Source: Happyplace

As kids we called it “ganging up”, gathering together as much muscle as needed in order to demonstrate your influence. It’s a management style used by corporate bully-bosses and surely a behavior that these de-motivators learned as kids. Such corporate bullies have issues upstairs, so to speak, self-confidence vacuums that cause them to enlist the support of other bullies in order to force their influence and demonstrate their irresistible control over others. In short, they can’t influence or persuade you by themselves. They don’t have enough self-confidence for that, so they must gang up and do it as a team. If you don’t think that this is so, think again. It’s behavior that bully-bosses learned as kids and they’re using the same techniques today. The trouble is it’s a technique that’s overwhelmingly de-motivating to those on the receiving end.

I was in the lobby of the Hampton Inn at the Buffalo airport stamping the snow off of my shoes at 7:30 in the morning when my Napoleonic bully of a boss called me on my cell phone. I had just cleared eight inches of freshly fallen snow off of my rental car. It was still snowing hard and the sky was so gray and the cloud ceiling so low that it almost seemed artificial. I heard his voice and my demeanor stiffened as I braced for what was coming; I always dreaded talking with him. He was about to brow-beat me into convincing a customer to take several shipments of bad product and he had enlisted yet another bully to participate in the intimidation. This other guy was a yes-man sycophant and the two of them together surely could do some damage. My boss was in a particularly bad mood since previous attempts to strong arm me had failed; I had not acquiesced to his unethical demands – demands which could have been harmful to the customer – and obviously this pounding had been rehearsed beforehand by the two of them. They left me little wiggle room other than to do just what they insisted or no doubt face unemployment. The encounter left me red-faced and furious. It was a classic case of a pre-arranged ganging up, a desperate bully-boss technique when the guy needed to demonstrate his prowess. His confidence in his own persuasiveness was so low that he was compelled to recruit another to help with his dirty work.

This bully-boss would never confront a major issue alone and it nearly goes without saying that he surrounded himself with a few favored managers, trusted confidants that carried out his every wish. The trouble was that these guys were nearly all lesser figures, unremarkable characters who allowed this incompetent to shine. It was absolutely demoralizing to the rest of us; one of the favored had the IQ of a dolt, but he called the boss “sir” and was flatteringly responsive to his every need. These corporate courtesans were skillful at telling the boss what he wanted to hear, never gave him bad news or shared an opinion contrary to his. None of them would ever eclipse him with their mediocrity. And so the business was mismanaged into near extinction under this boss’s reign and no one in senior management ever ventured to peel back the layers and look inside.

Next Tuesday: Cronyism and its destructive effects

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.

Another memorable bad boss in my past was a moody man with a disturbingly de-motivating style. Self-conscious of his short stature, he exerted absolute control over his realm. This guy was so caustic, so abusive and snotty that the dozen or so sales reps and group managers who reported to him would telephone each other in advance and pass along the storm warnings. Like an alcoholic or a manic depressive, this guy was always miserable and unhappy and as such would make certain that we were too. He insisted that we phone him and report the goings on in our respective markets and he would then take the opportunity to dismantle and crush our enthusiasm with an abusive line of questioning.

Absolutely uncertain

One of the hallmarks of his dreadful management style was that he’d never believe what we told him, he’d question the veracity of the intelligence that we reported and let us know that he had little confidence in our feedback. He’d intimidate and demoralize us. We all recognized of course what was going on here; this guy was asserting his power and control over us. If he allowed us to be enthusiastic, if he put credence and confidence in what we reported to him, then he’d be giving us credibility and hence power. He’d be validating us. His moody abuse, like an insecure tyrant, was his way of keeping us absolutely uncertain, never knowing what to expect and always thinking the worst. Dealing with him was an exhausting struggle that over time would have anyone worn down to an insignificant nub. It was some years later that we learned that there was indeed some truth to the otherwise unfounded rumors that he went through the trash in our offices at night after everyone had left to see what dirt he could find on his people. We positively dreaded having to deal with this loser, and he was the company’s vice president of sales and marketing!

Self-inflicted deficiencies

One thing is clear; I know men and I know how they think. I’m a man and have been one for nearly sixty years. As such I passed through childhood and into adolescence with boys, went to school and played sports with them, matured into adulthood with men and have worked with them for over thirty years. What they were as boys and how they learned to interact with other as kids in many ways is what they are today; how they treat others, how they project themselves and, more importantly, what self-inflicted deficiencies they have burdened themselves with since the experiences of their adolescence.

Next Tuesday: Ganging up as a corporate management style

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.

On her blog A Meaningful Existence, Karen shares The top 5 reasons to leave your job – no surprise here, a bad boss is number one. And while this economy might have you staying put for a while, it’s important to note her suggestions, particularly about doing something everyday to move towards finding a better job, and a better boss.

Our friends over at Tame your TOT (Terrible Office Tyrant) share a few of the thousand office tyrant stories collected during research for their book. One unbelievable tantrum throwing VP “threw a fit because a new employee took the last cookie in the break room.”  We cannot make this stuff up.

Jack and Suzy Welch offer insight into surviving a bad boss including, trying to figure out your own end game.

“This is NOT in my job description!” I added the exclamation mark for emphasis because I’ve yelled that (in my head) so many times throughout my career I’ve lost count. On his site Work Awesome, (love the name!) Joseph Lewis breaks it down for idealistic newcomers to the workforce – “Life isn’t fair. Nor is it reasonable, rational, sensible, logical, nice, or fluffy. Life is strange, ridiculous, cruel …and just a little bit dirty.” And in this dirty life, one day your boss is going to ask you to do something you don’t want to do. Lewis offers advice on how to handle it when it happens, because trust me, it will happen.

Monday morning mayhem – Or how to survive getting  your really bad boss, really angry on a Monday morning

For years I wasted entire Sundays absolutely dreading Monday mornings.   The uneasy feeling would start to creep in on Saturday night, and by Sunday evening, I was a basket case.  For many of us Monday spells the end of the weekend, the start of the work week and a return to a real tool of a boss.  Facing a really bad boss on a typical Monday morning is bad enough, but it’s even worse when you’ve got to face him with bad news from something that happened over the weekend.  What could you possibly do over the weekend that would require you to give your boss bad news on Monday morning?  Glad you asked.   I crashed…no… totaled the car. The company car.  Did I mention I’d been on the job for only two weeks when it happened?  I challenge anyone to top that Monday morning story.  

Thankfully no one was injured in the accident.  I still remember the two block walk of shame to the office that morning, after a totally sleepless Sunday night.  As my new colleagues sped by me on their way to work, I sensed more than saw them looking at me in their rear view mirrors wandering why the new girl was walking to work.  They all knew I had been given a company car and like a scene from The Office, were all peering over the receptionist’s shoulder when I arrived several minutes later.  I could have taken a cab, but in addition to the car, the company was paying for me to stay in a hotel until I found an apartment.  I thought it would be pretty presumptuous to take (and expense) a cab to work the day after totaling the car.   

It’s a testament to the saying "time heals all wounds" that I really don’t remember much of the conversation that took place that morning.  I do remember that it involved a lot of cursing on the Reprobate’s end (in two languages) and quite a bit of apologizing and tears on mine.   I was pretty young then, so crying was one of the only coping mechanisms I had mastered at the time.  I think I must have blacked out for a couple of minutes too because I remember someone handing me a bottle of water and seeing half of it on my shirt a few minutes later…or maybe that was sweat.  In any event, my point is this.  I dreaded that Monday morning probably more than any Monday morning I’d ever had before then and have ever had since.  Yet I survived.  I made it through the swearing, spitting (yes there was spitting) and crying that day.  Had I known 10 years later that I wouldn’t even remember the conversation clearly; I would have slept that Sunday night.  Had I known that the next two years would involve a lot more cursing, a lot less tears, and me ending up no worse for the wear, I would have had a lot fewer sleepless nights. 

It took several more bad bosses and Monday morning mayhems for me to learn that we can’t always control how our bosses treat us, but we can control how we respond.  Our really bad bosses get our talents, our time and our energy, but we own our emotions and our responses to theirs, no matter how erratic they might be. The next time I was faced with a Monday morning mayhem of that magnitude, I slept on Sunday night – not like a baby – but like an adult who knew in her heart that no matter what the boss dealt me on Monday morning, everything would be all right in the end.

If you’ve survived your own Monday Morning Mayhem, share your tale of survival with our readers. Email your story to denised@reallybadboss.com, or leave a comment in our comment section.

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…

Medina was hired by the church to be the pastor’s personal assistant. Medina claimed the pastor made him engage in a sexual relationship and sued the church for sexual harassment.  The church and the reverend denied any sexual relationship, but claimed that even if there had been one, the lawsuit was baseless since Medina himself admitted to consenting. It’s the old “I didn’t do it, but even if I had done it, you let me” argument.  The court didn’t buy it either, citing the supervisory relationship between Medina and Reverend Ike.

Office fraternization is common – even when explicitly forbidden by company rules. But when you get people spending more time with colleagues than with their spouses, these things happen. And while workplace dalliances are always risky, when they involve bosses and their subordinates, the risks multiply.

Business Management Daily suggests that companies consider banning all personal relationships between supervisors and subordinates.  And while many companies will take that suggestion, at least on paper anyway, we all know that banning them won’t put an end to them.  I’ve been in environments where there were obvious signs of a relationship going on between a subordinate and a member of management.  It’s bad for office morale, and it causes everyone to question the leadership.  We couldn’t see any evidence that HR or other management attempted to do anything to remedy the situation.  Maybe realizing that not interceding could threaten their bottom line, is the boost some employers need to finally take action.

That’s how I felt when I left my low paying, dead end job working for the government, to accept a slightly less low paying but much more promising position working in the private sector.  With the promise of a new career, came lofty dreams of conquering the world, one marketing plan at a time. It was a sweet, hopeful feeling and it lasted about eight months.

I should have been suspicious when the VP of marketing took me to lunch during my first week and dedicated much of the conversation to denying the rumor that he was “seeing” the CEO. A rumor I had not yet heard nor cared anything about.  The whole time he kept talking, I kept thinking “thou dost protest too much methinks…”  Couple that with the lie I was told about a low turnover rate. A lie which was uncovered after less than a month on the job when I learned that all the people the HR Manager told me had been with the company for 20 years, were crazy. All two of them. She also neglected to mention that everyone else in the office (a relatively small in-house staff of less than 20 people) had been with the company for less than 4 years. I probably could have probed deeper, should have asked more detailed questions, but I was coming from an office who’s idea of professionalism included random pantyhose inspections and snackless hell. Anything, I thought, absolutely anything, would be a step up. And for a little while I was right.

For a while, I let the deception about the turnover rate and secret rendezvous slide. I even tried to ignore the unpredictable, and sometimes volatile, behavior of the HR Manager, holding out hope that my dream job would somehow become a reality.  I now know I had too much hope in them, and not enough in myself. Had I not been so blinded by helping someone else – the company, it’s owners – achieve their goals, I probably would have been more focused on achieving mine. I stayed and worked. Worked hard. While the HR Manager took long lunches and skipped out early every Friday, I toiled to make things right. While the CEO played solitaire at his desk, the worker bees toiled away preparing  national presentations on his behalf. I was dedicated and committed to weatherering the company through the storm. The problem was, while I was dedicated to the company, the leadership was dedicated to itself.

Which brings me to a lesson learned

Work hard… for yourself.  Yes, of course, you’re getting paid to work for them, and work you should. I put in ten hour days and worked weekends because I wanted to do a good job for the company. And when it was all said and done, I wanted them to acknowledge my efforts and reward my dedication.  For my efforts however, I got an “eh” severance package, a hug from an HR manager I loathed, and a LinkedIn request to join her network (yes, she was that clueless.)

Fortunately, that’s not all I got. I hadn’t just been working hard for the company, I also worked hard because I wanted to learn and absorb everything I could. I wanted the challenge of producing quality work with a nothing budget. I wanted to learn how to keep a cool head amidst chaos and confusion. And I wanted to know that I could produce under pressure, extreme pressure. Had I not been motivated to work hard for my own self growth, being laid off would have been a devastating blow. Instead, the layoff gave me the presence of mine to put everything I’d learned to work for me. It certainly isn’t easy, but working hard for yourself pays off long after the job you’re working for stops paying you.

My next lesson…Fool me once, shame on you

 After picking myself up off the floor at the realization that my boss actually had a Facebook account, I’d be pretty disturbed.  I haven’t always had bad bosses, but the thought of “friending” even the good ones gives me hives. 

So what’s an employee to do? Schwabel narrowed our options down to three. You could just accept the friend request unconditionally, granting your boss access to the most personal and sometimes most trivial details of your life.  Yeah…that would be a no for me.  The second, more palatable, but still disturbing alternative would be to accept the request and utilize your Facebook account settings to restrict what your boss will be able to see.  Utilizing that option would mean your boss would go to your wall, see your name, one photo of you and your dog, and know you’ve restricted his access.  Finally, and definitely more up my alley, you could explain to your boss that you want to keep your business and professional lives separate.  A reasonable boss would understand.  Actually, a reasonable boss wouldn’t have made the friend request in the first place. 

The flip side of granting your boss too much access to your personal life is learning way more than you ever wanted to know about his. Who cares what he had for breakfast or where he was on Saturday night?  And I for one, DO NOT want to see his semi-nude beach photos or who he’s been sending cocktails to.  That said, I choose option four, ignore his friend request all together.  Career suicide?  I doubt it, but if he’s that bad, I’m probably working on getting out of there anyway.  How would you deal with a friend request from a boss?

1. Work as though you have the best job and the best boss in the world– Cruel I know, but it works. Take it from me. Much like a relationship, when the thrill is gone from a job (if it was ever there to begin with) it’s really hard to make an effort, especially when the person on the receiving end is an ungrateful, unyielding, good for nothing… umm…boss. The truth is, when you bring your A game to every assignment, every meeting, every challenge, regardless of whether or not your boss notices, you’ll develop exceptional skills that will work wonders for you when you eventually move on to the job and boss that are perfect for you.  In your new digs, when everyone’s crumbling under pressure because the boss has a hang nail, you, having survived the incoherent ramblings of an intoxicated CEO, will be the picture of calm productivity, and for that, you’ll be elevated to rockstar status.
2.  Know you’re probably smarter than she is, and she knows it– Knowing you’re the smartest person in the room can provide you with a quiet confidence that belies your current circumstance.  As employees railed against mistreatments and the ridiculous antics at the hands of our really bad and stupid boss, I plugged away diligently at the tasks at hand, convinced that the degree hanging over her desk had been purchased from the nearby Goodwill store. When she created her own private system of mathematics rather than owning up to an error in her calculations, she confirmed my suspicions.  Her frustration upon being confronted with the error and her anger that she’d been found out, had me smiling widely…on the inside.  Which brings me to the next tip…
3. If you need your job, don’t let your boss know that you know, just  how bad he really is – In fact it’s a good idea not to discuss your boss’ shortcomings with colleagues either.  With the exception of Human Resources (except if your HR Manager is Mary), discussing your boss’  lack of mental ability at work is a bad idea.  You never know who you can trust.  A colleague laughing along with you at the boss’ new system of math, might be the first one at her door offering up the latest office gossip.  Also, oftentimes what makes a bad boss bad is his or her inability to accept anything but praise. Keep in mind, we’re talking about bad bosses here.  When a boss is really bad, feedback, even when given with the best intentions, is often unwelcomed and undigested. The exception to the rule about not discussing a bad boss with anyone is when your boss is involved in unethical or illegal behavior.  For those bosses, contacting the EEOC might be a good starting point.
4. Document everything – This suggestion was actually submitted by several readers. My guess is they’ve all been burned, as I have, by a boss saying one thing, doing another, then blaming them for the fallout.  On some occasions having an email confirming my boss’ instructions helped, on others it was (unbelievably) ignored. Nevertheless, having a paper trail to document that I’d followed instructions to the letter, gave me piece of mind. It’s a sad commentary on management when you’ve got to maintain a private dossier ala The Firm to avoid being thrown under the bus, but that’s the reality of business these days.  If you’re in a particularly bad situation, blind copy correspondence between yourself and your boss to your personal email (if it doesn’t contain private customer information.)  If it ever comes to the point where you’re escorted out of the office without a chance to gather your evidence effects – as I was - your personal email might turn out to be a life saver.
5. Take time away from the madness every day – This is a simple one, but most of us don’t do it. Even if it’s only for a few minutes, stepping outside to get some air, take a short walk or spend a few minutes mindlessly leafing through a magazine at the local drug store helps put the job and the boss in perspective.  There were many times when  my ability to find a single bright spot in my day made the difference between a good day and the day ending with me collapsing in the fetal position at my front door. When your boss is insane, every minute of sanity you can savor for yourself is worth it.

Next Monday:  Part 3 – Dealing with a Really Bad Boss – Watch everything he does, then do the opposite

Authorities issue an APB for Good Management. Missing for years from thousands of offices around the world, Good Management appears to be gone forever and authorities are not optimistic about locating it.  For starters, since really bad bosses rarely display good management sense, employees have been unable to provide an accurate description.  As far as authorities have been able to ascertain, good management may never have been in really bad boss’ possession, as no one can remember ever seeing him utilize it.  Common Sense, a close friend of Good Management, is also said to be missing from the ranks of managers worldwide and was last seen…well…no details are available on the last time Common Sense was seen in management.

Authorities are currently questioning the human resources manager, who has long been suspected of hiring the really bad boss in question, despite having prior knowledge that he had never possessed nor utilized good management or common sense.  The HR manager, when questioned about her own lack of management sense, refused to answer, citing preparation for an upcoming company potluck (the company’s 12th this week) as her top priority. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including her DNA found on ridiculous decisions strewn recklessly around the office, the HR manager still maintains that she is doing an exceptional job.  Upon hearing this, authorities immediately questioned her sanity and her understanding of the word “exceptional.”

Authorities ask that concerned citizens be on the lookout for anything remotely resembling good management. To some, it might look like not paying bonuses to executives who suck.  To others it may look more like valuing employees input and fostering a nurturing environment.  Still others might see fleeting glimpses of Good Managment in managers who refuse to take pay increases while laying off employees. Good management was last seen hanging out with Common Sense and Decency.  The trio, while difficult to find, might be the combination of characteristics that ultimately saves big business and politics.  If you see any signs that your really bad boss is exhibiting any of these characteristics, contact authorities immediately and then bundle up. Hell is about to freeze over.

Update: Immediately following the potluck luncheon, the HR Manager was taken into custody on suspicion of being the world’s biggest idiot. At the time of this writing, the HR Manager was still maintaining her innocence and preparing to celebrate National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day throughout the office. Employees have been on the lookout for a hand big enough to slap some sense into her.

Each morning and afternoon, managers took turns walking down the cubicle lined aisles, peeking into trashcans for any sign of unauthorized snack consumption. Being a government agency with precise, militarily timed breaks of 15 minutes each, if you happened to be hungry at any other time than 11:15 am and 2:15 pm every day, you were stuck in a snackless hell.  So, as adults who are treated like children often do, we disregarded the rule and with childlike fervor became adept at sneaking snacks into our work areas, masking our defiance and coming to the aid of fellow snack bandits with perfectly orchestrated hand signals and turret like outbursts.

It was in the midst of a particularly harrowing snack sneaking session, in which I had been balancing a bag of potato chips on my knees while tapping out Morse code signals and flashing gang signs to fellow colleagues, that it dawned on me that I was an intelligent, talented adult, and not, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, a five year old. How had it come to this? How had I allowed snack espionage to become the highlight of my day?

Which brings me to my point.  When you routinely treat adults like children, they begin acting like them.  There are managers that will argue that if employees just did what they were supposed to, management wouldn’t need to create silly rules in the first place.  I agree that there are some employees (like the one in our office who tried to eat an entire pizza at her desk) who just don’t get it, and never will.  But we didn’t hire them, you did.  You created and/or contributed to your own management nightmare, so go manage it! And for the record, walking from desk to desk peeking into trashcans, is not managing it. Managing it would look like hiring the right people in the first place.  It would entail pulling the offending employees aside and addressing their offenses with them.  It would involve highlighting the people who are doing it right,  and, it would mean trusting the employees you’ve hired enough so that you don’t micromanage them to within an inch of their lives. 

The next time you’re tempted to do a clandestine trashcan inspection, think about the rest of us.   Think about the 95% of us who’ve known since we were about six years old that answering the phone with a mouth full of food is not ok.  Think about the 95% whose morale and motivation get knocked down a peg every time you devise another rule that screams “Look at me, I’m their manager, I can make them do anything!”  A well managed office won’t need a bunch of ridiculous over the top rules and a hall monitor to make sure things are running smoothly.  But, if yours does, whose fault is that?

The adult in me however, realizes that not everyone has worked for Kool-Aid pushing, Jim Jones wannabes and that while no one enjoys being laid off, some genuinely like and respect the companies they’ve worked for and actually want to keep in touch.  Some want to maintain ties to colleagues they’ve formed relationships with over the years. Others want to keep their names fresh on the minds of their former HR departments, hoping that in the event of an upturn, something new will open up and they’ll be in line for consideration.

Pride aside, keeping in touch with a former employer after a layoff can open new doors, provide fresh leads for your job search and keep you in the company’s good graces until the tide eventually turns.  That old adage about burning bridges still holds true.  It may be even truer still, when your employer is the one building the bridges.

To read more about alumni networks, click here.

Hospital administrators shouldn’t have been surprised in light of the fact that in 1996 Dr. Miller was charged with having a 2 year sexual relationship with an alcoholic, female patient for whom he had prescribed anti-anxiety drugs.  The board sanctioned the doc and put him on probation, but allowed him to remain on staff at the hospital.  Now that same hospital plans to appeal this ruling.  We hope they lose.

is what Kori Harrison’s boss told her to do to keep her job.  Canadian newspaper, The Providence, reports that 27 year old Kari Harrison was fired after refusing to wear skirts to work for the viewing pleasure or her supervisor, Greg Ford.  Greg also offered to trade truck tires for sexual favors, take her shopping for lingerie and share his  marijuana with her.  Well, the Human Rights Tribunal agreed with Kori’s sexual harassment claim and believed she was fired because she refused to do sexay times with Greg.  Greg was fired and Kori was awarded $32,144 in damages.  Now she can buy her own tires.