Really Bad Boss spans the globe in search of bad bosses everywhere.

Despite being the birthplace of the likes of Rod Blagojevich, Marion Barry and Michael Steele, the U.S. does not own the market on really bad boss behavior. Some bad boss stories from around the world:

Finland – Turns out, in Finland you can get arrested for aggravated dishonesty, the dangerous and obviously more aggravating relative of plain old dishonesty. Some Finnish chief executive ran a company into the ground and was detained earlier this week on suspicion of…you guessed it, aggravated dishonesty.  Can you imagine if they arrested all the dishonest American CEO’s?  Our penal system would be ruined.  And, if they expanded the arrest warrant to include politicians, well, let’s just say we’d have to create a new state. Read the full story here.

Nigeria – I know what you’re thinking, and no, madam, you have not qualified for a percentage of a $30 million inheritance left from the estate of a deceased head of state. And no, you will not have to provide your bank account information to access it.  But somebody will.  The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Wednesday published a list of high-profile debtors of the five ailing banks whose management were canned last week.  A report issued on the same day by the CBN named Aliko Dangote as one of the debtors.  Dangote, a billionaire tycoon rated by US Forbes magazine as one of the world’s richest Africans, has a net worth of around 3.3 billion dollars.  Don’t get me started on the rampant corruption in African nations that keeps much of the continent in a vicious cycle of poverty and abuse. Read the entire shameful story here.

China – We ran this story back in our early days, but the situation remains much the same.  Some Chinese factory workers make $57 for a 75 hour work week.  One of our readers commented that if the workers choose to work there, we should be ok with it.  I’m not so sure if there’s much of a choice if your options are between starvation and being overworked. Thoughts?

France – Remember when Elite Model CEO, Bertrand Hennet, was arrested earlier this year for cocaine possession?  We do.  Read the full post here.

Want to share your own international bad boss stories? Head to the comment section after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

A while back, the folks over at Business Management Daily asked administrative professionals “what was the craziest thing your boss ever asked you to do?”  Their comment section was flooded with responses.  Here’s a small sampling:

• “My boss wanted me to figure out what happened and fix his wife’s car that was sitting dead in a parking lot clear across town.”
• “Remind him when his children’s birthdays are and buy their presents and open his sandwich everyday to make sure there were no tomatoes on it.”
• “A President of company expected me to wash out his mug and lunch dishes and utensils daily. I was not allowed to throw out the plastic forks even if one prong was broken off, because it was still usable.”
• “Cut the tag out of the underpants she was wearing.”
• “He asked me to drop off his pet’s stool sample at the vet’s. And dropped off the container on my desk while I was having lunch.”
• “Drop off a urine specimen to his doctor.”
• “A former boss who ran a business from his home asked me to shave his neck before he left on a business trip.” 

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t trust myself with a razor anywhere near any of my bosses’ necks.  Read more of the crazy here.

Dan Schwabel over at Brazen Careerist posed a disturbing question today – What would you do if your boss sent you a friend request on Facebook? 

 After picking myself up off the floor at the realization that my boss actually had a Facebook account, I’d be pretty disturbed.  I haven’t always had bad bosses, but the thought of “friending” even the good ones gives me hives. 

So what’s an employee to do? Schwabel narrowed our options down to three. You could just accept the friend request unconditionally, granting your boss access to the most personal and sometimes most trivial details of your life.  Yeah…that would be a no for me.  The second, more palatable, but still disturbing alternative would be to accept the request and utilize your Facebook account settings to restrict what your boss will be able to see.  Utilizing that option would mean your boss would go to your wall, see your name, one photo of you and your dog, and know you’ve restricted his access.  Finally, and definitely more up my alley, you could explain to your boss that you want to keep your business and professional lives separate.  A reasonable boss would understand.  Actually, a reasonable boss wouldn’t have made the friend request in the first place. 

The flip side of granting your boss too much access to your personal life is learning way more than you ever wanted to know about his. Who cares what he had for breakfast or where he was on Saturday night?  And I for one, DO NOT want to see his semi-nude beach photos or who he’s been sending cocktails to.  That said, I choose option four, ignore his friend request all together.  Career suicide?  I doubt it, but if he’s that bad, I’m probably working on getting out of there anyway.  How would you deal with a friend request from a boss?

Sheryl Weinstein - Madoff's Other Secret

New memoir uncovers alleged 20 year Madoff affair

As recipient of a Really Bad Boss Lifetime Achievement Award, and possibly the worst money manager in the history of money managers, Bernie Madoff is a frequent target topic at Really Bad Boss (see Really bad boss rule#55:  When you’re in charge of managing people’s money and you steal it, you’re not allowed to keep it.) So we were hardly able to contain ourselves when we learned through the Associated Press that Bernie Madoff allegedly carried on a 20 year affair with one of his victims.  Talk about screwing someone over. 

Sheryl Weinstein apparently found Bernie Madoff irresistible in more ways than one.  In her newly released memoir “Madoff’s Other Secrets: Love, Money, Bernie and Me,”  Weinstein claims the two met at a business event while she was chief financial officer for Hadassah, a charitable women’s organization that also lost money to Madoff’s scheme.  While with the organization, Weinstein had a role in investment decisions.  Which begs the question, did Weinstein’s relationship with Madoff influence her, and thereby the organization’s decision to invest with the disgraced financier?  Better yet, how much of an influence did the relationship have and did it blind her to the truth about Madoff?  It certainly blinded Ruth Madoff.  Not only is she still claiming ignorance with regard to her husband’s crimes, but through her attorney she’s claiming to know nothing about the “alleged affair.” 

Weinstein, who’s been married for 37 years, says she had to sell her Manhattan home and that her investment losses have ruined her family.  I imagine the revelation of the affair also had something to do with the ruining the family part.  No doubt Weinstein releasing her book is an attempt to make up for some of the financial losses she suffered at the hands of Bernie Madoff.  And while we feel sympathy for those losses, she loses quite a few points for carrying on a 20 year affair with a criminal – a married criminal. Her story serves as a precautionary tale, reminding us that when you lie with dogs, you get fleas.

What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

• Tame your TOT (Terrible Office Tyrant) – Timing might help avoid at TOT meltdown. Interesting blog about ways to avoid a bad boss meltdown. 
• The guys over atBossTrenz want to fix your boss. If you tag your boss  they’ll anonymously send him/her a copy of their book.  I guess anything’s worth a try. 
• Fed up with bad bosses and a frustrating job market, former “serial employees” are using the Internet to give Noodleconomics a try. In our opinion, ramen noodles beat a really bad boss anyday.  
• The Earmark always manages to wrangle up a great list of really bad bosses, mostly of the political kind. Here’s the most recent.

This week in Really Bad Boss, political bad bosses shine…

• Mark Sanford’s been ridin’ dirty
  • Say it aint so – Roland Burris threatens to keep his senate seat because “people keep telling him he should.” We’re not buying it.
  • Ten things employers do that drive job seekers crazy. CNN had five, we knew we could find at least five more.
  • The slap that launched a thousand fantasies…

The Really Bad Boss Friday Funny 

If I had a dollar for every fantasy I’ve had that involved slapping my really bad boss so hard he flew out of his chair, I’d be rich. What economic crisis? 

In my fantasy, I’m the guy in the white shirt, and my really bad boss is in blue.  In reality, this is supposedly a teacher-student interaction. For the record, if I was posting this as an article, the really bad boss in this scenario would be the teacher.  Slapping the hell out of your student is a no-no, no matter how disruptive he’s being.  I bet you the other guy is really happy his teacher is right handed!