Have you ever worked for someone who was so excruciatingly awful you spent your days dreaming of their deliciously dreadful demise?
If so, console yourself with the fact that no matter how bad your boss is, they can't possibly be as bad as the terrifying trio of employers played by Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Spacey, and Colin Farrell in the riotously funny comedy Horrible Bosses.
Jason Bateman (The Switch), Jason Sudeikis (The Bounty Hunter), and Charlie Day (Going the Distance) are three ordinary guys who just can't take any more of their bosses' evil ways.
When they meet ex-con Jamie Foxx in a shady bar one night and he offers to be their 'murder consultant', they think their problems will soon be over.
Fortunately, the film's stars haven't had to endure any genuinely horrible bosses themselves. As Jason Sudeikis said at the film's London press conference:
I haven't had a bad boss really, or if I have I've usually lost the job or quit it. But acting-wise, I've been pretty fortunate personally.
But Kevin Spacey, who takes managerial malice to new heights in his role as Dave Harken, had this to say:
I've never had a horrible boss, but I have had really remarkably stupid bosses. And that is frustrating because you think: 'How did they get this job?' And then you realise 'Oh right, they're the son of...'
For Jason Bateman, it was an odd request, rather than a bad boss, that almost had him throwing in the towel on an acting job before he'd even started:
I was strongly encouraged to learn guitar for Juno. There was one scene where I play two lines from some Courtney Love song and I just didn't see the need for it and I actually passed on the movie because they kept coming with guitar lessons! But we managed to find a compromise and I ended up doing the movie.
Of course, Spacey, who plays Bateman's horrible boss in the movie, has been a real-life boss himself since he became Artistic Director of the Old Vic. So how does he think he fares in the supervisor stakes?
I've been very fortunate since I started at the Old Vic. I'm now in my eighth year of living here and we're at the end of our seventh season of work. I guess there's a little over 60 employees in the company and they get what we're about and they make me look very good.
I learned to delegate early on and trust them. And I like to make people feel the way I feel when I'm in the presence of somebody who's in the position of authority, whether that's someone like Mike Nichols or Sam Mendes currently. They create an atmosphere in which everybody just wants to come to work and do their best for them. And that's the kind of environment I try to create.
Of all the movie's bosses, Jennifer Aniston's turn as man-eating dentist Dr Julia Harris is quite possibly the most surprising. So, where did she find her inspiration?
Oh, Kevin Spacey... [she laughs]. No, I have never come across anyone like her. So, it was pretty much just going into my own dark imagination and seeing what I could come up with.
And was Aniston ever concerned about taking on the outrageously raunchy role which pretty much turns her girl-next-door image on its head?
Did I worry about that? No, not at all. That was the fun of it... how far it went. The entire movie really went for it. It didn't do 'sort of horrible bosses'. They were really horrible!
That's what's fantastic about being able to do something like that - it's so outrageous and it's limitless. So, you just get to have complete abandon and not worry if you're being completely inappropriate at all. And I loved that.
Horrible Bosses, in cinemas from 22 July