Ding Dong the Witch Is Gone

So the my awful witch ex-boss just disappeared a few weeks' after I left.  She announced to the team at the end of a horrendously long team meeting that she was going.  And that she wanted her departure to be kept secret and that she would be gone in just 2 weeks. The team meal after that was a lot freer and lively, everyone was relieved.

Clearing out my flat recently I came across some of the notes that I'd compiled when I was there to make a complaint and it makes shocking reading here are just some of the best bits:

What has such and such delivered in the past 6 months?.  Oh yes that's what to ask a member of staff about a fellow colleague on day 3 in an aggressive manner.  How to not to make friends...

Withholding information.  Oh yes, the best thing to do is to cut members of the team out of meetings with other people in the business for projects they would have to deliver.  The aim being that she would then hold all the cards.  Main problem here was that she didn't have a clue and therefore couldn't brief you about what you actually had a do so pointless barriers. HHmmm since she left, lots of the projects that she said were in hand hadn't actually started at all - makes ya wonder what she did for her £70k plus per year...

Making team members do tasks way out of their job remit.  From making sure conference phones are in meeting rooms (IT or admin responsibility) to fixing video conferencing she just wanted to throw her weight around.

Damaging relationships with the business.  How she managed to piss off so many people was highly impressive.  Marketing is all about have good relationships with your internal clients as well as external ones.  Everyone couldn't stand her.  Directors had meetings where they said that they couldn't stand marketing and when asked why, all their reasons involved her. They even stopped coming to see the marketing team as the atmosphere was so dire plus she would butt into everything. When she left many of them refused to sign her leaving card, relations were that sour.


Now that she's gone they are all working together better and just getting on with it, the need to have a new boss who is a saviour has relented as the chaos that was caused by her will take a long time to forget. In my next post I'll delve more into why I think she went - was she pushed or was it her decision......

What Not To Do When You're A Boss

Inspired by having a tremendously crap boss, here are some of the things that me and my colleagues came up with that good bosses should never do.  To all you rubbish bosses out there please take note, one day you will get your comeuppance if you don't take heed and change your ways.

Don't Keep Saying "I get that" or "I understand" in a rude abrupt tone when you clearly don't have the foggiest idea about what is going on or the point that the person is trying to make.

Don't keep saying that your employee 'owns' a project . Especially when they clearly don't as you will stick your oar in wherever you can regardless of whether you know what you are doing. We all know that an   employee 'owning' a project is another way for you to dodge any blame should anything go wrong. It's all about protecting your managerial ass.

Don't defer every minor decision to Group so that again you have no accountability. It's obvious you are clueless so wrapping everything in a serious amount of pointless red tape does not hide your general cluelessness.  It shows it up even more.

Stop using meaningless jargon. I work in marketing and don't understand what the hell you are going on about so what hope is there for the people in the business who are not marketeers. Get real, stop using jargon to disguise the fact again that you are clueless.  The characters in the fantastic beeb series twenty twelve could easily be inspired by you; pointless slogans, pointless lines, pointless jargon, just pointless. And no the use of jargon cannot hide the crap ideas that you are coming up with.  Innovator - my arse!! (Homage to Eddy Royale from the Royale Family.

Do not belittle others - it's not clever, it's not smart. Correcting people continuously who are from overseas when they are running a meeting is not good. It does not make you look big, just rude.

Learn something about the industry that you work in. Your lack of knowledge and pointless points is quite frankly embarrassing. All your ideas from other industries need to be tailored to the industry you are now in.  If they're not, they won't work.  Wake up, the business is in no state for you to screw things up even further.

At least know something about marketing.  With a switched on team like ours we soon sussed you out.  Responding to every problem saying "how would you do it?" is a tell tale sign that you are in over your head. It might take a while for others within the business to suss you out but believe me, your whole team has.