Schmoozing over coffee, drinks, and meals is part of Western culture, especially business culture. Use these opportunities to bond with your I-Boss in ways that will make life easier for you back at the office. Remember to talk about what the I-Boss wants to talk about. Laugh at the I-Boss's jokes and funny stories, even if it's fifth time you've heard the one about how his dog vomited on his neighbor's newspaper. Your I-Boss is in search of an audience. He wants to be heard. Your jokes, funny stories, or great ideas about how the office should be run are not on his agenda. You need to respond to the image he sees in his foggy mirror. The last thing you want to do is clean his looking glass. However, mealtime is another terrific opportunity for you to play detective and study the image he sees in his foggy mirror. Then dress your ideas and suggestions up to appear equally foggy. In other words, make them appear to be his ideas and suggestions or at least make them appear as they would in his mirror, not yours. Whenever humanly possible, order from the menu what your I-Boss orders. Eat at the same pace at which your I-Boss eats so you'll finish your meal at the same time he finishes. With your I-Boss talking so much, you'll need to be patient. Don't shovel food into your mouth while he's talking. Wait and take a bite when he does. Draw your fork or spoon toward your mouth in a mirrored motion to his. Maintain this culinary discipline to make him unconsciously feel as if you're an extension of him. When your I-Boss pauses to take a bite, you'll be biting, too, and won't be tempted to add anything to the conversation. Let there be silence. He will break it soon enough. As you chew your food, your Idiot Boss will be talking with his mouth full. Concentrating on eye contact will help you fight back the nausea. Idiot Bosses reveal some of their innermost thoughts while they are chewing. If your I-Boss gets some food stuck on his face or between his teeth, politely point to that spot on your face or teeth. If he gets the message and removes the food, great. If not, forget it. You did your best. When he gets down to serious business philosophy, track his line of thinking, as difficult as that might be.

Be an active listener. Maintain eye contact, nod frequently, and repeat key words and phrases aloud while nodding your head. "Uh, huh. Think out of the box!" "...the big dog on the street." "...your cheese." "...to infinity and beyond." Be careful not to outshine your I-Boss's dexterity with the silverware. If he eats peas with a knife, you eat peas with a knife. If he eats salad with a spoon, you eat salad with a spoon. If he stirs coffee with his spoon handle, do the same, even if you haven't used your spoon for your salad. If this means holding your fork in such a way that it protrudes from the end of your fist, get used to it. You want your I-Boss to be comfortable and unthreatened around you. His sense of ease and familiarity will pay dividends. If you're spotted at the restaurant by your peers, acknowledge everyone graciously. You can always claim you were there under duress or pleading for better department-wide working conditions. If coworkers approach your table and ask how things are going, seize the opportunity, chuckle, and say, "Our boss was just telling me about the time his dog hurled chunks all over the Sunday Times." Horrified expressions will come over their faces and they will back away from the table slowly. Your I-Boss will appreciate what a good listener you are and you'll have your peers' sympathy for the rest of your life.

Raising the Steaks

When your I-Boss invites you to lunch with an important client or someone higher up the corporate food chain, you must split the difference. When the big cheese isn't looking, but your I-Boss is, imitate the I-Boss. When you think you can get away with it, imitate the big cheese. It's likely your I-Boss will hog the conversation, including his dog-vomit story that gets 'em every time. You have helped create that delusion, but nobody else needs to know that. Fade into the woodwork at these multi-tier gatherings, observe, and learn. A drama will be played out in front of your eyes that could possibly reveal why the big boss tolerates your Idiot Boss, and it won't be for his jokes and funny stories. While your I-Boss entertains, you and the kahuna can chew your food. Your I-Boss isn't playing to you anymore. This gives you an opportunity to raise your level of table manners to match the person highest on the food chain. Laugh only when and if the big kahuna or client laughs. If the client or mega-boss doesn't laugh at your I-Boss's humor, make eye contact with your I-Boss and wink as if to say, "You're really funny, boss. What does this schmuck know?"

Save Your I-Boss's Bacon

Meals are social events. If ever there is an opportunity to demonstrate how adept you are in the social graces, mealtime is your chance to shine. You can be a Miss Manners graduate with a specialization in silverware usage, memorize wine lists and cross-reference them to historical rainfall totals in various regions of France and the Rhine Valley - and still blow it if you forget who's boss. Your shining comes from helping your I-Boss shine, not in outshining him. Your vastly superior knowledge of fine dining can score points with your Idiot Boss when you use that knowledge to spare him embarrassment. If you don't have vast knowledge of table etiquette, go online, to the library, or to charm school and get some. Even Idiot Bosses don't seem to mind gentle reminders about which fork to use for what. "I love a crisp salad," you croon on the way to the restaurant where you and your I-Boss will meet a big muckety-muck for a meal, "...which I eat with the little fork way on the outside, of course." Your Idiot Boss will look at you and repeat, "Of course," as if he knew all along. "Unless, of course, they offer me a chilled fork," you continue. "Of course," your I-Boss agrees. "Chilled is always better." He won't admit it, but your boss is willing, even anxious, to take cues from you regarding table manners. That is unless he's a completely clueless idiot, in which case it's every diner for herself. In the event he is open to suggestions, make them. The more dependent you can make him regarding socially acceptable behavior, the more he owes you. If, as I've said, knowledge is power, then knowing your way around a meal served with white gloves is awesome power. Put your superior intelligence-gathering skills to work and find out about the muckety-muck's proclivities. Usually, a big kahuna's secretary will gladly divulge, when asked, what his favorite wine is, whether he prefers well-done steak or tartar, and anything else that will help you make his dining experience pleasurable. Then turn around and let your I-Boss know what you found out. Hopefully, he's bright enough to realize how to use such information to his advantage. Even better, he'll appreciate that you are a font of career-enhancing data. When cross-cultural issues present themselves, you have an opening wide enough to drive a truck through. You've always urged your Idiot Boss not to slip off his shoes under the dinner table. Now you can enlighten him on all kinds of foot etiquette, from removing his shoes at a fine Japanese restaurant (you might want to carry an extra pair of socks in case his toe is sticking out of his) to never showing the sole of his shoe to a Korean. Cultural mores from anywhere on the planet are easily researchable on the World Wide Web. All you need do is stay ahead of the game, anticipate any faux pas your I-Boss is likely to commit, do your research, and coach him. In all likelihood, he'll appreciate your efforts.

Suffer Fools Kindly

In defense of Idiot Bosses, not all employees are Einsteins by any stretch of the imagination. In many organizations, the game of who's the biggest idiot never ends. The head of a university department asked me to become an adjunct faculty member as we sat in a swanky (and pricey) coffee shop. I was drinking one of those 35 cents-per-ounce Mango-Banana-Guava Surprise health drinks and he had an iced coffee concoction of some kind. My health drink came in a small plastic bottle with a hermetically sealed yellow plastic screw-off top. Why a health-oriented product so obviously part of the hippy-dippy, granola-eating, intellectually elite university village culture is sold in a container with a half-life of six million years is beyond me. Nonetheless, I eased my conscience with the thought that, if my empty Mango-Banana-Guava Surprise container is still bothering anyone six million years from now, they will no doubt possess the technology to turn it into rocket fuel. My new boss was pointing out the courses I'd be teaching in the university catalogue when I reached out, picked up the drink in front of me, and started sucking refreshment through the straw. I instantly realized I hadn't been drinking my Mango-Banana-Guava Surprise through a straw. I had wrestled the yellow lid off and was guzzling it like John Wayne at Miss Clara's Virginia City Saloon and Pleasure Palace. The straw in my mouth belonged to my new boss's frozen coffee concoction, as did the frozen coffee concoction I was swallowing. In one seamless motion, I deftly placed the frozen coffee concoction back on the table between us and snatched the plastic Mango- Banana-Guava Surprise bottle as if I had been holding it all along. If he noticed, he didn't say anything - even when he picked up his frozen coffee concoction a few moments later and started sipping through the communal straw. I matched his motion by taking a swig from my six-million-year plastic bottle. It was one of those moments you wish you could rewind and erase like a commercial on videotape. If he saw what I did and played along with my charade, he was either in desperate need of adjunct faculty members or he was willing to accept the idiot in all of us. I figure, if he is willing to accept the stupidity I bring to the relationship, it's only fair for me to cut him similar slack. If we little folks muster enough courage to put our work environment complaints under a microscope, we might just see the troublesome attitudes and behaviors we project on our bosses have our own fingerprints all over them. Admit it and note it on the inventory. When it's our turn at boss, we need to accept that folks will drink through our straws now and then. Fortunately for me, he turned out to be a Good Boss. So, I'll never really know if he wasn't paying attention, or if he graciously spared the idiot who drank some of his 35 cents-perounce frozen coffee concoction and pretended nothing happened.

Theoretical, Theological, and Biological Roots

If idiots didn't exist, would we create them?