Or They Could Get a Divorce...

Here's the situation: You walk into work in the morning and your boss is peeved. Not at you in particular, or even anyone else in the office for that matter. There's probably a marital issue going on in their house and they decided to selfishly take these emotions to work with them. You already know your day is screwed.

Obviously your main concern is to steer clear of him/her for the entire day, no matter how much work you have to do. Unfortunately, you're going to have to deal with the issue eventually when your boss schedules an impromptu meeting during your lunch hour to discuss the lack of paper clips in the mail room. Most of the meeting will be hosted by the happy boss who will scream and yell about nothing while you sit there stupefied.

How do you combat this? By saying absolutely nothing. Don't speak unless they specifically ask you a question, and make sure you're paying attention to everything they say because getting the answer to that question wrong will be detrimental to your career. And by the way, getting it right won't get you anywhere, so don't expect it to.

My previous boss was in a marriage that must have been hell on earth at home. This guy would come into work on a Friday before a three day weekend when the office closed at noon, and he would still be depressed. There could be complimentary gummy bears at the front desk of the building and his attitude was still downtrodden. Then one day I went to a happy hour with him and another coworker for some odd reason, and he started unloading his marital problems on us like we were Lorraine Brocco. I almost started recruiting women to have an affair with him right on our bar table just to shut him up.

The crazy thing of all this, is we were fine after that talk. Every time he had one of these days after that event, he would send me an email asking for a happy hour trip. I would of course oblige, and we would sit at a bar for three hours while he cried about how miserable his life was. I didn't care because his favorite happy hour spot had pretty good bar nuts and made a mean margarita, but his stories were pretty unbearable. This is an isolated incident, however, since I'm sure there are a few weirdos out there that don't drink, and if your boss is one of them a happy hour invitation may not be the best course of action.

But if you know they're a drinker, and you can't stand another day of getting scolded for not having your computer keyboard dusted, then give it a shot. Believe me, when your boss is angry and you know it's something home-related, a drink is just the thing to get them to loosen up. The worst thing that can happen is they develop a severe drinking problem and get fired, leaving you to take their job after they are thrown out on their drunken asses. Hey, it's a tough world, and they couldn't cut it.