Matthew Gates 8m 1,994
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Some people were born to be leaders, other people were born to be your boss.
Was your boss born to make your life miserable?
Does your company or boss just see you as a number?
I began working at the young age of 15 years old on the books. I have seen my share of bosses, managers, and supervisors, always hoping I land the job where I won’t have a manager or supervisor, and the boss is nice enough to let me do my job. As of recently, I love my job, and I cannot complain about any of the many bosses that I answer to. Reflecting on my long line of jobs, I can only remember a few jobs where my bosses, supervisors, or managers were not leaders; remembering that they just did not get it, or completely let the power and maybe even the extra dollar or two go to their heads.
They were certainly in the position of power to be called a boss, but the mentality and leadership style of a boss was that of something they had most likely only learned or seen in movies, where the boss is tough, strict, and to be feared. After holding several jobs of the same types of bosses, I could only wonder if life was going to continue delivering to me these incompetent people who could not understand how to run an efficient happy workplace, yet gladly held the title of a boss.
There was a time where I remember hoping and praying for a 15 cent raise, when I was making $5.25 an hour, which was minimum wage about 10 years ago. I had worked hard, arrived on time, did my best to scrub that grill, flip burgers, and make sure all food got out on time and correctly. I was just a teenager in high school and money, while you may think that three hours of work got you only $15 before taxes, that was better money than nothing to a teenager; so a 15 cent raise was the world to me.
On my review date, after having worked at McDonalds for a year, I was told by the boss who was responsible for raises that I did not try hard enough and therefore would not be getting any raise. By now, you understand that 15 cents was going to rob McDonalds of making a profit, and this boss was doing everything she could to ensure that McDonalds was able to hold on to every penny they could. I did end up staying for another year and literally began the mindset of just showing up to work and doing what I could. I ended up quitting because it became a habit to eat the food and I had enough of it.
My next job happened to be a security job right out of high school. I met the boss, whose name was Dominic, and he looked like … and sounded like he was from the mafia. He was the coolest boss ever, and just from his voice, calling me up and asking me to cover this place or that location, I felt like I was on secret missions. Unfortunately, for whatever unknown reason, he ended up quitting, and I got a few new bosses over the period of four years. After almost four years and random raises — I would get paid depending on where I went, which fluctuated $1 or $2 — but I had hoped for a raise in my base pay, which is the flat fee you get no matter what.
After four years of dedication to the company and the hard work I had put in, covering shift, staying overnight, I decided I would ask the boss for a raise. He made excuses for several weeks, telling me it was hard for him to do. I told him to do his best and that I had faith in him that he could get me a raise. Then after a month, I noticed my paycheck figure was different: How much of a raise did I get? A penny raise. 1 cent. Was this a joke?
He told me he could not give me a raise, yet my paycheck said I was earning my base pay plus a penny. I knew this was some kind of joke that he pulled and because of that, my four years of loyalty and dedication to the company was over. What kind of raise was I hoping for from this company? $1 or $2 would have most likely kept me happy for another 4 or 5 years, but that was asking for too much.
Another security job at a hospital with an amazing boss, but awful supervisors. The boss loved me so much that when he peered at my resume, the fact that I had a 2-year college degree did not matter to him. He was focused on the Judo class I took as an after school activity and asked me all sorts of questions about it. He was a great laid back boss who I admired.
Unfortunately, his judgement on giving people positions of power may have been off — I had a supervisor who would always come around and talk to me like he was the man and it was his hospital that he controlled. He always had to be right and anyone else’s word was wrong. He demanded to be called Sir and expected that if he asked a question, it would be answered with Sir. He was the man in power, the alpha male, or so he thought. No one was equal on his shift and everyone was supposed to follow his rules and orders.
One time, while he and I were restraining a hostile AIDS patient — he wanted to test me and see if I could handle it, so he failed to call for extra backup – one of the scariest moments of my life, as this guy was trying to bite me and spit on me — as we held the patient down, trying to sedate him, he mouthed off to a Hospital Administrator, who should have never been in the room in the first place, but unfortunately, our boss was left with no choice but to demote his position. Feeling as if his balls had been cut from underneath him, he ended up resigning his position at the hospital after a few weeks.
That same boss then hired another supervisor to replace the one that left, who also let the power and the extra dollar go to his head. How far did this extra dollar go? It put keys to the entire hospital in his hand and he had extra responsibility. This supervisor was always on me, always looking to get me in trouble, always looking to find me not doing my job correctly, and since he kept his cell phone handy, he would always try to snap a picture or record a conversation. I remember he put me on vehicle duty every night after dinner, and since it was cold out, I would put the heat on, and end up falling asleep.
In order to deal with this, I asked him to put me in the lobby after dinner so I could work past the exhaustion and tiredness. Unfortunately, he would not do it and snapped a picture of me sleeping. He showed the boss, but things never went his way. The boss told me to keep up the great work and to keep him on his toes; told me to make some mistakes and unless I did something dire and unforgivable, to keep up the good work and cause a little mischief. After a few months, this supervisor too, mouthed off to the wrong person, and was soon demoted. I actually did love the job, but knew it was just a dead-end job, and ended up leaving in order to finish my college education.
After finishing college with a Bachelor’s Degree, I came home, jobless, broke, and looking for work. Anything would do — and the first thing that came along was a programming / software engineer job. Being the desperate man I was with a negative balance in the bank, I settled for a less-than-livable wage which was a sad excuse for what he paid a computer software engineer. Nonetheless, I actually did love the job; loved working on the software; and I learned a lot about programming.
To make a long story short though, the boss was a womanizer, a greedy money hound, a con artist, a wanna-be alpha male (in which he would put down all other males in his company [including me] in order to feel better about himself), and a cheapskate. I really hate to say bad things about people, but consider those words a compliment to what he had called me when I told him I quit.
Don’t get me wrong — he had his good days where he was generous enough to take someone or several people out to lunch or buy the entire office lunch, but for the most part, he was just those things, and more. He would be the boss that had taught me the most about the type of bosses I would never want to work for again. In the end, I played him at his own game, and while he was used to people needing him for the paycheck he provided and rarely ever quitting because they were desperate; he was used to hiring non-college employees, single mothers, and anyone else who seemed to have no future — praying on their weaknesses, and knowing they had no way out.
Unfortunately, I think he underestimated me. I touched up my resume, using all the skills I learned from his company, and put it out there. Combined with the bachelor’s degree, I got several hits of interest, and before I knew it, I was in his office listening to those final words he said to me before we parted ways. I never looked back and never will.
There are a few other jobs I have held where I was not particularly fond of the boss, but looking back on these particular jobs, I realize they were there to help me get to a better place in life. I learned how power and money — even an extra dollar — could change people for the worse. I also learned the type of boss I would never want to work for. Most of all, I learned that no matter what type of job you have, no matter what type of position you are in — if you are unhappy with it, your boss is not going to change — you will have to be the one who changes.
Never be afraid of change, never fear giving up a job because you cannot stand a boss. Realize that you can always change your situation and your circumstances. Understand that in order to change things, you have to be the one who changes them. No one is going to do it for you. You have to be the one to take risks and be willing to take risks. You may need to go back to school (college or trade school) and re-educate yourself, but so long as you keep trying to better yourself, so long as you keep looking for that better place, so long as you keep hoping and knowing you will find it; than you will eventually find that place; that company; and that job or career you have wanted for so long and love, and when you finally get it, you won’t even feel like you are working.
No one should ever have to work for an awful boss, horrible supervisors or managers, or a stingy company, though most of us do at least a few times in our lives, but everything has its purpose and they do exist for a reason: To help us learn, grow, and strive for something better in our lives and in the world, especially to be better than them.
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