If Your Boss is an A**hole, Then We're All to Blame (Indirectly)

The same can also be said about your a**hole co-workers

It's almost stereotypical.  Some of you have even seen it in person: the executive or even a middle manager of an organization losing their temper.  There have been CEOs yelling, bullying, berating and being overall jerks to their employees.

A former, now deceased, CEO of one of the largest tech companies in the world (company name rhymes with "grapple") was notoriously aggressive at publicly berating employees who didn't "live up to his standards of quality".

You've also got managers who expect you to be constantly connected on weekends and holidays. They end up shaming you if front of your peers if you decide that you'd rather spend time with your family instead of answering the email they sent at 11:45pm.

Another famous CEO who runs the largest online store in the world (no, it's not Amazon) is making it a requirement for his employees to work from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. Anything less will get you shamed and fired, despite how well you perform while working less hours.

Yes, it's abusive behaviour.  Yes it creates a hostile work environment and a bullying company culture. It causes stress and burn out.

Guess what: we are all to blame for these terrible work environments. Here's why.

Admiration for "Getting Sh*t Done"

One of the problems is that humans as a society seem to have evolved to want to follow the alpha monkey as our leader. 

We end up admiring the conqueror (unless you're the one being conquered), the assertive/aggressive boss who won't let "useless processes" become roadblocks to their goals.  We like the person who isn't necessarily worried about hurting feelings or being a bully to "get the job done".  We see their seemingly demanding traits and interpret that as a leader having a high standard that we should all strive for.  

At the same time, we are captivated by a confident, charismatic public speaker who will be falsely self-deprecating to make themselves seem relatable and authentic. They make mild jokes in an attempt to get their employees to see how likeable they are when they're not being bullies.

To us, these characteristics are signs of the strong leader.   Incidentally, these are also some of the main characteristics found in clinical narcissists and sociopaths.  In any case, these are the kinds of traits that we like to see in our leaders.  

Because we, as a collective society and culture like those traits, people like that end up getting hired in those positions of power in the companies we work for.

The"Hustle Culture" Fetish

 
If you spend enough time following "entrepreneur", "motivational" and "influencer" accounts on social media, you'll see that a lot of them are posting about hustling and "rising and grinding".  It's not unusual to see these highly successful people showing videos and pictures of themselves getting up at 4:30am so that they can start lifting heavy kettlebells and running hill sprints.

Sure, there's nothing wrong with having goals and working hard to reach them.  I'm all for people wanting to work as hard as they want, as many hours as they need to feel great about themselves and to make their business successful.

The problem is that the constant stream of these social media posts has led to the creation of "hustle porn".  Hard work has become so fetishistic on social media that we as a society have come to admire the business leaders who get up early, work so hard late into the night on a daily basis to the point of burn out while wearing stress as a badge of honor.

The narcissist/sociopath business leader then sees this as an example to emulate, you know, because the Instagram post is getting so many likes.  And of course, if they're doing that, then they expect all of their employees to be "hustlers" as well.  It becomes inexcusable for employees to be unreachable on evenings and weekends because they want to spend time with their kids. In their minds, there's no excuse for being sick in bed not working because you can have a laptop or a smartphone with you on your bedside table.
Doing less is just being a lazy employee.

Overly Coddling Customers

In the end, all of these bullying behaviors stem from every businesses' fear of losing clients to the competition. As consumers, we've been spoiled to want every thing yesterday. If the toilet paper ordered online doesn't come within 24 hours, negative reviews get written and complaints are sent to customer service.

We as a society are all customers with these "immediate gratification" expectations at the lowest possible price from the businesses we patronize. Is it really a wonder that businesses then need to transfer that kind of pressure on business managers who in turn put pressure on their employees to deliver?  

In short, our attitudes as demanding, spoiled consumers who won't do anything inconvenient are partially to blame for our abusive bosses.  Instead of immediately writing a bad review or complaining to a manager because you received your double-shot grande caramel macchiato with soy milk 37 seconds longer than you expected, we need to take a step back and have a bit of perspective on how easy it is for us now to get whatever product product we want in the first place.



I've been lucky so far in that I've never had the pain of directly working for a pointy-haired boss with no regard for their employees well-being.  However, while we are quick to blame these kinds of people for their behavior, we should remember that as consumers and as a society in general, our attitudes about what leadership is and how we treat the companies we deal with contributes to these problems. We need to take some responsibility to start making better working environments for everyone.