8 Things I Learned From the Worst Boss Ever
She chain-smoked Kool cigarettes so her breath was always a rank mixture of nicotine and mint that you could smell when she kissed you hello on both cheeks, smearing her fuchsia lipstick carelessly onto your skin.
When we would stay late in the office, which was quite often, she would pound bottles of cheap chardonnay she'd make me fetch from the liquor store around the block.
And then she'd cry. Or scream. She would tell me I was the best and then tell me I was the worst. She'd remind me on a regular basis that my future success was entirely dependent on her goodwill. She was very charming and very pretty and smart like the villains in Disney movies.
She sounds like the worst best girlfriend in the world, but we weren't friends. She was my boss.
I spent several years in what in hindsight was a manipulative relationship, allowing her to chip away at my self-esteem and alienate me from my other coworkers.
One day, I finally found myself bawling and smoking a bummed Kool in an abandoned parking lot behind our building with rats scurrying around my feet.
I'd had enough and I quit. I threw my BlackBerry off the Brooklyn Bridge. It all felt very Jerry Maguire, except without the goldfish and the insecure blonde.
Looking back, I want to thank her for being such a bitch because having the boss from hell made me a better boss.
I spent a lot of time thinking about bosses and employees while I was working on my new novel, The Knockoff. It's sort of The Devil Wears Prada in reverse meets All About Eve, where the assistant is the villain who is trying to take down her once-successful boss. I once watched the Devil Wears Prada during my years of miserable servitude and thought, Wow, that Anne Hathaway has it easy. Her boss just called her fat. Mine made a pass at my boyfriend.
I've been a boss and an employee — a good boss and a bad boss, a good employee and a bad employee, and probably everything in between, but these days, I like to think of myself as pleasant to work with and for.
As the managing editor of Yahoo Travel, part of my job is managing our staff, our blogger network, and a stable of freelancers. I don't always need them to like me, but I do hope they respect me and think I'm doing an OK job.
I've had a lot of good bosses, but they weren't the ones who helped me figure out what to do to be a good manager. It was the bad boss, quite possibly the worst boss, who I gleaned the most about what to do and not do to when managing people. Here are the things she taught me:
1. Gossip sucks in the workplace. My horrible boss used gossip as currency to get what she wanted. She always knew when someone was having an affair, about to have a baby, or getting a divorce. She regularly peeped people's computers and checked out their text messages when they weren't paying attention. When she had dirt on you, she would lord it over you to make sure that you did her bidding. As fun as it may be, gossip has no place in your professional environment.
2. Don't get wasted with your staff. Keep a personal distance when it comes to partying. I know I wouldn't be able to hold my liquor with the 24-year-olds I work with now, so I don't even try any more. Shots? Forget about it unless you want me to start a bar fight. Speaking of bar fights, there was that time that my terrible boss began screaming at a woman in a restaurant because she thought she took her drink. Limit yourself to one glass of wine when you're out with your coworkers and save the rest of the bottle for time with your friends.
3. Keep your private life private. My boss had dated a lot of well-known men about town. I knew a lot about my boss's boyfriends' genitalia. I didn't need to know anything, but it was one of those things that she liked to talk about. Sometimes she was bragging about it and other times she was complaining, but there isn't much you can say in that situation, so I just smiled and nodded and made the appropriate "whooaaa" every once in a while to indicate that I had been listening and that I was impressed.
4. Listen. My boss loved to hear herself talk ... mostly about herself and other people she couldn't stand in the office. You stand to gain so much more by keeping your mouth shut and listening to your staff. I don't know everything, and I don't know half of what I don't know. The people I work with teach me something new every day because I listen. When I tried to speak up to my old boss, she would cut in and change the subject back to herself. That's just how it was.
5. Don't curse at work. My boss from hell would use the words "fuck" and "cunt" with abandon, and while it wasn't unheard of to say "fuck" in the office environment I worked in, the word "cunt" was still a big deal to hear come out of anyone's mouth in the middle of the day. Don't curse in front of your staff. I think my boss believed it made her seem tough. It really just made her seem crass and even scarier than she already was.
6. You're already scary by virtue of being the boss. Your position gives you a certain sense of authority. You don't have to do anything else to make yourself scarier to your employees. I was terrified of my bad boss. I was terrified of her before she revealed herself to be a demon. When people respect you and your position, you don't need to scare them to make sure they work their asses off for you.
7. Mean it when you give a compliment. In my early days of working, I wanted very badly to be liked. This made me something of a sycophant, a sidekick, a "yes woman." I was game for anything, any time. I just wanted my bosses to pat me on the head and tell me I'd done a good job. When she was in a good mood, my demon boss would sing my praises and tell me I was her protege. She would say that I was very lucky to have her. But when I'd do something to upset her, she'd quickly about-face and in an irritable and aggressive tone tell me I was the absolute worst. She would say I was a terrible writer and an even worse reporter. I'd leave and cry alone in my apartment smoking one of those bummed Kools.
8. Help other women. I watched as this particular manager alienated every single woman on our staff. Those women are all now wildly successful. But guess who they don't want to work with today?
Jo Piazza is the author of The Knockoff: A Novel.
Follow Jo on Twitter.
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