And somehow, the statement often arrives without any supporting evidence. ‘My boss hates me.’ Why? ‘He just does.’ Ah. Case closed. Of course, sometimes a boss genuinely may have an unreasonable dislike for an employee. Managers are human beings, after all, and human beings can be petty, biased and occasionally allergic to the personalities of others. But there is another species of employee for whom ‘my boss hates me’ is less a diagnosis and more a convenient explanation for why their career has remained stubbornly stationary. These are the people who want the corner office without having first mastered the corner of the filing cabinet. These are the folks who treat every piece of performance feedback like a targeted hate crime. To them, ‘Please stop sending emails in ALL CAPS’ isn't a reasonable workplace request—it’s clear, irrefutable evidence of a personal vendetta.
They’ve convinced themselves that the boss' morning glare is a dark, calculated strategy to keep them down. It is, frankly, a breathtakingly creative narrative. After all, accepting that Boss hates me because I am a free-thinking maverick feels a lot sexier than Boss is annoyed because I’ve been late four days in a row and accidentally erased the Q3 budget spreadsheet. You have to admire the sheer audacity of the ambition-to-effort ratio. They want executive-suite privileges, a plush leather chair but asking them to organise a Google Drive folder sends them into an existential crisis. They look at a basic filing cabinet the way an amateur hiker looks at Kgale Hill: a treacherous, unscalable waste of time that is fundamentally beneath their talents. So, they remain stationary, anchored to their desks, polishing their victim status like a trophy.
