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Dear Boss
By Robert Balcomb ©2005
Dear Boss:
I know more about what I do than you do. I
know as much about what I do for the company as you do about what you do for the company.
In fact, what I do is more important to the company than what you do for the company because
what I do is the very thing the company is in business for. What you do for the company
is to see to it that I do what I’m supposed to do, but I do what I’m supposed
to do whether you are there or not — you are not needed for that purpose.
You are there because the company follows a business formula: it needs bosses at every level
of its proceedings. This is borne out by the fact that . . . well, this is how it has always
been. I’m not really sure just what it is that you are supposed to do, other than needlessly
see to it that I do what I’m supposed to do. The irony is that your first job was at
the same level as the job I have, and you did it until you reached its top level; and by
that nature you should have stayed there doing the best that the job demanded. Since we
both came on board at the lowest level of our respective jobs, the jobs themselves suffered
because we did not have the experience necessary to do the best the jobs required; and it
took at least half of our tenure at our jobs to reach a reasonable degree of talent. From
then on the jobs went well. But the company had to follow the formula, “bumping you
upstairs” into a boss position. There, by the nature of things, you changed into the
world of that position and forgot everything you had gone through in your former position
— you became one of them! — but at the bottom of your new level. A new
person who had relatively little experience was placed at your old job, degrading the quality
of that job.
At the time you have reached the top level of your boss position, you will be due to be
bumped up to where you will again be at the bottom of that higher boss level, and where
that job will suffer the same lack of experience it demands. The Peter Principle
lives on!
For my theory to succeed, the company should give experienced workers who are at the highest
level of their jobs the same money that it would otherwise give to those who are bumped
up to the lowest boss positions, positions which are practically unnecessary.
Now, I have been at my job long enough to have reached the top of its level and am in danger
of the same process you went through. And I’ll lay a dollar to a donut that, under
my theory, you would be happier, as would I, doing what you were so good at doing what you
used to do, than you are now.
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