Can I borrow you for a second?

Some expressions, innocent enough in themselves, can make your hackles rise, set your teeth on edge and start the heart pounding. For me, those words: “Can I borrow you for a second?”, particularly when uttered by a certain individual, can only mean one thing – “Come here while I patiently explain to you why, yet again, you’ve failed at your job.”

Worst of all, you never hear those words when there’s plenty of time to make amends. No, it only happens on deadline or a few minutes past, just after you’ve released the last page to the printers, breathed a sigh of relief and fetched a tray to make everyone a  tea or coffee.

“Can I borrow you for a second?” is the last thing you want to hear. It means phoning the printers and asking them to wait because you have to send the front page again. It means rewriting a perfectly acceptable headline in less than a minute, and ending up with something far sloppier than the original because it’s been done under duress.

“Can I borrow you for a second?” is far more than the sum of its parts. It says “I’m the boss and I can make you do whatever I want.  Don’t argue with me because you will never win, and don’t think for one second that you can relax while I’m in charge.”

Bosses like this are exhausting. They sap your mental strength because you lie awake at night worrying about going to work, and they sap your physical strength because you inevitably end up working longer hours in the vain hope of pleasing them.

The main problem is that they don’t actually have enough work to do themselves. Obviously, they can’t admit this, so, to justify their inflated salary, they have to micro-manage the department, make you redo perfectly acceptable work, sneer at your efforts and set you up to fail.

This has to stop right now. Picture in your mind’s eye the last time you were hauled over the coals by this bully. Remember how it felt, see yourself vividly in that situation, experience the emotions. Now pull out a little, so you are watching the scene  more as an observer. Play the whole thing again and notice how you start to feel more detached from the action.

Now, here comes the best bit. Pull out still further, put a frame around the whole scene – you decide what that looks like – stick a cowboy hat on your bullying boss and make him wear Alan Partridge-style hot pants. You know, the kind he was wearing while gyrating under that disco-ball. Next, you’ll need a soundtrack – my favourite is the Benny Hill theme – so play that throughout the whole scene and make your boss do a silly dance to it every now and again.

After a few goes at this, I promise their ability to strike fear in your heart will diminish considerably. Next time they  ask you to change a headline (or the equivalent) right on deadline, take your time and don’t be rushed. They’ll soon stop doing it when the bosses upstairs start questioning why the paper keeps coming out late.

I’m setting the scene in a newspaper office, but the principle applies in any line of work. Get off the treadmill, stop that futile exercise of trying to please and appease this bully, look after your health  – and don’t let the bosses grind you down.