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App tracks the wise who hate their bosses on Twitter

FireMe! takes note of all those who tweet about how much they loathe their hardworking bosses. It even has a leaderboard.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read
Such joy. Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

Frustration is an essential element of the human condition.

Nowhere is it more essential than at work, where people can be openly hostile, appallingly manipulative or, if you happen to work in the San Francisco Bay Area, passive-aggressive till your toenails crack.

You don't know who your friends are, so you have to be careful where and to whom you air your frustrations. However, given its essentially public nature, perhaps Twitter is not the best place and Twitterers are not the best ears.

Some people, though, can help themselves no more than when they are confronted with a chocolate gateau. They know they shouldn't, but, in a trice, they have. Some even come back for second helpings.

Now, some kindly Germans have come along to fully expose those who are temporarily taken by a need to express job-loathing. They have created an app called FireMe!, which lovingly collates tweets that could most politely be described as injudicious.

You know the kind of thing: "i hate my boss soooooo much. mad irritating!" So says tweeter Meeshell, caught by FireMe!.

Sometimes, 'Shell, it's best not come out of your shell to this degree.

If the boss sees it, you will lose your job as co-executive assistant sales co-ordinator or whatever fetching title you might have.

I am indebted to the Huffington Post -- a place where no one would ever, ever tweet anything bad about the boss -- for having noticed this app.

The tweets that FireMe! collects are separated into four categories: "Sexual Intercourses," "Haters," "Horrible Bosses" and the quite riveting "Potential Killers."

The first of these contains myriad tweets whose popular acronym is FML.

A highly representative one, from FauxFox reads: "F*** my job. I cant even pay my f***ing bills with the paychecks I get. I basically work for f***ing free right. I need a better job."

A poem to capitalism, if ever there were one.

The "Horrible Bosses" section tends to be full of single-syllable expressions too. The "Haters" simply use the word "hate" a lot.

However, the "Potential Killers" offer a little more variety, some volunteering to kill not merely their bosses, but everyone at work.

As if to open the wounds a little wider, FireMe! has constructed a leaderboard, its (possibly vain) attempt to judge who might be first in the firing line.

To become a leader, it seems that you have to tweet about hating your job quite a lot.

There will be those who'll wonder whether FireMe! is serving a useful social purpose. I fear it may help the bosses far more than the workers.

I can imagine so many thin-skinned CEOs and many-faced members of the human resources community bookmarking it and checking it religiously, alongside their obsessive examination of Glassdoor.