One nugget of career advice that tends to get everyone agreeing is that you should never bad-mouth an old employer.
I tweeted this morning about whether putting down an ex boss is a good idea, and PatricePinkFile summed up the conventional wisdom on the topic:
World too small to burn bridges
But, in this age of venting about almost everything, such advice may seem a bit old-fashioned, no? And geez, every Tom, Dick and Harry citizen journalist has a forum to spout off about crummy bosses. You can tweet your feelings of being wronged by an old boss, or you can Facebook, LinkedIn, or just blog your bitchfest.
One woman from the UK blogged an open letter to her old boss and complained about how she was treated during her pregnancies:
I thought of the long hours I worked in this tiny office completely health and safety unfriendly, where I almost broke my neck many times, falling over the printer cable plugged near my desk, leading to his office, tangled with the computer leads of the desk opposite me.
And here’s a website dedicated to boss-hating rants called HateBoss.com. It’s tagline:
The Online Community for Venting Job Frustrations!
Maybe it pays to vent about your former boss, both in terms of your mental health and your wallet’s health.
Look at Sarah Palin. According to published reports her new book “Going Rogue: An American Life” isn’t just a bitchfest about the liberals in this country. The highlight of her book is how she puts down the McCain campaign that put her in the spot light in the first place.
This from the Wall Street Journal today:
…it is for details of the McCain campaign that many readers will pick up “Going Rogue,” and Mrs. Palin will not disappoint them. She describes in particular how campaign aides muzzled her and mismanaged her family.
One of the biggest mistakes of the failed McCain campaign—and there was no shortage of them—was its handling of Mrs. Palin. Her criticisms of the campaign’s treatment of her appear prominently in “Going Rogue.”
The book doesn’t actually come out until tomorrow but already it’s the #1 book on Amazon’s sales rank.
Seems “going rogue” could be added to the HR lexicon as a new phrase to describe dogging your old boss and still succeeding.
What’s your take? Are we entering a time when former boss-dogging is acceptable?
November 16th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Palin’s a big enough fish that she will have some source of revenue stream no matter what, and can’t be sued or blacklisted (at least not for now) for her comments. For the rest of us small fry, if we comment about a large enough ex-employer, 1) we can be sued for slander, whether we’re justified with our criticism or not; 2) if we haven’t already secured a new position, kiss whatever reference the former boss might have for you goodbye.
Also, if your line of work is small and incestuous enough, word inevitably gets around about your complaining.
November 16th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Great points DEB. Big fish: burn bridges. Small fish: swallow your pride.
November 17th, 2009 at 3:55 am
‘'’Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”’-Abraham Lincoln
Sarah Palin most assuredly has removed all doubt.
Although today we have become a society of many fools, we are still a free society. We have the right to criticize just about anything that walks, crawls or drools for that matter. There is no real difference today as years gone by despite the many avenues of speaking or blogging your mind.
Years ago, a very harsh, and very brilliant Boss of mine called a meeting of all his managers and supervisors. We were doing well by the dollar, however moral was low because of the arrest and prosecution of a popular and long time salesman in our company. In the convicts 18 years, there is no way of knowing what he may have stolen from our company and that was long before I got there. In the four months myself and two other managers scrutinized his work, we uncovered a mere $1000 he stole. We had to wait for the figure to go much higher for a stronger conviction and that is what we were told to do. This boss , who was also the owner could make a nickel cry, however in this case, he put forth the best effort he had ever known not to dissuade this long time employee the opportunity to hang himself higher. He even invite the salesman and his wife to his granddaughter’s Bat Mitzvah. After two more months, we were in our season and our conviction count rose to over $10 grand. We went to the District Attorney first. We had a meeting with the Police and the DA and the plan was to arrest the man quietly at home. My boss said, no way. He wanted him to have a good weekend and then arrest as soon as he arrived at his desk Monday morning. The man was arrested Monday morning in front of customers, a full crew of salesman,and the Boss. THe Boss said he treated him like a son and you should be ashamed of yourself. It was the only time I ever saw the man with some hurtful tears in is eyes. It actually scared away some unscrupulous salesman who felt it was wrong to let the guy hang himself so high. The customers felt it was something that showed you there are bad people in the world. The better employees were shocked, however were glad because they had nothing to worry about.
This meeting was about some stores that were distant from the arrest. Stories flew around about how terrible the Boss was to embarrass this salesman. It ended when by years end, everyone received better bonuses and pay raises were consistently higher.For now thoguh, we needed to address these rumors and innuendos. Someone came up with a sort of slogan. It went ‘Fire your Boss today…Quit’
No one did. The salesman was convicted, was given a suspended five year sentence and made restitution. A competitor hired him. He has been there about 20 years now. After all that, his stories flew about how terrible our place was, how back stabbing we all were, he was set up…just about anything you can imagine.
Put it this way, he makes less than he did working for our retailer after all these years and to this day, he says we cheated him somehow. So , in a way, it does not matter.
You are free to say what you want, no one has to believe you.