Your Job Sucks | Unpredictable Managers

Introduction

In the Pacific Ocean, there is an island made entirely of garbage. The island is roughly 1.6 million square kilometers in size and only seems to be growing. This swirling mass of sludge, plastic, and other debris is truly one of the worst legacies that humanity will leave behind. I say all of that to get to this point: the best solution for terrible bosses is to ship every single last one of them to this island--lovingly called the Great Pacific garbage patch--and leave them there with the rest of their kind. An overly-sensitive, high-and-mighty, unpredictable, tantrum-throwing boss can be what makes an otherwise wonderful job an absolute nightmare.

I’m coming into this post armed to the teeth with examples, too. I have had some truly terrible--even evil--bosses during my time in the workforce. I mean, truly, I’ve worked for some genuinely nasty people from head to toe, inside and outside of the office. At best, these heinous creatures were only ever reprimanded, never fired. It didn’t matter what they did. One of them repeatedly brought down clients in the datacenter while another was known to brandish knives, throw office furniture, casually talk about killing other employees within the company, pretend to quit once a month, and worse (yeah, worse). Still, both of these individuals still have their jobs at the time of this writing.

Why is this sort of thing detrimental to the company, especially if these awful supervisors still manage to achieve results? Why should employees just grin and bear it? What makes supervisors like the two I’ll be discussing today so counterintuitive when it comes to company interests?

Enter the terrible world of InfoTube, where I was bossed by Moe Gasoline. A small-sized datacenter managed by an international corporation, InfoTube’s management only cared about results, regardless of how they were obtained. In contrast, Serpent Ranch, an insurance company with significant datacenter needs, claimed to care about the well-being of its employees while it allowed them (and contractors) to be terrorized by outdated policies and violent managers like mine, Bill Camelot.

Let’s dive in.

The Nightmare Bosses

Moe Gasoline

Moe Gasoline was my first boss whose mood genuinely affected my job. Even when I worked in fast food, my managers knew not to allow their bad days to affect their employees. When it came to Moe Gasoline at InfoTube, however, all of the employees learned how to predict the good days (when they could safely interact with Moe) and the bad days (when Moe needed to be avoided). If he’d gotten back from a vacation, you knew you that you were probably safe for about a week. After that, however… Moe’s mood was up in the air. You had to creep around, trying your best not to make too much noise or draw any attention to yourself.

If Moe happened to so much as see you when he was in a bad mood, odds were you were about to get an earful. It wouldn’t matter if you’d done anything wrong, if anything actually was wrong, or if Moe had even been on site long enough to learn that something could possibly be wrong. All that mattered was that Moe was upset and you were, in his mind, an underling.

As punishment for whatever crime Moe made up in his mind, you would often receive a meaningless lecture shortly followed by a pointless assignment (a separate post on busy work is coming, I assure you).

We learned to avoid Moe on his bad days by pretending to be far more busy than any of us actually were. The key was to not only appear busy, but to appear frustrated with how busy you were. When Moe would walk by, you’d need to pull your hair out, growl, and stare at your fake problem with so much intensity that even the sun would tell you to simmer down. If Moe saw you that frustrated and upset, he would usually leave you to it. It helped that Moe had little to no idea what the data center technicians actually did, so I could have just been staring at a memory module that had been snapped in half and he’d have assumed I was trying to fix it with my mind powers.

Bill Camelot

This one is a doozy. In fact, this one is so much of a doozy that it needs a disclaimer: I am not interested in revealing Bill’s real name out of fear for my own safety and the safety of my former coworkers. I and several other coworkers reached out to numerous individuals at Serpent Ranch and the contracting agency, hoping someone could do something about Bill’s unpredictability and violence, but all we ever got was “we’ll talk to him”. Nothing was ever done and nothing will ever be done. He continues to be a violent menace to this day because Serpent Ranch refuses to do anything about him despite having received multiple accounts regarding his violent behavior.

When I first started at Serpent Ranch, I thought Bill was great. He was a fun, happy-go-lucky guy. He was always joking around--sometimes too much--and seemed to have a new song in his head every other hour. Then, when the next day came around, Bill was a completely different person. He was angry, stomping around, throwing clocks from the wall for displaying the wrong time. As the weeks went on, Bill started talking about employees he hated, usually those in other cities and states. He would talk about how he wanted to kill a particular employee, usually in vivid detail, either before or after having to jump on a call with the employee in question.

It became clear to me--and everyone else--what you had to do in that workplace: no matter what, do not get on Bill’s bad side. You cannot let that happen. The problem was that you never knew what it would take to get on Bill’s bad side. Some days, you had to deliberately defy a direct order from him. Other days, you just had to breathe in his vicinity.

I remember that I once misinterpreted an instruction he gave me because what he told me went against the directions in the ticket that I had been assigned. Because word of mouth doesn’t have a paper trail, but tickets do, I went ahead and did as the ticket instructed. Mind you, this was a quick, two-minute cable move. The mistake took two minutes to fix and he even acknowledged that the ticket was confusing and that the information should have been corrected in the ticket before any work was done. Yet, despite acknowledging that I was right and that he didn’t go about the process correctly, he still put me on his ‘naughty list’ for a month. A month. And being on that list isn’t a good experience for anyone. While Bill is mad at you, your work-life is pretty stressful and unenjoyable. Here are some things you can expect while you’re on Bill’s bad side:

• No lunches with coworkers
• Coworkers don’t associate with you for fear of being put on Bill’s bad list with you
• You can’t sit at your desk, because Bill is almost always at his desk in the same area, so you have to find a place to hide while there’s no work to do
• If you do happen to walk past Bill, you shouldn’t make eye contact. I say shouldn’t because I deliberately would make eye contact, since that was the safest victory I could achieve against him.
• When you walk past Bill, you get to hear his frustrated grunting and hissing and fuming, like an extremely bitter Gimli with a less-impressive, far-grayer beard.
• Bill talks badly about you to your coworkers, his boss, and your contracting boss (though everyone knows that there’s no truth to his words, it still has the potential to be detrimental)
• Every single ticket you work is scrutinized to its utmost in an attempt to find something wrong with it. If nothing is wrong with it, something is made up. Bill would even change entire methodologies behind things like rack cabling just to claim that you had messed something up.
• Bill would, in meetings, call you out, reprimand you, etc for next to nothing.
• When Bill was truly angry, his violent behaviors would be directed at you rather than at inanimate objects and walls. Thrown chairs would fly toward you, box cutters would cut boxes in your direction, his pocket knife would be sharpened at you, etc.
• The silent treatment from Bill, even when you actually needed something from him.

This was the general atmosphere of Serpent Ranch’s data center. You had to creep around the office and data center, hoping that you didn’t catch Bill on a bad day. If you did catch him on a bad day, you were bound to see a lot more of those bad days in the coming weeks--and all of those bad days were going to be attributed to something you did (something that Bill most likely forgot mere moments after he decided he was going to hate you for a while). I spent my last four months at Serpent Ranch on Bill’s bad side, mostly because I no longer cared enough to try to get off of it. In the end, when I left Serpent Ranch, I told him that I was absolutely fed up with his behavior, that I was tired of him talking crap about me behind my back, that I was sick of him trying to get my coworkers to turn against me, and that, in so many words, he really ticked me off.

Why Do These People Remain in Power?

Results in Spite of Bad Management

Those of you who watch The Office likely remember the storyline which had Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) as an absentee manager. He was off on an island for an entire fiscal quarter. When he returned, he collected a bonus that had been given to him as a reward for the company exceeding its goals for that quarter. Not only had his absence not caused a halt in the workflow, it had actually improved it. This is one of the more realistic storylines featured in The Office, based on my professional experience. Any time that Moe and Bill were gone for a period that exceed a day or two, my coworkers and I would adjust, our stress levels would decline, we’d work harder, and we’d get a lot more done. We took more pride in our work, then, and didn’t dread coming into work.

When Moe or Bill were on site, we still took pride in our work and worked as hard as we could, but we certainly weren’t operating at maximum efficiency. The individuals above our bosses, however, simply saw our results; they saw that Moe’s team or Bill’s team were massively successful and then attributed that success to our supervisors, not to the people who actually performed the work around their boss.

Not only did my coworkers and I have to do our jobs, we had to do them while also dealing with bosses who served as frustrating obstacles, not supporters or enablers. They made our jobs more difficult, not easier. Imagine how much more work we would have been able to get done at Serpent Ranch if we weren’t constantly trying to avoid being in the vicinity of our manic, rampaging, violent supervisor? And yet, when we still managed to achieve results in spite of Bill’s behavior, it was Bill who received credit, not the people who tolerated him while trying to make it through their 7-3 shift. Bill’s superiors would never fire him, because from what they could tell, whatever he was doing was working for the company.

(Blind) Company Loyalty

When I say company loyalty here, I’m not talking about employee loyalty to a company, I’m talking about a company’s loyalty to its employees. Typically, this can be a great thing. If a company matches market salary for a job rather than giving a standard raise, is willing to work with employees to help them achieve professional goals, and forgives the honest mistakes of its employees, that can go a long way. Unfortunately, at places like Serpent Ranch and InfoTube, company loyalty was a bad thing. The companies were loyal to a fault, unwilling to let go of managers and employees who have been with the company for a significant period.

It is nearly impossible to lose a job at Serpent Ranch. The company is a breeding ground for lazy, unqualified, coasting employees. It wasn’t until they started performing massive layoffs that individuals became worried about their jobs. During the layoffs, violent employees like Bill still managed to keep their jobs, protected by policies and managers who were simply too nice to speak ill of someone, no matter what information was given (and believe me--plenty of people approached Bill’s boss to tell him about the violent, reckless behaviors that we all endured on a daily basis). The well of forgiveness at Serprent Ranch was bottomless for its employees, regardless of the accusations leveled against them.

At InfoTube, it wasn’t so much company loyalty as it was… borderline nepotism. It didn’t matter what Moe Gasoline did--whether he was emailing us drunken instructions in the middle of the night or unexpectedly shutting down servers because he wanted us to look busy--he was always going to have a job at InfoTube because his managers were his buddies. They did everything together, from harassing female employees to watching porn in their office; they were bros, and that brodom ran deep. The only way Moe was going to part ways with InfoTube was if it was his own decision to do so.

The Problems with Retaining These Managers

Employee Retention (and Acquisition)

When you keep a manager who turns your workplace into a hostile, unwelcoming environment, you are essentially trading good employees (unless your employees are terrible, too) for an awful manager. Any time I have started looking for a new job, it has been because I reached a breaking point with management. I never quit because of customers or coworkers, no matter how crappy they were. If I liked my manager, my job was worth suffering through everything else. A good manager had my back and built me up as an employee, a bad one threw me under the bus and tore me down as a person.

At both InfoTube and Serpent Ranch, employees desperately wanted to leave due (almost exclusively) to management. There were always whispers of quitting, walking out, or giving an ultimatum to upper management. They weren’t just rumors, though--a lot of us did quit and even cited our bosses as our reasons for doing so (not that it made a difference because, as stated above, these two particular bosses are set for life, no matter what they do). Regarding InfoTube, company reviews and word-of-mouth were enough to keep experienced professionals from joining the team to fill in the newly vacant positions that resulted from my departure (and my poaching of a great coworker who was also desperate to leave). Last I heard, some of the employees who left still have yet to be replaced. The data center technicians who remain are working overtime and still can’t meet their 24/7 staffing promise. No one wants to work for or with Moe and those who don’t know about him are bound to learn pretty quickly that he isn’t someone you want to be associated with on LinkedIn (or, you know, anywhere on social media).

I made it clear to any and all recruiters I worked with after my departure from InfoTube that Moe Gasoline was irresponsible, immature, and a terrible manager--one of the worst. He had brought down clients, caused severe outages, and was ultimately not the sort of person I would ever recommend for a job. I also left equally honest reviews (though I couldn’t name Moe specifically) on sites like Glassdoor and Indeed. I may not be able to convince Moe’s buddies to fire him, but I can do everything in my power to keep other professionals from associating with him.

Employee Morale

Your employees will want to leave the job due to poor management, sure, but they’re still going to be working for you while they look for another job (unless they walk out and risk unemployment). While they’re working under their overbearing and unpredictable supervisor, they’ll be stressed, unhappy, and constantly toeing that line between staying at their job and walking away from it with their middle fingers raised. Morale is always going to take a hit when a job is crappy, but I wholeheartedly believe that morale is crushed most fiercely by bad managers. This is especially true when the manager’s mood is unpredictable and often violent, leading to constant tension and anxiety in the workplace. Employees who are constantly tense and stressed at work because they don’t know what to expect from their boss will dread coming into work, eagerly depart from it, and will spend their off hours trying to find a new job or simply forget the one that they have (leading to, as was the case for one coworker, severe alcoholism and termination).

Legal Trouble

I wish I had gotten some of Bill’s violent acts on camera. I have a few recordings of him bad-mouthing his supervisors and coworkers, but I was always too busy or had too much on my mind to capture his really awful episodes (usually, what was on my mind during those moments was simply: “get away as quickly as you possibly can”). If I had captured his real behavior on camera, though, imagine what could be done with that. Employers have a legal obligation to maintain a safe work environment. Failing to meet these obligations can lead to employees refusing to work (legally) and even lawsuits. If Bill remains at Serpent Ranch, it’s only a matter of time before someone reaches a breaking point and gives the company an ultimatum. I was only a contractor and had very little ground on which to stand, but if I’d been an internal employee, working directly for Serpent Ranch rather than through a middle-man, I would have done a lot more than just file a few complaints with Bill’s manager and my contracting company.

Conclusion

]In no way do I intend for this article to be a suggestion that mental health be a reason for an employee of any rank to be fired, barred from promotion, etc. Bill and Moe likely both have serious mental health problems which led to their unpredictable behavior and severe mood swings. The problem is not that they face these problems--it’s that they embraced them and expected employees to suffer the consequences. Bill even talked about his issues openly, sometimes boasting about them, as if he were proud of his behavior and instability. InfoTube and Serpent Ranch did nothing to address the concerns of their employees, regardless of the actions performed by management--that is the issue, here.

An unwillingness to address violent, unpredictable behavior led to a stressful and hostile work environment at both InfoTube and Serpent Ranch. Employees avoided their managers at all costs, resulting in missed tickets and calls while the employees were away from their desks, aimlessly wandering because they didn’t want to be around a manager on a “bad day”.

Employees should not have to circumnavigate their bosses just to get their jobs done and they certainly shouldn’t have to avoid their bosses just to feel safe at work. If you are an employer who has received feedback suggesting that one of your managers is violent, you need to take action. If you are an employee who works for a violent manager, seek safety, legal counsel, and a new job.