Advice from the Boss Upon His Retirement
Bosses are not your friend.
Nope. If we want your opinion,
we don’t want your opinion.
If we pat you on the back, examine
for stab wounds in the bathroom stall.
If the Boss enters the bathroom,
vamoose. You might hear something
you can’t unhear. Your Boss’s heart
beats to a different drummer, a higher pay
scale. Your heart is a different species
than a Boss heart. Reptilian comes
to mind. The mind is a dangerous thing
to use. Your Boss will tell you they
have a Boss too. We will tell you
what our Boss says. It’s a game
Bosses like to play. Bosses
like to use sports metaphors.
Beware of crunch time. During
crunch time, people get crunched.
If someone says the Boss wants
to see you, the Boss does not
want to see you ever again.
We can play good cop and bad cop
all by ourselves. Never confess.
Never find out how much the Boss
makes. During your performance review
improvise. Contradict yourself. You too
can be a good-bad cop. Don’t love
thy neighbor or thy Boss. If the Boss
has a window, do not look out that window.
Love the skeletons in the closet.
If the Boss says with all due respect,
crouch and take cover. Assume
the position. Do not take the deal
on 1000 business cards. Do not buy
cookies or chocolate from the Boss’s
children. Take seconds on the cake
at every retirement party. Here.
Jim Daniels’ Late Invocation for Magic: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming from Michigan State University Press. His first book of nonfiction, Ignorance of Trees, was published in 2025, and his latest fiction book, The Luck of the Fall, was published in 2023. A native of Detroit, he currently lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.
