The small world of Mr Little Boss

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I did childish things ... When I grew to be a man, I spoke like a man but couldn't leave my precious childish ways behind." That, says Brad, is his immediate boss in a nutshell. He laughs at "nutshell", commenting on its proximity with "nutter". More cutter than nutter, though, Brad reckons, describing his boss as a man with a scythe hacking down the tall poppies in his field.

Nobody in the office is allowed to grow taller than the other or display tendencies of being "just too good for himself". Out comes the scythe. Cut! And this in an ad agency, where creativity is the keystone in the architecture. "Sure," says Brad, "we're constantly being chastised for not being original enough. Then when someone comes up with a unique slant on something, he's deemed to be too clever by half." "What are you trying to prove?" the smart ones are asked by the boss, "That you're good enough to take my seat?"

The wise response to that, Brad winks, is to look shocked and say, "Wouldn't dream of that, Mr T. You're way out there, leagues ahead in the stratosphere." "You've got to be there to see exactly what statements like these do for his self-assurance," Brad tells me. "At least you're one of the honest ones," Mr T. will say in return, adding, "Stick to it, however. You never know when good things will come your way, Brad."

Mr T. believes that competition is good for productivity, so under this guise he plays one employee against the other. "The four of us may have been good mates but for Mr T," Brad states, "but he's gradually induced such a high level of mind poisoning it's difficult to distinguish between the reality of the person you're working with and the fiction he's made to be.

Shock

Sometimes, he will accept something mundane from one of us only to see the shock register on the faces of the others." "And what are you going to do about it?" his expression will challenge. "We go back and joke, "Andy's flavour of the day, today, or maybe it will be Tony". Two women employees were sacked after they failed to turn up when summoned to work by Mr T. at an unreasonable hour because he suddenly had to make a deadline. Both women, single mothers, had no way of making alternate, last-minute arrangements for their little children. "There were four of us guys he could have called in, but he was having problems with the women, one of whom was in the family way again and the other openly cheeky. So two with one blow, and now the four of us share the work of six people.

"The best men thrive under pressure and I"ll be interested to see who among the four of you survives," Mr T. told them, speaking from a relaxed position in his black swivel chair, arms linked behind his head, legs stretched out on a stool before him, a hot mug of cocoa by his side.

"Why not quit?" I asked Brad, citing that working under so much stress would ultimately be counterproductive. "It"s not as easy," Brad replies, "to cut and run". He has a point. Something inside the adult doesn't wish to kowtow to the child, even if it's the child that's in charge. It's hard to explain, says Brad, but if I quit I'd feel like I succumbed to something I ought not to have; that I permitted myself to take on Mr T. on a child's level. Staying, he adds, presents no greater alternative. He could get sacked, too, on any given whimsical day, but such, he reckons, are the vagaries of working with the child-boss. Mind-wise, Brad reckons, he finds himself in a rare kind of entrapment at the work place and the challenge is to negotiate a safe passage each day.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney.