A Boss's Bad Behavior Can Forever Influence Employees Starting Out
When Keith Thomson took a job as an ad-agency copywriting trainee at the age of 22, he wasn't exactly a naif. But he didn't expect that his two male supervisors would concoct a casting call for a bogus pantyhose manufacturer and proceed to test more than the acting abilities of the fashion models who responded.
Even as Mr. Thomson's illusions about suave and polished ad executives were dashed, so was his expectation that work would be a conventional meritocracy. "There is a meritocracy, but the merits are much different than you assume: sleeping your way to the top, playing golf with the right guy or drinking yourself silly in a barroom," says Mr. Thomson, who has just published his first novel. "You're looking for people to be your idols and mentors," he adds, but "one after another you realize there aren't any perfect people at work."
It's likely that nothing spells the end of office innocence for a newly minted employee as quickly as bad behavior by the boss. At their worst, such rude awakenings can slap the bushy-tailed idealism right out of an office newbie. At their best, they just get filed on the trash heap of life's lessons.
When a 24-year-old college graduate first showed up for work at a communications firm, she was, she says, "gung-ho" and "idealistic." Then she began working for a boss who retracted a promised trip to visit a far-flung client and backtracked on a bonus. He also required the kind of hand-holding that befits a toddler crossing the street. She recalls, for example, a day when he fretted endlessly to her about his mismatched shoelaces. Now, she says, she's "in the phase of trying to figure out how to distance myself emotionally from work and the people I work with," and asking herself, "What I'm doing: Is it really worth a life commitment?"
Mike Beczkowski also had a disillusioning experience early in his career. Eight years ago, when he worked for an investment firm, the head of his department was replaced by a brilliant man who turned out to be a terrible supervisor. The man would make his underlings interview all over again for their jobs or demote them and require them to interview their successors. Ultimately, he was removed. "It seemed like V-E day," says Mr. Beczkowski, but he says he is still stunned that "no one realized that [the boss] didn't have managerial skills before they gave him his position."
When David Chameli got his first internship with government attorneys, he was under the impression that he would be helping them right society's wrongs. That moment was pretty much over when his supervising attorney told him, "You've got to master the finer art of controlled mediocrity." The idea, says Mr. Chameli, was to walk the middle line between a blaze of glory and incompetence. "Very disheartening," he says.
Steven Pines had witnessed fraternity-house culture, but he thought he had left it behind when he got his first job as an arbitrage clerk at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He figured that the cohorts who sold sophisticated and exotic financial instruments would be similarly sophisticated and exotic. Instead, he says, bad behavior was rampant, including belching, cursing, gambling, cheating, fighting and "using the 'outside voice' inside." Forget teamwork, winning friends and influencing people, he says. "It was like being at a Jets game at the Meadowlands in the men's room during the fourth quarter."
In the early 1960s, Joseph Castellano worked on a project to develop rocket propellants for use in air-to-ground missiles, a job that required a security background check because of its sensitivity. His office mate was a Russian immigrant who enjoyed testing some of the chemicals' shock sensitivity by hammering small amounts of them on a metal anvil. "You would hear three or four hammer strikes followed by a loud bang as the material exploded," Mr. Castellano recalls.
But the real shocker -- and the proof that you don't really know the people you know at work -- came when the FBI appeared one morning and proceeded to riffle through the man's files and confiscate his personal effects. Was he a spy? Mr. Castellano says he still doesn't know.
All of this doesn't mean that bad behavior can't provide some relief in your average sterile office. Pension consultant Greg Jackson once worked for an executive who had a voice like Tommy Chong, blasted Ted Nugent on his radio and configured his computer to sound like a Harley-Davidson. Once he even lit one of his cigars with a lighter and a can of disinfectant. In an otherwise straight-laced work environment, he was, says Mr. Jackson, "a breath of fresh air."
Eileen McKenna recommends a philosophical approach. When she started working at the age of 18, she says, every hour was cocktail hour for her company's top executive, but "everybody loved him and he retired in the money." Now, she says, she thinks "too much idealism just gets in the way of progress," and "if you hold people to a higher standard, there will be nobody left to run the world."
上司行为恶劣新员工易受挫
当22岁的肯尼斯?汤姆森(Keith Thomson)来到一家广告公司做见习文案时，他自我感觉似乎已对社会世故有些了解，但两位男上司的举动还是让他始料难及：他们为一家冒牌连裤袜制衣公司谋划了一场模特征选会，而且遴选过程中对前来应征模特的考核超出了表演能力。
见此情景，不仅汤姆森心目中广告界人士温文优雅的形象一下子被打得粉碎，他原先认为的凭借实力步步高升的想法也在一瞬间化为泡影了。汤姆森不无调谑地说，倒是也是有一个“靠实力升迁”的法则，但这个实力与自己当初想象的大相径庭：是靠和上司睡觉平步青云，是与有权有势的人打高尔夫，或是在酒吧里喝得酩酊大醉等等。刚刚发表了第一部小说的汤姆森称，“初入职场时，你或许希望找到自己的榜样或良师，但时间一久便发现公司里其实根本没有人能胜任这样的角色。”
恐怕没有什么能比上司的恶劣行径能更快地打破这些初入职场的年轻人心中的无限憧憬，有的人甚至可能从此就放弃了满腔的理想和抱负。
有一位女大学生24岁毕业后第一份工作是在一家通信公司，用她自己的话说当时她“充满了干劲和憧憬”。后来，她到了一个上司手下干活，但这个人常常言而无信，包括许诺给她的出差去拜访一个实力雄厚的客户的机会以及一笔奖金等。上司还要求她过马路时拉著他的手，虽然这种行为似乎更适合一个孩子。还有一天，上司更是因为自己的鞋带搭配错了而向她抱怨了一整天。现在，她只能竭力抑制自己不要把对老板的情绪带到工作之中，并常常陷入痛苦的自问：自己到底在做什么，难道一辈子都要这样么？
麦克?拜茨科斯基(Mike Beczkowski)参加工作不久也经历过梦想的幻灭。八年前他在一家投资公司工作时，部门来了一位才华横溢的新主管，但恶梦也就从此开始。这位新主管要求所有的下属重新进行面试，达不到要求的就降职等等。最终，这个主管自己也被免职了。“这一天就好像是二战胜利日一样，”拜茨科斯基表示，但时至今日他依然搞不懂一点：这位主管被任命前竟然没人意识到他对管理是一窍不通。
当大卫?沙梅利(David Chameli)获得与检察官们一起共事的实习机会时，他深感自己具有帮助检察官们实现匡扶正义、打击犯罪的使命。但不久，他的上司、一位检察官就告诉他：“你必须要学会如何把握中庸的微妙尺度”。沙梅利表示，这位检察官的意思是他应在卓越和平庸之间选择一条中间道路，“这让我感到非常失落”。
史蒂文?派恩斯(Steven Pines)在芝加哥商品交易所得到第一份套利职员的工作时，他认为自己将来所处的工作氛围肯定要比以前看到过的最为融洽向上的公司文化还要完美，而同事们则会像他们出售的金融工具一样复杂而与众不同。但结果，很快他就看到了种种不良行为，污言秽语、诅咒叫骂、赌博、欺诈、斗殴随处可见，什么团队合作、赢得朋友和影响他人通通都见鬼去吧。
20世纪60年代初，约瑟夫?卡斯特尔诺(Joseph Castellano)在一个空对地火箭推进器项目组工作，因为项目的敏感性，工作人员都要接受背景审查。和卡斯特尔诺共用一间办公室的是一位俄罗斯移民，他喜欢把少量化学制品放在一块金属砧板上敲击，测试它们对震动的灵敏度。卡斯特尔诺回忆说，在三、四次铁锤敲击后，总会听到一次爆炸声。
但最大的震动是有一天上午，联邦调查局(FBI)特工来到办公室，翻看了那位俄罗斯同事的文件，并带走了他的私人物品。他是间谍吗？卡斯特尔诺说，到现在他也不知道。
但所有这些并不意味著一位举止恶劣的上司就不能给死气沉沉的办公室带来一些调剂。退休金顾问格雷格?杰克逊(Greg Jackson)就曾经有这样一个上司，此人的嗓音听起来像喜剧演员汤米?冲(Tommy Chong)，总喜欢在收音机里大声播放重金属歌手泰德?纳金特(Ted Nugent)的音乐，并把电脑音效调成像哈雷(Harley-Davidson)摩托车那样轰然作响。有一次，他甚至用打火机和一罐喷雾式消毒剂为自己点了一支雪茄。但杰克逊说，假如是在一个严肃刻板的环境里，他的这种举动或许算得上是“一股新鲜空气”。
艾琳?麦肯纳(Eileen McKenna)建议人们达观地来看这个问题。她18岁开始工作，看到公司老板似乎每时每刻都在轻松享乐，但“每个人都喜欢他，退休时他还拿到了一大笔钱。”现在，麦肯纳认为，“过于理想主义会阻碍前进”，而且“如果总是用高标准来衡量别人，那就没什么好人了。”
