How To Deal With Crappy Bosses

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My boss wanted to publicly humiliate me. He came into my office with a bunch of my colleagues. I was very busy playing chess online but I could see he was serious so I clicked away that window and stood up.

“Did you release the newest version product to the client last night?” he asked. The client was Pfizer. The product was software that automatically translated Pfizer technical manuals from English to about five other languages. I wrote the code.

“Yeah,” I said, “like you said I had to or we would be late on our delivery.”

“Well, the client called,” he said, “and they found a bug.”

My colleagues were nodding their heads. One of them must have been called by the client who then proceeded to take out his life’s troubles on her by screaming at her on the phone so she then complained to my boss who was about to take out the fact that he really wanted to beat his wife but I was a convenient second place.

“Ok,” I said.

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“So you released a product to the client that had a bug in it,” he said.

“Uhh, yeah, I guess,” I said.

“Let get this straight. You mean to tell me you released this without triple-checking every possibility?” he said.

“Well, I double-checked but I did not triple-check,” I said.

(don’t be bullied)

“Are you making a joke? This is a very serious issue. You NEVER EVER RELEASE A PRODUCT WITHOUT TRIPLE CHECKING.” His face was red. Everyone was watching.

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“Ok,” I said.

“Ok what?” he said.

“Ok,” I said. “I QUIT.”

Which felt great because just 10 minutes earlier I had gotten off the phone with Rob Martin at HBO who had offered me a job with almost a 50% salary increase (from $28k to $40k) plus $2k in moving expenses.

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“Well,” the boss (now “Chris” because he was no longer my boss), “you don’t have to quit. It was just a mistake.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t like being yelled at. You shouldn’t do that to people. I quit.”

Chris looked at me for a second. I think all of my colleagues had their jaws slack and wide open in that Monica Lewinsky way where the whole world could just explode any moment.

“C’mon man,” Chris said, “I was just concerned about the client. But I’m more concerned about whether or not you are happy in the workplace. No hard feelings.”

“That’s ok,” I said, “I don’t ever like being yelled at. So when people yell at me, I quit. You know as well as I do that every bug can’t be checked. You should treat people better. Now,” and I shrugged my shoulders for affect, “I give two weeks notice.”

I never told him I just had gotten an offer. A few months later he had a question about my code and he called about it and I told him I forgot the code completely and couldn’t help him. About six years later when I was running a venture capital firm he called, “hey buddy,” he said and he said he had a business to pitch me. I called him back and left a message. “Super excited to hear about your business. Send me a detailed business plan with description, bios, projections for the next ten years, a passcode to unlock an online demo, you know, all the usual things.” And he did. He put a lot of work into it.

I never called him back. He left repeated messages for about two months. He called my secretary and said he would stay on the phone until I picked up but I never did. I was really immature back then.

Bosses suck. I’ve had some real good bosses (hi Tom!) but mostly really bad bosses. Fortunately, before you finally quit there’s some good ways to deal with them and train them.