Earlier this week I received an email from a reader. In it she describes a manager so obsessed with her church and charitable organization that she’s lying and essentially stealing from her employer to support them. Amazingly she doesn’t see the irony in sinning to support her church. Some of her comments are unbelievable. Don’t take my word for it, read it for yourself…

Dear Denise,

I report to the Bus. Dev. Manager – a lady with 23 years of experience in her field of expertise and good at her job when she focuses on it.
Why is she the boss from Hell ?
a. She gets angry when she has to do actual WORK because it interrupts her extra-curricular activities – CHURCH & CHARITY. Screaming, shouting are the highlights of the day.
b. All her staff are bullied into supporting her Church Charity Organisation – coerced into buying books, donating money  etc. If we dont, we are ungrateful, stingy, godless creatures.
c. She lies to HR about her activities in the field – urgent meeting with client actually means church meeting to disscuss fund-raising) etc…. you catch my drift.  All employees are required to lie blatanly saying that she has a meeting with important clients.
d. Her entertainment claim for company’s clients is utilised for taking pastor and his family, church board directors for big lunches and dinners, wooing potential contributors for her charitable organisation.
e. Her petrol card provided by the company is used for ferrying various church members to and fro. Collection of donation in kind from existing company’s clients all in the name of charity.
f.  Personal remarks she has made to me – I’m not blessed by God that’s why I dont own a car, cant carry a designer brand handbag, have no husband. Your personal life must be an open book to her.
g. Personal remarks she has made to me – I’m a negative personality that’s why I don’t go to Church. She (Boss) is very blessed and that’s why God has given her a Mercedes.
h. Personal remarks to me and others – If God has blessed you, you have no money problems, you will not be sick etc. Only Christian people are honest and do good work.
i.  Personal remarks to me and others – She is a happy person because God has blessed her for her passion in doing charity work. Because we dont support her charity, we will not be blessed hence no bonus and no increment.
j.  I was never told that handling the paperwork for her Christian Charity org. was in my job scope during the interview. Her pet charity home was launched in 2009. During my recent appraisal, I asked her for an incentive as this was extra work.  Her response was that I was ungrateful, did I not realize this was GOD’s work?, she also threatened me saying that she would fire me, make sure that I would be disciplined by HR for insubordination.
k. Her tirade went on for an hour whereby she stated that she has tried to counsel and instill CHRISTIAN VALUES in her staff but I’m ungrateful, extremely cold person and resistant to change and need to be taught a lesson.
l.  Her statement “anyone who goes against me will end up badly.” By the way HR Manager is deadly afraid of her because my boss is on very good terms with the CEO of the company. All complaints, protests by me and other employees to HR have been squashed. Instead, HR liberally issues disciplinary action letters upon request by my boss for our department.

Suffice to say this is the last straw for me – after 3 years of enduring her personal remarks and abuse; I am actively seeking a position elsewhere. In my department when my boss joined in 2007, there were 7 of us. Now only my boss and I remain in this department. I tolerated and swallowed this abuse for years. Nobody deserves this sort of treament.

A Victim

Sounds like ‘A Victim’ works for a real lunatic. I hope her job search goes well and she’s able to get away from this woman as soon as possible. I wonder if the lunatics pastor knows she’s stealing time and resources from her company to care for the church? Something tells me he/she’s got to have some idea about what’s going on. And if so, they’re just as bad as she is.

Send your bad boss story to denised@reallybadboss.com.

In Part 4 of 10 signs you might be getting a bad boss, I conclude the series by talking about interviewers who ask illegal questions and about listening to your gut…

9. Are you married? What’s your religion? What are you anyway? I touched on illegal questions last week in sign#2 when I talked about the interviewer who, without asking outright, was fishing around to find out whether I had kids or not. In the case where an interviewer comes right out and asks illegal questions, run, don’t walk to the nearest exit. Any interviewer worth their weight knows that certain questions are off limits. If they’re asking you these questions, they either are trying to intimidate you, or have a hard time hiding their biases. Either way, it’s not a place you want to work. Some examples of illegal interview questions include:

• Do you have a visual, speech, or hearing disability?
• Are you planning to have a family? When?
• Have you ever filed a workers’ compensation claim?
• How many days of work did you miss last year due to illness?
• Would you have a problem working with a female partner?
• Do you have children? How old are they?
• What year did you graduate from high school? (reveals age)

For a list of additional illegal interview questions, click here.

10. The final sign you might end up with a bad boss isn’t based on research or scientific fact, it boils down to following your instinct. If you sit through the entire interview with the feeling that something isn’t right, then you’re probably right. Be careful not to confuse that instinct with nerves, but if you don’t have a good feeling about an interview, it might be a sign that you shouldn’t take the job. I’ve ignored that instinct several times in the past and regretted it each time. You never know, your gut might be telling you to let this one go because there’s an even a better one waiting in the wings.

If you’ve got some suggestions for things to watch out for during an interview, share them in the comment section or email them to denised@reallybadboss.com.

Over the past several days I’ve shared Parts 1 & 2 of my series, You Might be Getting a Bad Boss if… Signs of bad boss trouble to watch out for during an interview include loaded questions, rudeness, lateness, and a position that seems to be a revolving door. In part 3 of the series, I reveal three more signs you might be getting a bad boss -  inappropriate comments, you get an offer on the spot and you get the feeling you’re interviewing for a job at Camelot…

6. I should have known the minute he started referring to women as girls, and explaining why men do “so many things” better than women, to get up and walk out. But I was 25, anxious to start my first “real” job after college and desperate to move out on my own. His comments that day were the first of countless inappropriate comments my really bad boss of 2 years would continue to make during the time I worked for him. If there was an “ism” at the end of the word, he committed it. Racism, sexism, classism, ageism, this bad boss was an expert in all those areas. And during the interview he basically told me as much. But I was so eager to get the job, I refused to see what was right in front of me. If your interviewer starts making inappropriate comments during the interview, be thankful you were forewarned and get the heck out of dodge.

7. The same boss who littered my interview with inappropriate comments also offered me the position on the spot. Some might argue that that’s not a bad thing, but as I soon learned after accepting the position, hiring me on the spot revealed an impulsiveness in his character. As a fellow colleague put it, “if he can make a hiring decision that quickly, he’ll make a firing one just as quickly.” She was absolutely right. Over the next two years, I watched that boss fire talented, dedicated employees on the spot, for simple errors, or just because he “felt like it.” Impulsiveness might be great for rollercoaster rides but when it comes to a boss, trust me, you’ll want a little more stability.

8. If you’re given the impression that you’re interviewing for a job in Camelot, watch out. No company is perfect, and while there are great jobs at great companies do exist, if an interviewer paints a too rosy picture of where you’ll be working, be on guard. It’s not customary for interviewers to tell you that anything’s wrong with the company, if they’re laying it on too thick, they might be hiding some major issues. The online dating world provides a great analogy. You know that guy who looks so great in his online picture, and shows up to the date 50 pounds heavier and bald? That’s what a Camelot interview is like. The thing is, you might have been interested in a heavy, bald guy had you known what you were dealing with from the start, but the covering up and pretending to be someone you’re not brings into question his honesty. The same can be said for a company being represented by someone who misleads potential candidates.

Next: Part 4 – Illegal questions and listening to your gut

A supreme court ruling last week made it a little easier for companies to monitor employee cell phone and text use. The court ruled that employers have the right to read its workers text messages  if they believe workplace rules are being broken.

The ruling came in the case of The City of Ontario v. Quon. Sergeant Jeff Quon sued the city, the police chief and the police department in 2004 claiming his supervisor’s search of his text messages violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Quon had been using his government issued pager to send sexually explicit messages. When Quon went over his allotted 25,000 character limit per month, his supervisor reviewed his pager use to determine whether the limit was enough for official purposes. That’s when Quon’s sexually explicit messages to his wife at the time, and his mistress were discovered.

Quon sued claiming that the city didn’t have a text-message policy in place when the pagers were issued. The city did have official policies about computer, Internet and email use that limited the use to official purposes.

While I typically come down on the side of the employee in many matters, I can’t side with Quon on this one. If Quon had been using his personal pager/cell phone to send messages, that would be a different story, but I think any adult who’s spent any time in the workforce should know that employers typically monitor the use of any equipment they’ve issued, whether that’s a laptop, cell phone or pager. And, while I might get a lot of heat for this, I think that it’s within their right to do so – particularly if there are limits on the amount and type of usage they allow. As an individual, if you want to send sexy text messages until the cows come home, by all means do so, but do it on your own phone, on your own service plan where your expectation of privacy is legitimate. Read the full story on Quon and the court ruling here.

Do you agree with the court ruling? How do you feel about privacy issues in the workplace? Share your thoughts in the comment section.

Early on in the life of this site, I made an error that caused the site to go down for several hours. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) at the time I had only a handful of readers visiting the site on a daily basis. However, if you’re a blogger, you know that any amount of down time is bad. What made it worse was that I was the cause of the problem. My saving Grace? Admitting that I’d made a mistake – a huge one – and finding a friend to help me who knew exactly what he was doing.

There are some bosses who never, ever admit when they’ve made a mistake – Even when faced with indisputable evidence that they’ve messed up royally, a really bad boss will go to his grave before admitting to making a mistake. It’s one of the worst and most common mistakes bad bosses make. Why? Many bosses feel as though admitting to a mistake reduces their credibility and thereby their ability to manage effectively. In fact, the opposite is often the case. A boss’ ability to admit to making a mistake says to his employees, “I’m not perfect, I know I’m not perfect, and now I’m going to show you how someone who’s really in control handles a crisis.”

Pretending you’re infallible, even as everyone around you recognizes there’s a problem, says “I’m unstable and probably shouldn’t be trusted to lead.” I once had a boss who made a serious error in calculating some figures. When confronted with her mistake, rather than admit to it, she tried to explain that she’d used a different method for calculating her figures.  Not different information or data, a different method for adding and subtracting.  Ridiculous, but true.  Other than arithmetic, I was, and still am unaware of any other method for adding and subtracting numbers.  We never looked at her quite the same again, referring to her as the manager who rather than admitting a mistake, created her own private system of mathematics.

After a couple of hours, my knowledgeable friend restored my site to its former glory. The fact that you’re reading my mea culpa today means that fortunately for me, fatal errors in the blogosphere aren’t terminal, and neither are my mistakes. Bosses, do us all a favor – admit when you’ve made a mistake. It’s the only way to begin the process of fixing what went wrong in the first place.

What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

• “In the end, turnover is mostly a manager issue.” I couldn’t agree more. On the site flameofhope.net, a guest post by Dr. Zimmerman falls in line with what we’ve been saying all along, bad bosses are bad for business. Check out Zimmerman’s insights here.

• Call center staff in Britain say their bad bosses are treating them like caged animals – battery hens to be exact. The Mirror’s report found that some staff were allowed only eight minutes for bathroom breaks during an eight-hour shift. Read the whole story here.

• I called it. Remember Debrahlee Lorenzana, the woman who was way too sexy and distracting to keep her job with Citibank. I smelled a reality star wannabe and it’s begun! The Frisky’s reporting that Ms. Lorenzana is now starring in a promotional video for Long Island Plastic Surgical Group in which she touts her second breast augmentation surgery and says she wants to be “tits on a stick.” Wonderful – she’s just set sexual harassment causes back a decade. Read the full story here.

• Over at the Worcester Business Journal, the article Boss Management 101 offers advice on ways to make working with a bad boss less stressful. Some of the tips include; identifying your boss’ management style and asking the right questions. Read the full article here.

Earlier this month Keenon Aampay Hall a teacher at a Gwinnett County, Georgia school, resigned after being accused of seducing her football player student.

The 29 year old teacher and 17 year old football player who came to her for “tutoring”, allegedly carried on a six-month affair that included rendezvous in the classroom, viewing of pornography and underaged drinking. Although stories like this have become unfortunately more common, in a surprising twist, the student complained to administrators after he says Hall gave him a failing grade when he refused to get her pregnant.

In another twist, although Hall could lose her teaching certificate, despite having sex with a student, she could avoid becoming registered as a sex offender. While sex (even if it is “consensual”) between teachers and students in Georgia is treated as sexual assault, a loophole in Georgia law that was only fixed after this case came to light, made 16 the cut off age for the offense to be chargeable. At the time of the relationship in question, the student involved was 17.

Gwinnett County Public School officials are still investigating Hall.  During a human resources investigation into her conduct Hall resigned citing medical reasons. We think she’s got a strong case for insanity.  Photo – AJC: Keenon Hall

Read the full story here.