Who among us hasn’t, just once, wished our boss could walk a mile in our shoes. Last night on the premier episode of “Undercover Boss” we watched Larry O’Donnell, President and COO of Waste Management , the largest trash and recycling company in North America, walk a few miles in the shoes of several of his employees.

The show’s premise is simple – bosses from major companies across the country go “undercover” in various entry level positions in their respective companies. CBS’s tag line for the show is “They will discover the truth.” And to some extent they do.

O’Donnell sorted trash at one of his waste management facilities, collected trash from the side of the highway and cleaned toilets at a carnival. Along the way he meets with several dedicated and hardworking employees (no doubt handpicked by management for their great attitudes) and learns as much about their personal struggles as he does about the shortcomings of his own company policies. For instance, workers are expected to clean 15 port-o-potties in an hour. On an assembly line, employees have to remove cardboard from a conveyer belt going at extremely high speeds or risk jamming expensive machinery. And female garbage collectors are forced to use a can as a toilet during their routes.

O’Donnell comes across as a conscientious boss who genuinely seems concerned about the well being of his employees. By show’s end, he vows to review some of the corporate policies he and his management team have instituted and he promises to become a better manager. Only time will tell if O’Donnell and Waste Management really make changes.  The cynic in me thinks that when management is really concerned about how their policies impact employees and productivity, they don’t need a television show and cameras to learn the truth, they just  need to listen to their employees.  But, if “Undercover Boss” causes even a few companies to take a closer look at the way they do business, then it’s a start.

To catch clips from last night’s premier, click here.

A reader sent the following story in as a comment on our “Worst Bosses of all time” post. She sent it on New Years after being told she had to go into the office. Any of us who’ve had a really bad boss can relate to her feeling sick and crying on the weekend in anticipation of the drama that will most certainly take place on Monday morning. Here’s her story in her own words…

I was out of work for over a year so when I was offered a job to work at a non-profit agency an hour away from home, I said, Thank you, and took the job. Little did I know that the female version of Adolph Hitler is alive and well and running the non-profit agency where I had just agreed to work. While this woman was unpleasant at the interview, I just assumed that she was having a bad day or perhaps was stressed. I was mistaken; that is the norm.

On my first day in the office, instead of receiving any kind of welcome or introduction from her, she approached me as I was still holding my coat, purse and bag containing personal items like Kleenex and reference books, and said, Meeting in five minutes – I need you to take notes. The receptionist showed me where my office was and I hurriedly sat my things down and grabbed a pad and pen. There were about a dozen people in the meeting and she never introduced them to me, so I drew a diagram of the seating and numbered them so I could keep the comments straight of who said what. Finally, when there was a lull in the discussion, I spoke up and asked if, since I was asked to take minutes, I could please have everyone’s names. The boss later told me that I was never to interrupt one of her meetings again. Afterwards, she gave me several documents to make revisions on, however, I was not allowed to have access to any documents of my predecessor, so I had to completely re-type all the documents.

When I went to my new boss to ask a question, I discovered that she had left the office and had locked her door shut – she does not share her schedule with anyone and no one knew if and when she would return for the day. Another admin assistant introduced herself and showed me around the office and sort of explained what my position would be like. I was also told that I was the fourth secretary my boss had had so far this year. When my boss returned, I told her that I had tried to go to her to ask a question but found out that she was gone but the other admin had been very helpful and answered some questions for me. The boss was livid – “WHY WERE YOU TALKING TO HER??? SHE DOESN’T KNOW ANYTHING – SHE’S JUST A TEMP! SHE IS NOT YOUR BOSS – I AM YOUR BOSS! (repeating) ..SHE IS NOT YOUR BOSS — I AM YOUR BOSS!!!” I reminded her that it was my first day; that she was gone and I didn’t know if she would be back and the other admin had actually answered my questions. I was reminded that I was never to go to the other admin again for any reason without express direction.

…On Day #2, I handed a document to my boss that I had just completed; she looked it over while I stood and waited for further direction from her. She turned to me and said, “You’re a perfectionist, aren’t you?”, I replied that I guess I am. With a sinister tone, my new boss told me, “I’m a perfectionist, too. We’re going to butt heads and I’m going to win.” I told her, “You can win! You’re my boss and I’m just here to help you. Why would we butt heads?” She said, We’ll see. I have now been here two months and it is some of the longest two months of my life. I cry on my way to work, I cry on Sundays knowing that I have to go back to that horrible woman on Monday. Although she does not usually raise her voice, her tone is always cynical, sarcastic,

Read the rest of this entry »

When Tyra Banks announced that she’d be ending her talk show this year to pursue movie production, people (those who cared anyway) immediately began wondering about the real reason for the end of the show. After all, with two Emmy’s under her belt and with Oprah as her mentor, many thought she would become the next talk show queen. Well if you believe some of her employees, Ms. Banks doesn’t have the management chops to run her million dollar empire, much less a talk show.

According to insiders, the Tyra Banks show has been plagued with high turnover for years. “She and the higher-ups on the production staff could be extremely brutal,” says the source. “She really is a diva.” Sources say it was her way or the highway. In our experience, that’s pretty typical bad boss behavior. But if reports that Banks and upper management frequently demeaned lower level staff and that some employees only learned that the show would be ending after the announcement had been made to the press are true, then Banks and her management team are treading into really bad boss territory.

Now some of the reports coming out might very well be sour grapes, but it wouldn’t be at all surprising to us if at least some of stories are true. After all, what management training does Banks have? Plus we all know that training alone isn’t enough to make someone a good boss.  We’re sure something close to the truth will shake out over the next few months, but we’re not holding our breath.

Source: Examiner

In this week’s installment of Managing the Meanies, Buck introduces us to the bosses who only appreciate one opinion, their own.  Allowed to rein free in organizations, these really bad bosses are insecure, and dangerous for both the organization and the people who report to them…

Great communicators make great leaders, and the opposite is true as well

I have had bosses where the ebb and flow of dynamic conversation was absolutely prohibited. Having such a dialog would have empowered me, given me too much confidence and in turn would have diminished their control over me and the situation. One guy that I worked for had a desperate dislike for opinions – my professional advice and contributions, that is – and whenever I shared my thoughts on a matter he would quickly rebuke me. He was the one asking the questions, and my opinions, should he have entertained them, would simply diminish his control over the situation and me. Great communicators do indeed make great leaders and the opposite is true as well. Most bully-bosses are poor communicators, they tell you only what you barely need to know and not a fragment more. Keeping you in the dark and always guessing is their way of maintaining absolute control. It’s also their way of never making a poor decision, or any decision at all for that matter, bad decisions that someday might indict them for incompetence.

The corporate bully-boss that I just described above was a classic case-study in the realm of poor communication. Working for him was like being a laboratory rat in a complex labyrinth; you never really knew which corridor to go down. Should you just happen to work your way down the right path you’d be rewarded with no feed-back whatsoever, advance down the wrong path and you’d be jolted with a shock. It took me several years to figure out that the complete lack of direction from him was his way of never stumbling into a bad decision, and along with his dual-faced profile that he showed – lord and master to those below him, obsequious subject to those above – was the manner in which he skillfully survived in a senior management position for some twenty years of so!

Insecure managers are extremely dangerous people.

The tragedy here, and it can be described as no less so, is that those running the company don’t see these corporate de-motivators for who and what they really are; morale-busters just as pernicious to the health of the business as any other threat. One such de-motivator told me during my yearly performance review that I wasn’t a team player, a ridiculous condemnation that went into my file. I confidently shared my opinion with him that most people in the company, my colleagues as well as higher ups, would disagree with him. It was only because I offered contrary opinions to his from time to time, resisted his bullying threats and de-motivating intimidations that he branded me as such. It was me who was a threat to him. He perceived me to be more competent than he and when around I exposed him as the fraud that his own insecurities thought him to be. Insecure managers are extremely dangerous people.

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.

In this week’s installment of Managing the Meanies, Buck reminds us of a lesson his father taught him, “the one asking the questions is the one in charge.”  Bad bosses who refuse to acknowledge our questions understand that providing us with answers empower and validate us, and that’s the last thing most of them ever want to do…

A very costly mistake

Another manager that I had worked with as a colleague some years ago, Mark the plant engineer,  learned this lesson too, but unlike my experience, with bitter results. Mark was a real hard case, a tough guy and walked around the paper mill like he had a broom handle for a spine. He was in tight with the general manager and Mark was quick to note infractions on the clip board that he carried, always reporting to the higher ups whatever he had discovered. Feared by everybody as being the ferret that he was, Mark was an internal affairs type that snitched and tattled for the sole gain of advancing himself and his career. Sure, he had control over our workers, the fear and intimidation type of control, but he had no positive influence with them and in general everyone was unresponsive to Mark. It wouldn’t be too strong an assertion for me to say that all of the papermakers positively hated him.

Well, the time came when Mark made a dreadful miscalculation, a very costly mistake that had huge exposure. He couldn’t hide the fact that he had messed up royally, everyone knew it and his failure was revealed for all to see. He sought me out in the mill, came to me for sympathy I suppose, and I tried to console him as best that I could. He was so distraught that tears ran down his face, his eyes bloodshot and watery, mucus ran from his nose. Gosh, it was awful and I was in conflict with the compassion that I felt for him and the urge to walk away after saying to him “Well, if you hadn’t been such an SOB you wouldn’t be feeling this humiliation, would you? Have you ever thought about what being such a hard case really every got you?” Mark had been disgraced and shortly after was gone from the company. More than a few of us were relieved to know that the company recognized what a morale-buster this plant engineer was and the negative effects he had on the performance of the business.

Acknowledging your question empowers you

My parents understood the maxim that the one asking the questions is the one in charge and surely bully-bosses know this too. “Listen mister, I’m the one asking the questions around here” would have been my father’s reply when I was a kid and for some mis-managers it’s the central tenant of their management style. As for myself, years of successful selling has taught me well that questions are the key as to how fluidly a customer interview will go; the one asking the questions controls the direction and the outcome of the meeting. If you have ever had a boss who simply wouldn’t give you any answers, a very frustrating situation, then contemplate just exactly what’s going on here. Understand that acknowledging your question with a satisfactory answer empowers you, at least in the minds of the bully-bosses; it validates you, lends you respect and establishes you perhaps in some ways as an equal. It renders them answerable to you.

Some years ago I worked for a guy who was afflicted with the worst case of royalty syndrome, and asking him a question — at least if the inquiring person was one that he perceived to be beneath him in the corporate hierarchy — would elicit the most agonizingly uneventful response. Ask this guy a question and he would look away, rub his face, scratch his head, sigh and grunt, all the time fidgeting…and then, absolutely nothing. You could leave his office and go run around the block a few times only to still find him there when you returned, paralyzed by his reluctance to relinquish even a shred of power. You see, he knew that an answer would then validate the inquirer and it was for me to learn after working for this guy for several months that a commoner like me was not allowed to ask the king a question.

Next Tuesday: A desperate dislike for opinions: The poor communicator

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.

Anne Burrell - Image source nymag.com

Anne Burrell hosts Food Network’s Secrets of a Restaurant Chef. But before that she was a chef at Centro Vinoteca, a neighborhood restaurant and wine bar located in New York’s West Village. A lawsuit filed earlier this year claims that while Burrell was a chef at Centro she repeatedly hurled insults at, and discriminated against, female employees. A bartender says Burrell told her she had “saggy boobs,” and called her a “ho.”  Other female employees say they were called “sluts and whores.” The suit alleges that employees who complained to the restaurant’s owners were terminated, and that male employees were “not treated in the same or similar manner.” The complaint also states that Burrell suspended an employee for allegedly stealing a piece of cheese and claimed an employee faked an ovarian cyst to get out of working.

I don’t know much about the restaurant business, and even less about what goes on in the kitchens of these restaurants, but I always thought that restaurant kitchens were really tough places to work, where insult hurling was par for the course. I’m by no means excusing or justifying Burrell’s behavior, especially if it was only directed at female employees. But it’s got me wondering about the effectiveness of these types of lawsuits and the long term impact it may have on women in this particular industry.

Everyone has the right to work in a non-hostile, non-sexist environment, and I understand that when it comes to changing behavior, particularly corporate sanctioned behavior, money talks. Fear of being sued predated the shift in thinking that brought about an end (at least on paper anyway) to an environment where secretaries were openly and routinely goosed and propositioned in the workplace.

It would be interesting to hear an industry insider’s take on it. Is Burrell’s alleged behavior considered typical or even acceptable for the industry? Will a successful suit see the beginning of changes in behavior in restaurant kitchens, or will it more likely result in a reduction in the number of women being hired? Will it make a difference one way or the other? Share your thoughts in our comment section.

Source: Slashfood.com

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a reader interested in sharing his own stories of bad bosses and the impact they’ve had on his life and career. Always interested in others’ stories and how they’ve coped with really bad bosses, I asked him to send me his. And what a story it is. 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, and he’s got a lot to say about our corporate culture of bad management and worse bosses.

I’m very excited to welcome Buck Hamilton as Really Bad Boss’ first ever guest blogger. His stories are honest, often amusing, and familiar accounts of really bad bosses and the damage they can inflict on their employees and the companies they run. This week begins the series we’ve entitled Managing the Meanies; A Survival Guide to Corporate Bully-Bosses.  Every Tuesday over the next few months, Buck shares his personal stories of bad boss behavior and how he managed to survive his own corporate bully bosses.

In part one of the series, Buck introduces us to the first of his many bully bosses. Peter was the quintessential bad boss – “grumpy and unapproachable” with a god complex…

An eager young supervisor

It was while talking on the phone with a friend of mine who just recently left his company for a new job with a competitor that I heard in his voice a level of passion and excitement that he had never shown before. As if having been released from Puritan stocks he was liberated from the former company, the massive oak mantle that he had been locked into had been lifted. My friend was the casualty of a bad boss and the dysfunction cost the former company hugely with the loss of his talents.

His demoralizing bad-boss relationship was reminiscent of my own story when I was coming up in the paper manufacturing business as a young supervisor. At the time I had been challenged with a nearly impossible task, one that had been tackled by several other managers before me without results and one that I was determined to succeed at. This overwhelming assignment involved the disposal of hundreds of tons of waste paper that had been irresponsibly accumulated by the company over the years, paper that had no use whatsoever other than to be gradually reclaimed into the process as raw material, and if successful, the bottom line return to the firm could ultimately reach well beyond half a million dollars.

I worked on the project over time, reading about and researching the technology of recovering the waste, understanding the quality impact of using such raw materials in the process, talking with the old-timers at the paper mill and securing their thoughts and input. Several trials yielded promising results and I was thrilled with the progress that we had made.

Grumpy and unapproachable with a God complex

Well, every morning the company’s general manager, Peter, walked through the plant making his tour, his hands thrust into his pockets and always looking grumpy and unapproachable. On one such morning he stopped and asked me about the status of the project and I told him of the progress we had made and that several chemical company consultants were coming in to advise us on the technology — free input, I might add, with no cost to the company other than the price of the chemical should it work. He lost it right there on the floor and blistered me for bringing in consultants, the only consulting he insisted that the company needed was from him and he walked away berating me over his shoulder. I was left standing there flushed with embarrassment, crushed by the granite weight of his rejection. The encounter left me demoralized and uncertain what to do with the project, paralyzed as to whether or not I should even continue to develop this technology.

The seminal moment

Despite the general manager’s deflating style I succeeded with the challenge and in time recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars in bottom-line savings for the company. My nasty encounter with Peter, however, was the seminal moment in which I realized that it was time to leave the company and move on to a competitor; I had no desire whatsoever to work for a company that promoted such poor management style. But most importantly, Peter had demonstrated to me the lessons of yet another episode in how not to treat subordinates.

Have any of you ever had a seminal moment? A moment where, while working in a bad job, or for a bad boss, you simply realize that you can do better? That you just have to do better? We’d like you to share your seminal moments with us. You never know, maybe your story will give someone the courage they need to realize their own seminal moment.

Next Tuesday…12 bosses, less than 20% worth their salaries…