have served your father. Yet your father has deceived me and changed my wages ten times, but God did not allow him to hurt me."

It is not your boss's job to make you rich. It is your job to be rich if you want to. Jacob's experience in the employment bf Laban illustrates this lesson so powerfully. Experience, they say, is the best teacher: provided it is not your own experience.

There are at least twenty one (21) reasons why you should fire your boss before he fires you.

1. Your boss will never make you rich and he is not in anyway responsible for making you rich.

2. Your boss pegs your financial and material progress.

3. Your boss gives you a job all your life. Job is an acronym for Just - Over - Broke.

4. Your boss keeps you under the illusion of Job Security. The truth is this; "Job Security" died many years ago. It does not exist anymore anywhere.

5. Your boss pays you just enough so you won't quit. For instance when Jacob threatened to quit Laban's employment in Genesis 30:25­. Send me away, that I may go to my own place and to my country. Laban replied in the typical employers fashion in Genesis 30:28. Then he said, name me your wages, and I will give it.

6. Your boss makes you fee1 you cannot do without salary. People who need salary are slaves to salary.

7. Your boss makes you obligated/indebted to him by keeping you under constant fear of loosing your job or being desolate.

8. Your boss makes you work hard all your life, claims your most profitable prime time in life, the most precious 100,000 hours in return for "take home" which hardly takes you home. And you know that with all my might I have served your father. Genesis 31:6.

9. Your boss provokes you to anger; jealousy and hatred. This is why 96% of employees return to the work they hate to go, and to see faces they are not too comfortable to put up with. I often asked to know, in my various business seminars across the country, those who would readily go back to work the following week if five million dollars were handed over to them. I have never seen more than five hands in two hundred. The hands usually go down each time the value of the offer was raised.

10. Your boss uses you as leverage for his wealth. He converts your virtue, talent, knowledge, expertise, energy, influence, sweat, and connections to personal and corporate wealth.

11. No boss can ever pay up to your minimum worth at work. To compute your minimum worth in terms of wages, consultants recommend you multiply your current salary by 16 and double it. This is often proved during employer/employee negotiation for salary increase. The elasticity of wages is often determined by the bargaining strength of either party. If you don't ask employers, they don't mind keeping you at the same salary level for years, and as in the case of Jacob, he had his salary reviewed downwards. Genesis 31:7.

12. Your boss keeps your personal vision buried and subjected to the corporate vision and mission. That is to be expected, as you cannot have two captains in a ship.

13. Your boss determines where you live, who your neighbours are and for how long. He prescribes the proximity of the place of work to your residence the moment you are notified of your resumption time if you would not be late to work; you take a cue from your place of employment in deciding where to live. I know of children that changed schools five times within six years because of the exigencies of work, occasioned by constant transfer of their father at work.

14. Your boss determines what leisure time you have and how you spend it. Employers determine when your leave/vacation is appropriate. They determine when you get back home and when 'you leave home. This point was driven home to me one day. I was having a late dinner around 11:00 p.m with my family when we heard a knock on the door. It was my managing director's driver. I was urgently needed to advice him on a major issue. Dinner ended there and then. I know of managers who have not been on vacation for the past ten years because the operation would not permit the luxury.

15. Your boss monitors you and suspects you when you start getting rich faster than your pay. Genesis 31:1-2. Now Jacob heard the words of Laban sons saying, Jacob has taken away all that was our fathers, he has acquired all his wealth. And Jacob saw the countenance of Laban, and indeed it was not favourable toward him as before.

16. Your boss hates competition, especially from you. Don't allow your spouse, religion, family or family interest to come between the two of you. Neither should they know that you have interest in any other business, no matter the extent of your involvement.

17. Your boss is mightier than you, and since might is always right, your boss is always right.

18. Your boss has no permanent friend among any of his staff that includes you - only permanent interest - which is profit.

19. As far as your boss is concerned, you are an overhead, an item of expenditure. You are retained until he finds you replaceable.

20. Your advancement in age is a source of concern to your boss - so a means of gracefully easing you out is put in place called, succession planning.

21. Your boss plans for you to be poorer after leaving paid employment knowing fully well that your capacity to earn declines over time. Your boss still sends you forth with pittance in the name of retirement benefits which hardly covers 20% of your living expenses at old age.

Jacob recounted his experience in the employment of Laban before he decided to fire his boss and hire himself Genesis 31:42. Unless the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac had been with me, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God has seen my affliction and the labour of my hands, and rebuked you last night.

Is it not time to cry like Jacob cried out to himself in Genesis 30:30 and now, when shall I also provide for my own house?

Albert O. Aina is a Management Consultant with a divine mandate to raise effective leaders for the church, empower business people and motivate the young generation for a life of purpose and achievement. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Christian Leadership Inc. and Alaryn Management Centre Ltd. His organizations conducts Leadership Conferences, Pastor’s Retreats, Ushers Seminars, Sunday School and House Fellowship Workshop, Business Breakthrough seminar as well as Men and Youth Conferences across the country. Rev. Aina is the senior Pastor of Foursquare Gospel Church Saabo Zonal H/q. Lagos.