What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

• The Human Resources Info Blogspot offers 3 Tips to Diffuse a Problem Boss. Throwing cold water on them is apparently not an option.
• Job dissatisfaction is on the rise, even down under. Australian on-line mag WA Today discusses the problem and suggests 12 questions to ask yourself to determine, even in this economy, if you should be looking elsewhere for employment.
• Workforce Management Today asks the question; Has the employer-employee relationship changed for good? A quote from someone they interviewed for the article pretty much sums it up, “Let them fire me. I don’t even care what happens anymore. I’ll just go work somewhere else and be totally unhappy in that job too.”
• Democracy at its finest – New site will allow state employees to rate their bosses. I CAN’T WAIT!!

Every day I get emails or comments from people suffering under the burden of a really bad boss. I feel the frustration and powerlessness in their words and it breaks my heart. If you’ve never had a really bad boss, your tendency might be to downplay their concerns, but as someone who’s been in the exact same position as most of my readers, I know all too well what they’re feeling.

A reader from Australia commented yesterday about an employer who’s gaining a reputation as a company who mistreats its employees, and has the high turnover rate to prove it. She talked specifically about a director who took “great pleasure in bullying her employees.”  Reading her comment dredged up old feelings of anger and sadness I felt in the days when I worked for people just like that.  It’s a lonely, oppressive feeling.  You want desperately to get out, but the reality of needing your job outweighs everything else.

My really bad bosses have run the gamut from domineering men who were sexist, verbally abusive and just plain old offensive, to women, much like the one my reader alluded to, who ran their offices like a boarding house, bullying everyone just to make them feel better about themselves.  But regardless of the type of boss, or their gender, the resulting outcome was the same; an office of demoralized, demeaned individuals, desperate to get out.  And maybe the most disheartening part of having a really bad boss, is the eventual realization that neither Human Resources or upper management is coming to the rescue.

As a really bad boss “survivor”, I’d encourage those of you currently dealing with one to hang in there.  If your situation is anything like mine was, leaving right now might not be an option.  I’ve always said, you can’t always change the way people treat you, but you can change the way you react to them. The justifiable anger and frustration you’re feeling, is only eating you up. Trust me, your tool of a boss is sleeping like a baby and not spending one second of his self important life worrying about you.  The fact of the matter is, worrying about the worse case scenario never prevented it from happening.  But preparing for it can.

If you’re someone who’s gotten out from under a really bad boss, share your experiences and lessons learned in the comment section.  You never know how many people you might be helping. Read the rest of this entry »

An article in Business Management Daily warns bosses against mistakenly believing that consensual sexual activity with their subordinates gets them off the hook for sexual harassment.  Case in point, the sensational case of Augusto Medina and the late Frederick “the Rev. Ike” Eikerenkoetter, a former Florida based evangelist.

Medina was hired by the church to be the pastor’s personal assistant. Medina claimed the pastor made him engage in a sexual relationship and sued the church for sexual harassment.  The church and the reverend denied any sexual relationship, but claimed that even if there had been one, the lawsuit was baseless since Medina himself admitted to consenting. It’s the old “I didn’t do it, but even if I had done it, you let me” argument.  The court didn’t buy it either, citing the supervisory relationship between Medina and Reverend Ike.

Office fraternization is common – even when explicitly forbidden by company rules. But when you get people spending more time with colleagues than with their spouses, these things happen. And while workplace dalliances are always risky, when they involve bosses and their subordinates, the risks multiply.

Business Management Daily suggests that companies consider banning all personal relationships between supervisors and subordinates.  And while many companies will take that suggestion, at least on paper anyway, we all know that banning them won’t put an end to them.  I’ve been in environments where there were obvious signs of a relationship going on between a subordinate and a member of management.  It’s bad for office morale, and it causes everyone to question the leadership.  We couldn’t see any evidence that HR or other management attempted to do anything to remedy the situation.  Maybe realizing that not interceding could threaten their bottom line, is the boost some employers need to finally take action.

Kanye in full jackass mode

Sometimes, really bad behavior forces me to veer slightly off topic.  Usually it’s news from the entertainment world.  And last night, Kanye proved that he deserved to be talked about here, and is, in fact, still a jackass.  If you don’t believe me, watch the video link here. Kanye ran on stage during Taylor Swifts’ acceptance speech at last night’s VMAs to whine about Beyonce’s video deserving the award. Everyone, including Beyonce was shocked, and Swift looked humiliated.

The only excuse for this is if Kanye has a legitimate mental disorder.  But, I don’t think so. I think if his mug isn’t plastered everywhere on a regular basis, his ego just can’t handle it.  And, he’s brilliant, because here I am talking about him, and really, I couldn’t give a damn about Kanye West. And, wasn’t there a Michael Jackson tribute lat night?? He’s a genius for getting everybody to talk about him the night the VMAs have a tribute to MJ.

Thankfully, Beyonce saved the day when, after receiving her own award, she invited Swift on stage to finish her acceptance speech. I’m waiting for West to start asking us if a black man can’t get a break.  Our answer is, not when he acts like that.

The worst kind of betrayal is one you never see coming. New jobs are a lot like relationships in that way. I call it the Sweet Deceit. It’s that warm, fuzzy, deceptive feeling of comfort and security that sets in when you start a new job.  It blinds you to glaring omissions during the interview process, or the inability of the interviewer to make direct eye contact, and it quiets that voice in your head that’s screaming “girl, RUN.” You fall even harder if you’ve left a really bad job or bad boss behind. Everything is exciting and new and thrilling and you feel like you can conquer the world.

That’s how I felt when I left my low paying, dead end job working for the government, to accept a slightly less low paying but much more promising position working in the private sector.  With the promise of a new career, came lofty dreams of conquering the world, one marketing plan at a time. It was a sweet, hopeful feeling and it lasted about eight months.

I should have been suspicious when the VP of marketing took me to lunch during my first week and dedicated much of the conversation to denying the rumor that he was “seeing” the CEO. A rumor I had not yet heard nor cared anything about.  The whole time he kept talking, I kept thinking “thou dost protest too much methinks…”  Couple that with the lie I was told about a low turnover rate. A lie which was uncovered after less than a month on the job when I learned that all the people the HR Manager told me had been with the company for 20 years, were crazy. All two of them. She also neglected to mention that everyone else in the office (a relatively small in-house staff of less than 20 people) had been with the company for less than 4 years. I probably could have probed deeper, should have asked more detailed questions, but I was coming from an office who’s idea of professionalism included random pantyhose inspections and snackless hell. Anything, I thought, absolutely anything, would be a step up. And for a little while I was right.

For a while, I let the deception about the turnover rate and secret rendezvous slide. I even tried to ignore the unpredictable, and sometimes volatile, behavior of the HR Manager, holding out hope that my dream job would somehow become a reality.  I now know I had too much hope in them, and not enough in myself. Had I not been so blinded by helping someone else – the company, it’s owners – achieve their goals, I probably would have been more focused on achieving mine. I stayed and worked. Worked hard. While the HR Manager took long lunches and skipped out early every Friday, I toiled to make things right. While the CEO played solitaire at his desk, the worker bees toiled away preparing  national presentations on his behalf. I was dedicated and committed to weatherering the company through the storm. The problem was, while I was dedicated to the company, the leadership was dedicated to itself.

Which brings me to a lesson learned

Work hard… for yourself.  Yes, of course, you’re getting paid to work for them, and work you should. I put in ten hour days and worked weekends because I wanted to do a good job for the company. And when it was all said and done, I wanted them to acknowledge my efforts and reward my dedication.  For my efforts however, I got an “eh” severance package, a hug from an HR manager I loathed, and a LinkedIn request to join her network (yes, she was that clueless.)

Fortunately, that’s not all I got. I hadn’t just been working hard for the company, I also worked hard because I wanted to learn and absorb everything I could. I wanted the challenge of producing quality work with a nothing budget. I wanted to learn how to keep a cool head amidst chaos and confusion. And I wanted to know that I could produce under pressure, extreme pressure. Had I not been motivated to work hard for my own self growth, being laid off would have been a devastating blow. Instead, the layoff gave me the presence of mine to put everything I’d learned to work for me. It certainly isn’t easy, but working hard for yourself pays off long after the job you’re working for stops paying you.

My next lesson…Fool me once, shame on you

This week in Really Bad Boss…

• Who’s training new college grads? – Better question, who’s training the people who hire them?
  Stewart Heath – Pulled a gun on his employees and stole from a bunch of other people. If you’re one of his victims, share your story.
  From the “This never happens” files – A CFO has to cut costs and decides to fire himself. Leadership at its finest.
  Blog Roundup – 7 signs you’re a bad boss, 4 ways to handle a bad boss and guess how much bad bosses cost the U.S. annually? Hint – It’s a lot.

What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses:

• 7 signs you’re a bad boss – Only seven? There are a ton more, but these seven are a good start.
• What makes someone a bad boss -  Ji Hyun Lee tells us in her post over at Brazen Careerist.
• 4 ways to handle a bad boss – On her blog 45 Things, Anita suggests putting together a plan of action for dealing with a bad boss. And no, it doesn’t involve violence.
• Bad bosses cost us big bucks - USC business professors wrote the definitive book on the subject, and turns out boorish behavior in the workplace costs the U.S. $300 billion in losses annually.  Maybe now companies will do something about it. Or maybe not.