On Monday I shared part I of, You Might be Getting a Bad Boss if… The first signs of trouble during the interview included a position on a revolving door, the interviewer asking loaded questions, and making contradictory statements. In part 2 I tackle rudeness, lateness and unpreparedness.

You might be getting a bad boss if during your interview, the interviewer…

3. Is rude – As with all good-bad boss stories, this one is personal. I’d applied for a job online and the instructions stated that upon successful transmission of the application, a confirmation email would be sent. Well after submitting the application the first time and waiting 24 hours, no confirmation email ever showed up (yes, I checked my junk mail folder.) When the same thing happened with the second submission, I submitted the application a third time. This time I did receive a confirmation email, and a week later a phone call requesting an interview.

During the interview (that took all of about 15 minutes), the interviewer snared “Did you know you submitted your application THREE TIMES?!” When I explained that I hadn’t received a confirmation email for the first two submissions, she actually tsked, tsked! If that weren’t enough, she and the other woman who interviewed me, spent much of the 15 minutes acting as though I was wasting their time. I left the interview feeling disgusted with them and discouraged about my job search. So imagine my surprise when a couple of weeks later, after first sending a letter stating that I hadn’t gotten the job, the same interviewer called to offer me the position. Although I was currently in a job I hated, I felt I had no choice but to decline. If the women who would have become my colleagues couldn’t muster up enough “niceness” to be cordial during the interview, I couldn’t imagine what they’d be like to work for.

4. Is late – I understand that things happen. Meetings run late, emergencies arise and sometimes lateness can’t be avoided. But, if an interviewer keeps you waiting for half an hour or more, and is unapologetic upon his arrival, that might be a sign of someone who takes his employees for granted. In general, people who are perpetually late don’t value other people’s time as much as they do their own. And while there’s no way to tell from one late starting interview if you’re dealing with someone who values his time more than yours, if they’re unapologetic, that’s a sure sign that you are. Working for, or reporting to someone who’s always late often means working in an environment where there will always be a lack of organization and a lot of last minute rushing.

5. Is unprepared – I once sat through the first 10 minutes of an interview watching my interviewer shuffle through papers. Once he was done with that, he proceeded to read me someone else’s resume. In another interview when I asked about critical details of the position, my interviewer was unable to respond and didn’t offer to get the answers for me.

Unpreparedness, much like a perpetually late interviewer, points to a lack of planning and organization on someone’s part. If you’re being interviewed by someone in HR, who you won’t be reporting to, you might be wondering what’s the big deal? The big deal is, management that hires unprepared, unorganized people is equally unprepared and unorganized.

Just like we’ve got to put our best face forward for the interview, if the company’s best face is a late, unprepared or rude interviewer, then regardless of how good things may look on paper, if you accept a job offer, you might be in for a bumpy ride.

Next week: The conclusion of “You might be getting a bad boss if…”

So you finally snagged that interview. You’re dressed to impress, know your five year plan by heart and are ready to accept your dream job offer. But before you do, keep in mind the old saying, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. If you’re currently dealing with a bad boss, the tendency is to jump ship at the first sign of smoother waters. But, to use another cliché, you don’t want to jump from the frying pan and into the fire.

So how can you be sure about what you’re getting into? The answer is, you’re never really completely certain about the company you’re joining or the boss you’re about to report to. But if you pay close attention during the interview process, you might pick up on a few signs that may indicate you’re headed for rough waters.

In part I of You Might be Getting a Bad Boss, I list the first three of ten indicators that might suggest trouble ahead…

1. During the interview, the interviewer contradicts him/herself frequently – When you first inquire about why the position is open, you’re told the company is expanding. Later on the interviewer reveals that you’re replacing someone who’s no longer with the company. Whether the person was fired, or left by choice, the interviewers contradictory response could indicate either a predilection to, let’s just say, being fluid with the truth, or general confusion on their part. Either way, it’s not a good thing. Other contradictions I’ve experienced during interviews is waffling about turnover rates, the length of time the average employee stays with the company, and surprisingly enough, something as simple as office hours.

2. The interviewer begins a sentence with “Family is important, but…” – I once had a promising first stage interview with a Human Resources manager who ended the interview by asking me how important family was to me. I thought it was an odd question since most people I know would reply that their family is very important.  And that’s exactly how I responded. She responded that although it was important to her too, her job was more important. That response set alarms off. Although she hadn’t come straight out and asked me, I believe what she really wanted to know was whether I had children, and if they’d interfere with me doing my job. I didn’t and so they wouldn’t have, but that kind of inflexibility and probing on her part was telling.

Later on I found out that a friend who had accepted the position, routinely worked 70 hour workweeks, resulting in a nervous breakdown six months into the job. Would you believe that same HR Manager didn’t want to give her sick leave for the days of work she missed, and later terminated her for “lack of professionalism”? Be wary of illegal interview questions in disguise. Click here for examples of illegal interview questions.

3. The job has been open for a long time, or been filled and emptied in a short period of time – This happens in the hospitality industry pretty frequently, but if you’re dealing with a more stable industry, this kind of volatility might be a sign of bad management on a corporate level or a really bad boss on a more local level.  At one of the previous companies I worked for, the customer service manager position had been open for over a year. In a period of less than six months, they hired two candidates. One left after being unable to tolerate the level of unprofessionalism showed by her manager and the other was terminated for repeatedly falling asleep on the job. Either way, bad management was at the root of the problem. The problem in this scenario was management, and no amount of experience, talent or skill could make up for what they lacked.

Wednesday: Part II – Rude, late and unprepared

What the blogosphere’s saying about dealing with bad bosses this week…

• Your diploma is a passport to nothing – So begins an essay in a Canadian Newspaper by Rick Spence. Caitlin Kelly follows up with Eight Lessons That Might Help – a lesson for new college grads. I’m sure if I’d had some of this knowledge before accepting my first job, I wouldn’t have ended up with the horribly bad boss I suffered under for the first two years of my career.

• Employers, don’t take your employees for granted! And now there are even more reasons not to. On his blog SandersSays, Tim Sanders offers great insight into why employers should treat their employees with more respect. My favorite quote from the site – “By the time you realize your company’s culture stinks, it will be too late to turn the ship around, and when the economy totally improves – you are toast.”

• Over at The Working Girl blog, the working girl tackles the age old question about who makes a better boss – male or female. Check out her honest observations here.

• Over at Brainzooming, Mike Brown shares 5 things you can learn from a bad boss. No, intense hatred isn’t one of them. But he does point out that you can learn what a boss shouldn’t do, and I completely agree with that.

Apparently life can be pretty tough for a barista. Weeks ago we reported that the entire staff of Gorilla Coffee in Brooklyn, NY quit to protest a verbally abusive boss, and now Starbucks settles a case filed by former barista, Kati Moore, who claims the company was negligent when it failed to protect her from daily demands for sex from her store manager.

Moore’s story was featured on ABC’s “20/20” which investigated the sexual harassment of teens in the work place. Moore, who was 16 at the time of the alleged harassment, claims that her 24-year-old supervisor Tim Horton repeatedly summoned her for sex. When asked if she couldn’t have just said “no” when she was propositioned by Horton, Moore told ABC, “I didn’t feel like I could.” And that is why it’s always a bad idea for management to have sexual relationships with subordinates.

From David Letterman on down, the organizational power structure exists because for the most part, when people are told by their managers/bosses/supervisors to do something – even when they don’t want to – most of the time they’ll do it, no matter how ill advised. Why? They fear recrimination and they fear losing their jobs.

As a 24 year old working for satan’s first cousin, I experienced the effects of a sexist, racist, bully boss. And I put up with it for 2 years, not just because I was young and dumb (which I was) but mostly because I was afraid of losing my job. Now imagine the thought process of a 16 year old girl. It’s not a big stretch to understand that fear and naiveté played a big part in her decision to “do as she was told.”

Although Starbucks claims the pair was involved in a consensual sexual relationship that went against company policy, the coffee giant settled just weeks before the suit was set to go to trial. Neither side has discussed the terms of the agreement or whether Starbucks will now institute a policy protecting teens from sexual harassment. I’m willing to bet a vente latte that they will, and soon.

Image – Kati Moore. Source: ABC News

“…your pants are too tight.” That’s one of the things Debrahlee Lorenzana said her bosses told her before firing her from her position at Citibank. Lorenzana says that she was told that the combination of the shape of her body and the clothes she wore were ‘too distracting’ for her male colleagues.

The list of clothing Lorenzana couldn’t wear included turtlenecks, pencil skirts, fitted suits and three inch heels. So now Lorenzana is, you guessed it, suing Citibank for wrongful termination. And to bolster her case (?), Lorenzana’s attorney got her to do a photo shoot seen here (Lorenzana shown left.) But the thing is, in my opinion, the photos are intended to look sensual. They don’t look like the photos of a woman fighting to get her job back or to make a stand against women being discriminated against in the workplace. They look like the pictures of a woman auditioning to be the star of the next big and stupid reality show. Am I wrong?

Offices have dress codes, and whether you’re tall and curvy or short and fat, a too tight skirt is a too tight skirt. Citibank’s stupidity comes in singling out Ms. Lorenzana and basically blaming her because her male colleagues can’t keep their mind on work. We once had a woman come into the office on casual Friday in biker shorts and a tank top. Men and women alike were distracted – not because she was this tall, voluptuous model type, but because you just don’t wear biker shorts and a tank top to work unless you’re working at the Tour de France.

It’ll be interesting to see how this case pans out. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find Ms. Lorenzana showing up on a reality show sometime in the very near future. Image Credits: Carrie Schechter

Source: NY Daily News

Years ago when jobs were plentiful (ask you parents about it), if you had a really bad boss, you’d do one of two things. You’d hit the streets – literally – in search of a new job, or you’d bite your tongue, bide your time and wait for your pension.  These days when you hit the streets, the streets hit back and pensions have gone the way of the 8-track tape and Betamax (ask your parents about that too.)  So for many of us, for now at least, we’re stuck with our really bad bosses a lot longer than we’d planned on. So, how do you deal with a really bad boss when leaving just isn’t an option?  The answer is, one day at a time.

My most stressed times dealing with bad bosses came in anticipation of the things I feared they would say and do.  After “disobeying a direct order” (more about that in a future post), I spent an entire weekend tossing and turning, worried that I would show up to work on Monday, only to be unceremoniously escorted out the door by our offices version of high level security. But after spending my entire weekend worrying about Monday, on Monday my bad boss never even mentioned the incident.  In fact, she never brought it up again.

Then there was the time I totaled the company car.  Yes, I totaled the company car…during my second week on the job.  Giving my really bad boss at the time, a man who never required a legitimate reason to scream and curse, the legitimate reason to top all legitimate reasons.  As he screamed and cursed at me at length in his office, I tried to defend myself – citing the helium balloons in the back seat of the car I’d hit, the full moon, and the questionable chicken salad sandwich I’d had for lunch, as possible causes of the accident. It was terrible – the sandwich and the meeting with my boss.  So terrible in fact, I thought my job and career were over.  They weren’t. I survived that bad boss’ verbal beat-down and every one that came after that for the two years I worked for him.

The point is, we typically can’t control the actions of our bad bosses, but we can control ours.  No matter how bad our bosses are, we work for them, and work we must. We can either do that work in anxiety and fear, or we can choose to take the high road.  By taking the high road – the road less travelled – we live above the noise and the nonsense.  If we work at it, we’ll be able to see a lot more, learn a lot more, and experience the phenomenal personal and professional growth not readily found elsewhere.

What lessons have you learned from working with a bad boss? Share them in our comment section or email them to denised@reallybadboss.com.

Despite pleas and statements from friends and family members portraying former ClearOne Communications CEO Frances Flood as a compassionate woman who’s even earned a ministerial degree, a judge sentenced Flood this past Wednesday to 4 years in federal prison for artificially inflating the company’s 2001- 02 revenues to increase its share price. ClearOne’s CFO Susie Strohm was sentenced to 2 years  probation for perjury. ClearOne is a Utah-based maker of video and audio conferencing equipment.

Flood maintained her innocence, claiming that board members knew about every decision she was making. Prosecutors however, convinced jurors that Flood persuaded ClearOne’s distributors to accept products they didn’t order by promising them that they didn’t have to pay for merchandise until it was sold. ClearOne then reported those shipments as sales, artificially inflating revenue.

Source: Salt Lake Tribune