But it could have been worse. He’d initially tried to snort it off her butt…

From the “We couldn’t make this stuff up if we tried files” the New York Post is reporting that cocktail waitress Nicole Slama is suing her former boss and Manhattan nightclub owner Gary Malhotra for sexual harassment after he essentially forced her to use her body as a drug table.

In her $3.5 million suit, 24 year old Slama claims that in 2007 Malhotra forced her into a storage closet and said “I want to sniff [coke] off your [butt]. You have a great [butt].” Slama’d recently left a job at Applebees hoping to make money as a cocktail waitress at Quo nightclub. But in addition to the $500 she got during her first shift at Quo, she got an earful about management’s alleged practice of snorting cocaine in the back office and having sex with employees.

Slama alleges Malhotra offered her cocaine on several occasions but on December 6, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Although she managed to rebuff the butt request, Malhotra sprinkled coke onto her shoulder, snorted it and then licked Slama’s shoulder and neck. She later snuck out of the club and went to the police. In December, Malhotra was convicted of sex abuse, harassment and forcible touching. Of course Malhotra is using the “disgruntled, fired employee” excuse as a defense.

While most people probably think it’s impossible for sexual harassment to occur in sexually charged environments like clubs and bars, the fact is, sexual harassment is defined as unwanted sexual attention, and regardless of what may or may not be going on with other employees, if a boss forces an employee to do anything sexual, then he’s guilty.

Read the entire sordid story here.

Image: Nicole Slama/Inset Gary Malhotra – source: NY Post

Over at The Commercial Mediation and Arbitration Center website, there’s a post up titled Seven Secrets for Keeping your Company out of Court. The post was written in 2008, but, as evident by the number of sexual harassment claims in the news every week, it’s a lesson many companies still haven’t learned.

Even though I’m not on the side of helping company’s avoid going to court to answer for their own management failures, I do want them to make their workplaces, safe, harassment free environments for their employees. So here are a couple of the article’s suggestions along with a sprinkling of my own good old fashion common sense.

• Have a written sexual harassment policy and communicate it to all employees. That would be ALL employees. Executives and HR don’t get a pass because of their position in the organization. There should be one policy for all employees. Period.

• Implement and enforce your policy. This would seem like a no brainer, but you’d be surprised how many companies write policies, have every employee sign an acknowledgment and then proceed to ignore it. I’ve been in a conference room with a VP, a sales team and a HR Manager where the order of the day seemed to be to see who could be the most offensive. HR said and did nothing, decreasing the already shockingly low amount of respect we already had for her.

• Take complaints seriously and investigate every one. Brushing complaints off as mere misunderstandings, or ignoring them entirely, is a lawsuit waiting to happen. The worst thing companies can do is take harassment accusations lightly. Not only does that send the wrong message to staff, but it can end up costing you dearly in the long run.

You can read the entire list of suggestions for avoiding court here.

Bosses who go around conducting clandestine trash can searches, pantyhose inspections and  national sales meetings loaded, are pretty bad. But at least they don’t endanger lives. Not so with the boss of a West Virginia coal mine. According to fireboss, John Renner, his supervisor told him that regardless of ventilation issues, Renner was to evacuate the mine only if a federal inspector was watching.

As fire boss of Patriot Coal Corp’s Federal No. 2 Mine, Renner’s job was to monitor methane and oxygen and determine whether the methane had reached dangerous levels. Federal law requires that either the area be ventilated or the mine evacuated if levels exceed a certain reading. The government has required this type of monitoring since a 2006 methane explosion in a mine killed 12 men.

But Renner says that the first time he evacuated the mines after getting an above normal reading, foreman supervisor, Randy Coffindaffer, berated him for the evacuation, asking him “Do you know how much money you’re costing this company right now, evacuating it?”  Renner says he was “cussed” and “screamed’ at and told by Coffindaffer that he was “never, ever, under any circumstances” to evacuate unless a federal inspector was present. Fearful of losing his job, Renner relented. As a result, he’s been charged with falsifying inspection reports and is expected to plead guilty Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Clarksburg.

Renner is cooperating with authorities, and in recordings made during meetings with state officials can be heard speaking about having panic attacks, consulting with a psychiatrist and taking medication to deal with job related stress. Associated Press attempts to speak to Coffindaffer were unsuccessful and there’s no word on whether he’s still working for Patriot Coal.

Renner was obviously wrong for falsifying reports and putting miners’ lives at risks. But Coffindaffer and the management team that allowed him to bully Renner into doing it, must also be held accountable. Despite CBS’ “Undercover Boss”, I refuse to believe that most bosses are unaware when their management team is cutting corners, cheating and endangering lives. I’m just not buying it. I hope Renner’s testimony helps put Coffindaffer behind bars for a long time. Harsh? Not harsh enough if you ask me.

The Washington Examiner has the full story here.

What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week

• Good boss, bad boss, young boss? US News & World Report offers 7 tips for working with a young boss.

• Tula Connell at the AFL-CIO blog, introduces us to the book Can They Do That: Retaking our Fundamental Rights in the Workplace. The books author, Lewis Maltby,  president and founder of the National Workrights Institute (NWI), reminds us that “almost 20 percent of employers today require all employees to agree in advance not to go to court if the company violates their legal rights….If you don’t agree, you don’t get the job.” Connell thinks this book should be “part of every high school curricula.” We’ll get our hands on a copy and let you know what we think.

• Everyone’s talking about Brittain’s PM, Gordon Brown, being a big bully and that includes Hugh Cortazzi writing for The Japan Times Online. Like us, Cortazzi believes bullying in the workplace needs to be tackled seriously if abuses of power are to be kept in check.

• On Tuesday, amNY ran a post about tyrants in the workplace, and interviewed us for the piece. Check out the online version here.

On Tuesday reallybadboss.com, along with other experts in the field of workplace tyrants, was featured in an amNY piece by Lucy Cohen Blatter. The post, titled, Tyrants in the Workplace, touched on topics we’re all too familiar.

From the economy making it harder to do anything about bad bosses to a definition of bad bosses that includes anyone who is “mean, never compliments you, is harsh, has no flexibility and overworks people,” the post highlighted the problems with working for people whose sole purpose in life at times seems to be to undermine their employees.

However, there’s still hope. Blatter offers some tips for handling bad bosses, including a few of our own:

• Leave it at work. Try not to take negative feelings home with you.
• Don’t take it personally. The problem is with your boss’s management skills or his personality, not you.
• If all else fails, start looking for a new job. You don’t want to wait until things become unbearable or you risk being fired.

Read Blatter’s entire article here, at amNY.

Share some of your own tips for dealing with workplace tyrants in the comment section or tweet us @reallybadboss.

A couple had a “distracting” experience at the 9:40 pm showing of Shutter Island at the St. Croix Falls Cinema 8 in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. Later that night, Mrs. Kohl-Leaf, shot off an email to the cinema owners complaining about, among other things, the theater not taking debit or credit cards, the ATM being out of cash and the 20 minutes theater staff spent wandering through the theater in search of underage patrons.

The next morning, Kohl-Leaf awoke to this email from the company’s vice president.

Sarah,
Drive to White Bear Lake and also go f*** yourself. If you dont have money for entertainment, get a better job, and don’t pay for everything on your credit or check card. You can also shove your time and gas up your f*****g ass. Also, find better things to do with your time. This email is an absolute joke. We don’t care to have you as a customer. Let me know if you need directions to white bear lake.
Steven
Steven J. Payne – Vice President
Evergreen Entertainment
929 Old Highway 8 NW
Suite 200
New Brighton, MN 55112
Phone – (651) 636-1417
Fax – (651) 636-1418

Geez! Can you imagine what this jackass must be like to work for? If there are any employees of Evergreen Entertainment who want to (anonymously of course) tell me what this gem of a VP is like to work for, please email me at denised@reallybadboss.com or leave a comment below.  By the way, as is often the case of businesses behaving badly, there’s now a boycott against them on Facebook. Check it out here.

Gender preconceptions impact the way we view bosses

Vicky Oliver, author of “Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers and Other Office Idiots,” says she’s observed the differences between how male and female bosses are perceived in the office.  While a male boss who freely gives his opinion is perceived as someone who “tells it like it is,” the same behavior in a female counterpart is seen as a lack of tact. Aggressiveness in males in business is expected, even lauded, in women, it’s seen as being bitchy.

The truth is, bad boss behavior is oftentimes perceived as much worse when it comes from a woman. That might be due in part to the belief that some hold that women are the gentler, more caring sex. Seeing them behaving in an aggressive, “bossy”  manner is disconcerting for some.

The next time you’re feeling especially frustrated in a situation where a female boss is laying down the law, ask yourself what’s really bothering you about what’s happening. Is your boss really behaving badly, and if she were a he, would your reaction be the same? Bad boss behavior, regardless of who it’s coming from, is unacceptable, but reacting differently to a man’s bad behavior than to a woman’s is a lose-lose situation for everyone involved.

For more on the topic, check out Anthony Balderrama’s article, Gender Benders article on AOL.

What’s been your experience with male and female bosses? Have you seen a real difference in management style, or have the differences been more a result of your own preconceived notions? Share your thoughts in the comment section.