For some reason this reminded me of one of the better bosses I’ve had to work for. A few years ago I worked as a security guard in the Midwestern office building of a major phone company. I was in school, so I only worked weekends. I actually worked for a security company that farmed me out to the phone company.
Anyway, one weekend we got a bomb threat. I guess this happened often enough in other offices of the phone company that it wasn’t taken too seriously, but it was the first we’d ever handled there. The guy in charge of the operators called me and asked what to do. I had the building evacuated, called the Bomb Squad, etc. Nothing was found.
Well, my superior in the security company caught hell for this. Apparently, NO ONE has the authority to evacuate the whole building. The phone company gurantees “24-hour customer assistance,” and that’s what they’ll deliver, dammit! They threatened to cancel the security company’s contract, etc.
What did I hear about this from my boss? Hardly anything. He asked me to re-read the company’s regulations on what to do in these situations (which I had read waaaaay back when i was hired and were pretty vague about what to do) and left it at that. He said that barring any specific instructions, I had done the best thing I could’ve done in a difficult situation. After all, what if there had REALLY been a bomb?
Anyway, i thought I’d start a thread about bosses who may have been justified in making our lives difficult at some point, but didn’t. We complain about enough things on the SDMB. How about some accolades?
I really miss my old boss (from the ancient coin company that I used to work for).
I was extremely loyal to him, but unlike other superiors I have known, he returned the loyalty. And then some.
Before the company collapsed, he left to start his own company. If it hadn’t been a three person, very small business he was starting, he would have taken me with him, I’m sure. As it is, people came up to me and expressed surprise that I wasn’t going with him (I…uh, think they meant it in a good way.)
Rob (my old boss) wasn’t perfect. He had a temper and chewed me out mercilessly on more than one occasion. He could stress the shit out of me.
But for all that, he had my back. I threatened to quit on more than one occasion, and despite his temper, he was smart enough to realize that I was blowing off steam, was intensely loyal to him, and that I liked working for him as much as he valued my being his right hand man.
I’m happy I appreciated him while he was my boss. I’m sad, however, that my best boss was my first one out of college. I’ve never had a someone in a work relationship be as loyal to me as Rob was.
That’s my boss right now. I had little idea how much crap she shielded us from until she was away for a week during a busy time and none of us had “the buffer” that she normally provided. God, did the crap rain down from above! It was awful.
I once went to an “early career” thing for people who were at the crossroads. It was in a field (admissions) where most people work for a few years as their first professional (thought low-paying) job and then move on. A few people make it a career, and the workshop was partly about sorting out that decision. One of the leaders said “As you move up, you get higher pay, but you also get bigger headaches.” How true that is. I really respect bosses who realize that the pay also brings bigger exposure to criticism, and that part of your job is to take it and shield your employees from it.
I love my boss. She’s not perfect, but on the whole she makes it a damn fine place to work.
The hardest thing in the world to be is a good manager. I know when I was let go from my last job on my exit interview the Director of H/R said every last one of my staff came to her and was very upset that they would let me go.
Some of these were people that didn’t like me or I had to write up.
She said she never had that before.
I am no longer a manager and if you have never been one it is hard to realize a lot of managers take it for their employees and don’t let them know.
But being a manager and not one now it is easy to spot a poor one.
Unfortunately I have never had a manager who when push came to shove wouldn’t tow the company line and stand up for his employees.