Bob Goldman
What could be more risky than having lunch with your boss?
It could certainly go well, giving you the opportunity to show the person who controls your future what a deep, caring and wonderful employee you are, but the more likely outcome — the much more likely outcome — is that all you will show is what a shallow, uncaring and awful employee you are — a fact that you’ve managed to successfully hide. So far.
In “Thanks, but No Thanks,” a recent “Work Friend” column in The New York Times, Anna Holmes answers the question of a reader, who writes: “On my first week at my job, the CEO took me out to lunch. He informed me that he takes one employee out to lunch of a rotating basis every week to discuss his or her position and give feedback on how things could run more smoothly.”
To make matters worse, the writer didn’t like her boss. In fact, she considered him “my least favorite person at the company. I find him brash, immature and annoying.”
The writer does not say how big the company is, or how many employees were on the boss’s lunch menu. If he were the CEO of Walmart, for example, with over 2 million employees, at one employee per week, it would be about 400,000 years before her turn for a lunch invite came around again. One would hope the writer could hold out, but we all have different levels of tolerance for brash, immature and annoying behavior. (Your own level must be high. After all, you are reading this column.)
Work Friend encouraged the writer to “Just say no.” I have better suggestions.
Tuck your napkin under your chin and let’s order.
No. 1: Mind your manners.
Time for Emily Post to leave the building.
Explain to your boss that using silverware diminishes the primal enjoyment of food. “Momma gorilla does not use a fork. Baby shark does not ask for a spoon.” Be sure to order a gooey dessert. When you leave the restaurant with chocolate syrup smeared on your face and marshmallows in your hair, you can be sure your first invitation will be your last.
Of course, there is the danger that your boss’s manners are worse than your own. This provides you with the opportunity to start a food fight. Be sure to strike first. Upturning a bowl of pesto pasta on the boss’s head is a great way to demonstrate the competitive spirit you bring to the company.
No. 2: Let’s get (too) personal.
A business lunch can easily and uncomfortably turn personal. Prepare for the possibility by being the first to bring up intimate details of your private life. Before the appetizers are served, bring up the threats you regularly receive from Gloamglozers in the Edgeworld. Before dessert is finished, bring out X-rays and lab reports, which you can use with a dynamic PowerPoint to highlight which of your organs are failing. Explain that you are not contagious, probably, and you won’t be invited again, definitely.
No. 3: Be picky, picky.
If your boss takes you to a steak house, announce that you’re a vegetarian. If it’s a vegetarian restaurant, explain that you’re a carnivore and can only eat meat. No matter where you go, reveal that you are severely allergic to gluten, eggs, cheese, fish, poultry, soybeans, sesame seeds and salt. “But you order whatever you like,” you say, placing your EpiPen on the table. “I’ll be happy with water.”
No. 4: Bring a friend.
When your server arrives, order raw chicken and lamb hearts. Explain it’s for your emotional support ferret, who you bring out of your pocket and let nestle in the breadbasket. (You could also insist the boss brings along a friend from the HR department, but, trust me, the ferret is better company.)
No. 5: Grab the check.
Your boss will want to pay the bill, but you grab it first. Explain that it’s easy to bury personal purchases on your expense account; you do it all the time. “I charge all my lunches and half my vacations to the company,” you say, ordering a bottle of Lafite Rothschild. “Accounting has no clue.”
Your boss will appreciate your ability to think outside the box, especially when they realize your hard work and commitment has resulted in techniques to cheat the company they aren’t using themselves. Promise to teach them all the swindles you have developed if they promise never to invite you ever again.
Now that’s what I call a yummy lunch.
Bob Goldman was an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at bob@bgplanning.com.
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