Naturally, the company you work for says it loves you. We are a people business, it says, join our great team! To listen to the company, you’d think you were leading an exciting life with friends at a holiday camp rather than whiling away the days with dull colleagues in a grey office block.

The truth is that your employers don’t love you at all. They hate you. Not you as a person — as an employee — because everything about you is a cost: your salary, your national insurance, your pension, your PC, your phone, your workstation and its costly space.

They hate you because you take days off sick, because you come in with a hangover, because you make personal calls and look at funny viral e-mails, because you gossip. They hate you because you skip off each evening without a care in the world. They hate you because you are young and because you are old. They hate you for going off to have children and for not going off to have children but worrying that you should have done. They hate you because you haven’t the brains to make money on your own. They hate you for having the brains to ask for more pay.

Surely they can’t hate me, you say. I make money for the company. I am afraid they do; they suspect that you could be making more of it, that you might — just might — be indispensable.

So next time you see the boss gazing out over your floor, do not imagine it is a look of pride. He or she is looking at rows of little cost centres and wondering how many are worth it.

Come the day they say they hate to have to let you go, you’ll know that’s not true, either.

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