10 bits of “mean” job advice from your boss that are actually life lessons in disguise

Anyone who has ever had a job knows that bosses can be tough. Demanding. Assertive. Slightly dick-ish.

But even in the toughest of times, there is always a life lesson that will help you on the path to being a better employee and person. Take my boss for example: if you dig past the hard, thorny exterior, you are sure to find some memorable gems.

Underneath that gruff, brash, total-contempt-for-everything-you-are exterior lies a soft marshmallow core that truly cares about you. No matter how much it might seem like he utterly despises you – and even if he did say those exact words to you in the staff bathroom three days ago – really, deep down inside, he values your effort and wants to see you excel.

Here are the Top Ten lessons that every boss wants you to learn.

1. “Are you stupid or what? Seriously, are you fucking retarded?”




On the surface, this daily question might seem aimed at decimating your ever-depleting reserves self-respect and confidence. But what he’s really trying to ask you it to be self-aware. Know your limitations. Before you start a task he’s given you, as yourself whether you are really fit for this kind of menial labour? Do you possess the basic skill and know-how that will enable you to succeed in whatever insurmountable responsibility he throws at you, be it making forty-six photocopies of Friday’s minutes or sweeping up the mess in the goddamn storeroom?



2. “I’ll just do it – you’ll probably fuck it up”

Delegation and intimate knowledge of your employee’s skill base is crucial. A true leader doesn’t let even the smallest detail go unattended – even if that means going into the employee break room and making a big show of doing that small job in front of anyone to show how you’d have to be truly and unbelievably imbecilic to fail at it; or making certain to mention to Karyn in reception how much of a utterly incompetent half-witted baboon you are.



3. I said 'three', Jesus, can’t you fucking count?”




In the professional workspace, arithmetic is a key skill, as even the smallest totally understandable human error is egregious and unacceptable. It doesn’t matter how many individual items (78, to be exact, but who is counting?) were on that list of items that needed to be taken from the storehouse and stacked, in order of size, not alphabetically or numerically, in dispatch all the way across the lot, or that the print-out was unclear and looked like a 5 because of the cheap ink they fill the shared copier with to save money – these tiny mistakes are impermissible. Learn the maths good and you’ll never fail!



4. “Look at what you’ve fucking done now. Are you happy now?”




Observe your faults. Learn from them. And remember that tiny distinctions are important, even where the directives or instructions relayed to you are so completely vague that major misinterpretation is very, very likely. Mistakes happens, yes, but maybe increased concentration on the task at hand could avert disaster. And also, just maybe, you’re “total scum, Jesus, why didn’t I just hire a brain-dead Pomeranian?”



5. “Jesus Christ I’ve worked with untrained monkeys more capable than you”




Knowledge of your employer’s work history can be a potential career booster. It might seem like a really small thing, but knowing that, in the past, your employer has done charity work with brain-dead chimps that are smarter than you, or that on several occasions he has had the opportunity to work with developmentally challenged children that make you look like Mr fucking Magoo or something, could be just the thing to show your interest and investment in the company – and this could translate into a raise, promotiton, or even some basic human decency.



6. “If you died today I don’t think anyone would even miss you or notice you are gone”




What wise words – which of us hasn’t’ thought about our fragile existence, our small, insignificant place in the world? Constantly reminding ourselves that this – all of this – is just temporary is important. And then it makes you wonder about how you spend your time – do you put the rest of miserable life through this job? Or do you take a stand and make a brighter place for the whole world?



7. “What are you doing in my office?”




Boundaries must be drawn to establish lines of communication and facilitate effective team work. Not only to workspaces show easy-to-distinguish categorisations of work divisions, but the closed doors and drawn shutters that separate private workspaces also offer employees a quiet and distraction-free work environment to get on with the job at hand, whatever it might be.



8. “What is that? In your hand? Jesus, is a knife?”




Visual acuity and quick-thinking are vital skills. Being able to speedily identify products, brands, and make calculated estimations of the situation around you is so crucial – and not just for powerful business acumen or quick-witted identification of sales opportunities: it’s also often beneficial for your own health and safety.



9. “Oh god no, please don’t kill me, Jesus I’m begging you, I’m sorry I’m sorryerghhhhhh”




Being able to identify your mistakes quickly and attempt to take quick action to make up for them so as to effectively control damage and fallout is a vital talent. Even where there is no possibility for retribution or resolution on the mistake in question, it is a skill that builds confidence and upholds an atmosphere of professionalism. Negotiation skills – no matter the field of expertise – are always a plus, even if those negotiations end in tears.



10. “Hey, new guy, ya fuckin retard, go get me a cup of coffee”




In-depth research into your employee’s work history and their actions leading up to their new position at your place of business can avoid many stressful or just plain unnecessary situations. Information on a resume can be faked, and identity fraud is increasingly easy these days. Often just a quick check on Google or search through public records via a quick inquiry at your local police station can prevent a world of trouble and pain. After all, you never know when a lack of the most basic prudence into sourcing employment might come back to haunt you.

Especially in this cut-throat industry.

Opinion: Kids these days spending too much time outdoors

Guest Writer Johan Van Eksteen is back once more, folks, with those blistering words of truth and power that move whole crowds to cheers and tears. This time, he’s stumbled upon a very disturbing modern trend that every parent should be very, very concerned about indeed.

Dear Readers, I think I’m finally getting old. This weekend, sitting at home with the curtains drawn so that the bright sun and rolling verdant pastures in front of the ocean by my summer house don’t cause a glare in my 24-inch plasma, I heard a strange, strange noise. Cracking the windows and looking – eugh – outside, I eventually managed to choke down my Gollum-esque sun-hissing long enough to see a truly shocking, disturbing sight.

Children going outside, making forts, playing games and climbing trees.

Seriously, WTF is this kak?

When I was a kid we never had such luxuries. We had to be content to sit indoors all day, staring for hours at a time at a flickering screen, our necks craning downwards into glowing screens. Hell, if I even so much as mentioned spending a few wasted minutes out in the sun and air, my parents would have given me the most massive hiding, or at least left a downvote on my Reddit post.

And yet those were special days. Who could ever forget the magic of getting your first 30 likes on one post? Which of us don’t warmly cherish all the lols and rofls we had with our family? These are the things that make childhood the magical period of innocence and wonder and reposting it is.

All this gambolling and frolicking can’t be good for you: in fact, I think it could be destroying this country’s morals. There is so much life happening in the palms of our hands, and there they all are: outside, breathing in pollen-heavy, insect-infested air in the garden. God, yesterday I had to confiscate their soccer ball and then send them to their rooms with the door locked and shades drawn just so they’d say a perfunctory ‘lol’ to the memes I posted on their walls.

Nature:  a truly revolting, dangerous wasteland brimming
with spiders, disease and all kinds of horrors.

How are you supposed to make friends without adding them online? We need to do something to stop this scourge on our children’s innocence and wonder before it kills it altogether. How will our children ever be able to cherish these special, magical moments without a selfie or status that gets 23 likes and 15 comments in just 15 minutes?

Worst yet are these insufferable books they’re constantly reading. You look up from your iPad at the dinner table and the little vacuous snots have it right on their lap – they can barely go two minutes without looking down at it. And it’s not even a goddamn Kindle; what could be so interesting about paper and ink anyway? It seems that every two seconds I’m telling my kids “geez, Frikkie and Johan Junior, put that bloody thing away”.

We need to take a stand: these balls and games and frolicking in the untouched splendour are creating a generation of hyper-active, anti-social-network loners who don’t even once take part in conversation with their friends and followers; and all the while their iPads and Gameboys and Playstation 4s and Facebook accounts gather dust, forgotten and unappreciated.

In fact, I could go one step further and say that these so-called “physical sports” are warping our kids’ brains and teaching them to be violent. Every day, after my daily stress-unwinding LAN session of ThroatSlit MurderKings 5 I sit back in creeping, overwhelming terror and think about how my kids might be outside, rugby tackling each other, stomping on each other’s’ fingers and hands in that “ruck” thing, or sitting in giant stadiums at school yelling blood-thirsty war-cries at another bunch of kids whose only difference is that they go to some other school.

I know that my own grandparents thought I was spending “too much blerrie time on that blerrie computer thing”, but this is obviously a totally different situation. If we do nothing, we stand to pay the worst price of all: we could end up with a generation of children who think that they should empathise and try to understand that their own children might have their own personal interests and passions that are vastly different to theirs.

Or – God forbid the thought – that they shouldn’t tell their kids to do something just because they did it for years on end. What kind of mad, insane world might that be?

Johan is a guest columnist at Muse and Abuse. Widely renowned for his non-nonsense approach to controversial topics, Johan shines a blinding light of truth on subjects like the hideous scourge of immigration, why white people should vote ANC, why Blackface isn't the real racist problem in SA, and how Black Privilege is an ugly truth that no one wants to admit. He also thinks gay marriage should have been outlawed years ago.

Longevity, healthy lifestyle potentially fatal – study

The news got scarier and the world a considerably more bleak, depressing place to live this morning, after doctors working in conjunction with medical researchers at the Institute for The Study of Dangerous and Inevitable Illnesses announced yet another way you are probably going to die.

“The first few symptoms of this disease are iniquitous and dangerous because you feel normal, like a normal, healthy sixty-to-seventy-year-old,” said Dr Koff Formiplese. “And then BOOM: you’ve got it.”

The so-called Old Age Syndrome (OAS) has been shown to affect nearly one in a thousand people, mostly senior citizens between the ages of 60 and 90. The disease has a mortality rate of 100%, and is likely to affect you or someone you know at least once in your or his or her lifetime.

“This rare medical condition has diverse and wide-ranging symptoms,” said Formiplese, “such as hair loss, flaccid and weathered skin, brittle bones, arthritis and an increased susceptibility to infection from cuts and bruises. Also, it massively degrades their driving skills, and makes them give really strange birthday presents to people. The people who have this disease carry an unacceptably elevated risk of dying and they have a much higher than ordinary chance of developing cancers, lung, bone and liver diseases, and usually have a much poorer immune system. We need to find out what is causing this terrible affliction and end it once and for all.”

To deal with the disease, many people now resort to lumping all the infected into one huge Hospice Village, where activities like tennis, water aerobics and increasingly infrequent family visits are used to provide some relief from the condition.

However, there is a silver lining.

“Though everyone who catches the disease eventually and inevitably dies, many of them live for a very long time with the disease,” said Formiplese. “You could say it’s a manageable condition. And many studies show that simply smoking a few packs of cigarettes a day, taking high doses of illegal narcotics, avoiding the gym, eating deep-fried butter... these are all proved methods for guaranteeing you don't catch OAS.”

In light of many diagnoses like these by healthcare specialists, lawyers and legal representatives now believe they have identified two of the most leading causes of OAS, and are now gathering cases and names to back up what is set to be one of the largest a class action lawsuits in the history of the world, eclipsing the comparatively meagre settlements won from tobacco giants and poisoned water suppliers.

“We now know that statistically if you spend time in a gym or in the vegetable section of a supermarket, you’re more likely to develop symptoms,” said legal professional Claus Akshin. “as such, we’re preparing litigation against the Health Industry – places like Virgin Active and other gyms – and against fruit producers, farmers and grocers who stock produce that is dangerously high in vitamins, minerals and fibre, all of which are proven to directly contribute towards OAS.”

He went on to say how these insidious farmers were exacerbating and already out-of-control problem.

“There’s apparently a greenish sticky thing called celery that actually has a negative calorie count,” said a legal expert. “What kind of sick bastard would force his clients to burn energy to eat his food?”

They are also considering the Home Shopping Network and other infomercial channels, but proving causation will be tough if not impossible.

“They say ‘Guaranteed Results’ and ‘Money-back Guarantee’ and stuff like ‘get the abs you always wanted in no time’ but we can’t really find a single example where these products have actually inflicted one of our unfortunate victims with the kinds of Body and Muscle Mass changes that indicate the onset of OAS.”

However, Virgin Active CEO and farmers everywhere have been staunchly defensive.

“We’ll defend ourselves to the last,” said Virgin Active CEO Richard Branson. “I’m not even sure if the research is sound: in fact, most of the people who come to our gyms don’t end up being healthy and ripped anyway. Hell, the largest percentage of our subscribers is Guilty New Year’s Resolution folk, and they all quit almost immediately after Day One.”

Farmers, too, have defended their actions.

“Eating our produce might bring you OAS, sure,” said murder carrots and grim reaper corn grower Moor Talitie, “But eating alternative foods – fatty foods and carbohydrates – is clinically proven to give you higher cholesterol, excess adipose tissue and heart conditions: what doctors are now calling Fat Fuck Syndrome. I mean, I know it’s choosing between two evils, but ours is definitely the lesser of the two.”