10 quick tips to get along with your boss better
These helpful tips to increase workplace harmony were pulled from Bob Woodward’s The Last of the President's Men. Of course, these tips are only helpful if you have a boss. And if that boss is Richard Nixon.
Otherwise, this book is just a fascinating look at Alexander Butterfield’s influence over the whole Watergate thing. (He’s the whole reason we know about the tapes!)
✔️Do sit to the left of your boss.
❌Don’t use a white pad.
Oh, for f*cks sake. Why would you even consider using a white pad?! I’m embarrassed for you.
❌Don’t act like it’s weird that he sends formal memos to his wife (“Mrs. Nixon”) written in the third person complaining that his legs don’t fit under the bedside table. It’s not.
It’s not weird at all. Everyone does this.
❌Don’t come in here every five minutes.
❌Don’t display photos of former bosses in your office.
❌Don’t stop at one photo of your current boss.
Get real creepy with it.
❌Don’t interrupt when he naps on a cot in a tiny hidey hole and then eats his post-slumber cottage cheese.
✔️Do go after dangerous known criminals with gusto, if that’s within your job description.
❌Unless they are potential campaign contributors. Obviously.
✔️Do hand in your resignation letter when he demands it.
Even if you and the team all just busted your butts to get him reelected by a landslide. Mandatory group resignations are obviously good bossing and healthy for morale.
❌Don’t roll your eyes when he compares his plight to that of a grieving Theodore Roosevelt.
Or do.
By now, he’s not able to do much bossing, what with all his not being alive.
Also, the comparison is preposterous. Nixon resigned in disgrace, under a steaming pile of his own making. On Valentine’s Day/the third anniversary of his wedding engagement, Theodore Roosevelt’s mom died. Then shortly after (and in the same house!) his wife died… leaving him with a motherless two-day-old newborn daughter. In conclusion, Nixon deserves all the eye rolls.
✌️✌️
