Posted by denised in 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.
