Her boss is demanding, sometimes mean. Here’s why writer is having trouble quitting

I have a new boss and she’s really demanding. I hate to be this blunt, but she can be mean and has zero boundaries. She’s also all up in my personal business like you wouldn’t believe. Have I reported her to HR? Heck, I wanted to but I couldn’t because my “boss” is my daughter.

No, we don’t have a family business. In the category of “be careful what you ask for” I reached out to my daughter for tips on promoting a book I have coming out in the spring. Since my daughter is a digital media analyst, I knew she could formulate a stellar campaign for me.

What I didn’t know is that she would be a taskmaster with no regard for my feelings. Worse, I now find myself a slave to TikTok thanks to her. I have so many mixed emotions about TikTok. They start with, I feel like I’m too old for TikTok. The most watched TikTok accounts that feature people my age are grandmas who speak only in curse words. Apparently it’s a laugh riot to see Nana busting out a series of F bombs.

Then there’s the very real issue that I want another social media account to produce content for like I want an unmedicated colonoscopy. When I shared this with my daughter, she had no sympathy for me.

“TikTok is where the people are,” she scolded.

Another concern is that TikTok is a Chinese social media app that a lot of people think is a shady data harvesting arm of the Chinese Communist Party. The FBI calls it a national security threat.

Pre-pandemic I would have given all this China TikTok fear and angst a great big eye roll. But now, thanks to surviving a worldwide pandemic, I believe that the next horrific event is probably just around the corner.

Recently, when jokes were being made that some of those balloons floating around in our upper atmosphere could be UFOs, I shrugged and said to my husband, “You never know.” He looked at me like I had lost my mind. I had to alert him to the fact that I have now opened myself up to considering a vast array of worst-case scenarios, including the slimmest possibility that the plot from a “Star Trek” episode from 1967 might actually come to fruition. Tribbles anyone?

When I shared my China TikTok concerns with my daughter, she asked if I had gone into a conspiracy theory mood. I stated that I enthusiastically believe in science and that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.

She then accused me of just not wanting to “put in the work” of posting twice a day to TikTok. Um, she’s not wrong about that. You would think making short videos wouldn’t be that big of deal, but talk about a time suck. Even worse is when my “boss” gives me a negative performance review about how I need to do better hashtags and post video comments.

I guess the upside in all of this is that I’m no longer stressing about a social media company “big brothering” my data.

Instead I’m seriously considering “firing” (or would it be “quitting?”) my daughter in terms of our work relationship. I was close to doing it last week but then one of my videos had an exciting viral moment and now I’m no longer scared of China. I’m now afraid of my daughter’s power over me.

Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs, on Twitter at @snarkynsuburbs on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.