Throughout my career, I am blessed with wonderful bosses that taught me so much about life and business. Many of them became personal friends as well as mentors. But the ones I learned the most from are the bosses from hell. For one, I learned to grit my teeth, simmer my anger, prolong my patience and smile through my anger.
If you are like me, going through hell with your current boss, you might find this article useful. Read this before you decide to stab him or her with a knife!
Avoid Direct Confrontation
Sure, there are times you need to fight it out with your boss to protect your rights and there are times where direct confrontation will just make you go crazy. Like mad person crazy. Choose other ways to get the message across instead of making your blood boil everyday.
I had this idiot for a boss when I was in the education industry. Any confrontation with her is a waste of my time and effort. So instead of confronting her on important matters, I choose to email her and copy everyone else in the same team. That usually drives home my points and by typing out something black and white, she has to watch her words and make it look corporate positive.
Find Alternative Route
If my boss is someone I don’t look up to or can’t work well with, I’ll try to swap team or change my department. In any case, I’ll try to change my boss with the least impact to my role as possible. If I can’t perform my best with a horrible boss, it only drags the company down. Negativity breeds negativity so no point forcing two mismatch people together.
Imagine A World Without Him (Or Her)
My world has no place for bosses from hell. Instead of dreading to come to work everyday, I don’t let such idiot spoil my day. I go to work and I imagine as much as possible a world without my evil boss. As long as I don’t need to face him directly, I can get away thinking my world is perfect. Once I even traded my window facing desk with another colleague for a full little corner desk because I was seated where his yelling is within my hearing range. That colleague is a bit hard on hearing so she didn’t mind because his yelling is kinda muted to her and she really wants a window desk for a few years.
Know Your Limits
I can tolerate and forgive lazy, arrogant, lying, overpromising, backstabbing, scheming bosses. Yes, my tolerance level is super high. (Even higher now that I am well trained by my little diva.) But I have my limits too. I cannot stand stupidity. I just can’t find a walkaround solution for idiots who keep dishing out poor decisions time after time without learning from their mistakes. Those are the bosses I can’t work with and it’s either him or me, no two of us in the same team.
Greener Pastures
If all else fails and I rather use up all my leaves to hide at home than to save them for a good holiday, I know I’m having it bad. If that is the case, I’ll look at other greener pastures out there. Maybe I’ll find a boss who appreciates my effort, encourage my creativity, fuel my passion and inspire me to go beyond my limits. And that is a boss that earns my respect.
Have you had any bad bosses’ experiences? Please share with us how you manage to survive in the comments below.
Love my take on bosses? You will definitely find these interesting:
Crazy Things that People do to Suck Up their own Boss
6 Types of Bosses that breaks you
12 Things You can do to Hurt Your Boss Pretty Bad
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Nice write up
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Thank you, Shantanu!
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So real and damn match to my current evil boss…U have written and expressed it so well Kally I have all these inside me but can’t able to express as you do….It feels like I have vented out all now…Love u loads…Keep it up Dear.
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Thank you so much. I truly know how it feels to have an evil boss that you want to wrap your hands around his / her neck everytime you face him. Love you lots too. Take care and if you ever need to dish out the nasty to a listening ear, you know where to find me!!
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Ugh, a stupid boss is tough to deal with because he or she will constantly make everyone’s life harder with bad decisions. The bad part is they’re usually too dumb to realize that they’re the problem and will put the blame elsewhere when things start coming apart at the seams.
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Totally true!!! Dumb bosses are the worst! And you can’t even knock some sense into their puny head!
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Thank you for sharing this out
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Super informative thanks!
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Thanks so much for dropping in!
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Imagine the world with him/her- great point.
Informative post Kelly!!!
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And so we can breathe a little better, the air is a little fresher. Haha. Thank you!!
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Good post, Kallie. I’ve had both good and bad ones. Bad bosses are terrible, sometimes even worse than bad colleagues because bosses control what you do at work.
I had a really poor manager who would be abusive in emails, to the point of being both petulant and malicious.
Worse was he had a habit of not coming to work whenever our team held major functions because of foot pain from gout. There was one very busy week when he didn’t come in to the office from Tuesday to Friday. He didn’t take that week off in advance but he sent us an email every morning saying he won’t be in that day. Unfortunately he was senior so other than being chided by the CEO once not to be absent for a major meeting (your foot better not be hurting on that day), nothing happened to him.
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Har! I hate carry the weight of someone who is not pulling in their best. You know what I’ll do? I’ll just put that evil boss’s emails into spam and ignore him. If he ain’t going to respect my attendance at meetings, he ain’t gonna get a response from me.
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Yes, same here. It’s really dispiriting when your manager doesn’t even show up to work. I feel that I could have spoken up about that to him (whenever he returned, he’d pretend to be oblivious about the problems caused by him not being around) but instead, I was too respectful.
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As always, I enjoy the sound advice you give so well with each posting. However, after reading your first word, the one written at the very beginning, you know the one, well, I went a little, well, you know.
After reading the first sentence of the “Know Your Limits” paragraph, I thought, that is the employee I have been looking for all these years! Put that in her resume at the top of the Summary of Qualifications section! Then, I got to the fifth and sixth, I don’t know, I can’t figure it out, does a bunch of words in a paragraph count as a sentence sentence? Is there any way you could deal with those problems of yours? We can discuss pay and perks later.
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Haha! Well, it depends if you find the bunch of words talking back to you and if it make sense in your situation, then yes, it will count as a paragraph. 🙂
I bet you’ll make a great boss. Maybe if I pull the wool over your eyes every now and then. Hee!
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I completely relate! I’ve had a boss that was a good person to be around but a horrible leader and that eventually led to me quitting. Ultimately, I relied on the fact that I know I do good work, my network, and past work experience to take those steps to look for something new. Definitely not an easy situation to be in though.
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Oh dear, it must have been terrible times for you, Sophia. I’m glad you manage to pull through it and emerge as a much stronger person. Kudos for you to use your skills and network to grab a new opportunity for yourself.
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It near impossible in one’s lifetime to have an idiot “boss.”
I encountered this twice
The first time I choose to seek other employment as the hierarchy was stacked against me { I found out AFTER being hired, that they hired me to spy on my boss so they could build a case on her with grounds of firing her.
The second time it was a UNHAPPY boss, who was looking for other employment and would go BASALTIC at the slightest error and scream and yell in front of other employees. ….. I put up with this idiot who soon found other employment. I personally had only one run-in with him.
Thanks for another great POST,
God Bless,
Patrick
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Wow! They actually hire you as a spy! That must be so horrible. I couldn’t do it because it’ll mean I have to snoop around her all smiley. Couldn’t face my conscious after that.
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Never give them the slightest clue that you are vulnerable to their BS.
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Wisdom from Leland! That’s very true. I always put up a strong front and be ready to call out their BS.
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I would added document everything
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Good advice!
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