Yesterday I shared a comment from one of our readers regarding bad bosses and their bad rules. Today I’m sharing something another reader submitted in response to the original comment. In a show of camaraderie with her fellow bad boss sufferer, she shares her personal experience dealing with an outrageously incompetent boss.

I recently left a job that I loved because I could not stand to deal with my Dept Manager and her own set of rules any longer. When the co first hired her and she was moved to our dept, we were informed that she was coming in as a co-worker (we needed the assistance as we were all working 12-14 hour days). We were a small group of 10 and immediately tried to welcome her and bring her up to speed with what we do. She rebuffed any friendly overtures and acted like she knew more about what we did than our entire dept combined. We ended up losing 12 major law firms that we worked with in light of her behavior. Unfortunately, her direct boss chalked it up to “growing pains” & not as a result of her antics.

It wasn’t long after that that she was made our dept head. The office atmosphere changed immediately from fast-paced and friendly to tense and stressful. Other than “managing”, she did not pick up any of our case load, but she did cut overtime to 1 hour only each day (we were still expected to maintain the same number of closed files each week, however, and had to produce a Daily Mgmt Report for her. Talk about a waste of time & paper! Each of us spent the last 30 minutes of every work day preparing one for her that we could NOT email. We had to print them out and personally hand them in. She would peruse them (30 seconds at the most) and then crumple them up and throw them away. In addition, she re-organized our case load so that each of us were dealing with a new group of clients. Not necessarily a bad idea except that each of us had built up our own relationships with these individuals. At least 40% of our client base made complaints to higher mgmt. A month later she changed everything back – a good idea in light of the complaints, but we lost a lot of ground in the meantime while trying to build new connections & accomplish what we needed to do.
Unfortunately, things did not stop there. She, too, implemented a cell-free zone – while leaving hers on prominent display in the center of her desk. She spent at least 3 hours of each work day sexting her boyfriend. We were not even allowed to use cells at lunch unless we left the building (several of us grabbed lunch at our desk in light of the demands of the office.) Btw…leaving the building to take a call was not an option as it took 10 minutes in any direction to exit the building. When she was made manager, she changed the 1 hour lunch to 2- 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch (she was a smoker). My entire dept was female and the majority were mothers who would use the 1 hour lunch to run home & put the crockpot on or pick up prescriptions for their children, etc, while us non-mothers stayed behind & took care of answering any calls that came in (as we were friendly, it was a system that worked for all of us.) Her new lunch implementation changed all of that.

Much like the boss in yesterday’s post, this boss seemed to implement rules that not only destroyed employee morale, but was also counterproductive. I like to call this the arrogance factor – where bossing people around is more important than managing them.

Tomorrow: Part 3 of bad boss, bad rules

Last week we received a comment on the site in response to the post, Could a bad boss be worse than war? The commenter was at the end of her rope. Her frustration was evident in this simple statement – “There has to be some type of answer to this problem.” Here’s her story:

There has to be some type of answer to this problem. Someone needs to rewrite the law on what goes on in the workplace, whether it is harassment or bullying. Where I work, we encounter harassment and bullying by the office manager. This office manager is the savior of the world and we are nothing.

There are two sets of rules the office employees must follow one for her and the other for us. No personal phone calls only at lunch time and no cell phone use during the day. But it is ok for this office manager to receive personal phone calls during the course of the work day and her cell phone goes off (personal calls) and she leaves the office the speak to whoever and does not come back to work for 1/2 hr later.

In my review I was reminded that personal calls were not allowed and I told the office manager that when doctors calls I must speak to them, it’s when they are available for me to talk to them not when I’m available. My husband is very sick and I need to discuss things with them. You speak to doctors when they are available not when you are available. She told me that the doctors should call my husband and not me. But it is ok for the office managers doctors to call about her, her husband, sister-in-law, etc. I can go on and on but I won’t. I need some type of help regarding this situation. Can you help me?

While what her employer is doing seems heartless, it’s probably not illegal. If they’ve got policies that state there’s no cell phone use in the office, then employees are required to abide by those policies. Is it fair in this case where an employee has a true medical situation to deal with? No, but it’s probably legal. As for management having their own set of rules, we’ve dealt with this topic before. There are different rules for the rest of us. Managers, by virtue of their position, are allowed more “freedom” than employees, and some of it is justified. But when management adopts an “in your face” stance that seems to flaunt their freedom in the face of subordinates, it’s not only not cool, it’s debilitating to employee morale.

What are your thoughts on corporate rules and policies? Should there ever be exceptions? What advice would you give our reader who’s obviously between a rock and a hard place? Share your thoughts in our comment section.

For the second time in my career, I found myself in the unenviable position of having to deal with a really bad boss at a time in the economy when finding a new job seemed like a long shot.  For most of us, no matter how bad the boss is, looking for a new job when unemployment rates are at record highs is not a wise move.  You’re competing with the newly laid off and new graduates, and you never know if, God forbid, you’ll be trading in a really bad boss for a really, really bad one.

I stayed with my really bad boss for a couple of years. But in the end, after a lot of hard work and smart job hunting, I did eventually leave the boss I now refer to as the Troll.  Along the way I collected my share of hard knocks. There were days when things were so bad that at the end of the day I’d collapse in tears, too mentally and physically drained to even eat. And lets be clear – me not eating is like 90 degree weather in Alaska – its very rare and demands immediate investigation. My family and friends got me through the roughest times and when I realized I would have to stay in those jobs longer than I’d wanted to, I decided that if I had to stay, I’d learn as much as possible while I was there.

As my bosses piled assignment after assignment on me, in areas outside of my field of expertise, I scoured the Internet, signed up for online courses and learned whatever I needed to. I worked for an international company that offered free language classes online – so I took them. When I was tapped to develop training materials in an area in which I had little experience, I called friends and former colleagues who offered great advice and assistance.

As for my mental well being – I found that as I focused more on the invaluable experience I was gaining, and less on the Troll who was running the company, my days went by quicker and I began to enjoy my evenings and weekends again. In the end I was able to use everything I learned working for the Troll to secure my next position. During the interview when I was asked if I had experience doing  thing ‘A’, I was able to say, “Interestingly enough, while  thing ‘A’ wasn’t in my original job description, I stepped up to the plate, got the training I needed and have been performing ‘A’ successfully for the past year.” Being able to confidently say that during my interview was the cake…getting a job offer shortly after was the icing.

How are you coping with a really bad boss? Share your coping strategies with us in the comment section.

This article was originally posted on 4/09

What the blogosphere’s saying – and doing – about bosses this week…

• Pass me a donut – Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that stress, particularly chronic stress, is known to have a negative impact on health. University of Rochester Medical Center researchers have observed that workplace stress is strongly associated with being overweight or obese. Read the full article here.

• Don’t let incompetent bosses stand in your way – According to Financialpost.com, “the process of adapting to an incompetent boss begins with adopting an ‘it is what it is’ attitude so you don’t beat your head against a wall wishing the situation will change.” It’s maybe not what you want to hear, but they’re probably right.

• Careerealism.com – We love this site’s tag line, “Because every job is temporary.” Careerealism’s mission is to become the world’s number one blog for career advice. With free webinars and lots of professional advice about dealing with bad bosses, they’re well on their way.

• Glassdoor.com – Gives you an inside look at over 70,000 companies, all for free. The site offers salary details, company reviews, and interview questions — all posted anonymously by employees and job seekers. Sign up, create an account and get started today.

Over at the Ventura County Star Ritch K. Eich, poses a great question – Were you meant to be a leader or just a boss? Well, which one are you? Eich makes several clear distinctions, including:

• A leader is a champion for his or her employees. The boss tends to see his or her employees as a means to an end.
• A leader shows congeniality and respect to everyone regardless of his or her rank. The boss may seek to be pleasant and charming to executives but is indifferent or even demeaning toward direct reports. The saying “smiles up the organization and frowns down the organization” captures the point well.
• A leader will prohibit his managers from being demeaning, disrespectful or verbally abusive to others. A boss often turns his back on such behavior and may exhibit it himself.

Eich rightly argues that any person in a decision-making capacity, formal or informal, who advances the strategic goals of the business, who contributes mightily to institutional performance and who treats people fairly, honestly and compassionately is a leader. Everyone else, by definition, is just a boss. And therein lies the problem. At a time when leadership is needed the most, our companies, schools and politics are rife with bosses and too few leaders. The long term effects of that will be reflected in our ability to do business and affect true change on a global scale.

To read Eich’s complete list of what differentiates a leader from a boss, click here.

Ugandan Refugees

Yes according to a book by Barb Wigley, whose research on violence in the workplace found that aid workers suffered high stress resulting from problems dealing with managers and bureaucracies, particularly since they spend so much time away from the support of friends and family. According to Wigley,  “They need a little bit more from their managers, because they’re working in situations with violence and insecurity.” And it appears that that’s the one thing they aren’t getting.

One aid worker in Sri Lanka voiced her concern at finding that management was more of an issue than what was going on in the country around her, “I was expecting the conflict and the stress, but what really brought me down was how mean my manager was to me.”  According to Wigly, many aid workers leave jobs because of poor management. Bullying and bad bosses aren’t just issues with small agencies or remote locations. Aid workers have also expressed frustration when dealing with large organizations like the United Nations.

In difficult environments, managers need to know how to work well and communicate with the team, instead, they resort to bullying. Wigley’s research found that aid agencies can end up ignoring staff relations because of the “higher” goals they’re involved in pursuing.  Agencies are slowly waking up to their management issues, but Wigly says,  it’s difficult to overhaul a whole culture.

Some of the worst bad boss letters I’ve ever received came from individual’s working for non-profit agencies where bad bosses are allowed to stay because they help bring in donations. The problem with that, as it is with for-profit businesses, you end up losing your best and brightest employees.

Source: Reuters

A new study conducted by the University of Connecticut finds that women who witness the sexual harassment of other women develop a desire to “move away” from men as a group. The phenomenon, known as “bystander sexism”, means that women who witness harassment tend to experience anger towards men in general and be more wary of being approached by men they don’t know. In other words, men who sexually harass women may be screwing things up for the good guys out there.

So aside from putting a damper on a man’s game, what are the potential consequences of “bystander sexism” in the workplace? For one, men feel frustration at being unable to approach women in a way that won’t be perceived as harassment. In an office environment where relationships and interactions can already be tenuous, heightened sensitivity could turn your typical office into a minefield. University of Connecticut researcher Stephenie Chaudoir says “…men who are not harassers and men who are not doing anything wrong end up being painted in the eyes of women, at least for some period of time, in a negative way.”

Read a detailed summary of the study at the Washington City Paper, and share your experiences, male or female, dealing with or witnessing sexual harassment in the workplace in our comment section.