If you’ve ever had a bad boss, not only did they make work miserable, but also probably gave you a good story to tell later on. In this episode of Honest HR, host Amber Clayton is joined by SHRM Knowledge Center Advisors Robyn Hopper and Rue Dooley to read listener-submitted stories of bad bosses, identify their problematic behaviors, and give advice on solving for them in your workplace.
If you’ve ever had a bad boss, not only did they make work miserable, but also probably gave you a good story to tell later on.
In this episode of Honest HR, host Amber Clayton is joined by SHRM Knowledge Center Advisors Robyn Hopper and Rue Dooley to read listener-submitted stories of bad bosses, identify their problematic behaviors, and give advice on solving for them in your workplace.
Earn 1.25 SHRM PDCs for listening to both parts of this two (2) part mini-series on Stories About Bad Bosses; stay tuned for Part 2, which will contain info on claiming your credit.
Rate and review Honest HR on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Monique Akanbi:
Welcome to Honest HR, the podcast for HR professionals, people managers, and team leads intent on growing our companies for the better.
Amber Clayton:
We bring you honest, forward-thinking conversations and relatable stories from the workplace that challenge the way it's always been done, because after all, you have to push back to move forward.
Wendy Fong:
Honest HR is a podcast from SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, and by listening, you're helping create better workplaces and a better world. I'm Wendy Fong.
Amber Clayton:
I'm Amber Clayton.
Monique Akanbi:
And I'm Monique Akanbi. Now, let's get honest.
Amber Clayton:
Now let's get honest!
Wendy Fong:
Now let's get honest!
Amber Clayton:
Hello, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Amber Clayton, Senior Director of SHRM's Knowledge Center Operations. In our episode, we're going to discuss technical competency, HR expertise, employee and labor relations.
Today, we're going to start part one of our two-part miniseries on bad bosses. This two-part miniseries is approved to provide 1.25 PDCs towards SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP recertification if you listen to both parts. We'll be sharing the activity ID you'll use to claim your credit at the end of part two.
This year is SHRM's 75th anniversary, and we are focused on driving change. Today we'll discuss how to drive change in management behaviors and actions to help improve work, workers, and the workplace.
If you haven't already listened, we had an episode called "When Good Hires Become Bad Employees," where we discussed some of the challenges with hiring someone we thought would be great, but then they turned out not so great. What if that not-so-great person is your boss? How do you work with them? This is a common theme we hear in the Knowledge Center. Members have situations where they themselves must deal with a bossy boss or they're working with managers on how to deal with their managers who are bossy bosses. Today, we are going to share some stories from our listeners about their good and bad bosses, we're going to save the good ones till the end, and how you can approach these sometimes sticky situations.
I'm pleased to be joined today by my colleagues from the Knowledge Center, Rue Dooley and Robyn Hopper. Welcome to the show.
Robyn Hopper:
Hey, thanks for having us.
Rue Dooley:
Hey, everybody!
Amber Clayton:
Yes, thanks for being here. Some of you may know Rue and Robyn if you're a SHRM member and you've called the Knowledge Center's Ask An Advisor service, but I want to give them a chance to just tell you a little bit more about them. So if you would, share with us how long you've been with SHRM, and just a brief description of your background, and why you love being an advisor. As your boss, I need to hear that.
Robyn Hopper:
Okay, absolutely.
Rue Dooley:
I'll start if that's okay. Seniority here. So I have been an HR Knowledge Advisor with SHRM for 22 years and a few months at this point. Next year, it'll be 23 years, Amber, if you'll still have me for that long.
So for 22 years, you could ask the question, you must really love it. And the fact is, yes, I do. It's a different thing every single day, and it's not just one different thing; there's several different things every single day, even though the overall structure of what I do is pretty much identical from day to day: check in at the same time, check out at the same time, you won't let me work on weekends, which is great. My family appreciates that. So yeah, it's the type of place you want to hang out 20-plus years.
Amber Clayton:
Awesome, thank you. I thought I was going to have to cut you off, Rue, because I said it was brief. Robyn?
Robyn Hopper:
As Amber said, I'm Robyn Hopper. I have been with SHRM almost three years now. The end of November will be three years. I can't believe it.
Amber Clayton:
Is that all? It feels like more.
Robyn Hopper:
Wow, I don't know how to take that.
Amber Clayton:
No, no! That's a positive. I just feel like you've been here forever.
Robyn Hopper:
Thank you. I appreciate that. It sometimes feels that way. But I have to say, and that's in a good way, this is my absolute dream job, and I don't say that as fluff or anything else because Amber is my boss, but I say that because it really is.
Like Rue said, we do the same thing every day, but it's not the same. Being able to talk to members, to help them, all those positives that come through where, "Oh my gosh, you helped me," that's what makes my day. When we get the feedback from our members telling us how much that we have helped them to get through what they're doing because I did practice for a long period of time in HR and I know how difficult it is. So just being able to put my expertise out there and to help somebody is what I love. And so that's what I love about my job and working for SHRM. SHRM's the best company I've ever worked for.
Amber Clayton:
I would agree. Yeah, and I started out as an advisor, so I know exactly what you're saying too. It was just really rewarding to be able to help our members with their inquiries, and I've been here for... It'll be 12 years soon.
Robyn Hopper:
Wow.
Amber Clayton:
Yeah, I know. Crazy, right?
All right. Well, let's go ahead and get into this because we've got some good stories to tell about bad bosses. So now that they've gotten to get to know you a little bit more, and me, we know that situations involving bad behavior, it could be time-consuming and not many people like to deal with that. Plus, we know it creates a toxic work culture and we know that can be costly to a company, especially when it's the manager or the boss that's the problem.
And I was really excited that we're taking a different approach this time and we were able to get some of our listeners' stories to share here today, and I had to abbreviate some of them and remove some of that personal identifying information. We definitely don't want any calls coming in saying, "You just read my story," but I think it still has the same context. I just wanted to let those listeners know, if you happen to be one that had actually shared your story, that we just had to tweak it just a little bit just to make sure that we had time to tell it and to make sure that no one was being called out.
All right, so I'm going to go ahead and get started. And this one is... Let's see here. The person said, "At my company, we consist of primarily men due to the nature of our work. We have an older white male CEO. During an all-staff meeting, he introduced a new leader in the organization. He shared this person's experience and background and at the end he said, 'And she's a woman. Can you believe that?' He did the same with another hire saying, 'Believe it or not, she is a woman also.' There were people shocked by what he said, but the environment was such that the people feared him and with the board being all white men who appointed him, no one said anything."
Wow. I don't know. That's an interesting one. What do you think, Rue? How would you handle that? Let's say you're the HR leader of the organization and this is your CEO and this is really difficult.
Rue Dooley:
I would just pack my bags and run as fast as I could in this environment. Well, maybe not, but it may be an opportunity for HR to do some coaching if they have that relationship. Don't always have that relationship, can't always get through to the highest rank, but if HR usually has... And if they don't have it, they can get it. They can get help from us at the Knowledge Center, for example, where they can finesse coaching, counseling. The same things they would do with employees that are at their level or even at lower levels on the hierarchy or the organizational structure, they can do with CEOs.
Often when we talk to executives and CEOs, if we speak to them using what I call "their language," and that usually, whether we like it or not, it has to do with the bottom line, it has to do with money. If we can show them, even just in a polite, cordial argument in discussion terms, not argument as in verbal altercation terms, if we can just show them logically how behavior translates to money, whether it's to earn money or to lose money, we can usually at least get their ear long enough to begin to cultivate a culture that's more inclusive. I hate to be cliche, but that's literally what we're after.
Amber Clayton:
Yeah, absolutely. I was reading this and when the person said, "We consist primarily of men due to the nature of our work," my thought was, I wonder if this boss, the CEO said this, to basically say, "Hey, look, we're being more diverse." Now, I know it didn't come across that way, but there's a possibility that what this person meant was, "We're bringing in other people who are of another gender." Not to say that that excuses it, but it's just the way that I was reading it, I thought, I wonder if he thought that this was okay because he was just saying, "We're becoming more diverse."
Rue Dooley:
That's a great observation, and I think that that could be argued, and especially if held to it, a CEO might say, "Well, that's all I was doing is just be..." Yeah, but that's exactly the problem. In today's environment, why are you mentioning gender at all? Rhetorically. But I'm curious, Robyn, I don't mean to take over, but Robyn, what are you thinking?
Robyn Hopper:
No, you're fine. Well, it's kind of the way that you read it and then how somebody perceives things, which I know we talk about all the time, but the way I took it was, is it an old-school mentality? And without knowing the entire story, obviously we don't know everything, I took it as that older mentality of even a family-owned business, or not to pick on family-owned because they're great, but sometimes it's the way that it's just run and that's just how it is.
So when somebody is of different generations, just depending on what that is, and we don't know anything about that, but we know that there's that generation gap, and I think that a lot of times that does cause some issues in organizations because of the mentality of those generations. So I think that having even that generation kind of discussion sometimes breaks things back up to the forefront as to, "Oh, I didn't realize it was coming across that way," or if you don't mention something, well, it's never going to stop. So sometimes people just don't know that they're coming in that direction. But who knows? I mean, with knowing that.
Amber Clayton:
It's funny that you say that because I met with a president of a company not too long ago, and he was explaining to the audience, he was on a panel, and he was saying back in the day, he used to curse at his employees and say, "Get that G-D work done," And now he understands he can't do that any longer. And he's a member of SHRM. Yay! So we're very happy about that. But yeah, there are generational differences, but again, that's that opportunity for coaching and training that comes into play.
So let's go ahead and jump to the next story. Robyn, do you want to read that one?
Robyn Hopper:
Sure, okay. It says, "While I worked in property management, the boss degraded each of us in front of others, yelled consistently, told us how incompetent we were. I recall a specific situation when there was a horrific snowstorm. We all had to report to work. It took me four hours for the trip that would usually take about an hour because he would not stop paging me." I like the old-school paging, by the way.
Amber Clayton:
This person even mentioned that in the story.
Robyn Hopper:
Yeah. "I kept having to pull over and find a payphone, yes, you read that right, to call him and tell him I was trying to get there and stop paging me. There was a giant hill where there were wiped out cars everywhere and no passage, so I parked my car in a neighborhood and walked the rest of the way to work. This was when women were required to wear skirts and pantyhose to work."
Amber Clayton:
Oh, gosh. I remember that.
Robyn Hopper:
"So imagine what condition I was in when I arrived to see an ambulance hauling my boss away. He was out shoveling and had a medical emergency. One of the building engineers told me what happened, and my only response was, 'Good.'" Wow. "I promptly went into the building, used the all-call system, and instructed everyone to go home." My goodness.
Amber Clayton:
There's so much going on in this story here. The boss degraded the people, said they were incompetent, then they're making this person report to work in a snowstorm. And that's interesting because we do get a lot of those weather-related questions from members about, "Can I make my employee come into work even though there's five feet of snow outside?" And it's very interesting.
So Rue, what do you think?
Rue Dooley:
I think this is a good example of a bad boss. Just because a boss can do a thing doesn't mean that that thing must be done.
I was the preceptor for an intern. He was a college student. I was the HR manager at this small consulting company, and we brought in an intern every summer. We brought in a sharp finance major and we employed him in accounting and the kid's clothes were wrinkled all the time. And this was the early 1990s, so pagers were still around, but going out, I guess, and we still had to wear a shirt and tie. And the CEO called me into his office and he said, "That kid's either going to wear a tie or he's going to have to find an internship elsewhere, and you better make sure it happens."
Well, see, times were changing. The CEO was older, the kid was younger, I was in the middle. Times were changing already. The kid is like, "I don't understand. I'm just an intern. I'm coming from campus. I come here and I work a few hours and then I go back to campus. Why do I have to do this?" And I'm like, "Dude, just put a tie in your bag. Wear a collared shirt and do that," because the boss could dictate what you wear. But just because he could, didn't mean he should.
Sometimes a good boss would review their policies and make sure that the conversation they're about to have, the confidential conversation that they're going to have with their employee, is in alignment with their policies, and then they would just hear the employee out. Sometimes if you just hear, just listen to them long enough, you've created for yourself enough goodwill that you can actually say, "Well, here's why we require what we require," assuming that what you require as an employer is worthwhile anyway, but times change and good bosses are just as flexible as the times.
Amber Clayton:
So bring me back to the story Rue because you said that circled back to the story about this degrading boss who made them come in during the horrific weather.
Rue Dooley:
Well, the degrading... Well, it was cold. It was cold weather. So what he could do was he could say, "I'm paging you. I'm paging you. I'm paging you, and you're supposed to work, you're supposed to work, you're supposed to work." He has that authority. Just because he could, didn't mean he should, and he could have paused long enough and had the confidential, private conversation in alignment with existing policies.
It has to do with the misuse of authority. It has to do with the person in power saying, "It's going to be my way as reasonable or unreasonable as my way is." So whether it has to do with weather, "You're going to come in. There's five feet of snow, you're coming in. In a blizzard, I don't care," there once upon a time was a time when employers had that authority and they wielded it and sometimes they abused it. That makes them bad bosses. So whether it's clothes or weather or both, the abuse of authority makes you a bad boss.
The good boss says to the poorly attired intern or the adequately attired professional who has to come in during a blizzard and you page them over and over and incessantly and they have to pull over and use a payphone, all that stuff's ridiculous, but it doesn't mean that he didn't have the authority to do that. He had the authority. Should he have wielded it? Obviously now we know in retrospect, no, he shouldn't have, and we probably would've known in real time, no, he shouldn't have. But I think that, at the core, it's the same problem and the same fix.
Amber Clayton:
Okay. Well, I'm thinking, and Robyn, you can chime in on this because again, there's multifaceted parts to this story here, I think about inclement weather and those members who do call us and say, "Can we require them to come into work?" And sure, unless there was a state of emergency and there was some type of a stipulation or something that said, "Everyone needs to stay off the streets," like when we had COVID and everyone had to wear a mask, as an employer, you have a duty to make sure that your employees are safe and having them drive to work in five feet with snow, for example, is not really safe.
And so you could risk that person getting injured, hurting somebody else, getting killed. And do you want to do that? Do you want to be that boss that actually makes the employees come in and potentially get them into a harmful situation?
Robyn Hopper:
And that's where my mind was going too. My whole thing was the safety piece of it. I live in a state or an area that gets a lot of snow, and the year that we had Snowmageddon, which wasn't that long ago, but there was a state of emergency and I still had to go to work. So it's one of those things where you think back and you go, "Okay, where's the safety aspect of it? Is there an inclement weather policy?"
But in looking at the one that I was reading and that we're speaking about with this particular situation, it was way back in the day. So if you think about it, payphones, you can't even find anymore. But it's one of those things where now employers are thinking about, with the way that the climate change and everything, I think that employers are thinking more about the safety aspect of it and trying to plan ahead as to what happens with the weather condition.
But it's too bad that this is what happened and that poor person could have really gotten hurt walking the rest of the way to work, but they felt that they needed to be there. There's a of things, there's a lot of different moving parts in this situation.
Amber Clayton:
Yeah. And well, this person had a medical emergency, had to go in an ambulance. I mean, that's terrible-
Robyn Hopper:
Crazy.
Amber Clayton:
... and we don't know the end of that story, but hopefully that person's okay.
Robyn Hopper:
I hope so. I hope so. It's very interesting.
Amber Clayton:
All right. Well, let's move on. Rue, you want to read our next story?
Rue Dooley:
Yes. "The boss insisted we all cleaned the parking lot of a five-building facility to 'gain respect for what's required of the cleaning crew.' This really meant he was too cheap to hire a contractor to do it. We spent weeks using one of those Tennant sweepers cleaning this massive parking lot with him screaming at us the entire time about what a terrible job we were doing." Wow. How's that for motivation?
"One of the engineers had to bring his kid one day because we were required to work weekends to get the job done by the falsely imposed deadline. He heard the boss berating me and said to his dad, 'Why is he so mean to her?' Shortly thereafter, the boss was fired and I learned that he was fired from his next job too." Yikes.
Robyn Hopper:
Wow.
Amber Clayton:
Sounds like it's rightfully so. Whew, okay. Well, that's really interesting that the boss was yelling at them about doing a terrible job when that's not what they've been hired to do anyhow. I mean, I don't know that I would know how to operate a Tennant sweeper and you know-
Robyn Hopper:
I don't either.
Rue Dooley:
I don't even know what that is. I'd have to Google it.
Amber Clayton:
I'm just thinking of those vehicles, and gosh, the audience members, I hope I don't sound stupid with this, but I'm thinking it's just one of those street-sweeper things. That's what I'm thinking, but I could be wrong. I could be wrong.
But how interesting. What if I were to call you guys in one day and say, "You know what? We're not going to be taking member interactions today. We're going to be going outside and cleaning the parking lot"?
Rue Dooley:
Yeah. Everybody would just conveniently be sick that day.
Amber Clayton:
No, you already arrived to work.
Robyn Hopper:
Well, and I think with our group, Amber, I think that we would do it for maybe a couple of hours and then be like, "All right, Amber, we're good now."
Amber Clayton:
Yes.
Rue Dooley:
I don't know. I think we would actually... We would roll up our sleeves, dig deep-
Robyn Hopper:
Probably.
Rue Dooley:
... get it done, and make a party out of it because, in my opinion, we are of the mindset this is a fun job, we like each other, and we would make a party out of it.
Robyn Hopper:
Of course.
Rue Dooley:
We would probably grumble and complain later, but you're such a-
Amber Clayton:
Uh-oh, uh-oh. You're going to suck-up.
Rue Dooley:
Oh, boy, this is going to be... Okay, I don't care how it sounds. You're such a cool-
Amber Clayton:
I like it when you suck-up.
Rue Dooley:
No, yeah, it is. I'm about to suck-up real bad here.
Robyn Hopper:
You would.
Amber Clayton:
I would.
Rue Dooley:
But you're such a cool boss, you would make it a party. If there were some kind of directive that made you have to beg us to do it-
Robyn Hopper:
You'd probably bring us ice cream or something and then...
Rue Dooley:
... the first thing you'd do, you totally would, you would beg us. You would ask for volunteers, you would make it a party. It would be something we wanted to do. You would create an atmosphere that made us want to do it. And I think that's what makes a good boss good and a bad boss bad. The bad boss says, "This is what thou shalt do, and while you're doing it, you're doing a horrible job at it, even though that's not what I hired you to do. So why do I have expectations that you'd be good at it?"
Robyn Hopper:
Right. In this brief story, there's no, "Thank you so much for helping." There's just yelling and screaming, which that's no motivator at all.
Amber Clayton:
So as the HR manager, I would assume, and this is what I would think and what I would probably give some advice, is to have a conversation with that person and just say, "If we had known about this in advance, we could have prepared. Tell us why we're doing this. Also, if you were to give us some incentives versus yelling at us, maybe we'd be better off. We could actually manage to do this." And then like you said, maybe there's a fun way to actually do something like this or you know I love the competition. I would totally do that.
Robyn Hopper:
Oh, yeah.
Rue Dooley:
Or a competition. You would make it a competition.
Robyn Hopper:
Do it as a team-building something or something. I mean, we are very competitive in our department, that's for sure.
Amber Clayton:
Yeah. And if there's a safety issue, a safety hazard, again, I don't know anything about these Tennant sweepers, you might have to have a certain license. There might be some hazards involved with this, and you could certainly say to your boss, "I'm sorry, but this is a safety issue and I don't want to do it." And if the boss retaliates, then that could be a violation of OSHA. And I think that that's something to be considered, just depending on what they're having the people do.
Robyn Hopper:
Yeah, exactly. And I don't know anything about a Tennant sweeper, and I'm not going to pretend that I do, but could it be similar to saying, "Hey, Rue, why don't you go drive that forklift?" Well, he doesn't have the certification behind the forklift, at least as far as I know. So is it the same thing when we're talking about the safety issues again that we were talking about with other things? I think safety comes in.
But I have to say that I really like the last line of it where the boss was fired and then they were fired again. I hate to say that, but it's going to follow them. That's the thing.
Rue Dooley:
I'm really unsettled with the part about the child.
Amber Clayton:
Oh, absolutely.
Rue Dooley:
An employee brings their kid in and the boss is not just a bad boss, but a bad person. I mean, who berates another person, even if they're deserving? My wife and I can't even raise our voices and have a spirited debate, a very loving, spirited debate, because our kid is around. Who does that?
Amber Clayton:
I think a lot of people actually, Rue.
Robyn Hopper:
A lot of people.
Amber Clayton:
Yeah.
Robyn Hopper:
Yeah, I agree. And the thing is that, and in front of a kid, a kid's not going to sugarcoat it. They just are going to speak what they are going to speak, and obviously they picked up on the things that were happening, so I think that that's an interesting piece of it.
Amber Clayton:
And look at the danger. Again, these Tennant sweepers, there's a kid in the parking lot when you're doing these things. That could be dangerous in and of itself. Yeah, lots of bad things in this particular story.
Robyn Hopper:
Agreed.
Amber Clayton:
Let's go on to our next one. This one is, "I went back to an organization to work for a woman who had been my boss previously. She was great then, but something must have happened because she was not at all how I remembered her. She snapped her fingers to get your attention. She also berated you for tiny, tiny things. We held a meeting that included students and ordered snacks to serve at her request. They ordered pretzels, chips, cookies, and sodas. She wigged out and screamed at us for 'ruining their dinner' and asked us, 'what were you thinking?' Of course we could not say, 'We were thinking you told us to order the snacks,' but she wanted me to fire a perfectly good employee, which I refused to do."
And it sounds like this is two kind of situations with the same person. So the first part with the whole snacks thing, this person obviously told them to order it and didn't give clear direction, and maybe that's something to talk to that boss about as an HR professional. "Hey, did you tell them what you wanted them to get?" And then maybe they would've gotten fruit or crackers or whatever, something healthier, or maybe no snacks at all because you don't want to "ruin their dinner."
So the other part to the story is that this boss "wanted me to fire a perfectly good employee, which I refused to do." Been there, done that. Then when the person's sister died, "She told us on the way to the funeral she felt bad about how badly she had treated that employee. I remember one of my colleagues sitting in the back seat and the expression on her face when I said, 'Well, maybe you should tell her you're sorry.' Those of us who worked there formed a survivors group. We still convene to this day. And thankfully they've gotten to the point where we no longer talk about what banded us together initially."
Okay. I just need to say that this reminds me so much of a company I used to work for because we had a CEO who was very much like this, would give direction, then turn around and say, "No, I didn't say that," and so you'd feel like you were going crazy and then questioning yourself. And he wanted me to fire... This is interesting. He wanted me to fire a really good employee because he didn't like the way the employee leaned on a counter and talked to another employee. He leaned on a counter and he saw him on camera doing this, and he asked me to fire him. And I said, "No, I'm not going to fire a perfectly good employee because you don't like the way that he leaned on a counter."
You know what he did? He went and had somebody else fire him. And I was the HR Director at the time. He had another person fire him. And it was unfortunate. There was nothing else behind that. I mean, this is a person who would come into, let's say I'm having an interview with a candidate and the candidate has a nose ring, and he walked by and he gave the kind of slit across the throat like, "No, we're not going to hire this person because they've got a nose ring."
And I have so many stories. I could go on with a whole podcast just on that person, but I won't do that today. But I will say there is a survivors group. There is a group of people who had survived working with this person. And yeah, we don't have a Facebook page or anything, but we still talk to this day, and when we talk, we reminisce about some of those things and how we survived it, so I can totally relate to this story.
Robyn Hopper:
That's crazy.
Amber Clayton:
Yes.
Robyn Hopper:
The whole thing is crazy.
Rue Dooley:
Oh my goodness.
Robyn Hopper:
But unfortunately, it's not uncommon and we hear about things like this happening. And it's-
Amber Clayton:
So what do you do as the HR manager?
Robyn Hopper:
Oh my gosh. Which one are we tackling first?
Amber Clayton:
Well, the stories are... I mean, the snacks thing. I think I mentioned if the person had given the directives, the details, then maybe that wouldn't have happened. But I think the fact that she wigged out and screamed is another issue too that warrants having a conversation.
Rue Dooley:
I may be reading into it too much, but the first part, correct me if I'm wrong, sounds like she said she was returning to a boss she'd worked with before? Yeah.
Amber Clayton:
This employee? Yeah. So the employee went back to an organization to work for a woman who had been her boss previously, and she was great then but then something must have happened-
Rue Dooley:
And was a good boss previously.
Amber Clayton:
... because it all was different afterwards.
Rue Dooley:
Went berserk.
Amber Clayton:
Mm-hmm. A good boss.
Rue Dooley:
So she was a boss before. She had the, as we call it, the chops to be a good boss. Was it that she was a good mid-level manager and now she's at the executive level and can't handle the power or did she have some traumatic life event that-
Robyn Hopper:
That's where my mind went.
Rue Dooley:
... shook her to the core or...
Amber Clayton:
Well, we don't know.
Robyn Hopper:
Well, we don't know. That's right.
Amber Clayton:
And that's the questions that we have to ask.
Rue Dooley:
Yeah, because those are the questions that I would ask. It sounds like she went there with this personal relationship. Amber, if you were to go somewhere else, anywhere else, it would be difficult for me because I love SHRM, but I love you too.
Amber Clayton:
Aww.
Rue Dooley:
And if you said, "Hey Rue, I'm over here," I'd be like, "that's a great boss." Now, if I went over there and you were a horrible boss, I'd be like, "What in the world?" And I would think something was wrong with that place or something happened. And because of our relationship or what I think our relationship is, I would say, "Can I talk to you for a while? Can we set up a meeting at your convenience and I'll bring whatever snacks you say bring"-
Amber Clayton:
That's funny.
Rue Dooley:
... "and we'll sit"-
Amber Clayton:
What are you thinking? Don't ruin my dinner, Rue.
Robyn Hopper:
Don't ruin dinner.
Rue Dooley:
And you can say that to me because of the relationship that we've had historically, but you wouldn't be saying it to all of the employees. And that's why I would have that private, again, confidential meeting face-to-face with this person that I knew previously in a different capacity to get at what really is going on here. Maybe I can understand it better.
I'm of the personal philosophy that if you understand a person's history, you understand that person, and you drop and leave biases and all these other things that cause us to treat each other badly aside. But to get there, sometimes it takes tough conversations like coming to your boss's door and saying, "Can I set up a meeting with you in private? Maybe can I even," at the risk of being inappropriate, "can we have dinner later?"
Amber Clayton:
Oh.
Rue Dooley:
No? Here's why. But it's based on the relationship, this is why I say I may be reading too much into it, based on the relationship that it sounds like they had before.
Amber Clayton:
Could be.
Rue Dooley:
Did they have a personal relationship? And I don't mean a romantic relationship, a personal. Did they hang out before? I don't know, and maybe I'm reading too much into it, but let's have a conversation. Let's have a private, confidential, and let's see what's really going on. And worst case scenario, maybe she's just always been bad and you're just learning that.
Amber Clayton:
Yeah, that's true.
Robyn Hopper:
Well, I agree with Rue on the conversation piece of it because it sounds like why would somebody go back to an organization and a boss that they had worked for before if they didn't have that kind of good relationship with them? That's just kind of my thought level. I don't think I would go back to a place if the boss I was going to work with I had any kind of conflict with or saw some other conflicts out of it.
Amber Clayton:
Oh, of course not.
Robyn Hopper:
I think it just makes sense. So if the relationship was there, I would think that the relationship could continue where it's, "Hey," and having that, maybe a non-formal conversation about, "hey, I've seen these things," or, "this is how I feel about it," or whatever it is, it doesn't even have to be non-formal, and talking about it.
Amber Clayton:
Yeah, I would just say, "I came back to the organization partly because of you," and appeal to that person to say, "hey, I came back and what's changed? Something's changed."
Robyn Hopper:
I agree.
Amber Clayton:
So I think you're right, just having that conversation with the person, and again, knowing what the relationship is or that you had with them, I think is really helpful to make that move forward.
Robyn Hopper:
Agreed.
Amber Clayton:
All right, well, let's move on to the next one. Robyn, you want to take that one?
Robyn Hopper:
Of course. All right, so this is a little short one, so that's good. Let's see what we've got here. It says-
Amber Clayton:
I don't know, we might have long answers.
Robyn Hopper:
I don't know. You never know. We tend to.
"I needed to have surgery on my feet and I was taking an FMLA leave. When I told my boss about it, he said, 'Nothing is wrong with your hands,' and made the typing motion with his hands, 'so why can't you have surgery and then come in and work the next day?' I about lost it on that one." I can understand that and relate, actually. "And then I had to sit there and fight with my leader in HR for an FMLA leave. He was crazy."
Now, I can say from personal experience, I actually did have some foot surgery, but I have great bosses, thank you, Amber, who understood that it wasn't that yes, I could use my hands, but it's still the mentality of the healing process of everything. So this one definitely kind of hits because I was on the other end of the spectrum on this in knowing that a leave is necessary, and I was told, "Take as much time as you need to heal so that you can come in and do a good job." Well, that makes sense to me.
And the other thing too is we all know FMLA is an employee's right to have.
Amber Clayton:
When they're eligible.
Robyn Hopper:
So when they're not allowing somebody, if they're eligible, if they're not allowing them to have that, could it be a violation of FMLA? So I'll get off my soapbox on that one, but that would really make me angry, for sure.
Rue Dooley:
So I've said this, you've all heard me say this, I'm so proud. So I've been single for most of my life and for a big part of my professional life, and I got married later in life.
Amber Clayton:
To a wonderful woman.
Rue Dooley:
Thank you. I'll tell her you said that. And we had our first child later in life as well. And so I hadn't had need for FMLA, right? Never did. In fact... Well, that's just ancient history. But I was around when FMLA was written as law. And I brag about it. This is one of the reasons I love my division. I love our division leader. I love my department. I love my department leader-
Amber Clayton:
I think our audience is just going be like, "Ugh, love."
Rue Dooley:
... I love my coworkers.
Robyn Hopper:
I know. They're going to be like, "That can't be true." It's true.
Rue Dooley:
That's fine. Yeah, and listen, I love... But here's how they can create that in their organizations. Here's how they can do it because my love is authentic and it's genuine because I never had need for leave. I would come to work. I just worked. That's just what I did. You just work, work, work, work, work.
When my wife got pregnant, there was a big party for us. Nobody asked for that. I didn't ask for it. There were a couple of them actually, and just people just pouring into us. And that was just the beginning. Then when she went into labor four weeks early, I'll never forget, I talked to Amber and Amber was like, "That's it. We got it from here. Go. Go." Period. That was it. I'd never heard another word. It was so smooth. It was so easy. Nothing, there was nothing I had to do except take care of my family. And I think that's what the legislators wanted is to put that kind of thing. But I'm so grateful. I'd never had it that easy before. And it worked so well.
And then, I'm not going to get into the details, I'm just going to say this piece, the leave was provided, nobody questioned or grilled me. I got lots of good leave and it worked really well for my family. And to this day, my wife is like, "I'll never forget how good SHRM was to us when," fill in the blank. You know? And that stuff stays. I mean, the kid is six. So that stuff stays with you for a long time. You hear how emotional I am? I'm like, "Yes, thank you, employer!"
So HR professionals can create that kind of culture in their organizations with the way they approach that. And this boss flipped it on the head and did it the exact wrong way.
Amber Clayton:
Yeah. Well, I think we kind of have an advantage too because we have so many advisors. And the challenge that many members have is that the person who's going out on FMLA may be the only person in the office that can do those things. And one of the things that I try to do is make sure that someone knows someone else's job. There's information documentation to say what that person does, how they pull their reports because you don't know when someone's not going to be there, whether it's on leave or whether it's something else. And I think it's really important that more than one person knows the job just in case these things happen.
Robyn Hopper:
Yeah. And you're exactly right on that, Amber, because, and I know we're trying to get to the next one, but I just wanted to add, I'm going to add a good-boss portion to this bad-boss piece that we're talking about FMLA, even if it's not FMLA, say somebody's going on vacation for a week or two weeks or whatever it is. I had a boss who we made a manual of basically, "Here's how to do my job," because I was the only one who did my particular job. So there were things that I created that my boss didn't know, and she was my backup. So every once in a while, we would look at making sure that the manual that I would go over with her was understood and that she could do my job.
So there isn't always that opportunity to do something like that or somebody to be able to take over, but I've seen too many HR departments or organizations fall apart when the only HR person goes out on leave and there's nobody there to deal with the OSHA or all the big things that happen, and then all of a sudden, they come back and it's a mess. So having that support system, which it sounds like this person did not have that support system, unfortunately.
Amber Clayton:
You know, and I was thinking about this too. Again, this is a short story, but the person, they had surgery on their feet, not foot, and they might not be able to drive the vehicle. They may not be able to walk to the car to go to work or whatever it is. So it's really interesting. As an employee, I probably would've said that to my boss.
Robyn Hopper:
Oh, for sure.
Amber Clayton:
If they said, "Well, nothing's wrong with your hands," I'd be like, "you're right. Nothing is wrong with my hands, but because of my foot surgery, I need to heal, I need to prop my feet up, I can't drive my car," whatever it might be. "Well, I'm not that talented," but no.
Rue Dooley:
I can't walk on my hands.
Robyn Hopper:
No, me neither.
Amber Clayton:
Now, with that, we've actually come to the end of our show. For our listeners who are members of SHRM, you can find resources on this topic at SHRM.org. We have a toolkit called Managing Difficult Employees and Disruptive Behaviors. You can also contact Robyn and Rue and our other advisors at SHRM's Knowledge Center at SHRM.org/HRhelp.
As we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, this two-part miniseries on bad bosses is approved to provide 1.25 PDCs towards SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP recertification if you listen to both parts. Stay tuned for part two of our miniseries on stories of bad bosses, which will include the activity ID you'll use to claim your credit.
Thank you again, Rue and Robyn, for taking part in this episode. And if you haven't already, please subscribe so you'll never miss an episode and be sure to rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Feel free to reach out to me. You can find me on LinkedIn or X. And if you'd like to learn more about the Honest HR podcast, about myself or the other hosts, or to just get additional information and resources on what was discussed in today's episode, head over to SHRM.org/HonestHR. And to learn more about other SHRM podcasts, check out SHRM.org/podcasts.
Thanks again for joining us on Honest HR.