Chapter 15. Just for Sport

You can feel like a football when you have a boss who likes to play with the underlings, setting up roadblocks and embarrassing or humiliating employees for amusement. Sometimes this boss will pit coworkers against one another, creating unnecessary rivalries. It’s like the boss is a coach who enjoys moving players around the field or benching them on a whim to show who is in control.

That’s what happened to Gloria, when she worked as a researcher at a consumer products company where there were a half dozen senior vice-presidents in charge of various product lines. Her job was to report to two of the senior vice presidents, Judith and Max, who shared responsibility for one of the product lines but hated each other so much, ...

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