Bosses - the Worst Ones

"In sales you have to lie like a rug. It's as simple as that. Don't worry about next year. The punters will have forgotten by then." So said my first marketing boss, when I joined an English language school somewhere on the south coast in the late 1980s. Those were the days when students were everywhere and sales people trawled Spain and Italy each September and October, coming back with bookings for twenty to thirty groups of summer juniors for the following year. Heady times. It was dog-eat-dog stuff, of course. Our school wasn't the only one out there.

Funny thing was that he hated his own school, his employees and students and prowled the corridors every day, swearing and smoking at all in his path. He was wildly successful too. His school made buckets of money and was packed to the rafters most months of the year. He had a massive detached house, a lovely wife and two wonderful children. I even wrote a novel about him! http://www.lulu.com/shop/adrian-liley/the-man-in-the-middle-the-marketeer-part-one/paperback/product-23672496.html

I remember my first ever marketing trip with him. He took me to Switzerland and Italy and made me share a room with him for 2 long weeks, because he did not want to splash out on two singles in all the hotels along the chosen marketing route. My misery was compounded by his chain-smoking in pitch-black rooms every night. It was hell on earth. The marketing meetings were pretty instructive too. I remember him offering total exclusivity to every single agent in a ten-floor building in Turin, one amazing day. When I asked him about this, he just chuckled and said: 'These agents don't talk to one another, they'll print their brochures and sell our courses and, by the time they discover their enemy downstairs is selling identical courses, it will be too late. They'll complain, but who cares? We'll get them back next year, they can't afford to lose us." I got fired six months later for not lying convincingly enough to an agent from Naples. True story.

I had another boss, who told new recruits to our department that "Men are best with strategy, the big picture, women are best with the detail, doing the secretarial work." And this was in the late 1990s too. He was successful as well. The odd thing was that his team was full of women who adored him. I never did work that one out.

Then was the boss who spoke a language I could not understand. Every sentence was a quagmire of helicopter-vision, blue-sky synergy, kicking things into the long grass so we could have a win-win situation... ahead of the curve. Funny thing was that he rarely did any work. He left that to others. This was a meetings man and he was great at them.

Then there was the manager who got angry all the time and was feared and hated by the staff. You could instantly tell what sort of company this was by quickly walking into the sales office and watching everyone dive for the default spreadsheet on their screens to hide the Facebook or Twitter chats they were all having. You could almost smell the fear and loathing in that room.

Another manager was power-mad and micro-managed everyone to the degree that he wanted to know how many calls they had made everyday and how many potential sales managed. He relied on statistics to rule everything and judged the team by the numbers in front of him. There was even a camera in a discreet corner so he could keep an eye on what they were all up to. But the most un-nerving thing about working there was returning to an office full of new people you did not know after a sales trip abroad - the old team having been fired twice-over while you were away.

As you can see, I've had a mixture of bosses in my time. But I'm not saying they were all mean, nasty, sexist ogres. No, not at all. I've had some truly brilliant ones too. But that's tomorrow's story...