Managing 'horrible bosses' is a tough job

While you may think yours is the one true boss from hell, how about a manager who tells a subordinate that he wants to "trim some of the fat . . . I want you to fire the fat people." Or a trash-talking, sexual-predator dentist putting major moves on her dental technician?

They're just two of three extremely bad bosses in the new R-rated Jennifer Aniston comedy "Horrible Bosses" opening Friday. In it three beleaguered buddies compare notes on their respective bosses and end up hiring a "murder consultant," played by Jamie Foxx, to help them wipe out those monstrous managers.

While that's clearly not an option to be considered in real life, such fictionalized accounts of over-the-top workplace scenarios do serve a purpose, says Karen Nussbaum, executive director of Washington, D.C.- based Working America, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO.

On one hand, such farcical depictions provide a catharsis for those trapped in jobs with dysfunctional bosses. Also, when a problem behavior is turned into "an object of derision, you change the debate on it," she says, sending a message that such behavior is "clearly wrong."

Yes, such films can be funny, "until you're the one in the position with the bad boss," says Susan Zeidman of Syosset, who oversees interpersonal communication and management programs for the American Management Association, a Manhattan-based training and professional development company.

She suggests that employees take classes in assertiveness training so they can get back some control, such as respectfully telling an out-of-control boss that they'll be back to discuss the situation once the shouting stops.

More than 400 workers are venting their workplace frustrations in Working America's "My Bad Boss" contest, open for entries through July 20.

Among the scenarios from New Yorkers, who remain anonymous on the site: one who reportedly sent an eight-months-pregnant employee out in a snowstorm to get him food; one who, on take your child to work day, reportedly threatened to let his daughter fire a supervisor.

Having once worked for a firm run by a "narcissistic drama queen," a marketing professional from Long Island says she survived the ordeal by seeing the job as temporary and focusing on the Web-related skills she was developing. Now running her own marketing consulting firm, she says she told herself, "I can get through it."

Of course, a key approach is to document in detail the boss' behavior and take the matter to human resources, a higher level of management or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, says Diane M. Pfadenhauer, an employment attorney in Northport. And remember, she says, that being mean and overbearing isn't necessarily against the law.

Her further advice: Identify and avoid scenarios where a boss might set you up. She tells of a boss who would put an employee on speaker phone and embarrass him in front of a roomful of people. That's until the employee caught on, she says, and made a point to stop calling and instead drop by the boss' office.