A DAY FOR THE MAN

Yesterday I go to my favorite doughnut place for a healthful and delicious breakfast and find that almost all the good doughnuts are gone. Why?

"People have been coming in and buying lots of them. It's for Boss's Day, I think."

Boss's Day? Really? There's a Boss's Day?

The US has about a half dozen blue chip holidays, your Christmases, Independence Days, Memorial Days, that kind of thing. Then you've got the second tier holidays: the ones where you don't get the day off, but you'll probably celebrate in some way. Think Valentine's Day, Halloween, Mother's Day.

At the bottom of the food chain is a whole list of holidays that seem pretty much to be invented by Hallmark. These holidays are often little noticed by the general public, but they at least tend to recognize the underdogs of society: Grandparent's Day, Secretary's day, National Illegal Laborer Day, etc.

Then there's National Boss's Day. You could argue that National Boss's day comes every two weeks when your boss receives a paycheck many times larger than yours. Perhaps it comes when the corporate bonus arrives. Maybe the extra days of vacation your boss gets counts as a personal observance of National Boss's Day.

But no, someone got the idea that we needed to take time out of our busy work schedules to honor our bosses for being our superiors. According to Internet legend, that person was Patricia Bays Haroski, who was a secretary at an insurance company in Illinois. Her boss was her dad. His birthday was October 16th. Though some mechanism, she got Illinois to declare the day Boss's Day in 1962, and the whole thing has just spiraled out of control ever since.

While many people were scrambling for doughnuts to feed their bosses, others wrote songs and bought greeting cards. My colleagues at a competing station here ACTUALLY DID A FEATURE LENGTH INTERVIEW WITH THEIR BOSS to observe the day.

Apart from not eating my doughnut of choice yesterday morning, I did not celebrate National Boss's Day. My boss is a perfectly decent guy, but he'll never know I didn't celebrate because he was at his second home in Mexico. As for next year, I don't know how I'll celebrate.

Perhaps the best thing to do is promote other lesser-known holidays to dilute the power of Boss's Day. International Talk Like a Pirate Day is starting to catch on, and National Mole Day always gets some play on NPR each year. I think I'm going to put most of my effort into promoting Towel Day. Towel Day is a celebration of the late author Douglas Adams. On May 25th, observers are instructed to carry a towel with them as reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

That seems a perfectly worthy holiday, and It coincides with Nerd Pride Day, which I already celebrate. Perhaps I'll observe it from my second home in Mexico... once I become the boss, of course.