on being a slave

some bosses think that their subordinates are born for the sheer reason of making their heavily laden lives more conducive to living. you know contrary to what your boss keeps shoving into your minute mind, this is not entirely true. the truth is people work so they can receive a meager amount of salary every month in exchange for a few, maybe 8, hours of their day using specific skills that they have. the boss, on the other hand, hires these people for them to do specific tasks and hopefully be able to make substantial contributions to the company as a whole. making the bosses' lives easier is not the sole reason for a worker's being; it is just the natural unintended consequence of it all. in other words, to think that your staff must be at your beck and call whenever and wherever is completely unacceptable, not to mention feudalistic. and if i were working for a reason bigger than my meager salary, it is only because of a vision that the company upholds that i extremely respect, and not because i intend to make someone else's life easier, particularly my boss's. i'd like to believe that i'm born for bigger things, and besides, i'm too poor to be a philantropist. and even if i were rich, the boss would be at the very last item in my list of "to-help" after my family, my friends, my relatives in the province, and the six million poor filipinos who have nothing to eat. forgive me, if you think i'm selfish. anyway. so if a harmonious relationship must happen between bosses and subordinates, then i guess a clear understanding of roles must be reached. subordinates must try not to look at their bosses for career fulfillment and gratification, while bosses must try not to make their subordinates the ultimate source of self-affirmation. the sooner we suck this all in, the better our working lives will be.