Poor Martha. Our modern-day icon for the Superwoman Business Executive has been quietly ruminating behind bars for the past five months. Quietly – right. We still heard about or from her on a more regular basis than I hear from my brother. Then she emerged from prison to a new television deal, soaring stock prices and the possibility of a book about her cellular experience to the tune of five mil. I bet she sure learned her lesson!
I had about three degrees of separation from Martha, who is well known to be somewhat of a tyrant, when I worked for her PR firm in New York. Personally I can neither confirm nor deny said rumor, because she has an intimidating staff of attorneys who could reduce my life to rubble with one well-placed phone call. But I will say that the few times I had the pleasure of meeting Martha she scared the bejeezus out of me. She has this way of looking at you as if, like the Terminator, a stream of information detracted from your most private thoughts is running across her vision in green, squared-off computer language. I felt completely dissected in the few seconds it took to shake her hand and remained trembling in place after she had quickly dismissed my existence and moved on to more interesting prey.
You’ve heard about Martha’s menacing management practices because she’s a celebrity, but from my experience Martha’s style may simply be a learned byproduct of the female executive’s struggle to the top. I myself had more than my fair share of fanatical bosses. What I wonder is, are crazy people naturally more successful, or does being successful make you crazy? I am a terrible manager; does this mean I can safely consider myself stable? Is this just a New York phenomenon or is it a worldwide epidemic?
For example, my last New York boss was a Class A lunatic. Many of us completely unqualified to do so diagnosed her with bipolar disorder, and just generally being a nasty person – an extremely unpleasant mix of shortcomings. Her modus operandi was to treat you like a gift from God for the first couple months you were in her employ, thus luring you into a false sense of security before startling you out of reticence by turning into a red-eyed, boil-covered, nostril-flaring, spiked-tail-whipping, fire-breathing monster of a bitch. You would then spend the rest of your inevitably short service doing your best, which was never good enough, to dodge her easily incurred wrath. One instinctively tries to do a better job in order to avoid criticism; however, attempting to do the right thing is the fastest way to piss off a crazy person.
This particular boss was fond of reassigning, at random, various responsibilities within the organization to people who were not even remotely qualified for the job. “But I was hired as a mailroom clerk,” one might protest, when given the new title of Vice President of IT Operations after the former Vice President, in an effort to find an acceptable excuse for missing a few days of work had, during lunch, leapt out his 32nd floor window. “The IT department receives quite a bit of mail,” she would rationalize in such a way that you felt foolish for having said anything. And then when the server blew up as a result of your incompetence, she would sue you for maliciously and intentionally misrepresenting your skills, thus putting her business in jeopardy.
Perhaps this particular boss is an exception and just needs to be heavily medicated or, preferably, strangled in her sleep. Maybe in most cases crazy bosses learned management skills from their crazy bosses and that’s how, due to the Domino Effect, New York psychologists can demand $250 an hour. At least Martha had the sense to become a billionaire. Because everyone knows that once you’ve made that much money, nobody would have the balls to call you crazy.
I know I wouldn’t.
Note to my current boss: This column refers to past bosses only. You are not at all crazy. In fact, you are the nicest, most reasonable boss I have ever had, and I love your hair.
