Bad Bosses, Part 2: Action Heroes, Guns, and Explosions

“Your boss is a woman?  Now this is a strange bank.” – It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

In order to dress for success they tell you to dress for the job you want, not the job you have.  So I found out where my boss shopped for clothes.  I’d see what they wore, and then wear the exact same outfit the next day.  My boss at the time, Marji, thought that was just a little weird since horizontal stripes weren’t at all flattering on me. 

It’s both a blessing and a curse to get to the end of writing your post and finding . . . it’s too long.  It’s a blessing because if I can break it into two posts, hey, I’ve already got my next post written, which might get me to bed by 2AM instead of the usual.  The curse part is that the post has to have a natural break between part one and part two – thankfully this one did.  The other curse part is that I actually look forward to writing a post – and the one I had planned for Friday will have to wait a week.  But it’s gonna be funny.  Part 1 is here: Bad Bosses, Part I, Including Garfield as Written by H.P. Lovecraft, and part 2 is below.

It’s been my experience that all good bosses look the same, since they are all clones of me, or at least the “me” in that first performance review (JW note: it was described in the last post, and it was a really good performance review).  And I’ve had plenty of bosses in my career – in one two-year period I went through five bosses, and I am averaging a new boss every sixteen months over the years of my career.

Based on my experiences, the traits of good bosses that I’ve had are listed below.  Good bosses are:

• Concerned about doing their duty for their company. They display loyalty – they do their job.
• Good at setting clear expectations on behavior and expected work outcome. You know what you’re supposed to be doing.
• Never smelling of grilled onions.
• Able to create an environment where honest questions are encouraged.
• Good at providing the tools, time, and space the employee needs to get work done.
• Available to do children’s magic shows for birthday parties.
• Honest with employees, and give clear feedback meant to help them improve.
• Quick to recognize that mayonnaise is not a French musical instrument.
• Courageous – the truth is the truth, and they’ll share that up and down the line and damn the consequences.
• Reluctant hold a knife to the secretary’s administrative assistant’s neck.
• Genuinely concerned about the employee.
• Treat people (generally) fairly.

It’s always a shame when you have a great boss and he breaks a leg and has to be put down.

There are times I’ve managed to screw up most of the rules I’ve listed above when I was a boss – that’s why I was able to list them off the top of my head – you remember your mistakes.  But you learn from them, too:  One of the biggest compliments I got was when I was leaving a job for a new company.  The Chief Operating Officer came in to say goodbye and told me, “I hope you’re going to be supervising people at your new job.”  Maybe he wanted the new company I was leaving to join to fail, but I took it that he appreciated my efforts to learn and be better as a boss and wanted to pass that legacy on to other companies through people like me.  You’re right.  He wanted me to mess up that other company.

I imagine this every time I walk into work and use the remote to lock the doors to my car without looking.

Notice I didn’t mention charisma as a requirement to be a good boss.  You don’t need to be an Elon Musk to be a great boss – and I’ve heard he’s not a particularly good boss unless you’re his weed dealer.  Notice that I didn’t mention intelligence – in some instances really high intelligence works against you as a supervisor since it can make it more difficult for you to communicate well.  Would I rather have a smart boss or an honest one?  Would I rather have a smart boss or a courageous one?  Would I rather have a smart boss or one that didn’t constantly smell of grilled onions?

Most of the time, the cause of a really bad boss is due to their fear, namely fear of getting fired or fear of missing a promotion or fear of missing a rung on the corporate ladder.  If that were to happen?  He couldn’t afford to pay for the “hot stone massages” his wife was getting from Günter, her “masseuse.”  However, sometimes you get bosses that are so strange they remind you of Cousin Eddie®:

One boss I had actually lived in his office, as in slept there every night five or six nights a week.  He claimed to be a member of a biker gang, and told stories of holding a person upside down from a bridge as the gang gently convinced him to be out of state so he couldn’t testify at an upcoming trial.  He told about buying a girlfriend a “little car” to convince her to have an abortion.  And the time he broke a bottle to use as a weapon because “The Indian” was trying to knife him.

This might not be a completely faithful adaptation from the original story.

And as a boss, whenever I needed help, or a risky event was about to occur, you could count on him to be three states away.  As bad bosses go, he wasn’t horrible, since after I convinced him that if I looked bad, he looked bad, he had my back when we talked to corporate.  Working for him was a really weird nine months.  Normally I throw in a joke or an exaggeration in my descriptions – but in describing this boss?  Nope.  That all happened.

To be clear, with the exceptions listed above, almost all of the rest of my bosses have been great people who were of good character and really interested in helping me develop as a person and as an employee.  But where all good bosses are similar, bad bosses are often unique:

• The Seagull – The Seagull is a boss that gets a new job every year or two. Why?  Because he flies in, makes a mess, and stays until he’s kicked out.  Miller was a Seagull.  Keep good notes for the aftermath.
• The Shadow – Whenever anything important happens, they’re gone. Whenever you have a question?  They deflect.  Literally, it’s like not having a boss at all, or at least a boss that will make a decision.  You will have a boss if one of your choices goes wrong, however, because the Shadow will quickly (and correctly) point out that he never told you to do such a thing!
• The Burnout – The Burnout peaked twenty years ago, and is mad and bitter. His back hurts.  You make too much money.  He wants to retire, but has to wait another year for Medicare™ to kick in.  Until then?  He wants to inflict as much pain as possible on the office because he wants everyone to hurt as much as his back does.
• Captain Ahab – Captain Ahab is great because he has a vision. Companies love Captain Ahab leaders because they become obsessed with obtaining a vision.  The upside?  Your mission is clear, Ahab makes sure you have everything you need.  And you will work 80 hours a week to accomplish it.  These aren’t 80 hour weeks of playing Minesweeper®, no, every minute is fully used because (Spoiler Alert) that Moby Dick isn’t gonna spear itself.  Ahab doesn’t care about your family, at least during work hours.

He then tried to hypnotize the people in the meeting using a pocket watch.  The work was rough – 90 hour weeks for months on end, but we got free coffee and he’d buy us catered dinner if we had to work past 9pm.  On a Saturday.   

• The Sphinx – You’re always guessing. The Shadow won’t give you any sort of answer, but The Sphinx won’t tell you what he wants, but you can be sure that The Sphinx will tell you if it’s wrong.  Generally loudly and when other people are around.
• The Politician – The Politician cares about only one thing – does it look good? If it looks good and is immoral or illegal?  Who cares?  The Politician is most commonly heard saying “perception is reality.”  The Politician always dresses carefully – almost as good as his boss.  The Politician seeks constant movement.  They can avoid being blamed for messes they make, but will loudly point out the mess they inherited in their new job.  Your value to a Politician begins and ends with you being useful to them.  Otherwise?  You don’t exist.

Your defense if you have a bad boss in almost every case if you want to keep your job is the same:  do your best at work.  Work hard, and don’t break the rules or the law.  Be nice.  And if it sucks too much?  Get a new one.

While traditionally thought of as a good boss, Washington had a few buttons you didn’t want to press, although he did light up Ye Olde Twitter® to piss of Adams:  “King George . . . Washington.  Verily that soundeth goode.”

One other note:  if every boss working at a company is a Bad Boss, one of two things is going on:

1. The Bad Boss is what they really want. Unless you can make it work, you have to leave.  Sooner or later, the messes a Bad Boss makes will stick to you.
2. It may be you. I know that there have been times in my career when my attitude wasn’t optimal.  It’s probably the boss.  But always leave room and examine that the real problem isn’t you.

Okay, I’m now officially sick of Mack the Knife.  But I still don’t feel bad.  And if you’d like to share a bad boss below, feel free.