Boss level.

Getting ready for the holiday! I am of course referring to October 16, Boss's Day. I'm sure you love your boss and will want to get him or her something very thoughtful on the big day. Something that says "Thanks, boss" and "Thinking of you, boss" but "Not in a creepy way, boss." You have two days.

 Alison Green of US News & World Report explained the holiday thus:

Amusingly, it turns out that Boss's Day was created in 1958 by someone who was working for her father at the time, according to several websites. It might have been a kind (if daughterly) impulse at its start, but it's since grown into an unwelcome obligation that many workers feel bound to celebrate – not only with cards, but with actual gifts. In fact, I regularly hear from people who have been pressured to donate cash to workplace collections to purchase expensive gifts for their managers.

I have either eight bosses or one boss. As a freelancer, working from home, I currently report to eight different clients, so my contact at each of these companies is a kind of mini-boss. Or, I could say that I am self-employed, and thus have only one boss: me. Some of the companies I work for act as if they are totally my boss; because of the laws of the City of New York, or other locales in which they are based, they are not allowed to employ me as a stringer indefinitely, and so have found it advantageous to pretend I am an employee. It tends to be cheaper for them than paying me per job, even though they have to offer me benefits that they do not pay me enough for me to participate in. What this also means is that I have to do the stupid training that all office employees have to go through every year, and you probably know what I mean -- watching videos online to teach me how to not harass my fellow employees and not break confidentiality or security.

Security tips are always a good reminder, but whom am I supposed to harass around here? My wife? She'll kill me. The dogs? They'll report me to my wife. So those tips are less useful.

Fortunately I do not have to do employee self-reviews, one of the most evil things ever invented by companies. The one upside to those, though, is that they usually result in a small cost-of-living increase at least. If I want to raise I have to ask my client gently and hope they don't decide that some dimwit fresh out of college can screw things up just as well as Fred can for less money. I will often be told that Management must be consulted, and that's as far as we ever get.

For the purposes of Boss's Day I have decided that I am indeed my own boss, and intend to celebrate accordingly. I will be alternately cold and friendly to myself, I will hint around about a big project before dumping it on my desk, I will listen and believe all the bad gossip about myself that comes over the transom, and I will tell myself what a great job I'm doing while looking for some H-1B visa holder to take my job at a third of the salary. Then I will expect to get myself a card and a cupcake or some dumb tchotchke for the desk and wish myself a happy day. Yippee.