A look at what the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

According to Yahoo Finance, “the day of reckoning has arrived” for bad bosses - If only. Truth is, really bad bosses never read articles on bad bosses. They either don’t know or don’t care. Nevertheless, Yahoo asks, what kind of bad boss are you? Choices include poor preparation, lacking influence and not knowing your job. They forgot to include ‘jackass.’  Check out the complete list here.

Surprise, surprise…or not, pastors can be bad bosses too – In the post Bad Boss Pastors Who Drive You Nuts, the site Church Forward, lists several ways pastors drive their staff nuts including pretending they know better than everyone else and constantly checking their phone at meetings.

Ten Ways to Be a Better Boss – Over on the Rodg3R blogspot they propose 10 pretty effective ways to be a better boss. One of our personal favorites? Public praise, private punishment. Great advice, we wish more bosses would listen.

Management needs training too! – So why won’t anyone give them any?! The Training Time Blogspot is trying to change that. A resource for HR Managers, the article makes the excellent and sadly overlooked point that for bad bosses, “the right training at the right time could transform those rule-huggers and glory hogs into leaders.” Finally someone in HR is acknowledging this fact. We’re wondering though, what do you do if it’s the HR Manager who needs training?

Got a blog or post you’d like us to feature in the roundup? Email it to denised@reallybadboss.com.

Former bit-part actor and Bosley hair-transplant company salesman, Otis Duffey, is now suing the company for $3 million alleging sexual harassment and wrongful termination.

Duffy, who is a former European pro basketball player says that during his tenure with the company he was repeatedly subjected to sexual harassment at the hands of his female colleagues. The harassment included fondling his butt, grinding against him and propositioning him. “It was unsolicited, unwanted and basically taking away from my performance at work,” Duffy said. “…I wasn’t interested…and they weren’t my type. I dress very well,” he added. “I wear $700 Louis Vuitton shoes.” (Not sure why it matters that his shoes cost $700.)

Duffy says when he complained about the harassment, he was ordered to take a sex-harassment course and then terminated. He contends,  “I shouldn’t have to take a sexual harassment class when I was the one being harassed.”

Women harassing men doesn’t make it in the news very often. For one I imagine that some men may be embarrassed to admit that they find the sexual advances offensive. What are your thoughts on female on male sexual harassment in the work place? Have you experienced or witnessed it? Share your thoughts in the comment section.

Story and image source: New York Daily News

In this week’s installment of Managing the Meanies, Buck continues with his story of a former colleague who’d had enough of his bully bosses and jumped ship to the competition, sparking panic and hysteria…

The Inquisition

Shortly after my colleague left his company, there followed an inquisition. Like a CIA security breech his defection sparked interrogations – hysteria of a sort – panic and accusations. His former boss was incredulous; how could this have happened? There was a frantic activity around ferreting out a conspiracy; who knew about his defection? Who was complicit in this treasonous conduct? Disbelief and shock thundered around the halls of the corporate headquarters. Like the final scene in the Wizard of Oz, someone was really upset, but did anyone venture to take a hard look inside the company? Did anyone inquire into the real reasons why he left? In many ways the inquisition was indeed a smoke screen, a clever deception scheme to divert attention away from the truth and that is that my friend defected from his company, went to a competitor and took nearly all of the former company’s business with him because he had tired of paying homage to the ego alter.

Small in stature

I struggled with a similar bad-boss relationship a few years ago, all the time asking myself why I was so stupid as to tolerate the abuse. Arguably the worst boss that I ever worked for, this insecure guy was a real Machiavellian character, a dangerous corporate animal that everyone was afraid of…or rather, we were afraid of his moods and he knew it. Smaller in stature that the rest of us, he always stood with his hands in his pockets and he seemed to wear a perpetual grin, a quirk that I always found to be disquieting. This was particularly evident while he was working you over, disciplining you while showing a full toothy grin. I recall thinking that this was the strangest behavior – perhaps he was always nervous I thought – until it was explained to me that such a grin, a full display of teeth during a confrontational situation is a 100,000 year old simian left-over from our primate origins. Still a sign of aggression in chimps, the human expression is no less dangerous a warning.

This guy really rounded off the panoply of bad boss criteria. He was the ultimate corporate survivor, determined to be left standing when the final roll call was made. Despite being a senior manager and an officer in the corporation, he never made a critical or important decision, was never involved in high profile affairs, and as such was immune to the corporate witch hunts and purges. It’s a sad note to have to remark that this guy, like many other bad bosses that I’ve known, is still mismanaging those unfortunate enough to be reporting to him.

Next Tuesday: “Yeah…but people just don’t get it.”

Editor’s note: 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.

For me it was when the president of the small family owned company I worked for had one of his female employees strut around the office wearing a bikini under the guise of “auditioning” to be the next model for one of our product lines. It was not only humiliating for the woman who did it, it was humiliating for the rest of us who had to sit there and watch it happen. Of course we were all young and dumb back then and no one even considered contacting the EEOC – which is what we should have done.

I’d like to say that was the worst “it’s time for a new job when…” story I had to tell, but sadly it isn’t. Coming in a close second was the government position where the office managers went around inspecting our legs to make sure we were wearing pantyhose. A not so distant third was the job where the boss never wore deodorant, rarely paid me on time and was absolutely clueless about anything remotely resembling management skills.

It happens to all of us. That one decisive moment when we know that no matter how long it takes, or how hard we have to work at it, we are getting out of dodge. After years of subtle and not so subtle abuse it can be something as little as a disparaging look delivered by a particularly bad boss, or a lack of a “great job” after you’ve just busted your hump on a major project, that sets you over the edge. It’s in that moment that you know, once and for all, that economy be damned, you are going to find a new job.

We’d like to hear your some of your best “It’s time for a new job when…” stories. Share them in our comment section or email them to denised@reallybadboss.com.  We’ll be sure to share them in a future post.

This week in Really Bad Boss…

More worst boss ever stories – And you thought your boss was bad. This crackpot hit one of her employees in the head with a book!

Cronyism at its finest – Buck Henry delivered another great installment of Managing the Meanies this week, discussing workplace cronyism and its destructive effects.

Male on male sexual harassment is on the rise, and its no surprise that these claims are harder to win than “traditional” harassment cases.

Conan is king – He spent two weeks dissing his bosses on national TV and might $40 million for doing it!

What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

Coping with a bad boss Oprah style – We’ve never heard anything about Oprah being a bad boss. In fact she takes her entire staff on vacation every year. This week on her radio show Oprah & Friends, host Jean Chatzky talks with O, The Oprah Magazine columnist Suzy Welch about coping with a bad boss.

Ehow begins its post about handling a bad boss with this piece of sage advice “Identify your boss’ key bad behavior. If it’s sexism, racism or other discrimination, it’s illegal. Report specific incidents to human resources.”

From Workplace Babble – Gen Y Workplace and bad management. How do you manage the Gen Y workforce? If you’re smart, very well.

Workplace Diva – On average, employees spend 13 hours worrying on the job and 6.2 hours worrying over the weekend about their bosses say and do. We certainly know what that’s like.

Is there anyway to know if you’re about to be terminated? The Career Doctor (did you even know there was one?) says that while there might not be a way to know when a termination is coming, your best bet is to have your resume ready.

Despite his hurt feelings about losing The Tonight Show, Conan O’Brien is in an envious position right now and it’s not just because of his reported $40 million payout for leaving NBC. Conan is king because he got to mock, ridicule and otherwise shame the bad boss goofs at NBC who got him and the network in this whole mess in the first place.

Think about it. For the last couple of weeks, Conan’s been paid millions of dollars to diss his own bosses – and he’s been loving it, and so have we.  Julia Roberts even got in on it on the red carpet at the Golden Globes. And although Leno was some of the collateral damage – deservedly or not – the world stood behind Conan in declaring the real screw ups in this matter as NBC. How often does that happen? How often in “real life” does the laid off employee get a national platform to complain about his bosses and there’s nothing the bosses can do about it? Never. And that’s why, no matter where you fall in the late night battle between Jay and Conan, you’ve got to admit, that at least for a little while, Conan was king.