Bosses: the one where you don't have Friends

The one with the birthday

The preparation

I'm a freshly demoted accountant aged fourty-something who used to be a manager. My boss thought it's a good idea to steal my only direct report so hey, who wouldn't enjoy being just an individual contributor instead of a manager?

Anyway, tomorrow I'll be fourty-something -more as it is my birthday. A birthday which just happens to be another day in the office where I'll see an old jolly clown in a business suit who happens to be my boss! So I just prep my clothes for tomorrow, put my laptop in the bag and squeeze myself in bed between my toddler and my dog.

Bullshit! I've never been tidy, so I rephrase. I throw my trousers on the sofa, I lose one sock on the floor and the other one on my dog's tail, I leave my laptop next to the toilet seat (after working there for a while to finish a paper), put my pyjamas inside out and I collapse in a bed with a loud fart that almost wakes up my toddler.

The start

Eventually it's my wife that wakes up in an hour grunting and moaning. We quickly drop the child to the granny and off we drive!

It's already midnight. It's officially my birthday. What more can you wish for? I'm officially fourth-something-more, I'm a demoted accountant, I have an annoying old jolly clown as a boss and above all of these, I'm celebrating it on a plastic red chair at Sidcup A&E! Too bad they don't have champagne on those automated selling machines!

I have high hopes for my wife to be seen early. It's not the first time we're here. Last time we waited two hours. Meanwhile Brexit happened and another oldish jolly clown known as Boris made a promise to fix NHS since we are no longer paying £350 million a week to EU. He fixed it the same way my boss fixed my career opportunities. If Boris did Brexit, my boss did Managetix by taking away my only direct report left.

It's almost morning and we're still waiting. Time flies when you're having fun!, used my boss to repeat each time the clock passed 8 pm in the office. Well, having fun or not it does! And when I already accepted the fact that I am to spend the rest of my birthday on a red chair in the Sidcup A&E, the nurse calls my wife's name.

Luckily, there's nothing that the antibiotics cannot heal. Except that we don't get any and we're not gonna get any until the pharmacy opens. At 8.30 AM to be precise. There is a problem though. My wife is not well enough to drive to the pharmacy and I should be somewhere else at that time. Next to a clown more exactly. When I say clown I don't mean Boris, I mean my bald oldish boss.

The morning

Fine, I'll sleep on it. Which I did. Two hours on the clock from the time I went to bed to the time that my iPhone's alarm went off. Ok, let's see how soon can I finish with the prescription delivery. I'll take the challenge.

A bad beginning makes a bad ending is an old saying. Where do I start? Bad traffic, roads closed, lack of parking, queue in the pharmacy and the slowest pharmacist ever. A perfect combination of ingredients whose final outcome is the feared one: a bad beginning ended my plan to be in the office today! Which means that the Power of Three (days in the office a week) will suddenly collapse and my old bald boss will not appreciate it.

It's 9.30 AM and I'm finally home with a bag of medicines for my wife. I am one hour away from the office and only half an hour away from the weekly meeting with my team. Teleporting has not been invented yet and the conventional commuting takes still one hour, as it has been the case for the past 50 years. I admit defeat.

Like a young Harry Potter, I go back to my place under the stairs. That's my new office for the working-from-home days since my son was born and my old office desk was converted to a playground.