Some managers go beyond being dictators to becoming real psychos. They treat their employees as their slaves. Whatever you do is not good enough, they keep criticizing and under-estimating your work. They always think that whatever they do and say is brilliant and whatever you do is disappointing. They interfere in your daily work to the extent that they paralyze you.

I came across one of those once. The ironic thing is I was an Organization Development manager with 11 years of working experience. So I was on a strategic managerial post and I was supposed to have responsibilities and authority to manage my projects. The healthy way to deal with me was to evaluate my work based on results. But instead see what she used to do:

1- Insist that I CC: her on every email I send.

2- Read every email and find something one way or another to criticize in the email. (Something like the tone of the email might annoy the audience, not clear enough….. )

3- Insist on attending most if not all the meetings I conduct.

4- Criticize me in front of the audience sometimes.

5- Criticize my work all the time especially if my customers praise it.

6- Continuously add new projects to my schedule (overloading me to the max.) and still request very tight and unreasonable deadlines. This of course is to give herself the pleasure of criticizing me for being late.

7- When the time for the quarterly evaluation comes, she gives me a completely unfair evaluation. And when I ask for logical explanation, she is unable to give me one. She starts saying stupid things like: “Everyone thinks your work is not good enough”. Of course without saying WHO “everyone” is and WHY it is not good enough and WHAT exactly is not good enough about it.

8- She wants to be treated as GOD. Whatever she says I should agree with. Whatever she wants she gets anytime.

9- Start all her meetings after 6:00p.m. and if I start complaining and asking not to be forced to stay late every day then it becomes a big issue. And suddenly I get comments like “It is not professional to refuse staying late”.

10- Go to the CEO (her boss) and show-off her work and exaggerate its impact and results. And when it comes to my work that she is supposed to report to him, she either undermines or does not mention at all as if I am not doing anything.

The funny thing is the projects she was responsible of did not deliver outstanding results as mine did. As a matter of fact I am convinced that she used to treat me in such a way because she was jealous that everyone is praising my work and not hers. Also because her way of dealing with people was extremely repulsive, (arrogant, bossy and aggressive), people preferred dealing with me. I think that made her jealous too.

WELL, how to deal with such psychos?

1-Resign to get rid of the headache.

2-Be his/her slave as he pleases. And of course praise him all the time, befriend him and feed his ego.

3-Go behind his back and befriend his boss, praise him and feed his ego. Then use your relation with his boss as your boss’s whip.

As for me, my choice is 1- all the time as I can not do, neither 2- nor 3-. It is not just me to be a slave or hypocrite. As a matter of fact I feel sorry for such people that they have to live with themselves. They are really sick and they definitely need help.What would you do?