I am self-employed, so I don’t have a boss. The nineteen nineties saw an epidemic of business books with the theme “The Customer is Your Boss,” but I never bought into that. It was bad enough that the customer was “Always Right” in the twentieth century, they had to go and be the boss, too. Luckily, the advent of the George W. Bush Confederacy of Moronic Chimpanzees nipped that silly notion in the bud. Corporations in our brave new world don’t answer to their customers or anyone else.

But I digress. I’m thinking about bosses today because this afternoon, when I was making a tempeh hamburger, the microwave beeped while I was doing something else. I think I was organizing my vitamins, an undertaking akin to the damming of the Three Rivers Gorge. I took so long to get to it that it beeped again, haughtily. “You’re not the boss of me, microwave!” I informed it.

That felt good.

I like that expression, “You’re not the boss of me.” I don’t know where it came from, but I hope it stays with us, unlike “that’s dynamite!” or “where’s the beef?” which were products of their very limited time. “You’re not the boss of me” expresses a universal truth. You aren’t the boss of me. I am bossless. Hear me roar.

Good lord, microwave, I’m coming!