I have an evil boss. Many times I’ve thought of posting rants in the Pit venting my frustration that someone could be so stupid, dishonest, incapable, unpleasant… and successful. She is an awful person, an incompetent, empty-suited, wealthy narcissist. We are a two person company. I am her assistant, and she is the greatest villain in my world.
My boss is seeking a teaching gig at my beloved alma mater. It appears she will teach a single class this fall quarter. She will be terrible at it. She will have unexplained, sudden absences. She will BS her way through each lecture with material prepared by someone else. She will require her TA to pretty much run the entire show. She will make, and then break, grand promises to mentor, individually, each student. And she’ll brag to the world how damn good she was while complaining loudly about the pay.
When she prunes a few hundred thousand dollars from a corporation, I sigh at their foolishness but accept it. This time is personal, though. I don’t want her bringing her poison to my alma mater. As I saw the possibility of the university hiring her develop, I’ve felt helpless. I didn’t even know what class she’d be teaching.
Today, however, I learned the name of the faculty member with whom she has been speaking. It’s a professor I had when I was in school! In my major! This prof almost certainly wouldn’t remember me – I was a mediocre student from ten years ago – but still!
Could I possibly undermine my boss’s little academic adventure before it begins, before she wastes the students’ time and tuition dollars? The odds would be slim, I know. Arrangements may have progressed beyond the point of no return; I’m likely to be brushed off by the university; I’d definitely be fired (a blessing?) should I be discovered; and I don’t even know how I’d proceed. But I feel a duty to do something.
What do you say? Should I attempt to sabotage my evil boss’s attempt to land a gig at my alma mater?
It sounds like she’ll do a pretty good job of sabotaging herself, and there’s absolutely no way you can make yourself look good if you try anything. Sit back and watch the trainwreck.
Honestly, this sounds like the majority of college professors I’ve dealt with over the years. The good ones are great, but most try to find as many shortcuts as they can.
Why? Your boss is the devil yadda yadda yadda. From what you’ve told us, you can’t DO anything about it. You’ve got no real pull with the university (a professor from ten years ago who didn’t really know you then isn’t going to remember you now) and even if you could get them to listen to you, why would they believe you? To their eyes, you’re just some nut getting involved in someone else’s interview.
Without some type of proof they’re just going to assume you’re some type of vindictive lackey.
Why did you wait until she brought her business to your alma mater before saying “Y’knowwww…maybe I should let everyone know how incompetent she is.” So it was fine she did this until she came to your old college?
From your description, it sounds like this isn’t her first teaching gig, but if that’s the case and she was so palpably abysmal, I would think the school would never have even considered her. Academia isn’t so vast and anonymous that a string of failures would go unnoticed.
No, because nothing good comes from trying to sabotage people. How do you know that whoever you’d be trying to sway with your secret insider information won’t know the next person you want a job from? Then that person would have every reason to narc you out as the person who sold out his/her boss.
Find a new job. Why would you stay in a company where the only other person who works there is someone you describe as evil and incompetant?
Thank you for the replies, all! My original writeup contained extra details that anticipated many of your comments. The resulting wall of text ended up much too long for my tastes, so I pared it way back. Perhaps I can sprinkle in a few more bits of detail here and there…
This teaching gig would be very, very part-time for her. It would definitely NOT represent a new job that would result in her abandoning her current business.
This is my wife’s advice. I imagine that my boss will do the ONE thing that she’s good at, and that’s schmooze with the important people so they think she’s wonderful. But the truth would hopefully come from course evaluations the students fill out. She can’t suppress that.
This is, by far, my biggest reason to do nothing. I’m very skeptical that I could actually make a difference. (And bouncing this off you fine folks for your take is bolstering this view…)
Oh, absolutely I am! I’m stuck in a bit of an employment trap that she’s set, but I’ve worked up a solution. That might be a story for a different day.
Agreed. That’s the biggest reason for me to not act.
Well, I am a vindictive lackey. They’d be right on that part. But I’m a truth-spewing, righteous vindictive lackey!
This is a detail that I clipped from original post. This would be her first foray into teaching. Well… at least the first foray in many decades. I HAVE felt the urge to tip off prospective clients as to how little value they’re going to get for their heaps and heaps of money, but I felt that wouldn’t be ethical. I mean, my boss might dupe people into giving her company business, but it doesn’t rise to the level of fraud. This time it’s different because this is a not-for-profit in question… and not-for-profit with which I’m affiliated, at that.
As you pointed out, schmoozing is her key to success, not talent. The school isn’t paying for instruction. They are paying for something else.
Here are the facts:
She will never lose the teaching job until *she *is ready to lose it.
You will be ratted out as soon as you try to do anything adverse.
Your boss will have many more teaching job offers, and she will take them, and complain of her teaching burden in carrying X number of classes, rather than 1 class.
If she’s making hundreds of K already, and getting teaching gigs, she will soon have a book (written by the TA, or undergrads) published.
Oprah will give her a special plug in O magazine.
President Obama will say,“Well, at least in this case, I was wrong about a business being created by one person.”
If you keep out of your boss’s way, you may keep your job for at least a little while longer.
I wouldn’t recommend saying anything unless you have a current personal or professional relationship to the professor in question. Without one, you will only end up sabotaging yourself. Unless you have immediate plans to relocate and change industries and you don’t need the reference, what you’re contemplating would be professional suicide. Whether she is or isn’t a sociopath (it sounds like she may be), she didn’t get this far in life without knowing how to destroy her enemies.
I guess it’s better to be at the right hand of the devil than at the mercy of [del]his[/del]her wrath?
If I were a fancy professor, talking to some fancy business owner, and her decidedly less-than-fancy underling (ten to fifteen years out and still working as a personal assistant! With a college degree! Who had shitty grades in school even back then!) came up to me and said “She super sucks! I hate working for her.” I’d probably take the fancy rich business owner’s side, and probably invite her out to drinks and say, “Cynthia, you will not believe what your temp told me earlier today! That you are the Devil incarnate. Hahaha. Que ridiculo! Let’s get some Long Islands.”
We fancy types gotta stick together.
In other words, if you hate the job so much, you should probably strive to advance your own career to someplace other than a personal assistant. Because trying to badmouth your boss will only lead to your own humiliation and termination.
What kind of university is this that prepares its students for long term careers as assistants 10 years past graduation?
If that’s not what they trained you for, then I’d say they failed miserably and you owe them no fealty. They get what they deserve in your miserable boss.
Well, when it’s unanimous, advice is hard to ignore. (Which reminds me, should I tip on the pre- or *post-*discounted restaurant bill?) I won’t take any action. Thank you, everyone, for the guidance (excepting Kimmy, who seems to have pretty much fantasized the details of the situation to her liking).
Northwestern. It’s a shitty little school just north of Chicago. You’ve probably never heard of it.
OP, I feel for you. There are some excellent bullshitters out there, and working with one (or worse, for one) is terrible. It sucks seeing them BS their way to impressing upper management, taking credit for others’ work while doing nothing themselves, flaking out and no-showing on occassion, yadda yadda yadda… while at the same time making things miserable for the rest of the team.
Just wanted to say…
ETA: oh yeah, you tip on the pre-discounted cost.
If I thought is if the boss would be doing a disservice to the students, I’d probably talk to someone at the school. First protect yourself to make sure that the evil boss won’t find out.
And like colander said, start looking for another job unless you think the evil boss is going to be leaving soon.