you’re worth. And your work, which is measured against what you know to be well done, not against his face while he reads it.
Once they’re separate, his criticism turns into information. Sometimes useful, sometimes not. It stops being a verdict.
And one thing remains entirely yours, which is how you speak to him:
Austerity of speech consists in speaking truthfully and beneficially and in avoiding speech that offends. One should also recite the Vedas regularly.
Bhagavad-gītā 17.15. 1972 edition.
Truthful, beneficial, and not offensive. Read it slowly, because it’s harder than it looks. It doesn’t say keep quiet: it says tell the truth without using it as a weapon. Neither the swallowed resentment nor the little poisoned barb that feels so good for three minutes.
And notice that it calls this austerity. It isn’t sold as good manners; it’s put where fasting and discipline are: it costs something, and you do it on purpose.
That isn’t being a doormat. It’s the only thing in that room that doesn’t depend on him.
One uncomfortable thing is left. You learn more from the impossible boss than from the comfortable one, precisely because he gives you nothing for free. But you only start learning the day you stop needing him to direct.