Spotting A Nutjob Boss

First impressions matter. There's no doubt about that. But what if your first impression turns out to be wrong? If you're on a date, it could result in a tedious evening and funny/mortifying stories to tell your friends when you get home. Or, on the extreme side, it could end with assault or worse. The nice guy or girl turns out to be a dangerous psycho. Get out alive while you can!

So what happens when that apparently kind, personable, and seemingly fair potential boss becomes your real boss and turns out to be the opposite of who you thought he or she was? At least after a bad date, you don't necessarily have to wake up next to that person, much less ever see them again.

But an unhinged boss is a person you must deal with at least five days a week. Seeing them first thing in the morning is almost as bad as waking up next to them. And if you happen to wake up next to your unhinged boss some morning, then you have problems that are well beyond the scope of this blog.

I once considered myself a good judge of character--a person with fairly solid instincts. Like most people, I've been duped a couple of times. In the work realm, I've been mostly right but sometimes wrong about bosses. For every wrong, there was indeed hell to pay.

This one boss seemed perfectly fine. Balanced, even. I'd go so far as to say that I honestly thought this person was nice and looked forward to working at that company.

Time soon told a different tale. This person had a chaotic, frantic quality sometimes seen in mental hospitals. The whole office was run in fear and anticipation of the next meltdown. We could actually get real work done when the boss wasn't around, as opposed to when the boss was there, constantly whining and interrupting. Oh, and the ethics of the honcho were questionable to say the least.

That's all bad enough (and there was much, much more, a lot of which I've blocked out). But what was worse was the way this all made me doubt myself. (Co-workers privately confessed to feeling the same way). We all thought that we must be crazy if we hadn't somehow picked up on this nuttiness from the get-go. That's the danger "getting to know" someone on an interview.

Those masochistic veterans who'd been around for years took it all in stride, as if it were somehow normal. Watching us new people react must have been entertaining and kinda sad for them.

That's the thing about crazy people. They draw you in, and soon you're questioning your own sanity and ability to judge character. Since that work experience, I've become much more skeptical about people in general, particularly those I might one day be required to work with--or more importantly, work for. In my next job, mark my words, I will know, dammit-- via the grapevine or other inside information whether-- or not there are nutty people in the office.

And yes, I know this all goes both ways. We've all worked with or known someone who has worked with a crazy co-worker. It must suck to be the supervisor in a situation like that. But at least in that scenario the person in charge can exert their power, and if not fire, then at least make life difficult for the nutty employee.

None of this helps, of course, when the boss is the nutjob who is convinced that everyone else has some sort of a problem.

Like a friend of mine used to say--"Look at the situation and ask yourself what's the common denominator. If it's you, then maybe you've got to change."

Nutty bosses rarely venture to query themselves in this way, and if they do, I'd bet money that they don't see themselves as problematic.