Once I’d made a mistake in a document we had to send out. I’d emailed him the document to review and instead of emailing me back to let me know about the mistake, he forwarded the document to our client, with the mistake in it, saying that I’d authored it and if they had any comments, to get back to us. When the client responded, they pointed out the mistake and my boss came into my office to tell me that he knew it was in there, but he didn’t correct it because he wanted to me to learn from the embarrassment of my mistake. (I don’t cry at the office, as a rule, but I came close that day.)
I hated having him as a boss and I was always in a state of anticipation of something nasty he would say to me. I felt it made me less productive and it definitely contributed to my negative feelings about that job. So I was glad to read this post from two workplace experts about a recent study about the negative effects of bosses’ rudeness on employee performance. Apparently the anticipation of rudeness, as well as the actual acts of rudeness, make employees less effective at what they do.
Have you worked for a rude boss? How did it affect your job performance and job satisfaction?
