Do I Miss It?

Karen asked me a couple of hours ago if I missed having a boss.

Interesting question — obvious answer.

At least to me.

One of the things I so much enjoyed about the job that I had was the amount of freedom from oversight that I had most of the time. Even with that though, I was directly answerable to someone else.

Now, though, I don’t have that, which translates into significantly more freedom than I had before.

Not having a boss is more than just not having a supervisor.

It’s not having Performance Planning and Review — I didn’t even know what PP&R meant until just before I retired.

It’s not having:

• 3 hours a month at the plant, whether I spent 100 hours there last quarter or not
• condition reports for students late to class or absent
• extreme focus on safety to the point of being ludicrous
• management observation of training by people whose only qualification for evaluating my presentation is that they’ve attended some kind of training in the past
• assessment after assessment after assessment
• a safety minute every day
• a safety meeting every month
• etc., etc., etc.

It’s not being answerable to someone else for all of the things that added little value to our core business.

Like I said, the answer is obvious.

I do wear my gloves almost every day, though.

It has nothing to do with safety.

I just don’t like splinters.

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Update 3/5/2011:  Located lost comments for this post on the Internet Archive WayBack Machine site:

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