Wow, some of this stuff makes me giggle and some of it literally makes me gasp in horror. Awesome. 
Heh - you reminded me of a friend’s story of how the company she worked at said they couldn’t afford a Christmas party one year (an oil & gas company, in Calgary during a boom), so they had finger foods at the boss’ house. Did I say house? I meant mansion. Yes, cheap-ass sandwiches at your boss’ mansion because they can’t afford a Christmas party when you know they’re making ungodly profits is a huge morale booster!
Remember, if they are salaried, their labor has literally no value!
Display your Charles Bronson hard-assness for all and sundry. In casual conversation, ask a worker how a competing company was able to score higher than your own on the ‘Fortune 100 best places to work’ survey. When the worker says it may have something to do with the competition having every other Friday off, tell him “You would be fucking stupid to change jobs for an extra 26 days off.”
Keep them guessing. Randomly spout “We’re all just lucky to have a job.”
Have it both ways. Give your people instructions. Freak out three weeks later when you realize you should have told them to do it a different way. Deny you ever told them to do it like that and tell them to do it “the way I asked for it the first time”, ASAP.
Don’t rock the boat. Cave in to every demand and tantrum thrown by the new kid in your department, who happens to be the daughter of one of your fellow managers.
Rule by terror and favoritism. Tell your people that one of them will be sent over to the life-destroying hardship department in the other building because 2 more people just quit over there. Decline to say who will go, just “We’ll let you know in a few weeks”. Then name 3 people who won’t be sent, give reasons that everybody knows are lies.
Delegate insults. Say nothing when, in the middle of the same meeting, apropos of nothing, the annointed nepotism beneficiary tells everybody how her relationship with her spouse has improved since you gave all her job duties to your other workers.
Outfox your people. When they ask for instructions or clarification in an email, tell them what to do in person. Now there’s no written record of what you did.
Kiss the ass attached to the hand that feeds you. Whenever the CEO’s most recent fraudulent bilking of the shareholders is revealed, cover for him. Tell people “It’s his company, he can do what he wants with it.” Snarl and mutter when someone points out the the CEO owns less than 1% of the company since he had to cover a margin call last year.
Protect your turf. If you run an accounting department and one of your people says somebody from engineering wants some information, tell him “Don’t give away our data! Let them figure it out on their own.” Leave it to your workers to explain to the engineers that they need to hire their own accountants.
Be the everyman you imagine your workers are. Cluelessly tell people how much your Fijian vacation, latest bottle of vintage cabernet, or Springsteen tickets cost. Invite your people to come out to your under-construction 7000 square foot house, on their lunch hour, so they can marvel at it’s majestic beams and foundation. Offer to buy them lunch at Sonic on the way back. Ask a worker “Why is your wife still working? Mine doesn’t”.
Rank has its privileges. Tell off-color jokes or mock the CEO. Tell your people to cut it out when they respond in kind.
Villify the not-present. In the middle of a routine meeting, denounce the guy who quit last week. Tell everybody he was a weakling and a pussy who couldn’t hack it at a real company like this. Make up fairy tales about his failures and bad performance reviews. Express disbelief that he wasn’t fired years ago. Don’t mention that he is now a VP at a competitor.
Be everything and nothing. Assign a difficult technical task to an underling, because “I don’t know how to do that bullshit.” Make impossible demands and ignorantly second-guess every move they make because even though you have no fucking clue what they are doing, you still know more than they do.
Remember: If your company buys out another one, promise to use “best of” practices going forward. Then, when implementation rolls around use only the processes you, personally, came up with. No matter how asinine, inefficient, or even if they are not industry standard. When asked about the promised “best of”, remind the ungrateful peon who bought whom.
For many PHBs, communications is a problem, not an opportunity. This extends to office bulletin boards.
Publicize your guidelines for posting memos on the office bulletin boards. Require permission even for things within the guidelines; make it difficult to get that permission (for example, requiring to go through one particular staff member who is often absent). Meanwhile, post your own memos that haven’t even a passing familiarity with the guidelines.
True, that.
However, many of these are based on past experiences. My list was based on things I’ve seen on TV shows, comedy skits, etc… I’ve never seen anybody pat a woman on the ass and call her “sweet tits”.
… Though is my wife in for a surprise when I get home!
When you decide to switch to a different database platform, don’t tell your current database developer; instead, have other employees pester him for bits and pieces of the database schema and have the head of your IT Dept build a clone in the new environment in secrecy. Then to avoid paying unemployment benefits, first see if you can irritate the current developer into either doing something unprofessionally fire-worthy or stalking off in disgust. If that doesn’t work, say he did anyway and tell the Dept of Labor that he quit his job. It may be awkward for him to find a new job in this economy or keep his head above water w/o unemployment benefits, but if you’re going to be a jerk boss you need to earn the title.
There’s more to being a jerk boss than the way you treat your valued employees, though. To render the best services to your company, chew up 2 months trying to get the old developer to quit or do something you can use as an excuse for firing, while paying full time wages for no work; meanwhile, make sure your IT Dept head isn’t actually qualified to build a database, and when it fails, hire an outside consultant at 4 times the full-time rate of your developer. With regards to the treatment of your old developer, do a sufficiently unprofessional job in documentation and in the content of your emails that you lose the unemployment hearings and have to pay the guy’s unemployment benefits anyway.
Be sure to take your anger out on the remaining employees when you get the court notification on that.
As is my boyfriend…
Um, JohnT, you do know it’s OK to do this to your wife but not to a colleague, right? 
Oh goodie.
Hire drinking buddies, old friends, cronies and the children of your friends.
Hold them to entirely different standards of behavior than anyone else in your department.
Promote then at the drop of a hat. Give them perks reserved for higher job titles. Allow them to come in late, and drunk, take two hour drinking lunches, and leave early after sleeping through the afternoon.
Try to drive off other employees to make work for more drinking buddies and old cronies. Rig qualifications and interview processes in their favor. After all, that worked well for THREE of my former bosses.
Implement a strict dress code. Even for the tech guys.
Especially for the tech guys.
NM… posted too late.
Hmmmmm…
My wife and I work together. You think she could sue me? 
Have a strict policy regarding number of absences per year. Track absences on a rolling calendar based upon hire date. Suddenly change course to track absences based on straight calendar date so absences that were on the cusp of “falling off” are now counted against the employee again. Put the employee on probation under the threat of firing nine months later when one additional absence plus the double-dipped days puts them over the threshold.
Be insulting when an employee asks for a raise. Eventually give it to them. Give them a little fuck you at the end of the year by giving them a markedly smaller bonus.
Insist your employee have their reports upward-evaluate her. When they have 2 people that don’t like them, but 10 that are positive/very positive, ignore the 10, focus on the 2 and remind them that “perception is reality”.
You have all the specifics you need - and from the perspective of the oppressed employee, of course, one sees nothing but specifics - but a few overarching principles can be drawn.
1. Maintain negativity. They don’t call it “work” because it’s fun, or meaningful, or even useful. You’re paid to be the boss, and that means making people earn their money - and then some. You are not there to be liked, trusted or respected - only obeyed. And to be that, you had better be a feared presence. You are their superior - make it clear that they are you inferiors.
2. Maintain tension. A team often performs best under pressure, and if not, it damn well ought to learn how. Keep the deadlines coming, keep them short, and back them up with action - whether disciplinary, retributive, or just plain in-your-face. This redounds to the goal of Principle 1, as well as Principle 2, and is thus a highly efficient practice.
3. “Damned if you do - damned if you don’t.” Employees need to confront reality, and part of reality is that some things are impossible with the time, money, energy, and resources available. Another part of that reality is that they can still be to blame. Help inculcate these valuable lessons – test your people by putting them in binds, and never accept that someone “did his best” without results. Again, an efficient policy, because it reinforces both negativity and tension - while insuring that no one will better, outpace, or upstage you in your job. Any good performance you get out of your team will be the result of you and you alone.
4. Substance abuse. You’ll need it, and in time, it will need you.
And, as mixed messages are absolutely vital, constantly increase the hours they’re expected to work, completely independently of any work left undone - the worst workers are the most indispensable. This kills two birds with one stone - 1) mixed messages, 2) making their lives miserable, in increasingly large quantities.
Have them do everything EXCEPT what they’re actually hired to do. Then, of course, bitch them out for not getting their job done.
Better still, refuse to let them do anything, then bitch them out for not getting their jobs done.
Goddess, I wish I wasn’t speaking from experience…
Face Time (the amount of time you spend in the office) is far more important than any actual quantity or quality of work. Make sure your people are there at 6am and are still there and “working” at 6pm (or later) every single day, plus at least a couple of hours on the weekend. This shows how dedicated they are to the job.
Make sure you brush up on all your buzz words and confusing language! Why say “please copy the team on emails about the project so we know what’s going on” when you can say “Effect an inclusive group learning environment though proactive, inclusive communication items to affected and involved co-stakeholders.” If no one can understand what you’re saying, they can’t blame you when anything goes wrong!
Be sure to have no idea what it means to prioritize items. Tell your team their “number one priority” is item A. Then ream them out when item B isn’t done first. It’s also good to tell six people on your team to each request something different from the same overworked, short staffed person in another department. Don’t tell anyone which item is most important. If you let them fight it out, you’ll find out who’s your best at getting things done.
Make changes just because you can! Never mind that the file cabinet that everyone uses has been in the same location for 15 years, move it elsewhere, preferably in a high traffic location.
Also make sure that the main office printer is moved as far away from everybody as possible.
Better yet, throw a big-ass Christmas party at a fancy restaurant with an open bar and a first-class dinner and entertainment. Make a speech thanking everyone for all their hard work over the last 12 months.
Then lay staff off in January.