Delivering really bad news to your really bad boss on a Monday morning

For years I wasted entire Sundays absolutely dreading Monday mornings.   The uneasy feeling would start to creep in on Saturday night, and by Sunday evening, I was a basket case.  For many of us Monday spells the end of the weekend, the start of the work week and a return to a real tool of a boss.  Facing a really bad boss on a typical Monday morning is bad enough, but it’s even worse when you’ve got to face him with bad news from something that happened over the weekend.  What could you possibly do over the weekend that would require you to give your boss bad news on Monday morning?  Glad you asked.   I crashed…no… totaled the car. The company car.  Did I mention I’d been on the job for only two weeks when it happened?  I challenge anyone to top that Monday morning story.  

Thankfully no one was injured in the accident.  I still remember the two block walk of shame to the office that morning, after a totally sleepless Sunday night.  As my new colleagues sped by me on their way to work, I sensed more than saw them looking at me in their rear view mirrors wandering why the new girl was walking to work.  They all knew I had been given a company car and like a scene from The Office, were all peering over the receptionist’s shoulder when I arrived several minutes later.  I could have taken a cab, but in addition to the car, the company was paying for me to stay in a hotel until I found an apartment.  I thought it would be pretty presumptuous to take (and expense) a cab to work the day after totaling the car.   

 It’s a testament to the saying “time heals all wounds” that I really don’t remember much of the conversation that took place that morning.  I do remember that it involved a lot of cursing on the Reprobate’s end (in two languages) and quite a bit of apologizing and tears on mine.   I was pretty young then, so crying was one of the only coping mechanisms I had mastered at the time.  I think I must have blacked out for a couple of minutes too because I remember someone handing me a bottle of water and seeing half of it on my shirt a few minutes later…or maybe that was sweat.  In any event, my point is this.  I dreaded that Monday morning probably more than any Monday morning I’d ever had before then and have ever had since.  Yet I survived.  I made it through the swearing, spitting (yes there was spitting) and crying that day.  Had I known 10 years later that I wouldn’t even remember the conversation clearly; I would have slept that Sunday night.  Had I known that the next two years would involve a lot more cursing, a lot less tears, and me ending up no worse for the wear, I would have had a lot fewer sleepless nights. 

It took several more bad bosses and Monday morning mayhems for me to learn that we can’t always control how our bosses treat us, but we can control how we respond.  Our really bad bosses get our talents, our time and our energy, but we own our emotions and our responses to theirs, no matter how erratic they might be. The next time I was faced with a Monday morning mayhem of that magnitude, I slept on Sunday night – not like a baby – but like an adult who knew in her heart that no matter what the boss dealt me on Monday morning, everything would be all right in the end.

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