People don’t leave their jobs, they leave their bosses.

They leave their finger-tapping, less thinking aid than metronomic insensitivity. They leave their finger-pointing, last seen circa primary school recess-time spats. They leave the constant underestimation of the time it takes to get things done, like a child badgering 'are we there yet' even before the car has left the garage. They leave waiting to rush then rushing to wait – is one forever fated to be a chao recruit? They leave the plagiarism, so cunningly done university graduands would doff their mortar boards.

Most of all, they leave being accountable to their intellectual inferior; how did one as such rise to occupy such a position?

But occupy the position one as such has somehow done, puncturing the dreams of those below them; punctured by a greenhorn. They lose their colleagues – friendly one day, irrelevant the next. They suffer a stuttering résumé, forced to disguise a reason for leaving when the truth shouts ‘could not continue work under inept boss’. This boss has curtailed their would-be career; time invested now lost – money can be recouped, yesterday cannot.

Yet leave they can, and retake power for, as Nietzsche exhorted, that which does not destroy us makes us stronger. And in their renewed search for work-life balance, hopefully, as Mark Twain cajoled, wiser: believe nothing you hear, and only half of what you see.

{For victims of their bosses}