Good Day World!
I’ve had a couple of bosses in my lifetime that I was sure were the worst people in the world! I couldn’t believe a thing either of them said. While general manager of a small weekly newspaper I often found myself on the losing end of commissions each month.
My boss had a bad habit of pushing the bar up just enough to avoid paying what we’d agreed to and I never seemed to hit the goals he set. How could I? It was like doing the limbo, but no matter how low I did go…he found a reason not to give me the agreed upon increase each month. Newspaper ads were a tough sell even back in the 1980s, and I worked hard to sign local businessmen up to ad contracts.
The biggest asshole I ever worked for was when I was the publisher of three newspapers on the California north coast. As owner, he was always trying to impress me with his power over people. He owned several other businesses included a cable magazine and liked me to go with him when he visited them.
He’d stop and start badgering a worker in a cubicle doing phone sales. Sometimes he fired them on the spot to show how tough he was. I simply couldn’t stand the man. I had to walk away one day or I would have hospitalized him and then spent the rest of my life in prison!
Today, I have an interesting article on the subject that I thought you might enjoy:
“The bully, the narcissist, the know-it-all, even the psychopath.
We may not like them, or want our children to be like them. But chances are, almost everyone who has worked long enough has a horror story about a superior who generally behaved like Homer Simpson’s boss, Mr. Charles Montgomery "Monty" Burns.
A growing number of researchers are looking into what makes a real-life Mr. Burns, and what they are finding isn’t always pretty.
“There are whole climates and cultures of abuse in the workplace,” said Darren Treadway, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo School of Management. His recent research looks at why bullies are able to persist, and sometimes even thrive, at work.” (Read the whole story here)
Time for me to walk on down the road…
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