The I-Boss

The headline on the Forbes.com article got my attention: HOW TO WORK FOR AN IDIOT.

The article featured excerpts from the book,  How to Work for an Idiot: Survive & Thrive Without Killing Your Boss and an interview with the book's author. Dr. John Hoover.

Bottom line: I felt like an idiot for taking the five minutes out of my morning to read this dribble.

A sample from the article:

"Some workers, fed up by the knuckle-dragging incompetence of the idiot boss, spend a good part of the day making the twit look bad. The shrewd employee works around the idiot boss by becoming a boost to the ninny's career--not an impediment.

"You want to diminish the power of the boss's cluelessness to harm you," says Hoover, a corporate psychologist who holds a Ph.D. in organizational behavior. "You do that by becoming an enhancement to the boss."

Say what? . I would never follow that advice. Not in a million years. And I absolutely wouldn't advise anyone else to follow it either.

Can you say Abu Graib?

It's not just the advice which I find pathetic, spineless and overwhelmingly depressing--the tone of the advice is insulting.

"Start by paying attention to what interests the bumbler and listen carefully when the schmo grunts. This will provide vital information in planning your winning assault on idiocy.

If your boss has a hockey stick in the corner, uses a puck for a paperweight and has the jersey of his favorite player mounted on the wall, you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that he's a hockey nut.

Rather than laying out your proposal in detailed and complex language peppered with chatter about the "leading edge" and "getting the lion's share of resources," try this:

"Wasn't it Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky who said you shouldn't skate to where the puck is but to where the puck will be?"

I don't want to publicly refer to people as idiots, twits , bumblers,or schmos. In fact I don't want to name call at all. The boss may be incompetent, unreasonable, unethical,and ineffective. But name calling--feels too much like 7th grade to me. Or worse yet, the Russ Limbaugh Show.

So I went to Amazon.com to read some of the reviews.  They were very mixed. Nevertheless the book ranks around 15,000 on Amazon's best selling book list. Much higher than I would have ever guessed.

That wasn't my only surprise. The book was published in 2003.

Which raises another question, why would Forbes feature a book that's been on the market for two years?

Call me an Idiot but it feels like there's more to the story.