Being the Boss Doesn’t Mean You Can be a Jerk
The last two days have been very interesting for me, professionally and personally. Yesterday I was sitting in a meeting with a project team and my Boss asked me if the process created by two other team members was error-free and ready to go. Since it hadn't worked for my part of the project, I had to couch my answer as saying I could not speak to the entire process, but the part where my stuff was impacted did not work. Yet.
Basically, I didn't want to make it appear that these guys failed in their efforts. First, they had precious little time, secondly, I had no idea if my part was 1% or 50%, and if it was 1% and the other 99% went smoothly, then there's reason to be optimistic. Basically, I knew very little because there had been very little time.
I tried to be diplomatic, but my Boss started yelling. At me. Even though it was clear that I was not responsible for this process, and more importantly, I said I just didn't know. Ask someone that knows. He didn't like that answer.
Often times, my Boss will put me on things because they are critical and he knows I'll complete them and make him look good. This has often times made me disliked by the other folks in the Shop as it puts me at odds with their little parts of this and that. This was no exception. I had been told by several levels of managers that these two guys had this process, and it was theirs.
So I left it to them. To my Boss' clear anger.
He yelled - considerably. I said I'd take care of it. It ended up not being right, and there were significant issues that had to be fixed, many of which were uncovered by me - not them. But since I'd taken the yelling, I was allowed to help. Lucky me.
Today I went into my Boss' office and told him that things were on track, and he mentioned that the manager of the two guys stopped by with that same news earlier. Good. I then wanted to talk to him - respectfully, about his behavior towards me in the meeting.
Yelling at me, when it's not my responsibility, success or no, is not professional. It's over the top. Way, way, over the top.
I attempted to tell him the position he puts me in - directly at odds with the managers on the floor - expecting me to simply work it out and make things happen. Well... after seven years, I'm tired of that. Certainly on this project. Where I had started that way and been slapped down so many times, I just didn't feel like getting up.
My Boss responds with "I see your point, but I'm not going to apologize."
I was stunned. Why not just leave it at seeing my point? Why did he have to make the point that he's not going to even offer a trivial apology? In retrospect, if he's the kind of guy that would yell at me in the first place, I shouldn't be surprised that he would not offer even a shallow apology.
My point of writing this is two fold: first, it's significant and it show the mentality of the people I work for, and second, I think there's no doubt in my mind this will happen again. And when it does, I'm going to pull this out and replay it to him. Not that it'll matter, but then I'll send it to HR, and they will have a talking to him.
May not change a thing, but I have warned him.