The Art of Managing Dan

It started, as these things often do,
with a calendar invite
titled simply:
“Catch-up.”

No context.
No agenda.
Just Dan.

Dan, who always seemed to lean back
as if management
were a reclining chair
he’d earned in another life.

Dan, who loved phrases like
“circle back” and
“boil the ocean”
and “I’m just the ideas guy.”

Which meant
you would boil the ocean.
And build the pot.
And gather the wood.

And if the ocean didn’t boil fast enough,
he’d ask
why you weren’t showing more initiative.

I didn’t hate him.
Not at first.
He wore nice shoes
and had the sort of jawline
that HR seems to promote.
But I did begin to notice
how every success had his fingerprints on it
only after it had stopped screaming.

I remember the first time
I thought, quietly,
“I think I have to manage this man.”

Not work with him.
Not support him.
Manage him.
Like a skittish horse.
Or an unmedicated uncle at Christmas.

I didn’t say it aloud.
I just began
folding his ideas
like paper cranes
and flying them back to him
with my fingerprints missing.

I learned to nod in meetings,
 a monk in a Zen koan,
while beneath the table
my foot tapped out
a Morse code of despair.

I learned
how to email him
in a tone that said,
“Of course this was your idea, Dan,”
even when it wasn’t.

Especially
when it wasn’t.

At night,
I dreamt in PowerPoint.
My therapist called it
“mild adrenal fatigue.”
I called it
“Wednesday.”

Some days,
I imagined telling him the truth.

Pulling him aside in the kitchen
between a weak coffee
and a stale muffin
and saying,

“You don’t lead this team.
You orbit it.
Like a lonely moon
made of jargon.”

But I never did.
Because I needed the job.
Because the team needed me.
Because I’d read enough Greek tragedies
to know
the hero dies
when he believes in fairness
more than timing.

Instead,
I played the long game.

I made him look good.
I coached the juniors.
I cleaned the messes
he hadn’t noticed he’d made.

And when he got promoted
for “building a high-performing culture,”
I smiled
like a man watching a dog
accept an Oscar.

Eventually,
I left.
Quietly.
No drama.
Just a tidy folder
called “handover”
and a bottle of single malt
on the desk.

I didn’t look back.
Except sometimes,
in moments of weakness,
I wonder
if he ever knew.

If some small part of him,
drunk on attention
and KPI glory,
felt a tremor
in the scaffold
I built beneath his feet.

Probably not.
Dan was never one for introspection.

But I imagine
he noticed the silence
when it came.
The way his inbox
stopped answering him
before he’d asked.

And maybe,
in that silence,
he heard my voice
for the first time.

Not loud.
Not angry.
Just tired.

And done.

FSF