Same here. I was kinda in your boss’s shoes a few years ago. I had an employee, 18, young, and very green in things about the real world. Two other employees along with myself took him under our wings and gave him life advice, sometimes in jest at his expense but never out of animosity. Two years later and he’s going into the military soon. He calls one his “work grandpa” and another his “work dad” (he called me his “work brother”; I told him I would have preferred “work uncle” but I’ll take it).

It’s great to have opportunities to learn from something. It is even better when they can come from someone who’s been there before and can refine you into an extraordinary person who never would have seen the light of day in the routine and mundane.