This post was originally published last September. I just read “Warning Signs About Your Future Boss: A Checklist” by Professor Bob Sutton of Stanford University, who is a workplace expert and author of the best selling The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t
I would like to add one more item to Professor Sutton’s checklist – The boss who is always late.
I should have known this better — a few years ago, I interviewed with a small company. My hiring manager, the VP of Marketing, was young, charismatic, and super talented. However, there was one problem — he was late for my initial interview by 30 minutes. When we had an phone appointment later to talk about the job offer, he was late for 15 minutes, and called me from a noisy cell phone while he was driving.
When I started working for the company, this guy was never on time for a single meeting. Frequently he would let me wait for hours or days to talk to him. And he did the same to other people in the company. He had his own clock and everyone in the company had to follow his time.
Have you encountered people like this guy? He was a very talented marketing executive, but I would never want to work for him again.
Throughout my career, I have encountered several people like my former boss. Maybe I’m over-generalizing a little bit, but I’m convinced from my experience — if a person doesn’t respect your time, he is not going to treat you with professionalism and respect. Being punctual is a very important yardstick to evaluate a future boss/colleague.
Do you have any example of bad bosses? Drop me a email (regularguy@GeekMBA360.com ).
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- What if you have five 17-year old Kobe Bryants on your team? (And why you should never hire someone directly from McKinsey to run your business)
2 responses so far ↓
1 HR Good_Witch // Mar 8, 2009 at 8:26 pm
I once had a boss that would take personal calls from her teenage children during our meetings – including my performance evaluation. It drove me nuts! Bad enough she had to pick their classes for them and do their homework for them, but not during my evaluation! Otherwise, she was actually a pretty good boss, but that was not good form!
2 HR Good_Witch // Mar 9, 2009 at 12:26 am
I once had a boss that would take personal calls from her teenage children during our meetings – including my performance evaluation. It drove me nuts! Bad enough she had to pick their classes for them and do their homework for them, but not during my evaluation! Otherwise, she was actually a pretty good boss, but that was not good form!
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