Boss's Day cards

Didn’t you get the memo? It’s Boss's Day! Bosses aren’t generally celebrated so much as rather grudgingly respected. But every October 16 the water cooler warriors of the world come together en masse to enshrine their employers in office-related swag. This is perhaps the biggest day of the year for purchases of coffee mugs, staplers and sharpies which are showered on the management sector far and wide in hopes that those bosses will be a little less bossy. But hey, bosses are people too. And if you take a little time out to think of them with a present or a card, they’ll certainly appreciate it, and you’ll certainly breathe a bit more easily during your quarterly reviews.

Much as it might seem like some hare brained self-congratulatory scheme from an eccentric Michael Scott type of boss, Bosses Day was actually created by a happy employee. Patricia Haroski, an administrative assistant for an insurance company in Illinois, was pleased enough with her boss to get the idea for a national holiday celebrating bosses; perhaps it helped that her boss was also her father. She submitted the holiday to the US Chamber of Commerce in 1958; four years later it was officially inaugurated in her home state by Governor Otto Kerner, who was unbothered by the nepotism because he was too busy taking bribes to notice. Despite being ushered in by such a bad boss, the holiday can easily be applied to the thousands of decent bosses around the country and world. And while it’s a bad idea to give your boss the same kind of gifts that Kerner was getting, there’s nothing wrong with gift or card on Bosses Day to your management. And who knows, your boss might even lighten up around you once in awhile.