Every Bad Boss Has Already Been Parodied

The office printer has jammed again. The meeting that could have been an email is still going. Your manager has just said something so aggressively stupid that for a moment you lose faith in the entire concept of hierarchy. You know it won’t fix anything, but you go looking for a song about it anyway.

German TV hosts Joko Winterscheidt and Klaas Heufer-Umlauf—the double act behind the long-running comedy show Circus HalliGalli—put out a collection of office parody tracks that sits somewhere between satire and genuine catharsis. Titles like "Problems at the Office Printer," "Dumb Dumb Dumb Dumb," and the barely-veiled Britney riff "Meeting Baby One More Time" do exactly what they promise. The joke is the premise and the premise is the joke.

The standout is "Nervige Chefs"—annoying bosses—in which Palina Rojinski, the Berlin-born actress and presenter who somehow makes everything she touches slightly more watchable, goes full Rihanna and settles all accounts with the incompetent management class. It’s the kind of performance that only works if the performer has clearly spent time in a room with someone exactly like that boss. The fury is too specific to be invented.

None of this is high art. It doesn’t need to be. There’s a place for music that exists purely to make you feel less alone in your particular Tuesday misery. Sometimes the most dignified response to a bad job is a three-minute pop parody played at full volume on the commute home.