When I Walk Out Of Here

Terrible Bosses

The late Sam de Brito had a complaint against the ALP's swap of leaders from Kevin Rudd to Julia Gillard. It was often cited that Kevin Rudd was a terrible boss. De Brito wrote in his column we've all had terrible bosses and we've still turned up to work. What excuse has an elected body got in refusing to work for a terrible boss elected by the very people of the land, really? 

Of course it has transpired since then that both sides of politics have seen fit to swap out the leader at semi-regular intervals since the Rudd removal. None of these Prime Ministers have served out a full term and Scomo might be the first one to do so since John Howard. That's a long time between stability - not that stability is any good if the leadership is as rotten as the current Coalition.

This is something you pick up in life along the way but terrible bosses are par for the course. You can do worse than a terrible boss, and that might be a criminal boss. All the same, barring the criminal boss type, chances are most people have a terrible boss. This is because nothing brings out the asshole in somebody than the entitlements of leadership, When I was younger, I found myself at the outpost of a Japanese corporate behemoth. I had a boss to whom I reported, who was a certifiable asshole, but his boss on top of that was an alarmingly incompetent man. This boss was terrible because he was functionally paralysed when it came to making decisions. It was alarming how he was willing to let things just happen by not making a decision. This was because to him, making the wrong decision was worse than the consequences of not making any decisions. It was excruciating to sit through one of those glum meetings the Japanese companies have, waiting for him to make a decision - any damn decision - and not getting anything conclusive out of him beyond an uncomfortable cough-grunt-throat-clearing-noise.

It took me a while to understand that most terrible bosses don't know they're terrible. Some of them are misguided in thinking that they're great bosses. Your average boss, like your average anything, is terrible at their job. This is mostly due to the Peter Principle where people are promoted to the level of their incompetence. Another element that can go into the mix is that your average boss has no empathy. The empathy deficit is usually the blindspot through which all their interpersonal disasters come marching in. Woe betide us if they happen to be disorganised or lazy or not good at solving problems for themselves. It's a lot easier to be a terrible boss than a good one. There's a reason Captain Kirk with all his faults is considered a good captain. It was a show written by ex-navy people who had seen terrible captains. We might laugh at Captain Kirk, but golly there are probably much worse captains in real life commanding real navy ships of the line. 

But even allowing for all that, the little tyrant I worked for, was a particularly terrible, awful, crappy boss from infantile-boss-hell that inspired half an album's worth of songs why I wanted to stop working for him. 

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