by Dino Londis

Managers come in all shapes, sizes and levels of competence. What makes some of them insecure is anyone's guess, but an incompetent boss is dangerous. They've got your job in their hands.

I've worked for some gifted managers and some true nightmares. One was bi-polar, another a humorless zealot, another a paranoid sneak. And this was all at the same company, one coming right on top of the other.

In your favorite bookstore or library, you'll find shelves of books for new managers, new techniques for old managers, tips on handling difficult employees, turning management into leadership, how to fire someone, and so on. But you'll find few titles about dealing with bad managers. The reason is simple: Managers hold all the cards. We employees hold but one: We can leave. But how realistic is that?

War Stories

At the time I made the transition from mail clerk to network administrator, my boss by her own admission was bi-polar. When I was trying to make heads or tails of IT, and spent a slow afternoon adding a user to NDS while trying not to break anything, or sticking an RJ11 jack into an RJ45 port wondering what the difference was, she said, "Get to work. I know your type." The next day she either didn't recall or didn't believe it anymore. Several times, she nearly fired me on a whim. When she left the firm, she was literally screaming and crying.

Her replacement trusted me until I fell ill for a month. Like her predecessor, she needed daily nurturing. That is I had to check in each day to make sure things were okay and nothing was festering. When I was sick, she turned on me. The IT integrators - the guys who I replaced when I took the position - returned to point out every mistake I made.  From then on she made my life miserable, until I quit. 

When my new boss at a top-ten law firm took me out, he said, "Don't tell the others I took you to lunch." That should have told me everything. He told me I'd been hired to improve our group's customer service by setting an example. When I tried this, it turned my colleagues against me. When I turned to my boss for support, he balked.

I spent eleven months working harder, but getting more isolated. I responded to accusations with what I thought was professional silence, letting my work product prove my value. I thought that as long as I worked hard, management would have no reason to fire me. I found out that hard way that wasn't true. My manager sent HR an e-mail asking for my termination - but accidentally bcc'd me.   

At that point, I went over his head to HR to say I could no longer work in such conditions. I chose the date I wanted to leave, offering a two month window. That's a long time, but I knew HR would rather see me depart on my own terms than dismiss me and risk litigation. That was my only smart move in eleven months on that job. Had I engaged like that earlier, I would have stood a better chance.

Lessons Learned

And that's what I do now. When pushed, I push back. I call it being sticky. Surviving in the workplace has as much to do with personalities as the work. Because I thought I didn't need to respond, I was easy to push out because I was easy to push around. In that first firm, I was scrambling to meet every whimsical demand by my manager, putting out real or imagined fires.

Today, I am in a much more stable environment, but I still apply the lessons I've learned. I document each conversation, phone call, and e-mail. Just the bullets, no emotion. I can't emphasize this enough. It works for so many aspects of what I do in a day. I don't cut and paste from e-mail. Typing the materials forces me to remember the details I would otherwise forget. It also creates a detailed timeline in case my actions are called into question. I not only know when something was done, but the mindset leading up to the decision.  So I can push back with accurate and winning information.

In my free moments, I review the document for technical information, so that can be on the tip of my tongue. And if I can't remember something, I know right where to look.

Yes, it's a lot of work, and it adds a great deal of overhead to my day. But like anything proactive, it prevents small fires from flaring out of control.

Dino Londis is an applications management engineer in New York.