National Boss Day was Monday, so I'm a bit late on this - but what the hell. Better late than never, eh? Below is a sampling of recent links that celebrate the blessed event - which some in the Bush administration wish to elevate to the patriotic-slash-religious status of a Thanksgiving or a Christmas, or at least according to certain rumors I've heard. I have eschewed the more inane and obsequious articles for those that are merely helpful or amusing.

I learned some interesting tidbits - for instance, that a survey of 1 million workers said a bad boss is their Number One reason for leaving a job, and that more Americans (15 percent) would prefer to remain with their current boss than to work for any individual celebrity boss such as Bill Gates or Donald Trump, but that the largest plurality (38 percent) would prefer not to have a boss at all and to work for themselves.

Some of these articles approach the issue of boss-employee relations with a ponderous sincerity, urging employees to ask themselves whether or not they - and not their bosses - were the jerks in the equation, or to put themselves in the shoes of their bosses for a moment to understand how they feel. Empathy for the master is much encouraged here. The Star-Telegram article makes facetious suggestions on how to please notorious bosses from TV and the movies, but is most memorable for its title - "Time To Toady". Gotta love that one. Another article describes an online software program that allows web visitors to fabricate an ideal "virtual boss". I gather there's some kind of Frankenstein's Monster subtext underfoot in that one. Finally, from a university online news site, there is a checklist on how to suck up to The Man. It lists the usual suspect behaviors (e.g., "Be A Leader", "Be On Time", "Be Professional"), but is organized in such a way to be useful despite its fundamental banality.

"Boss Day: Real sorry I missed it" from Scripps News
"What celeb CEO would you like to work for?" from Work Life
"Got the bad-boss blues?" from Newsday
"DDI Builds the Ideal Boss" from Red Herring
"Boss, worker: Walk in others? shoes" from Corvallis Gazette-Times
"It's Time To Toady" from Fort Worth Star-Telegram
"Brown-Nosing 101" from Echo Online (Eastern Michigan Univ.)