Petty Tyrants in the Workplace

At one time or another, almost everyone has had to work for a petty tyrant.  The boss who belittles, the supervisor who enforces every little rule, the foreman who criticizes every aspect of the job.  Last week's This American Life devoted an entire episode to the rise and fall of a School District Maintenance Manager who terrorized employees for several years before ending up in jail for some of his extracurricular activies.  If you haven't listened to the show, click here, it's definitely worth listening to. 

Steve Raucci, the star of the show, rose from a position as a maintenance man to head of the maintenance department for a school district in New York, in charge of 120 employees.  At the same time, Raucci was president of his local union.  He could thus not only punish and fire employees, he could also quash their grievances.  Raucci's intimidation and terror of employees was such that no one dared cross him.  Eventually he was arrested and sent to jail for seting off a bomb, yes, a bomb, near the front door of an employee he was trying to make quit.

Raucci's petty tyranies differ only in kind from the types of tales I hear on a weekly basis.  Employees complain of being harassed by their supervisor, or of having a target on their back, or of being hounded out of the workplace.  In many cases, there is nothing that can be done  -- unless the harassment is on account of race, age, sex, union acticity, or another unlawful reason.  And many times the "harassment" isn't really harassment at all -- it's more a case of a supervisor taking a dislike to someone and then scrutinizing their work.  If scrutinized closely enough, any employee's work will reveal mistakes or other issues.

Sadly, the worst bullies are usually bosses who rose up through the ranks.  The problem seems to be more acute in the public sector as well.  I'm not sure why that is, except for the fact that there are sometimes more layers of supervison in the public sector, and less accountability for managers.

Petty tyrants cause hardship not only for those below them, but for the employer as well.  When employees aren't treated fairly, they resort to lawsuits, EEOC filings, and filing grievances.  And, in the non-union sector, more organizing drives have probably been started because of bad supervisors than bad wages and benefits.  One management lawyer friend of mine says that whenever he is retained by a client to defeat a union organizing drive, the first thing he wants to know is who the first-level supervisors are, and whether they are liked by the employees.  If the petty tyrant is the problem, it is pretty much assured that he will be fired first in an attempt to defeat the organizing drive.