No surprise here, a large number of really bad boss stories in 2009 were directly related to bosses who either took advantage of the boss/employee dynamic for sexual favors or turned a blind eye to workers who did. Here are a few of the most memorable…

Bad Medicine

You’re the director of a major hospital in Queens, NY and over an 8 year period you recieve numerous written and verbal complaints about one of your doctors.  You ignore the complaints and allow the doctor to continue working at the hospital.  That decision could cost the hospital  $15 million.  Actually, $7.5 million.  A Queens, NY jury found both the doctor and the hospital equally liable.  The nurse who brought the suit, Janet Blanco, says she suffered sexual torment at the hands of Dr. Matthew Miller for over 8 years.  Read the rest of this entry

No quiero Taco Bell

Another fast food manager gets out of pocket and Taco Bell now has to pay $350,000 to two female  employees as a result of an EEOC lawsuit. In another case of sexual predator parading as management, really bad boss Terence E. Davis, a former Taco Bell manager, was accused of sexually assaulting a 16 year old female employee on her first day of work.  When she left to go home following the assault, he even followed her.  During their investigation, the EEOC also uncovered evidence that Davis had raped another 16 year old employee just five months earlier.   Davis plead guilty to raping both women and is serving two concurrent eight year sentences. The EEOC tried to reach a voluntary settlement with the Irvine, California based Taco Bell Corporation, but was unsuccessful.  In addition to the $350,000 payout, Taco Bell must maintain a written policy against sexual harassment and will distribute the policy to all employees. Read the whole story here.

Have your way at Burger King

Not to be outdone by the Taco Bell manager, a Clemmons, North Carolina Burger King Manager upped the ante.  Kathleen Joyner, a teenaged employee at the fast food restaurant, sued Burger King after she was repeatedly propositioned for sex by her General Manager. When she reported the sexual harassment to assistant managers, they did nothing.  Now Burger King Inc. will have to fork over $85,000 for damages and provide sexual harassment training to its supervisors.

Regardless of where you work, if you’ve reached the level of General Manager, I’m pretty certain you ’ve rubbed up against at least one sexual harassment policy along the way.  The truth is, men and women who stalk their employees like prey usually know exactly what the company’s sexual harassment policies are.  They simply choose to ignore them.

Former Israeli Prime Minister charged with rape

This story was in the news non-stop a couple of years ago, but now Israel’s ex-president, Moshe Katsav, has been formally charged with several counts of rape, sexual harassment and indecent acts.  The 63 year old father of 5 was forced to step down from office in 2007 after accepting a controversial plea agreement that would have had him facing lesser charges.  Katsav was instead accused of sexually harassing two women and performing indecent acts, but later withdrew from the agreement.

Katsav’s former secretary accused him of raping her when she worked for him in the late 1990’s.  He denies all charges and says he’s the victim of a “lynching.”  If convicted of rape, he could face up to 16 years in jail.  Read the full story here.

David Letterman and his worldwide pants…

When David Letterman revealed he’d been the target of a $2 million blackmail scheme carried out by a CBS 48 Hours producer, not everyone was shocked. But it did raise the question about the “consensual” nature of boss/employee relationships in the workplace. Here’s how we saw it then…

Let’s be clear here, the criminal in this story is the CBS 48 Hours producer who attempted to blackmail Letterman.  Let’s also understand though that Letterman’s a married man with a 6 year old child who’d been in a relationship with his now wife for over 20 years. Infidelity is old news, and frankly, Letterman’s cheating comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone.  The big story here (aside from the cloak and dagger blackmail plot) is Letterman having sex with his employees. Read the rest here.

2009 was full of them. Tools. Men and women who, despite being put into positions of power, couldn’t disguise their true, tool selves. Here are a few of Really Bad Boss’ favorite tools of 2009:

Roland Burris was bad enough to earn slots in both our shady politicians and tool of the week roundups. Here’s how we summed him up back in August.

It seems as though politicians are falling all over themselves to display tool-like behavior.  If we could unilaterally present the award to the architects of the birther movement and the healthcare town hall showdowns, we would.  But, in keeping with tradition, we’ll give the award to a single individual who’s recently displayed very tool-like behavior.

This week, it’s a toss-up between Blagojevich puppet, Senator (we use the term loosely) Roland Burris and Governor Mark “don’t cry for me Argentina” Sanford.  Sanford’s personal use of his state’s plane has rightfully fallen under scrutiny. Pickups from his son’s games and flights to get discount haircuts, all funded by taxpayer dollars, deservedly put Sanford in the running.

However, Burris gets the award this week for announcing a change of heart and declaring that he might run to retain his senate seat.  He then provided further proof that he’s operating solely on fumes when he declared “people all over the country” were urging him to run.  When pressed, Burris could not specify what country or clearly define what he meant by “people.”

The New Jersey Massive.  Remember them? Here’s a refresher.

This one is about a week late in coming, and it’s technically 44 tools…but we’ve got to give it to the group we now refer to as the New Jersey Massive.  The NJ Massive includes Rabbis, assemblymen, mayors and a host of other elected and appointed officials allegedly involved in crimes ranging from money laundering to human kidney selling.  The turnpike isn’t the only thing that stinks in New Jersey.

Brilliantly Stupid Boss

We kind of tread lightly on this one, after all she was the victim. But we had a hard time believing that this extremely intelligent, highly paid woman would be duped into living in abject poverty by her fake Rockefeller husband. Here’s how we saw it back in June…

The Harvard educated ex-wife of Rockefeller perpetrator Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter says she stayed married to a man who she says withheld food and kept her a mental prisoner throughout their 12 year marriage.  Gerhartsreiter, who’s on trial for kidnapping the couple’s 7 year old daughter last year, spent his entire adult life pretending to be someone else, the most famous of which was Clark Rockefeller, heir to the Rockefeller legacy. Read the full story here.

RNC Chair Michael Steele was a Really Bad Boss favorite this year.

RNC Chair Michael Steele continues to do everything in his power to attract minorities to the Republican Party.  And by attract, we mean swear them off for life.  He seems to be aiming for a Really Bad Boss Lifetime Achievement Award, and if he keeps it up, he’ll get several.  In his seven months as RNC Chair, Steele has done the following – Suggested that hosting hip hop rallies was the key to recruiting a younger, more diverse following for the Republican party. Declares there’ll be no more apologizing from the Republican Party, and then fearfully continues to apologize to Rush Limbaugh on the rare occasions when he has an original thought. Thinks that fried chicken and potato salad will attract diversity to the Republican Party.  In the same interview, refers to the end of slavery, but doesn’t seem to believe it himself. All this and he’s only held the position for about seven months. For his sheer ignorance and intense stupidity, Michael Steele gets this week’s Really Bad Boss Tool of the Week Award. He’s earned it.

Bosses behaving badly – Another Senator, another affair, another Tool of the week

Nevada’s Republican Senator John Ensign is the latest publicly elected figure caught up and out engaging in an extramarital affair.  It’s becoming rote. The headlines can practically write themselves.” Insert politican/public leader /CEO name here, has affair with 30ish assistant/campaign staff member/former model.”  In fact, it’s so common that this “news” almost didn’t make it as a post.  But then I started thinking.  The fact that extramarital affairs by public leaders have become so commonplace that it’s no longer news…is news. Read our take on it back in June here.

Valley Swim Club gets the Tool of the week award

Philadelphia Club rescinds camp’s membership  when they learn black children attend the camp – We know that members only (often code for whites only) clubs still exist.  But the fact that the president of one of these clubs (a club that advertises open membership) issues the following statement after members complain about black children swimming in their pool, reminds us that stupid is a club with more members than it can handle:

“There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club.”   John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club. Yes, he actually used the word complexion. Read the rest here.

Cheating on their wives wasn’t the only bad thing politicians and elected officials were caught doing in 2009. From judges operating above the law to mayors creating their own, 2009 was a banner year for political stupidity…

Judge Sam Kent’s law and major disorder

Just when we thought Rod Blagojevich was the biggest tool going, US District Judge Sam Kent literally and figuratively takes the title.  The 6′4″, 250 pound judge is disgusting.  He’s not just disgusting because he sexually harassed and tormented the female members of his Galveston, Texas courthouse for years – fondling them in the hallways, forcing one assistant’s head into his crotch and forcing his mouth unto another.  And, he’s not just disgusting because he was frequently drunk on the job.  Even alternately calling himself ‘the emperor of Galveston’, ‘the government’ and (insulting wildlife everywhere,) ‘the lion king’ wasn’t disgusting enough.  No, Kent is disgusting and deserves the Tool of the Week award because:

• In keeping with true Really Bad Boss behavior Kent first denied the sexual assaults claiming that the sexual contact was consensual. When he finally confessed, it was in a plea bargain that gave him a 33 month prison sentence for obstruction with the sexual misconduct charges being completely dropped.
• After initially denying the sexual assaults, Kent eventually blamed his behavior on “difficulties dealing with the death of his first wife and other issues.”

Read more about why Kent won our tool of the week award here…

This just in – Rod Blagojevich is still a tool. You know how much we love Blago right?  Well today we fell in love all over again as he pleaded not guilty to 16 federal criminal charges.  Blagojevich, hair perfectly in place, looked relaxed and confident as he entered his not guilty plea at the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago.  Blago said he was ”saddened and hurt…” by the indictment, and then told reporters to go f*** themselves.  No, he didn’t actually say the last part, or at least he wasn’t caught on camera saying it.  But  when all this drama began four months ago, he was heard on tape referring to now President Obama, as a “m***** f*****,” so cursing at reporters would certainly not be out of character for him.

As you know from our ongoing love affair with Kwame Kilpatrick, the only thing we love more than a really bad boss, is a really bad boss who, even when caught on tape, still denies any wrong doing.  It comes as absolutely no surprise to us that this pillar of the community continues to deny attempting to auction the, then vacant, Illinois senate seat to the highest bidder.

When Blagojevich finally does admit to some wrong doing, we’ll be sure to cover it here, along with the breaking news of pigs flying and hell freezing over.

We’re not buying it. No list that includes Rod Blagojevich is complete without Roland Burris. Burris still insists he didn’t try to buy his senate seat from Blagojevich. We didn’t believe him then, we don’t believe him now. Here’s how we saw it back in August.

A couple of weeks ago, Roland “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing” Burris, hinted at not running to retain the senate seat Blagojevich tried to sell him gave him.  We all breathed a collective sigh of relief.  At least I thought we did. Burris now says he might still be in the running because he’s being urged by “people all over the country” to run.  What country? Which people? And by all over does he mean all over his house?  Caus’ we’re not buying it.

That said, Marion Barry proved that some people could do anything and get reelected. And I guess being caught on tape negotiating the purchase of your senate seat, when compared to being caught on video smoking crack, is no big deal.  Nevertheless, right now most people, besides the ones in his basement encouraging him to run, just think he’s an idiot.  If by some miracle he’s actually elected to the position, we fear he’ll open his mouth one time too many and prove once and for all that he is.

What do you get when you mix two prostitutes and a former Republican party chair? A  beat-down. A politician can usually talk himself out of anything…except that is, a beat-down from his wife who’s  just caught him with two prostitutes.  Former Cook county Republican Party chair Gary Skoien denies he was with two prostitutes at around 1:00am last Sunday.  His wife begs to differ and police reports state she allegedly beat him (embellishment mine) after finding him at home in their children’s playroom with two women.  Skoien claims the police report is wrong and that he’s working on correcting it.  By correcting it he means denying it ever happened.

Editor’s note: Buck Hamilton’s Weekly Series, Managing the Meanies, will return  with all new posts on Tuesday, January 5th.

For the next couple of weeks, Really Bad Boss will be reposting our most popular and commented on bad boss stories of 2009. Today, we’ll highlight some of the best bad political boss stories of the year. From Mark Sanford to Kwame Kilpatrick, some politicians went to great lengths to unsuccessfully cover up secret lives…

Text and the City – Embarrassing text messages between Kwame Kilpatric (Detroit, Michigan mayor) and former mayoral chief of staff Christine Beatty (not his wife) were made public yesterday.  We are really big fans of Kwame Kilpatric.  Why?  Besides the fact that he gives us so much to work with,  the only thing worse than a really bad boss is a really bad boss who doesn’t know when to sit down and shut up.  After weeks of vehemently denying the affair, perjuring himself in court  and refusing to resign even though EVERYONE KNEW HE WAS LYING, prosecutors revealed the existence of  the text messages that would ultimately seal his fate.  Now that the messages have been made public, they reveal quite a few salty exchanges between the two. Nice mayoral conduct Kwame and yet another example of bosses behaving badly.  To read the nastiness in detail, click here.

Don’t cry for me Argentina – Well, as we reported yesterday, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was indeed in Argentina, trying to get his groove back.  In an emotional, tear filled press conference, Sanford (ironically tanned) apologized to his wife, his children and, it seems, to everyone else in the world.  Sanford, unlike many other of his ilk didn’t deny having the affair and came clean about it before evidence surfaced that would prove he was lying (think Kilpatrick, Edwards).  We can argue ad nauseam about whether or not unfaithful politicians should continue to be trusted by their constituents, but in Sanford’s case, what’s unarguable is his M.I.A  routine. You can’t just go AWOL because you feel a sudden urge to get your groove on.   Abandoning your office – even temporarily – without alerting your staff or your family, is inexcusable and cause for serious questioning of your mental stability.

I’m not a South Carolina resident, and ultimately the decision lies with them.  But in our opinion, Sanford’s disappearing act is a surefire sign of a Really Bad Boss.

This is happening waaaay too often – These politicians are keeping me busy. Last week while I was lollygagging about up north minding my own business, yet another Senator admitted to having sexay times with someone other than his wife, practically begging me to write about him here.

This time the senator was 47 year old Paul Stanley (R-TN), and his “indiscretion” was with a 22 year old intern.  The conservative Republican (of course) and abstinence only supporter (of course, of course), admitted to having a sexual relationship with his intern.  After much soul searching the senator decided to come clean because his conscience wouldn’t allow him to continue with the hypocrisy.  NOT.  What really happened was the intern’s boyfriend got a hold of some nudie pictures the senator took of his girlfriend and tried to blackmail him.  It was only then that the Senator saw the light and fessed up about the affair to local authorities, stopping the blackmailer in his tracks.  The boyfriend is now charged with trying to extort $10,000 from the senator.  And the senator has joined our growing list of political Really Bad Bosses.

As if the whole sordid tale wasn’t bad enough, guess how Stanley met his current wife? You guessed it, she was once his intern.  Read the entire hot mess of a story here.

Tomorrow: Affairs weren’t the only deception by politician’s in 2009

It’s a sinking feeling. One I’m all too familiar with. It starts out with your boss telling you she, or he, wants to talk to you. If he’s a real heel, he’ll get a hold of you on your cell phone (company provided or personal) late in the evening or even on the weekend. When your boss calls you at night or on the weekend, it’s never to give you a raise. The worst part about it is when you’ve got to wait until Monday morning to get the news.

This recently happened to a friend of mine.  A bunch of us were hanging out on Sunday evening, when she gets a voicemail from her boss telling her to give him a call back, “if she feels like it.” WTH? Who does that? On a Sunday? With no hint at all about why he’s calling? I’ll tell you who does that. A jerk. And unfortunately the business world is full of them. When I was laid off from my last position, my own jerk called me on the first day of my vacation, to lay me off. Why, you might ask, didn’t she just tell me the Friday before I left for vacation? Did I mention she was a jerk?

What I do know is that bad bosses – really bad bosses – whether by design or sheer incompetence, choose the worst times to do the worst things.  Layoffs, “come to Jesus meetings” and run of the mill, work-related bad news are all par for the course wherever you work. My issue is with the way these bad bosses choose to handle delivering it. Once after a particularly disastrous quarter, one boss called to blame me for the entire million dollar company’s poor  performance. Even though I was the marketing manager, he held me responsible for sales, production and inventory failures. Why? I was the only one stupid enough to take his call on a Friday evening.

I’ve spent over ten years working for bad bosses who made holding the proverbial ‘other shoe’ over their employees head into an art form. Some seemed to actually derive pleasure from passing on bad news at inopportune times. Others just seemed oblivious. Whatever their motivation, it was just one of the many really bad habits of really bad bosses. The light at the end of the tunnel? The worse these bosses were, the harder I worked to get away from them. I’ve also found that eventually  there’ll be a shoe looming over their heads as well. And I have to admit, when the other shoe finally did drop squarely on the shoulders of one of my most notorious bad bosses, I got a big kick over it – pun intended. Is that wrong?

In this week’s installment of Managing the Meanies, Buck introduces us to the bosses who only appreciate one opinion, their own.  Allowed to rein free in organizations, these really bad bosses are insecure, and dangerous for both the organization and the people who report to them…

Great communicators make great leaders, and the opposite is true as well

I have had bosses where the ebb and flow of dynamic conversation was absolutely prohibited. Having such a dialog would have empowered me, given me too much confidence and in turn would have diminished their control over me and the situation. One guy that I worked for had a desperate dislike for opinions – my professional advice and contributions, that is – and whenever I shared my thoughts on a matter he would quickly rebuke me. He was the one asking the questions, and my opinions, should he have entertained them, would simply diminish his control over the situation and me. Great communicators do indeed make great leaders and the opposite is true as well. Most bully-bosses are poor communicators, they tell you only what you barely need to know and not a fragment more. Keeping you in the dark and always guessing is their way of maintaining absolute control. It’s also their way of never making a poor decision, or any decision at all for that matter, bad decisions that someday might indict them for incompetence.

The corporate bully-boss that I just described above was a classic case-study in the realm of poor communication. Working for him was like being a laboratory rat in a complex labyrinth; you never really knew which corridor to go down. Should you just happen to work your way down the right path you’d be rewarded with no feed-back whatsoever, advance down the wrong path and you’d be jolted with a shock. It took me several years to figure out that the complete lack of direction from him was his way of never stumbling into a bad decision, and along with his dual-faced profile that he showed – lord and master to those below him, obsequious subject to those above – was the manner in which he skillfully survived in a senior management position for some twenty years of so!

Insecure managers are extremely dangerous people.

The tragedy here, and it can be described as no less so, is that those running the company don’t see these corporate de-motivators for who and what they really are; morale-busters just as pernicious to the health of the business as any other threat. One such de-motivator told me during my yearly performance review that I wasn’t a team player, a ridiculous condemnation that went into my file. I confidently shared my opinion with him that most people in the company, my colleagues as well as higher ups, would disagree with him. It was only because I offered contrary opinions to his from time to time, resisted his bullying threats and de-motivating intimidations that he branded me as such. It was me who was a threat to him. He perceived me to be more competent than he and when around I exposed him as the fraud that his own insecurities thought him to be. Insecure managers are extremely dangerous people.

Buck Hamilton is a sales and marketing executive who’s spent over thirty years working in the paper distribution business. He’s a prolific writer who’s presently working on a book which narrates the stories of sixteen Vietnam War veterans. You can read his weekly series  “Managing the Meanies: A Survival Guide” every Tuesday here on Really Bad Boss.

Talk about a bad boss! Earlier this year an audit of Dekalb County, Georgia elementary school Atherton Elementary revealed an unusually high number of eraser marks on the state’s standardized 5th grade CRCT math re-test. When further investigation revealed that the school’s principal, James Berry and assistant principal Doretha Alexander were behind the changes, both were arrested. State officials maintained that the higher scores helped the schools meet federal standards. The state said the scores improved significantly with the changes. On average, answers were altered 21 times per student, the majority of the changes making them correct.

Both administrators plead guilty to altering public documents and last week, DeKalb County District Attorney Gwen Keyes Fleming said that Berry will serve two years’ probation and pay a $1,000 fine. His sentence could have been as long as ten years. The state’s teacher licensing commission banned Berry from Georgia schools for two years. Alexander was banned for a year.

I don’t understand why the principal was only banned for two years. What do you have to do to get banned for life? Isn’t altering student test scores a good enough reason to get you banned from administrating at any public school for life? We’re sending the wrong message to the students here and we’re certainly not putting their well being first. Worse yet, other metro Atlanta schools are also being investigated including Deerwood Academy in Atlanta, and Parklane Elementary in Fulton County. Bad principles indeed. (Image – James Berry)

Source: WSBTV