OK, your boss is kind of a jerk. Maybe she’s stingy with the praise, or takes your labors for granted, or is quick to suggest that a job shoveling manure at the racetrack would be a good match for your natural gifts.
It could be worse, though. To see just how much worse, consider @work’s Horrible Boss Hall of Fame, inspired by the new movie that’s made tyrants a timely topic. And next time your boss gets under your skin count to 10 — and count your blessings.
George Pullman: How miserable a boss was this 19th-century railroad baron? So bad his family had him entombed in a concrete and steel crypt after he died, for fear union activists would desecrate his corpse.
Pullman’s eponymous luxury railroad cars were a huge success, but he felt his workers would be more productive if they lived away from the vice-ridden streets of Chicago. So in 1880, he launched his Pullman City, a planned community without bars, brothels and baleful labor agitators.
It was also free of any First Amendment privileges. And neat-freak Pullman sent out inspectors to insure residents were keeping their homes up to his standards.
Pullman further endeared himself to his minions after the financial panic of 1893, when he cut wages — but not his rents, or the 16-hour workdays. When workers went on strike, federal troops came in to crush the rebellion, killing 13 workers.
SURVIVING THE CITY’S MOST TOXIC TYRANT
Max Blanck and Isaac Harris: The owners of the Triangle Waist Company — a garment sweatshop near Washington Square Park — were a dynamic duo of depravity who exploited their poor, immigrant female workers for all they were worth, making them work long hours in dehumanizing conditions.
They also had a habit of locking factory fire escapes to prevent theft, and letting flammable debris accumulate. When this powder keg erupted in flames in 1911, 146 workers were killed, many jumping to their deaths from the upper floors.
The two were tried of manslaughter but acquitted — and collected a hefty insurance payment for the damaged building.
Albert Anastasia: So hot-headed he made Joe Pesci look like the Dalai Lama, the Gambino crime boss and chief enforcer for Murder Inc. handled every personnel issue the same way: termination with extreme deadliness. The more power he accrued, the more violent he became, until his peers had had enough. He was whacked in a Midtown barbershop in 1957.
Marge Schott: Yanks owner George Steinbrenner earned plenty of curses in his day for his tyrannical ways. But for sheer offensive lunacy, the Boss had nothing on late Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott, who at times seemed incapable of opening her mouth without letting an epithet fly. She described two of her star players with the adjective “million-dollar” followed by the n-word plural. She couldn’t understand why people found the slur “Jap” offensive. She referred to gay men as “fruits.” She said Adolf Hitler was “good in the beginning, but went too far.”
The list goes on. She burned her last bridge when she said she felt “cheated” when the 1996 home opener was canceled after an umpire died on the field. She was eventually pressured into selling her controlling interest in the team.
Al Dunlap: The nickname “Chainsaw” doesn’t exactly suggest a hand-holding management style, but even that moniker might have understated the malevolence of this downsizing dynamo. Plenty of corporate bosses pumped up profits by slashing workforces in the go-go ’80s, but few reveled in the role of ax wielder as much as Dunlap, who cut thousands of jobs and shuttered dozens of plants at Scott Paper and then Sunbeam.
He was just as charming when it came to dealing with his staffers, who lived in fear of his tirades. As John A. Byrne wrote in his bio “Chainsaw,” Dunlap’s habit of screaming at managers hard enough to blow their hair back led them to adopt the code phrase “Hair spray day.” No wonder he traveled with a company-paid bodyguard.
But the Chainsaw ran out of gas when he was accused of shady accounting designed to drive up the stock price. Dunlap was eventually canned by Sunbeam’s board, and the SEC effectively banned him from corporate life.
Leona Helmsley: There’s no boss New Yorkers loved to hate as much as the “Queen of Mean,” who notoriously ran the Helmsley Palace hotel like a fascist dictator, heaping abuse on employees before canning them for minor screw-ups. Workers lived in fear of Helmsley, who once famously showed her common touch by insisting “only the little people pay taxes.”
But it was her treatment of contractors that proved to be her undoing. A dispute over payment led to a Post story detailing her habit of billing home renovations as business expenses, and she was sent to prison for 18 months.
Naomi Campbell: The hot-tempered hottie has been accused of various assaults on personal assistants and home servants, including an infamous attack on an assistant with a Blackberry. After whaling on a housekeeper, Campbell was sentenced to five days of community service at the NYC sanitation department, where she swept floors while wearing designer duds.
Alex “Daddy” Campbell: Massage parlor owners generally don’t fit the mold of progressive managers, but “Daddy” was in a league of his own. The Illinois “spa” owner was accused by police of extorting thousands from two female employees, forcing one to have sex with him, blackmailing two others with a video he made of the two in flagrante. But his crowning touch was forcing some workers to get “917” tattooed on them, in honor of his Sept. 17th birthday.
Scott Rudin: It takes special talent to get singled out in Hollywood for bad behavior, but film producer Rudin truly rises above. He’s earned legendary status — and the nickname “Boss-zilla,” bestowed by the Wall Street Journal — for his chronic abuse of underlings. Being screamed at and dodging projectiles are all par for the course, according to his legions of former assistants — whose duties have involved keeping enough Blackberries on hand to replace the ones Rudin smashes during tantrums.
To find out what kind of despots New Yorkers have suffered with, we polled workers taking a break in Bryant Park about their own horrible bosses.
* Emmanuel Agrapidis, 37, writer
Have you had more good bosses or bad ones?
I’ve had great bosses, but I’ve also had a horrible boss.
What was so bad about him?
He was a stuffed shirt. He thought he was his job — he didn’t know he was a human being. He made me realize that I was like that too, so I quit my job. He taught me a valuable lesson by teaching me I didn’t want to be like him.
* Teresa Canete, 29, project manager
Have you ever had a horrible boss?
I worked for a lawyer in a law firm. He was the most horrible person you could imagine.
What made him so horrible?
He was mean to his employees. He was mean to his clients. He didn’t care about anything, just money.
Did you ever think about getting revenge?
Yeah, I thought about it. But then when it’s over, you realize it’s not worth it.
Do you think power brings out the worst in people?
Yeah, power and money. Especially money.
* Kimberly Bourne, 22, waitress
Have you ever had a horrible boss?
I have one right now.
How long have you worked for him?
Five years.
Why stay if he’s that bad?
It’s an easy job and it’s good money. I’ll stop at some point, though.
Have you ever thought about getting revenge?
No, karma will come back and get him.
* Dan Combs, 54, administrative assistant
Have you had more good bosses or bad bosses?
I haven’t had many bad bosses. Maybe three. Out of those, I can think of one that was the most terrible.
What was wrong with him?
His temper. He was a hothead, to say the least.
How did you handle it?
I stopped talking to him as much as possible. And I quit within weeks.
Did you ever try to seek revenge?
He wanted to update the company’s computer system with this whole custom-built thing. I’d had a previous job where they’d done the same thing and it didn’t work out. But I didn’t tell him — I told him it was a great idea. Hopefully, the same thing happened to him — he poured millions of dollars into it, and it never worked.
* Michael Pereira, 48, sound engineer
Have you ever had a bad boss?
I worked in a restaurant kitchen and my boss was sort of like Jennifer Aniston’s character in “Horrible Bosses,” except he hit on women. He was sneaky and conniving, doing things behind your back.
Are you a boss to anyone? No, but I’m hopefully moving my way up, and if I ever were a boss, I’d never be like him. — Miriam Furst