Confrontational And Immature Bosses
What do you do with a confrontational boss? At my previous job one of the owners always had issues with me. I believe it was because I held him accountable. If he said he would do something I expected that he would do it and when he did not do it, I would follow up. I was polite in my follow up but apparently it was too much for his ego.
In a recent meeting he was upset at me for not being available at 11:00 PM to do a deployment of code to production. The deployment had not gone well and there were errors with a few components. I had sent an email that morning at 8:00 AM with some things to try. I followed up at 11:30 AM with a question as to if my suggestions had been followed yet. Still no response. I sent another email at 1:00 PM asking if anyone had done what I suggested. Still nothing. Then at 10:30 PM my boss starts sending emails panicking that no one can get a hold of me (they hadn’t even tried.) They finally tried what I suggested sometime after 11:00 PM but I was no longer available.
In the meeting I kept asking the Director of Network Services, who is an owner, why he would not do what I suggested and why he would not respond to my emails. He kept trying to put the blame on me for not being available at 11:00 PM but I kept putting the ball back in his court asking why he wouldn’t do what I suggested. He never did answer me. The fun part though was that he started to stare me down, literally. He is a former cop and believes he is tough and since he does not know how to handle conflicts without a gun he stared me down like a 5th grade schoolyard bully. It was very funny. I finally stared back at him for about a minute and then looked away and then he finally looked away.
I am glad to be gone from that company. Childish owners and egos so big there was no room for me.
Unfortunately both owners of the company were very similar like that. I tried working with them but after 4 1/2 years it was clear there was no room for anyone who was not willing to be subservient to them. Their egos were just too big. It’s a shame because they really could do well.