Lessons from the Bad Boss

This morning, as I sat at my desk grabbing handfuls of dry Cheerios out of the box and ruthlessly shoving them into my mouth, I contemplated my old boss, Bob.

Bob isn’t with us anymore, and I don’t mean he moved to Caribbean to avoid detection by the IRS (though in other circumstances, that might be how his life played out). Bob passed away and the world is a less colorful place without him.

When I was 20 years old, I answered an advertisement in the newspaper titled Girl Friday. After one brief interview, I landed the job I would have for the next 8 years. I learned a lot in those years, foundational lessons that serve me even now, 30 years later. Bob, therefore, was a pretty instrumental person in my formative years, professionally speaking.

Bob was also the Worst Boss Ever.

At least that’s what we all thought when we worked for him. He was an eccentric guy, overflowing with nervous energy and wanting everything done now now now now now. There were times we tried to slip him a little calm-down pill but he always caught us. He probably fired some of us for it, too.

Bob fired us a lot.

I got fired one time because I wouldn't stop clicking my ballpoint pen.

I left that place in 1993 and a few years later Bob passed away. The manner of his passing even left me shaking my head. You see, Bob was a stress-junkie. He would never leave the office, even for lunch (and therefore neither could any of us). He didn’t take sick days. He barely took a vacation each year. It was work work work. He thrived on it, as best I could tell.

Long after I left, when business was slower, he took up the habit of occasionally going fishing with a friend on a weekday afternoon. You know – to relax.

It was on one of these weekday fishing expeditions that he had the heart attack that took him from his family.

Bob never stopped showing us all the ways he was different from everyone else.

Here I am, nearly 30 years after leaving Bob’s employ (please don't start doing math... let's see, she was 20 when she took the job, worked there 8 years, carry the 1... STOP!) and I have had some time to reflect back on those years, on Bob and what he taught me. Some of it is pretty important so I wanted to share these lessons with all of you.

LESSON 1

My first day of employment with Bob is when I learned that I wouldn’t get a lunch hour. Nobody did. We weren’t allowed to go out for lunch. Employment Law was no impediment to him! You wrote down your food order with everyone else and the driver went and picked the food up. Then, you could keep working while you ate at your desk.

Okaaaay….

That first day, we ordered Taco Bell. I ordered a Mexican pizza and it was sitting there on my desk as I was working. We had an open office concept way before it was popular in Europe, and each time Bob walked past my desk (and he walked past my desk a lot), he plucked a black olive off my Mexican pizza. With his fingers.

Hello? I don’t even know your middle name never mind your hand-washing habits! 

What I learned:  IF YOU REALLY WANT SOMETHING, GO FOR IT.

LESSON 2

When Bob was overwhelmingly busy, he was more scattered than usual. He would bark out orders and we would all jump. Most of the time, his focus was on the business tasks at hand, but once, he said he forgot to flush the toilet and told me to go flush it for him.

Oh yes he did. I reminded myself I got paid by the hour, and, yes, I flushed.

What I learned:  WHEN YOU’RE REALLY BUSY AND STRESSED OUT, DON’T BE AFRAID TO ASK OTHERS FOR THE HELP YOU NEED.

LESSON 3

Bob was always trying new things in an effort to improve his health and well-being. Whenever he went on a diet, he would tell us we weren’t allowed to bring in any foods that tempted him. When this happened, we’d all get the irresistible urge to bring doughnuts and M&Ms and anything else we knew he couldn’t resist.  

Revenge is often subtle, Bob, and very sweet.

One time when he was trying to lose weight, he decided that eating Cheerios was just the thing to help him, and could be seen at any hour of the day toting around a big box of Cheerios and eating them by the handful. Customers looked at him like he had two heads. 

He didn’t care what people thought, and he never let our poking fun of his weird habits bother him or change his course. Naturally, this is why I thought of Bob this morning as I drew a handful of dry Cheerios right from the box.

What I learned:  DON’T LET WHAT THEY THINK OR SAY CHANGE WHAT YOU ARE DOING IF IT’S THE RIGHT THING FOR YOU, EVEN IF YOU’RE SEEN AS A BIG CHEERIO-BOX-TOTING WEIRDO.

LESSON 4

While Bob frustrated us every day, fired most of us multiple times, and inspired us to label him the Worst Boss Ever, he was a devoted husband and father. He was even a devoted boss. Bob would have given any one of us the shirt off his back (and he actually did once when he was all sweaty, but that’s another story). He gave us advice, even when (especially when) we didn’t ask for it or want it. He cared about each of us in his own quirky way. 

Aside from the business lessons, I received personal benefit from his generosity in multiple ways. He gave me the hand-me-down clothing from his daughter – beautiful garments that I could never have afforded myself as a single mom with two young daughters. He and his family once took my girls and me with them on a vacation that I otherwise could never have afforded. He paid me a generous Christmas bonus in cash every year, always in advance of the holiday, giving me time to put Christmas under the tree for my children.

Bob’s wife was instrumental in running the business every day. We called her Saint Carol. She once casually told me he brought her coffee in bed every morning, to help her start her day. This one personal fact let me see a whole different Bob than the one I knew day in and day out at the office. Bob doing acts of service and kindness? Penance, perchance? But still, I couldn't help but have a slightly softer view of him after knowing that.

What I learned: LET PEOPLE KNOW THE PERSONAL YOU. LET THEM SEE YOUR DIMENSIONS, YOUR STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES. LET THEM KNOW WHO YOU REALLY ARE.

Because they’ll never forget.

As I reached into my big box of Cheerios this morning, I thought about Bob.

Thank you, Bob, for all that you taught me - what to do and what NOT to do - and for all you did for me.  I will never forget.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Linda Metzler decided she wanted to be a writer when she was 6 years old and has never wavered from that. Sure, she got stuck in procurement for the past 38 years starting with that Girl Friday job, but then LinkedIn gave her this platform and now she occasionally regales you with hard-hitting news, um, I mean dumb stories about Cheerios and rumble-strips and occasionally Procurement.

Oh, and that toilet flushing part? True story. That was a one-time thing. I don't do that anymore so don't ask. But it did make it into my LinkedIn Job History. Hardly anybody reads back that far, though, but it's a delightful little Easter Egg I left there for the most curious among you. Occasionally, someone will see it and ask me about it and I love when that happens. It makes me giddy. Kind of like when I worked at Reuters and I used to bury Monty Python quotes in my training materials, just to see who actually read them. My boss. He read them. (And he was not a fan of humor in training materials, but the Bob-Voice inside me said "Do it, Linda! You do you!" and so I did.)