Second Thoughts about Bad Bosses

Susan Cramm, author of 8 Things We Hate about I.T.: How to Move

beyond the Frustrations to Form a New Partnership with I.T., introduces
a lesson in assessing bosses from The Curmudgeons Guide to Getting
Ahead: Dos and Donts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear
Writing, and Living a Good Life, by Charles Murray.
by Susan Cramm

No one likes being bossed around. At age 8, I lodged a quiet protest over my
mothers weekly requirement to change my bed by putting the clean sheets in
the laundry hamper and leaving the dirty ones in place. In my peanut-butter-
and-jelly-addled brain, it was a victory over oppression. I was proud of my
sneakinessa pride that fed my ego, but also, I realized later, stunted my
growth.
An overly developed ego can impede a career as well. Its always tempting to
revolt when bosses have treated us badly. But we should be disciplined
enough to take a step back and dispassionately analyze the situation, just as
Charles Murray advises in the excerpt below.
If your bosss behavior appears to be criminal, by all means resistand reach
out for help. But bad bosses are more likely to be incompetent or boorish.
Thats when its worth remembering that getting ahead usually involves more
interdependence than independence. And interdependence requires humility
above all.
Maybe your boss is a narrow-minded control freak, but you might be able to
make that work for you. Or maybe youre wrong about your boss. After all, it
can be hard to like people who give us negative feedback or push us beyond
our comfort levels. In any case, take the time to think it through. As my
mother taught me, self-discipline is a lot less painful than regret.
Susan Cramm
An excerpt from chapter 9 of The Curmudgeons Guide to Getting
Ahead: Dos and Donts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear
Writing, and Living a Good Life

Youve been working at your new job for six months, lets say, and youre so
unhappy with your supervisor that youre considering quitting. Heres what
you need to think through: Exactly what is bothering you?
There is one immediate deal-breaker: The boss asks you to do things that you
believe to be unethical or otherwise morally wrong. In that case, you should be
prepared to quit. Before you actually take that step, however, go to some other
senior person in the organization whom you respect and tell that person your
story. If the result satisfies you, fine. If effective action isnt taken, quit. When
youre in your twenties and you dont have a family to support, theres no
reason to compromise your integrity to keep a job.
What about a boss who is a nice person but incompetent? The incompetence
might take many forms. Perhaps your boss is a lousy manager, giving
contradictory instructions, failing to check whether his instructions have been
carried out and unable to meet deadlines. Perhaps he makes factual or
computational errors in the products he turns out. Perhaps he
misunderstands the instructions given to him from above and sends you off on
a task that you know his supervisors didnt have in mind. Whatever the
specifics, its quite clear: Your boss doesnt know what hes doing.
You have to ask how much his incompetence is holding you back. If you are
trying to acquire a specific skill set, the answer may be a lot. If you want to
improve your craft as an editor in a publishing house, for example, it is
important that you work under someone who is a terrific editor. The less
specific the skill set, the more likely that you arent losing much because of the
bosss incompetence. You can learn a lot about good management by working
under someone who is a bad manager. Sometimes incompetent people
delegate so much work to their subordinates that you find yourself given
meatier tasks than you would get from a more competent supervisor. Unless
you need a boss from whom you can learn specific technical skills, you might
as well stay on the job, though you might want to quietly test your alternatives
in the local job market.

You can learn a lot about good management by working
under someone who is a bad manager.

What about the boss who is a jerk? It depends on what kind of jerk he is. Lets
start with the most notorious kind of office jerk, the sexist male who makes
life miserable for his female colleagues or subordinates. I dont want to
minimize how trying and even frightening it can be to deal with such a
situation if you are a young woman new to the workplace and the jerk is a
much older senior employee. But if you find yourself in such a situation,
remember two things. First, even the hint of a formal sexual harassment
complaint scares employers, who badly want to avoid the legal hassle and the
financial costs that a complaint entails, and should scare the sexist jerk even
morehis job can easily be in jeopardy. Second, you shouldnt assume you
have to do battle all by yourself. Every office Ive ever worked in has had
sagacious women who would have been wonderful counselors and advocates
for a young female employee who is being harassed. And let me put in a word
for male curmudgeons. Most of us see ourselves as gentlemen. You dont have
to approve of our antediluvian mind-set, but theres something to be said for
having a senior male in authority who detests men who maltreat women or
take advantage of underlings. You can come talk to us too.
The same generic advice applies if you are black and have a racist boss or you
are gay and have a homophobic boss. You have legal options for responding,
but they arent your only options. Dont underestimate the decency of the
other people in your workplace, including the curmudgeons.
Next we come to jerks who are merely unpleasant. They are crude, controlling,
ill-tempered, or otherwise offensive. How you react depends on how good they
are professionally. When they are very good at doing something that you want
to become good at, Id stay on the job. The best of all possible ways to improve
your professional skills is to be around such a person. The woman who
inspired The Devil Wears Prada might have been a terrific pain to work for,
but she apparently knew her stuff better than just about anybody in her
business, and working as her assistant was probably an invaluable experience.
The less spectacularly talented your boss is, the less reason you have to stay.
But in all cases when you have problems in your interactions with your boss,
theres one more question you have to ask yourself: To what extent is your
boss at fault, and to what extent are you a neophyte about supervisor
subordinate relationships? Some of you have reached your twenties without
ever having been treated as a subordinate and you are not used to it. What you
see as arbitrary, insensitive, or hostile behavior on the part of your boss may
be nothing more than the way in which supervisors have been treating
subordinates from time immemorial. People in charge dont always feel the
need to say please when they tell you to do something. They may receive a
report that you worked on all night without the slightest indication of
gratitude. They may answer your request with a gruff No without feeling any
need to explain. They may be indifferent to the problems you have overcome.
(A boss in my youth had a sign on the wall reading, Dont tell me about the
storms at sea. Just tell me when the ships coming in.) So if you think you
have a bad boss, first go to a quiet room, look deep into your soul, and
determine whether you are a victim or a self-absorbed naf.

Copyright 2014 by Cox & Murray Inc. Excerpted by permission of Crown
Business, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin
Random House Inc. All rights reserved.