It was hot. The shrubbery that surrounded the stupid electric timer I was supposed to be programming was so thick, I had to force my body through the only jagged gap in the bushes right next to the garden wall. The hole was so small it compressed my chest so I could only take shallow breaths against the poking foliage, and twisted my body so as to limit me to the use of one hand at a time. If I rotated my torso sideways, I could gain the use of my other hand by extending both arms over my head, forcing my shoulders up against my ears. In this awkward horizontal shrug I could barely get my head back enough to read the tiny, now sideways, LCD screen through the thicket of branches and arms. What should have been a simple project had become a drawn-out battle approaching the multiple hour mark, but I had just about got it. I backed out of my contorted position, stood up and stretched my aching body, took a few breaths, and then dove back into the shrubbery to finish the programming. Worming my way back into the fully horizontal position with both arms extended far over my head, I started tapping out the programming sequence on the sweat-dampened rubber buttons of the timer. I’d had to memorize the manual of the unit; there was no way I could read a cryptic set of instructions written in tiny print, and probably poorly translated from a foreign language, while wedged in that impossible position. A bead of perspiration trickled down the tip of my nose and hung for a second before my gasping and grunting sent it falling to the earth as I fought through the aching fatigue creeping over my shoulders and out my arms. DONE! I hit the final key only to find that in my strained state, I had been punching buttons so aggressively that I had somehow knocked the power supply loose and needed to do it all over again.
Swearing violently in my head as I extirpated my body once again from the snag, I found my boss standing over me.
“What are you doing?” he asked
“Programming this stupid timer, just like you asked me to!” I exploded.
“You’ve been working on that this whole time? That should have been a five minute job!”
I was immediately defensive in the face of his irritation with me. “It would be a five minute job if the damn thing wasn’t wedged into the tightest corner of this stupid project!”
He eyed me slowly and skeptically, with almost a confused look on his face. Then he stooped over and gently slid his torso into the jagged hole I had called my home for the last couple hours and reached up to the timer. He grunted as he twisted his head to see the unit and extended his arm through the thicket to reach the timer. I felt a rush of validation watching him struggle to reach the goal. But that validation quickly turned to wonder, then dismay, as his hand reached past the buttons, grasped the whole unit firmly, and removed it from the wall with one sharp, precisely angled tug. A moment later, he had disentangled himself from the web and was standing comfortably next to me with the timer in his hand.
“If you put a battery in the backup, you can program it here and then re-mount it, now let’s see…” With infuriating ease, he pulled out the small flashlight he always carried in his back pocket and removed the batteries.
“Perfect.” By some miracle of providence, likely reserved for those who hold positions of authority, the two triple-A batteries from his flashlight were exactly what the timer needed. He popped them in, and with some begrudging input from me, tapped out the programming sequence (because of course I had it memorized), then unhurriedly slid himself back into the thicket, and clicked the timer into place. The whole operation took less than three minutes and hot though it was, he was far from perspiring and showed not even the lightest signs of effort.
I call this the “Boss Phenomenon” and believe it to be a fact of human life, in the vein of the Pareto Principle or Murphy’s Law. If you have spent any time doing any kind of work; mechanics, construction, puzzle-making, you name it; you will have encountered a time where you were stuck on a task, completely befuddled and unable to complete it. Then, at the peak of your exasperation, your boss will show up and neatly solve your problem in under ten seconds. It is absolutely infuriating, humiliating, and awe inspiring. It has happened to me more times than I can count in every job I’ve ever had.
Sometimes it’s a matter of experience: this adventure in the shrubbery was my first time programming a digital timer and my complete unfamiliarity with the product and the context made me vulnerable to making a rookie mistake. Other times, it’s a matter of skill: I once spent a large amount of time attempting to fit a difficult mortise-and-tenon joint. After giving me plenty of time to try my hand at the craft, my boss took the tools from my hand, and in two deft movements with the hammer and chisel, he cleanly and sharply removed the offending material and slid the joint firmly into place. It was the same result I might have eventually reached, but it would take me another 15 years with those tools before I could do what he did in the time that he did it.
Sometimes it’s a matter of fortuitous timing; I’ve spent half a day digging to find a gas line, only to have the boss come up, listen to me express my frustration in not having found it yet, then silently take the shovel from my hand, gently scrape the side of the trench, and expose the line with one stroke. If I had simply kept my mouth shut and taken that next stroke myself, I’d have saved myself the indignity.
Still other times, it’s just dumb luck. I’ve struggled for far too long trying to start a small engine (as on a blower, a generator, or a trencher), fixing pull cords and flywheels, no doubt flooding the carburetor on occasion. After the boss has watched my hot, sweating, frustration for what feels to be an indecent amount of time, he will take the tool from my hand and inevitably start it on the first pull.
The Boss Phenomenon has been a source of frustration for much of my working career; yet from the moment I hired my first helper, I’ve noticed that the shoe is now on the other foot. It may well be the absolute best part of my job when I get to a site and find one of my guys who is obviously frustrated, overwhelmed, and has spent way too much time one a task that he knows I expected him to have completed long ago; his frustration now compounded exponentially by my very presence - the physical embodiment of his failure and shame; only to have me walk up and solve his issue in the amount of time it takes to sneeze.
I usually try to ease the feeling of shame and frustration my employees are undoubtably experiencing in that moment. They are seated in a chair that I occupied not so long ago, and I expect they relish the interaction about as little as I did when was in their place. I honor their unsuccessful efforts and attempt to bring dignity to their work as best I can, and I consider it a sign of their good will that the Boss Phenomenon has now become something like a running joke amongst the team.
But every now and then, my moral maturity fails me, and it is just too much fun to approach one of my guys who has been struggling, twisted over a countertop, upside down and backwards, trying to pop a lens onto the face of one of our fancy, dotless LED under-cabinet lighting strips. It’s always hot out; I can see the frustration rising like heat waves off his face, and the sweat on every pore of his skin cheerfully reflecting the light from the obnoxiously complicated lighting strips (that look so good on a finished kitchen!). Then, when he explodes out of his cramped position to recover so he can try again, I’ll swoop in without a word, and in one motion, pop that lens into place, then give him my sweetest smile, and walk away. If I had a mic, I’d drop it.