This week in Really Bad Boss…

• The arrogance factor – Bad boss trait #9, and you can usually spot it a mile away. Little people with little minds and a little bit of power – a disastrous combination.

• Buck Hamilton concluded his Managing the Meanies series by defining the real problem with bad bosses.

• A couple of Walmart employees suit Walmart. Walmart then fires them. Not so smart Walmart.

• Bad bosses and bad employees, bully bosses get a pass, bosses who give up, and more in this week’s blog roundup.

What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

• Candadian site, GlobeLife wants you to know “What to do when your boss is a bully.” The post centers around a new book out that alleges that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was a big bully to his staff. While some claim the PM was merely passionate, Gary Namie, founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute, suggests that calling bully behavior passionate, sends the message that  everyone else should “learn to live with it.”

• Got a boss who’s a perfectionist? Be Ruly offers a couple of pretty good suggestions for dealing with a perfectionist boss. We’re big fans of her Defensive Documentation suggestion.

• What to do when your boss gives up – While some might use it as an excuse to give up too, if you’ve got career goals then giving up on a boss who’s given up, is not an option. The New York Times offers suggestions from leading management experts on what to do. And although we wouldn’t necessarily suggest going this route, they even share the story of a group of employees who were bold enough to confront their own boss.

• Frank Newell’s back with part 2 of Bad bosses, bad employees. This time he’s talking about bad employees, specifically the thieving kind.

• NWsource reports that a new study proves what we’ve known along. Bad bosses who appear to be good performers get a pass. Upper management, and anyone outside of the line of fire for that matter, may not want to befriend the bad boss, but they’ll accept the bad behavior “as long as they don’t think they’re the next target.”

Last week we reported the story of 48 year old William Fals-Stewart, a researcher at the University at Buffalo from 2000 to 2005 who was being was charged with among other things, grand larceny, perjury, and offering a false instrument after hiring actors to testify on his behalf at a university inquiry:

According to state prosecutors, 48 year old William Fals-Stewart, a researcher at the University at Buffalo from 2000 to 2005, was being investigated for allegedly inflating the number of research recruits in reports he provided to the National Institutes of Health.  To answer the accusations, Fals-Stewart reportedly hired three actors to testify by phone at a university misconduct hearing.  The actors were told they were being hired for a mock trial training exercise, but were actually offering sworn testimony before an inquiry panel.  Using scripts provided by Fals-Steward, the actors testified that they had worked on his projects at the university’s Research Institute on Addiction.

Following the investigation and the testimony provided by the actors, the inquiry panel recommended that the investigation against Fals-Stewart be dropped. Claiming his reputation had been tarnished, Fals-Stewart filed a federal lawsuit against the state, asking for $4 million. It was actually this greedy maneuver that ultimately got him caught however because it was in preparing to fight the suit that state prosecutors uncovered the fraud.

Well, a reader just alerted us that Fals-Stewart died suddenly on Tuesday afternoon and was pronounced dead at his Eden, N.Y. home. The cause of death has yet to be determined. Real the full story here.

In a move that has employment lawyers around the country scratching their heads, Walmart fired a couple from their Monticello NY store shortly after the pair filed age discrimination and sexual harassment suits against the retailer.

The store claims that the couple, who have been employed by Walmart for nearly fifteen years jointly, were terminated based on poor absentee and time management records. The couple claims that they’re being harassed by management and that they’ve informed management on numerous occasions that the absences shown in the system are incorrect.

What makes the firing seem pretty stupid on Walmart’s part is that here you have a couple of employees who, up until they filed their lawsuits, appeared to be good enough workers to stay employed with Walmart for eight and seven years respectively. Then, within a relatively short period of time they develop poor attendance and time management issues? Sounds a little hokey to us. Check out the full story at Law.com, and decide for yourself.

In the last of installment of his Managing the Meanies series, Buck Hamilton breaks down the real problem with bad bosses. Despite our personal objections to bad management and the havoc it wreaks on our own lives and careers, ultimately who suffers most are the companies who employ and promote bad managers…

Despite what might seem to be a very negative venting of my resentments and  disappointments — a mile of clichés could perhaps sum up my situation, ax to grind, sour grapes, sore loser, to name but a few — I can assert that the problem of poor leadership is pervasive in management today and that such bad bossing is as instrumental in the demise of a company as any of the other excuses that the key bosses offer to explain their own short-comings.

Nearly all of the companies that I have worked for over the years have folded and one in particular is presently on the verge of bankruptcy with financial collapse a near certainty as this is being written. And the same de-motivating bully bosses are still there mismanaging the company down the tubes. Nearly all of the talented people are gone, some long ago defected to other companies, some were fired for not being team players and others have gone off on their own to become very successful entrepreneurs. Those remaining are the uninspired, the weaklings and the timid, the corporate animals, too, that know the survival tactics and those that are there because they’re beholden to the machinations of the corporate political game.

What none of these people realize is that those that left the company, the truly talented and inspiring leaders, are the ones whose superb performance would have launched the company and its management into greatness.

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. He’s shared his excellent “Managing the Meanies: A Survival Guide”  series on Really Bad Boss over the past several weeks. We thank Buck Hamilton for his contribution and wish him continued success.

A friend of mine (let’s call him Mike) called to vent the other day. He’d just gotten a call from someone in HR at a company he’d applied for a position with. The HR manager, apparently took the time to contact Mike – out of what I’m sure was hundreds of applicants – just to give him a hard time about applying for the position.

The HR manager started the conversation with some disparaging remarks about Mike’s resume then spent several minutes asking my friend why he thought he’d be a fit for the company. You should know that based on the job description that was posted, Mike was more than qualified for the position. There were a couple of areas where he could have been stronger, but the HR manager didn’t seem to  be calling to try to determine Mike’s qualifications, she seemed determined, simply, to belittle him. She came off as bossy, inconsiderate and very arrogant.

When I worked for the government, our offices were full of arrogant, incompetent middle managers with little formal education and even less people skills. Working for them was frustrating and infuriating. I once had an assistant manager stop me on my way into the building to tell me to remove my sunglasses from the top of my head. I’d perched them up there when I’d walked into the building and hadn’t made it to my office yet when she came barreling around the corner to tell me to remove them. When I told her that I’d just walked in, she told me that I was in now, and that I needed to take them off immediately. She didn’t seem to see the irony in pointing out the unprofessionalism in “glasses perching” while employees around us watched her browbeat me over something so minor. Of course, this was a member of the same management team that routinely conducted clandestine trashcan searches and pantyhose checks on its female employees.

That assistant manager was – and still is – a small minded woman, with very little power, and even less skill. She and the HR manager who grilled Mike are a lot alike. Both are little people with little minds, given a little bit of authority.  Authority, even a little bit of it, is a dangerous thing in the hands of a fool.

As is often the case in poorly managed enterprises, not only is the sunglass czar still employed, she’s now tormenting and harassing perfectly decent employees as the division’s manager. Unfortunately for us, management by fear and loathing is not only tolerated, it’s often rewarded. As for the HR Manager who was rude to Mike, I’m willing to bet that if she goes unchecked, the company will have a hard time hiring and keeping the most qualified candidates.

This week in Really Bad Boss

• 5 really bad boss behaviors that should die a quick and painful death.

• Buck’s Managing the Meanies contribution asked whether bosses could be one person in the office and a different one entirely outside of it. Buck certainly doesn’t think so.

• Need a couple witnesses to testify on your behalf? Why not hire a couple of actors to do it for you? That’s what this University at Buffalo researcher did.

• The web was all abuzz this week with talk of firing bad teachers, yet another sexual harassment case and bad bosses and bad employees. Check out this week’s blog roundup for the scoop.