Bad Bosses

It seems, one is either bossed or the boss. Any way you look at it, both are onerous.Those who choose being bossed might not think so, but they have power, too. A good boss can only be that, if it has happy, supportive people working under its command. After a thirty year period of working for good and bad bosses, I've learned this truth through observation. I hasten to say, that in my work, there were guidelines that involved ethics and hierarchies responsible to the public domain. Even still, somehow the curtain of authority had holes for bad bosses who leapt through sometimes with help. The best bosses I have experienced weren't always rule followers. Some of them took "the rules" and bent them to fit the occasions at hand. The bending process was beneficial because life isn't all black and white even though the law comes first and morality is prime. In the good boss era, there were delightful times when the fine line between boss and worker, disappeared and we operated as "good buddies" at the task. Those times were the most productive. They can also be slightly precarious if someone oversteps the boundaries forcing bossmanship to come in. The boss is always the boss and it's the job of one to manage even the smallest situations that can arise, but to do it with taste and strength and commitment to the worker as well as the task. It's a hard line to follow, but the best bosses are able to know when to be boss and when to step back which is what makes me think bosses are born, not created. The worst bosses I have had the misfortune to experience, were people who didn't have a care about anything but what they conceived as their goals and went about doing so in Attila the Hun ways. It was their way or you fell. In this case, the perpetrator was middle management and he had been hired deliberately to upset his workers. Upper management, the untouchables, directed this gullible type to go in and stir up trouble to break up a scenario in which there were too many wiser and more experienced worker folk that made them fearful of losing power. Their ideas were completely without substance, but they had the power to take power and that's what they did whether it bespoke intimidation or not. And it worked for a time. The weaker workers simply disappeared, but those why persevered and were patient and had lots of knowledge based on their experience, stayed. They knew how this would play out and it did. The "new broom" finally wore out and balance returned to the work place but not without scars. A good boss is respected and supported; he or she understands the worker having been one.  A bad boss, flings authority around until it finally hits back and all is lost: workers and task.