So who is really the boss?

Editor dominee Willem de Klerk’s shiny shoes as he peacocks on the back of a chair told me every Saturday night 6 o’clock: the paper is done for him and his secretary (whom he married later). Not for us, Boss. We forged on to bring out a good national Sunday paper two hours after his personal deadline.

Not that he cared. Like Willem Wepener, revered editor whom I adored at the daily I worked for – until he glibly gave my Promised Land job to some radio jock just because I was forced to take unpaid pregnancy leave, unlike the boys on the border who got their three months “forced refresher courses” fully paid.

Or Naspers’ Ton Vosloo, who left little yellow notes under my typewriter telling me my words are precious – but never backed my fight for subsidising my home loan because Beloved got no subsidy. “Sorry. He’s the breadwinner.”

The battle cry carries on 40 years later. The glass ceiling is, as ever, real.

But I thank Covid for gifting me a good boss. Online work shows us all up. And he saw my worth.

He’s 20 years younger than me and I outrank him far in experience, but we respect, even love, each other. We understand each other. Neither my age, nor his seniority, will come between us.

I’ve always been the wild card so I tend to “embarrass” him by shooting from the hip everywhere.

And he blames red wine, I think. I don’t. Those e-mails fired off are not drunken sprees. It’s Ton Vosloo’s little yellow notes, totally …

But I know what binds us: passion. Passion for a good blurb on the front page selling the paper. Most importantly, passion for people; teams – and here’s the secret of “teams”: life happens. A team member dies; someone’s brother; “I really just need leave”.

He, like me, understands exactly that: we are human, we have crises, we need to deal…

He’s on holiday, leaving me beached to find the waves and swim. No human intervention needed, thank you. I can see my way back to the deep waters.

And that makes a good boss. I know Big Brother is watching. But I also know I’m good enough. He’s my boss. But I am – wink-wink – pulling rank.