A Letter From The Editor
Here’s To Horrible Bosses —
As Well as Good Bosses
They’re All Adventures in Learning
O
4
ver the course of your working
life, you’ve probably had a few
terrible bosses; some of you have
probably had more than your fair
share, depending on what happens to
be your field of endeavor.
Bosses come in all varieties —
little ones, big ones, loud ones,
verbally abusive bosses and those
who are completely insecure ones,
and my personal favorite, utterly
incompetent. We’ve all been there
(except, of course, at PCT, where the
leaders are wonderful, but that goes
without saying, right?).
For years, researchers have stud-
ied something called “managerial
derailment,” a couple of big words
put together to coin a phrase for
the dark side of management.
According to the Harvard Business
Review, bad managers can be
pigeonholed into one of four catego-
ries.
1. Moving-away behaviors,
actions that create distance between
leaders and workers, which leads to
a lack of communication that obliter-
ates trust.
2. Moving-against behaviors or
actions that overpower people and
involves manipulation. Obviously,
nobody likes that.
3. Moving-toward behaviors,
actions that make staff members
reluctant to take bold moves that are
essential to the success of business.
4. Hysterical Laugher. (This is
probably the category I fall into.)
Boss laughs hysterically and makes
odd jokes when encountering office
drama, from either a member of their
team or someone else. OK. Harvard
never really included this one, but
they should have, because it’s pretty
interesting, I think.
As I look back on my work life,
I realize that I could have learned
this ploy from my own past bosses.
Anything’s possible. It was very likely
just my personality.
I consider my first job waiting
tables at a Fort Worth Steakhouse.
But that wasn’t really it. My first job
was working for a national fast-food
chain where my boss was a hand-
some 24-year-old and I was 15. He
asked me out several times and I said
no, simply because my parents didn’t
let me date. They especially didn’t let
me date 24-year-olds. He punished
me for rejecting him by having the
time clock moved higher on the wall
so I was unable to reach it to clock
in (I am 5 feet nothing). He wouldn’t
let anyone help me. “It’s in the
Employee Handbook,” he announced
with a smirk. “Clocking-in for a
co-worker is immediate grounds
for dismissal.” Whatever. “Bite me,
Pedophile Guy,” I said quietly to
myself.
I moved boxes from the storeroom
and climbed on them. He wrote me
up for clocking-in late. I brought my
own stepladder from then on. He
threw it in the dumpster. I pulled it
out, and from then on I left it chained
to the railing by the backdoor where
everyone else left their bicycles.
At the time, Fort Worth was being
terrorized by a serial killer who had
been dubbed by the media, “The 820
Slasher.” I eventually nicknamed my
boss “The 820 Slasher” and it stuck.
Each time another unfortunate victim
fell prey to the “The 820 Slasher,”
I’d wait for someone to comment on
it so I could say something like, “Of
course there was another murder.
It was Sam’s day off.” Guess you’d
have to have been there.
I often wonder why he didn’t fire
me. It was probably because, on
some sick level, he got a kick out
of trying to torment me. Anyway, I
managed to land another job pretty
quickly.
Lesson I learned from Sam —
laugh at bad bosses and never let
them make you cry and never let
them make you feel short, no matter
how short you actually are.
After working in fast-food hell, I
was hired to work at a steakhouse
as a server. The woman who hired
me was lovely. I believe that she’d
worked in restaurants most of her life,
and she was kind and soft-spoken.
Her parents and sister helped out and
they were simply wonderful.
Then, there was her husband,
Jimmy. He was loud and obnoxious
and used rich profanity at times.
Those times included whenever he
was awake or sleeping. He loved
to call people “stupid.” He loved to
threaten to fire us.
One day, in the fall, the restaurant
was plagued with flies. It was a very
nice restaurant, very clean, but that
one day it had flies, not a lot of flies,
but in an eatery, any flies equates
to too many flies, but they were the
kind of flies that would hide, then
come out and gravitate to the most
persnickety guests. A woman came
in with her daughter. She was our
pickiest customer — bar none. Out
came the flies. Five of them — dive-
bombing this woman and her daugh-
ter. My theory was that the woman’s
perfume, called Youth Dew (no one
young ever wore the stuff) was a
favorite for cunning flies. We tried
to shoo the flies away, but nothing
worked and we were hesitant to get
out the flyswatter and begin smashing
them at the table (urgh!).
Finally, the woman said, “You
ridiculous girls! Why don’t you
simply get a flyswatter and kill the
damn pests?”
I replied, “Why get a flyswatter
when you have shoes?” I took off one
of my high-heeled pumps, climbed
onto her booth and went about
slaughtering flies with my shoe.
I became the “great tan hunter”
(my brother had a pool where I
spent a lot of time). Before long, all
five of the annoying creatures were
deceased and the woman was horri-
fied, but her daughter was laughing.
A couple of other servers had come
to my rescue, with disinfectant and
new drinks and fresh silverware,
they moved the always-complaining
woman and her giggling daughter.
My boss’s husband fired me for
being, yep, you guessed it, “stupid.”
But my lovely boss followed me out
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