What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

• Listen up bosses – Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein interviewed Daniel H. Pink about his new book, “Drive” in which he discusses why the traditional carrot-and-stick approach to leading, does little for job performance and satisfaction.

• Forehead Tittaes – I don’t create it, I just report it. Click here to read, and see, what this is all about, and what it could possibly have to do with bad bosses.

• The great divide – 30 years ago top executives at S&P 500 companies made an average of 30 times what their workers did — now they make 300 times what their workers make. And they don’t understand why we can’t stand them. The Business Insider takes on ‘Undercover Boss’ and how out of touch bosses really are.

• The secret to having happy employees? Fire all the unhappy ones. Wait. What? Trust me, it’s not as bad as it sounds.

• This just in – courtesy and manners can help improve job satisfaction. In Back to Basics: The art of saying Thank You, Laurie Griffith asks bosses to check themselves.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Last spring, Dallas school investigators found that Skyline High School teacher Leslie Michel Finch behaved inappropriately with her 17 year old student for over a year. Despite that fact, ten months after the district concluded its investigation, Finch was still working at the school before resigning in January. It gets worse. Finch is now a substitute teacher in another Texas school district.

The really bad behavior in this one goes so deep, it’s difficult to know where to begin. But lets start with the obvious. Teachers are not supposed to be having “sexual relations” with their students. Period. The fact that school officials determined that inappropriate behavior took place, yet Finch was allowed to continue teaching in the same school is baffling? If this had been a male teacher involved in a sexual relationship with a female student, would he have been allowed to continue teaching? I doubt it. Furthermore, I’m guessing criminal charges would have been filed against him.

The story is being reported by the Dallas Morning News who reviewed 20 cases involving sex allegations against teachers between 2005 and 2009. The review found that in half of the cases, educators suspected of having inappropriate relationships with students were allowed to resign and maintain clean criminal records, allowing them to pursue other jobs working around children.

Sex offenders are not limited to scary men lurking in the dark at children’s playgrounds. When adults placed in a position of authority, abuse that authority by behaving inappropriately with children – no matter how old those children are – they should be punished, severely. The other guilty party in this scenario? The school system that allowed Finch to continue teaching at the school and left the door open for her to keep working with children. Really bad all around.

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 employees and constituents 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 Management 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 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.

This APB was originally issue in 6/09.

This week in Really Bad Boss…

• The arrogance factor – Bad boss trait #9, and you can usually spot it a mile away. Little people with little minds and a little bit of power – a disastrous combination.

• Buck Hamilton concluded his Managing the Meanies series by defining the real problem with bad bosses.

• A couple of Walmart employees suit Walmart. Walmart then fires them. Not so smart Walmart.

• Bad bosses and bad employees, bully bosses get a pass, bosses who give up, and more in this week’s blog roundup.

What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

• Candadian site, GlobeLife wants you to know “What to do when your boss is a bully.” The post centers around a new book out that alleges that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was a big bully to his staff. While some claim the PM was merely passionate, Gary Namie, founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute, suggests that calling bully behavior passionate, sends the message that  everyone else should “learn to live with it.”

• Got a boss who’s a perfectionist? Be Ruly offers a couple of pretty good suggestions for dealing with a perfectionist boss. We’re big fans of her Defensive Documentation suggestion.

• What to do when your boss gives up – While some might use it as an excuse to give up too, if you’ve got career goals then giving up on a boss who’s given up, is not an option. The New York Times offers suggestions from leading management experts on what to do. And although we wouldn’t necessarily suggest going this route, they even share the story of a group of employees who were bold enough to confront their own boss.

• Frank Newell’s back with part 2 of Bad bosses, bad employees. This time he’s talking about bad employees, specifically the thieving kind.

• NWsource reports that a new study proves what we’ve known along. Bad bosses who appear to be good performers get a pass. Upper management, and anyone outside of the line of fire for that matter, may not want to befriend the bad boss, but they’ll accept the bad behavior “as long as they don’t think they’re the next target.”

According to state prosecutors, 48 year old William Fals-Stewart, a researcher at the University at Buffalo from 2000 to 2005, was being investigated for allegedly inflating the number of research recruits in reports he provided to the National Institutes of Health.  To answer the accusations, Fals-Stewart reportedly hired three actors to testify by phone at a university misconduct hearing.  The actors were told they were being hired for a mock trial training exercise, but were actually offering sworn testimony before an inquiry panel.  Using scripts provided by Fals-Steward, the actors testified that they had worked on his projects at the university’s Research Institute on Addiction.

Following the investigation and the testimony provided by the actors, the inquiry panel recommended that the investigation against Fals-Stewart be dropped. Claiming his reputation had been tarnished, Fals-Stewart filed a federal lawsuit against the state, asking for $4 million. It was actually this greedy maneuver that ultimately got him caught however because it was in preparing to fight the suit that state prosecutors uncovered the fraud.

Well, a reader just alerted us that Fals-Stewart died suddenly on Tuesday afternoon and was pronounced dead at his Eden, N.Y. home. The cause of death has yet to be determined. Real the full story here.

The store claims that the couple, who have been employed by Walmart for nearly fifteen years jointly, were terminated based on poor absentee and time management records. The couple claims that they’re being harassed by management and that they’ve informed management on numerous occasions that the absences shown in the system are incorrect.

What makes the firing seem pretty stupid on Walmart’s part is that here you have a couple of employees who, up until they filed their lawsuits, appeared to be good enough workers to stay employed with Walmart for eight and seven years respectively. Then, within a relatively short period of time they develop poor attendance and time management issues? Sounds a little hokey to us. Check out the full story at Law.com, and decide for yourself.

Despite what might seem to be a very negative venting of my resentments and  disappointments — a mile of clichés could perhaps sum up my situation, ax to grind, sour grapes, sore loser, to name but a few — I can assert that the problem of poor leadership is pervasive in management today and that such bad bossing is as instrumental in the demise of a company as any of the other excuses that the key bosses offer to explain their own short-comings.

Nearly all of the companies that I have worked for over the years have folded and one in particular is presently on the verge of bankruptcy with financial collapse a near certainty as this is being written. And the same de-motivating bully bosses are still there mismanaging the company down the tubes. Nearly all of the talented people are gone, some long ago defected to other companies, some were fired for not being team players and others have gone off on their own to become very successful entrepreneurs. Those remaining are the uninspired, the weaklings and the timid, the corporate animals, too, that know the survival tactics and those that are there because they’re beholden to the machinations of the corporate political game.

What none of these people realize is that those that left the company, the truly talented and inspiring leaders, are the ones whose superb performance would have launched the company and its management into greatness.

Editor’s note: 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. He’s shared his excellent “Managing the Meanies: A Survival Guide”  series on Really Bad Boss over the past several weeks. We thank Buck Hamilton for his contribution and wish him continued success.

The HR manager started the conversation with some disparaging remarks about Mike’s resume then spent several minutes asking my friend why he thought he’d be a fit for the company. You should know that based on the job description that was posted, Mike was more than qualified for the position. There were a couple of areas where he could have been stronger, but the HR manager didn’t seem to  be calling to try to determine Mike’s qualifications, she seemed determined, simply, to belittle him. She came off as bossy, inconsiderate and very arrogant.

When I worked for the government, our offices were full of arrogant, incompetent middle managers with little formal education and even less people skills. Working for them was frustrating and infuriating. I once had an assistant manager stop me on my way into the building to tell me to remove my sunglasses from the top of my head. I’d perched them up there when I’d walked into the building and hadn’t made it to my office yet when she came barreling around the corner to tell me to remove them. When I told her that I’d just walked in, she told me that I was in now, and that I needed to take them off immediately. She didn’t seem to see the irony in pointing out the unprofessionalism in “glasses perching” while employees around us watched her browbeat me over something so minor. Of course, this was a member of the same management team that routinely conducted clandestine trashcan searches and pantyhose checks on its female employees.

That assistant manager was – and still is – a small minded woman, with very little power, and even less skill. She and the HR manager who grilled Mike are a lot alike. Both are little people with little minds, given a little bit of authority.  Authority, even a little bit of it, is a dangerous thing in the hands of a fool.

As is often the case in poorly managed enterprises, not only is the sunglass czar still employed, she’s now tormenting and harassing perfectly decent employees as the division’s manager. Unfortunately for us, management by fear and loathing is not only tolerated, it’s often rewarded. As for the HR Manager who was rude to Mike, I’m willing to bet that if she goes unchecked, the company will have a hard time hiring and keeping the most qualified candidates.

This week in Really Bad Boss

• 5 really bad boss behaviors that should die a quick and painful death.

• Buck’s Managing the Meanies contribution asked whether bosses could be one person in the office and a different one entirely outside of it. Buck certainly doesn’t think so.

• Need a couple witnesses to testify on your behalf? Why not hire a couple of actors to do it for you? That’s what this University at Buffalo researcher did.

• The web was all abuzz this week with talk of firing bad teachers, yet another sexual harassment case and bad bosses and bad employees. Check out this week’s blog roundup for the scoop.

What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

• I came across a really great article about the relationship between bosses and employees on VandNews.com, Virginia and North Carolina’s community newspaper. In part I of his series, Bad bosses and Bad Employees, Frank Newell, of Newell Farms Wildlife Center, writes about the mutual respect that bosses and employees should have for each other and how that manifests itself in a great culture.

• Firing bad teachers – Teachers are one of our most underpaid and undervalued positions. Charged with instructing the children of this nation they’re faced with daily obstacles that would be difficult for many of us to surmount. That said, a bad teacher is a bad teacher and he or she has got to go. Not so easy in Los Angeles it seems. According to an article on KCET Local, “trying to fire a bad teacher in L.A. can cost the city up to half a million bucks, and almost never happens.”

• Egypt moving closer to passing sexual harassment laws – Although they’re often ignored by bad bosses in the states, at least we’ve got laws on the books that define sexual harassment and make committing it a crime. Egypt, not so much. Reuters reports that that might be changing.

• Over on OpEd News, Roger Shuler reacts to a federal jury awarding $2.7 million in a sexual harassment suit against Georgia based security company, U.S. Security Associates Inc. Referring to his own age-based harassment claims againt the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Shuler asks the question ‘How clueless can management be these days?’ By the number of sexual harassment and discrimination cases in the news each week, we think the answer is “very.”

University researcher hires actors to testify on his behalf

From the ‘so wild it has to be true’ files comes a story out of Buffalo NY where it seems a former researcher at the University at Buffalo paid professional actors to testify on his behalf during an investigation into whether he falsified data for use in federally funded studies.

According to state prosecutors, 48 year old William Fals-Stewart, a researcher at the University at Buffalo from 2000 to 2005, was being investigated for allegedly inflating the number of research recruits in reports he provided to the National Institutes of Health.  To answer the accusations, Fals-Stewart reportedly hired three actors to testify by phone at a university misconduct hearing.  The actors were told they were being hired for a mock trial training exercise, but were actually offering sworn testimony before an inquiry panel.  Using scripts provided by Fals-Steward, the actors testified that they had worked on his projects at the university’s Research Institute on Addiction.

Following the investigation and the testimony provided by the actors, the inquiry panel recommended that the investigation against Fals-Stewart be dropped. Claiming his reputation had been tarnished, Fals-Stewart filed a federal lawsuit against the state, asking for $4 million. It was actually this greedy maneuver that ultimately got him caught however because it was in preparing to fight the suit that state prosecutors uncovered the fraud.

Fals-Stewart, appearing in Buffalo City Court on Tuesday, was charged with among other things, grand larceny, perjury, and offering a false instrument. Don’t feel too bad for him though, after leaving the University at Buffalo, he was hired as a research scientist at the University of Rochester. And if that doesn’t pan out, he can always get a job as a politician.

Source: AP

Certainly you’ve had a boss who when at work was a monster, an abusive tyrant like some of the characters that I have described here, but when outside of the workplace in a social setting, seemed to be a decent, almost tolerable human being. The change between work and social setting was so remarkable that people actually commented that the boss wasn’t so bad after all, or at least when away from the office. Well, I don’t buy that.

Surely you’ve heard the popular behavioral estimate that the way people treat wait staff in a restaurant is a glimpse as to who they really are. Surely the way people are at work, when exposed to all of life’s stresses, challenges and human interactions, is indeed a full life-size portrait as to who they truly are. No concealments here, you’re looking right into them.

A valuable lesson

One of the most valuable lessons I learned years ago from some of my first interactions with demoralizing bully-bosses, whether as an observer or as a recipient, was just how not to treat people. True, years of selling paper and as such selling myself, has fine-tuned my persuasiveness. After all, you can’t successfully sell paper by being abrasive, secretive and abusive. You can’t persuade the customer to buy from you after you have humiliated her, held back critical information and declined to answer her questions.

Similarly, companies cannot realize a truly committed and brilliant performance from their most valuable asset, their people, if their people are languishing, their talent and creativity suppressed, under a bully boss. And despite all that has been written about leadership, the self-help, motivational management stuff (the book store management sections are full of new inspirational works!) we’re still led by poor managers. Like bad parenting, which can mess up your kids for life, bad bossing can similarly create a whole generation of poor leaders – managers who haven’t a clue as to how to motivate their people.

Next Tuesday: The conclusion of Buck Hamilton’s Managing the Meanies series.

Editor’s note: 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.