Since 1984 this is a celebration for everyone who is neither a boss nor professional assistant – hey they have their days already! It is celebrated on February 29 in keeping with the esteemed position of an Underling!
Underlings exist in every story, and while they’re often treated as little more than brainless stooges there to do their boss’s bidding, there’s often far more to them than initially meets the eye. They are dauntless in the pursuit of their duties, stalwart in weathering their employer’s abuse, and loyal to the very end, even if the ingrate that hired them doesn’t deserve it. International Underlings Day celebrates these unsung heroes.
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings. – Cassius
The day was established by one Peter D. Morris in 1984, a man who perhaps had spent too much time as an underling in his life and thought that Boss Day was an affront to the people who did the real work on the ground. Can you blame him? Work may be a ladder of success, but it’s the absolute fools way up as those who ride the escalator to the top will attest. You don’t know about the escalator of success? That’s because you’re just an underling, and that door is kept firmly locked against rebellion and snot-nosed upstarts.
In all honesty though, without underlings, there’s no way that the boss could get his job done. His job is to keep the underlings marching along with orders as to what he wants to be done and how he wants it done, the underling’s job is then to ignore what he’s been told and get it done the right way and let the boss think it was his idea all along. That’s the mark of a great underlying.
Of course, underlings don’t warrant a holiday their very own, so the boss discovered a clever way to give them one, without elevating them to being equals with National Boss Day. How does International Underlings Day accomplish this? Well, it only comes around once every four years, which is about the ratio of your paycheck to your bosses. Welcome to the world of being an underling.
