Bad Leader Lessons

Sometimes the worst leaders make you better, once they let you out of the locked building.

I was working for a large retail company back in the early 2000’s. I had a visual merchandising position for one of their flagship stores that was a two-level behemoth. The store was gigantic. The managers in the building were getting ready for an investor visit and they asked many of us to work overnight shifts in order to prepare.

They were assembling a large team. There were at least sixty of us there for the first overnight. I was told that my skills were required in order to get everything ready. I was excited to help out! I arrived at the store at 10:00pm with extra water and snacks, ready to work. I was then ignored by a handful of corporate employees that bossed everyone around and didn’t even bother to ask our names. I was disappointed but not crushed. I shook it off and moved on with my night.

7:00am rolled around and the sun had started to rise. About twenty of us strolled to the break room to grab our stuff, eagerly looking forward to heading home. We clocked out and headed upstairs to the front door so we could be let out. Our Operations Manager ran up behind us. “You are not excused”, she said. Her voice shaking. “We are not finished yet. All of you — go back downstairs and clock in and get back to work.” We all looked at each other in utter confusion. Was she serious? She was.

She wouldn’t let us out and the management team made us clock in and get back to work. To say I was furious would be an understatement. We marched back downstairs, clocked in, and went back to work. About thirty minutes later they let us go home. They let us out of the building that they had locked us in to.

I had family in town at the time so the next day I called out sick. There was no way I was going through that again when I could be spending time with my mom. When I called out I was informed that it was a “mandatory work day” and they had received a lot of call outs. First of all, isn’t every day a “mandatory work day” and second, of course you had a lot of call outs — you locked us in the building!

I had already been interviewing elsewhere by this point because I knew that this wasn’t a place I wanted to move up and as luck would have it, the next day I received an offer from another company. I drafted my letter of resignation on my “sick day” and was able to stroll in to work the following day and deliver my two-week notice.

I left with a lot of lessons on how NOT to lead people and I left with my head up. I wanted to scream at them. I wanted to tell them that were horrible leaders. I wanted to tell them to go fuck themselves. But I didn’t. Don’t burn your bridges, ran through the back of my mind. So I didn’t. I moved on.

Looking back, I am astonished. I cannot believe that managers of a building would treat people like that. It would have been so easy to make it a positive experience for everyone. If they realized that they were falling behind all they would have had to do is ask people if they wanted to stay. Give everyone an hour or even a 30 minute heads up. “Hey guys, we could really use some extra help. If you’d like to earn some over time let us know and we’d love to have you stay and help us a little longer”. Super easy. Really. Instead, they created a horrible mess and made everyone angry.

Being a good leader requires communication, transparency, and respect for the people that are there to help you. The least you can do is talk to your team and treat them like humans. Have no doubt, they will appreciate the little things and they will not forget it.

*The views expressed in this article are my own and do not represent my employer or clients.