Surprised? So are many people, but not Patricia Bays Haroski. In 1958, Haroski, who worked at State Farm Insurance Co. in Deerfield, Ill., sought to have Oct. 16 proclaimed as National Boss Day. She felt that many employees, especially young ones, didn’t understand how difficult a boss’s job was. So, she chose Oct. 16 to pay homage to bosses everywhere. Why Oct. 16? It was her boss’s birthday. And did I mention that her boss also happened to be her own father?
 
Unfortunately, it’s not actually an official, governmental holiday, but it was registered with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and as long as this party holds power, that’s pretty much the same as a congressional decree. If you happen to be abroad Oct. 16, you may be in luck. According to its backers, boss day also is celebrated in England, Australia and South Africa—although it’s possible that enthusiasm for bosses is dimmed in South Africa for, well, historical reasons.
 
Don’t for a moment think this holiday is the preserve of a small coterie of captains and overseers. According to the Hallmark Corp., “49.2 million individuals are employed in management, professional, and related occupations.” That means there’s one boss for every two workers—a  number that’s bound to increase after the recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling that declares anyone who tells another worker what to do is a supervisor and, so barred by federal labor law from union membership.
 
But even now, 49.2 million is a lot of bosses to commemorate and that could—if you were generous enough—put a real dimple in your meager budget. This is where Hallmark comes to the rescue with “popular ways to say ‘thanks’ include cards, a department lunch, a ‘goodie’ break, flowers or gifts.” Actually, the company concentrates on cards—an extensive, and cheerily groveling line of boss-admiring cards. In fact, it’s hard to find anybody other than the card company who takes this holiday with much gravity. The Wikipedia entry for National Boss Day notes:
 
The holiday has been the source of some controversy and criticism in the United States, where it is often mocked as a Hallmark Holiday (a disparaging term used to describe a holiday that exists primarily for commercial purposes).
 
And here, I thought the whole idea of being a boss was to foster commercial purposes.
 
I have no doubt that being a boss is often a difficult job, especially in the United States, where some workers still cling to the antiquated notion of equality. While many people soon learn that equality stops at the workplace door, they can never seem to entirely accept that becoming an employee is—without union membership—more or less, the equivalent of submitting to feudalism. Most bosses try mightily to stamp out any signs of independence, but workers often respond with barely-disguised contempt and ridicule.
 
This, in turn, makes bosses frustrated. In despair, many managers and supervisors take courses on enlightened management, but the dubious benefits of such classes seem to last until the managers again run into a real worker—then it’s back to varying degrees of tyranny. If you want to know how bad management can get, simply go to the website of Working America, where the results of their Bad Boss survey are displayed, www.workingamerica.org/badboss.
 

If, after that, you still want to celebrate National Boss Day, Hallmark has 47 different cards from which to choose. Or, given the widening gap between worker and management salaries, take the boss out to lunch and stick him or her with the bill. Don’t feel bad doing this, though. They’re sure to get even with you later.