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Suffering
from "really bad boss" syndrome? You are not alone by any
stretch of the imagination. Assuming you aren't a clock-watching
slack ass or raving lunatic with irrational propensities for disturbing/disruptive
or possibly violent behavior, your paranoia about getting canned
may still be quite justified. There exists a hard-core cult of
moral sell-outs in every organization of human beings. Materialism,
power, you name it, routinely people are easily induced to play
Herr Doktor S.S. just for the strokes.
Actually, some
people simply should have been swallowed instead of conceived, let
alone promoted to a supervisory position. "Cracking the whip" by
making examples out of innocent parties is among the oldest forms
of organizational tyranny/corporate "terrorism." Termination of
your employment would almost certainly be attributed to Employment
at Will. Essentially, this means either party can drop kick the
other without an excuse. Of course, the risk and pain here are almost
always entirely the employee's. That's why the people who pull down
REAL money carefully cover themselves with legal employment contracts
resulting in diamond parachutes. All too often, these same people
have themselves been "bad bosses" for an entire career. So much
for "fair."
If you are ever
informed that "it isn't working out," or "we're letting you go,"
it may have absolutely nothing to do with truth. The world has no
shortage of smirking HR types able to sit down with you and your
"bad boss," look you right in the eye and say things about your
work performance which would make Will Rogers want to cold cock
a nun. Any attempt to refute their illogical, untrue assertions
about you, your character or your work performance will prove to
be like trying to nail Jello to a wall. For a classic example of
this behavior, I refer you to a particularly delicious scene from
the wonderful film, "American Beauty," where Brad, corporate asshole,
reads Lester Burnham's (Kevin Spacey) memo out loud. Lester then
says, "For fourteen years I've been a whore for the advertising
industry. The only way I could save myself now is if I started firebombing."
To which Brad responds, "Management wants you gone by the end of
this day." Lester threatens a sexual harassment charge. "Can you
prove you didn't offer to save my job if I'd let you blow me?"
Rather than whine,
freak out, lose sleep or wind up helping to put a new wing on some
psychiatrist's tract mansion, your best bet is to come to grips
with Shakespeare's 394-year-old observation, "(Life) is a tale told
by an idiot; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." (Macbeth,
act5,sc.5 l.16-27).
If the pressure
becomes unhealthy for you at work, then by all means initiate whatever
processes you can to effect a change of employer. This may provide
some FAST temporary relief. Otherwise, realize that, as expressed
in the David Mamet film "The Spanish Prisoner" (featuring actor/comedian
Steve Martin in a non-comedic role), "Worry is like interest paid
in advance on a debt that never comes due." Also in that film is
this gem: "If the company is indebted to you morally but not legally,
they will give you nothing -- and my experience is, they will begin
to act cruelly toward you. Why? To suppress collective guilt."
You know who
the quintessential "really bad boss" is. He's the guy Jodie Foster's
FBI character was chasing down in "The Silence of the Lambs": that
cross-dressing serial psycho ('Buffalo Bill'). His daily approach
toward you probably brings to mind someone standing over a 10-foot-deep
basement well, hard metal rock blaring, holding a perfectly manicured
miniature white poodle in one arm and a bucket-on-a-rope in the
other hand, taunting you -- his luckless report -- with that monotone,
high nasal, Thurston Howell-gone-a-flaming-alternative-lifestyle
voice: "It puts the low-shun back in the bucket-et, or it gets the
ho-se."
I've endured
way too many Managing Directors and VPs of Marketing and Sales Managers
like that. I've been looking at different companies over the last
couple of years. I'm fine where I am, but have a relatively wide
breadth of experience in both sales and salespeople management,
from Wall Street to Healthcare. I'm motivated to leave healthcare
because the vast majority of budget-mad-techno-weenies now ruining
it are likely to burst into flames if/when they finally come into
contact with sunlight. Immolation would be so fast and furious the
only witnesses would be either other aliens able to pick up ultrasonic
frequencies, any carbon-based life forms requiring oxygen within
100 feet, NASA satellites or the occasional suicidal fruit bat.
I value my early
mid-life and don't want to remain too close to those guys. Plain
English: HMOs, IDNs, GPOs and their CEOs, COOs, CFOs and CIOs, who
are mostly money grubbing JOs clueless as to the meaning of integrity.
The only health they honestly care about is their own. When it comes
to el momento di verdad, the rest of the world can come suck a cold
fart right out of their over-paid asses, for all they care.
As a result,
patients, personnel, vendors and all their families have entered
the 21st century suffering from morale so low and lost you'd have
to go to the South Pole and find the farthest star in the sky even
to be looking in the right direction for it! The good news is, so
are all the stockholders (finally) so there's hope for "healthcare"
yet, but the time is nigh for me to move my skills, talents, interests
and sanity into another field. But I don't want to make the wrong
jump.
The thing about
making a wrong career jump is not finding yourself reporting to,
managing or selling (directly) to Buffallo Bill's alter ego, a guy
I call "Thumpa." He's basically the knuckle walker we all love to
hate, operating incompetently and with no conscience, just under
the surface of too many Managing Directors, VPs and Sales Managers
who have been Peter-Principle-promoted too often. Usually an obese,
raging alcoholic, Thumpa operates with a mixture of piss, pesticide
and pure petroleum jelly running through his veins. If you find
yourself dealing too closely with him too often, you then become
a man with a fork in the land of soup. You'll walk around looking
like you just swallowed a turd (even on weekends because Monday
is drawing near). During every morning's shave you'll face the same
guy whose spirit once reported to Custer on the very morning of
Little Big Horn. Those eyes will repeatedly whisper back at you,
"This day's got room for improvement, General."
Due to unbelievably
poor impulse control, Thumpa is unable to stop himself from doing
incredibly stoooopid things. His atrophied brain inhabits the land
of the rusty, hoodless, 'I-ROC-Z' TransAm-up-on blocks, hiding a
mangy, vicious, infested, brown-dog-on-a-chain in the dust, with
235 empty beer cans beside a tilted, double-wide trailer. He is
the archetypal toothless, pierced 'n tattooed obese shame of illiterate,
race-baiting Americana. Thumpa is most at home wherever the women
are too busy flinching, nursing a black eye or nervously avoiding
him. He is the unshaven, 345-pound, waddling, one-eyed mutant tattoo
museum who failed truck-driving school (six times) and comes out
only for fresh porn, more beer, some "crank" or to take a wormy
shyte on the neighbor kid's stolen Yamaha (during ads between pro-wrestling
bouts).
Thumpa is the
soul of every bad boss. You know the type: You can literally see
the dog shit fumes wafting off him. He carries a chain saw around
on a back belt loop, just below the hairy third nipple buried in
one of the many sweaty fat folds of his lower back. Since his pants
are mostly always falling off an almost-nonexistent ass, you can
occasionally catch a glimpse of the fading, Gothic lettered tattoo
some comedic artist left on him during one of Thumpa's classic trade
show benders. Right there, just above his plumber's butt crack,
there reads an admonition from Dante's "Divine Comedy" (1321): "Lasciate
ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate!" (Abandon all hope, ye who enter
here). The only eye Thumpa has is crossed and everybody knows he's
out of his trailer because the dog quits barking, makes weird whimpering
noises and all you hear is the chain quickly dragging back underneath
the TransAm as the insects fall silent and shotguns all over the
"park" go KER-CHUK!
Thumpa exists
in virtually every company where snotty, too-neat, nasty-nice corporate
lawyers are overpaid to protect his right to completely decimate
every human being he has dealings with. I have seen the enemy and
regardless of his Klingon cloaking device, know how to avoid him
at all costs. This has taken a few years of experience which translates
on a resume only to those who know how to read between the lines,
because they too are somewhat experienced in the ways of the world.
Since almost no one in modern times has actually ever read a resume
(particularly complete stranger headhunters and especially while
they have you on the phone popping questions at you like, 'So, whadja
W-2 last year?"), feel free to assume what you will about that last
arrogant and shamelessly self-aggrandizing statement.
If you aren't
in the process of being driven silently and slowly mad by the likes
of some corporate "Buffalo Bill" or "Thumpa," painfully extracting
paychecks from a job which involves feeding some sick and demented
ego, I would be absolutely astounded and love to hear from you!
I'd love to hear from you just as much if you're pretty sure your
current boss lied on his resume and you suspect that in fact, he
was a hooking lap dancer at a Mexican truck stop until he discovered
some Turd-o-saur.com job finding service. Live, laugh, love and
know there is great truth in the maxim "Usually the hurtful are
themselves hurting."
Now, if only
they could wind up hurting themselves even more than they hurt you.
Otherwise, it has helped me a great deal never to attribute to malice
aforethought that which just as easily might be attributable to
unconscious incompetence, low IQ and even lower EQ. Forgive, forget
and move on.
Copyright
© 2000 Marc V. Mulay All Rights Reserved
Marc V.
Mulay is a father, husband, jazz/rock/fusion/funk 'n blues guitarist,
composer, poet, writer, former salesman, stockbroker, and flyer.
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