Why Some Men Hate Working For Female Bosses.

By Speider Schneider From Ask-men.com

As far as we have come in equality of the sexes, it is still almost impossible for men and women to work together. Case in point: I recently met a newly jobless friend for lunch to cheer him up and relay some stories that would make his dismissal from his current position a bit more hopeful.

He is a very sharp creative type with an eye toward the future and pushing the envelope. He is hardworking and a no-nonsense guy. He was doomed from the start. We sat down, and he told me the problems he faced.

So It’s Not Just Me

“I just rubbed some of the people who have been there so long the wrong way.” He is very humble, and I knew the entire reason needed to be pulled out of him.

“Some people found you curt or you didn’t involve them enough in decisions?” I asked, having worked with him and seen the internal politics just enough to see the red flags. “It was a female boss, right?”

He looked a bit stunned, but the problem was the distance between Mars and Venus. I relayed stories of a female manager who would call people into her office and trump up something so they would break down and cry so that she would comfort them and tell them everything was all right. Sick! She tried with me a couple of times, but I would argue her points until they were transparent. I think when I left her office, she would cry. Men do this, too. So we share a cruel streak, but I doubt that’s a mutual building block.

What this manager was doing was caring for people. She didn’t see what she was doing as cruel. She was filling people with emotion, dropping them down and picking them up so she would be seen as the confident and nurturing female boss. She was just mental about it!

My friend and I traded more stories and started coming down hard on some of our former female bosses. I had also been totally destroyed by a female manager. She made it her business to see me gone. It was a sharp contrast to the beginning years of our work together. She assigned me special projects and encouraged my future climb up the corporate ladder. Then it all changed in what seemed to be a day.

“She was in love with you,” said a female friend, to whom I related the same story while we had a lunch far enough from the office not to be seen. I was dumbfounded. Except for the jokes around the office, I had no idea she liked me like that.

“When did it change?” she asked.

She overheard me talking about how a woman I liked in another department had put on a lot of weight, and she went off on how she knew what I ‘really thought’ and how I was a ‘typical man,’ and that’s when I started noticing being moved to the D-list.”

My friend, who is one of the sweetest and most intelligent people I know, kept eating her salad and started to explain it to me. “She replaced the intensity of her love for you with hate.”

She kept eating and smiling as if it happens every day. Apparently it does, and what was so easy for a woman to see, I wouldn’t notice if you tied it to a brick and smashed it over my head. I’m a man. I don’t think that way.

My male friend who had met the same fate didn’t spot it as my female friend did. Men aren’t wired the same way women are. Do I even have to mention that?

Are Female Bosses Worse Than Male Ones?

Anyone who comments that male bosses never cross the line with sexual harassment and bullying female employees is either sense impaired or lying. Male bosses love having power over others, and they exercise it as often as possible. But so do female bosses. Having given two weeks’ notice to the small firm where my female boss was abusing me on a daily basis, the very next day I was called into her office where one of the nice female partners fired me while my wannabe-lover stood smiling with her arms crossed. I said, “OK, but don’t you want me to train my replacement?”

“You can go!” said my love-muffin boss as she laughed.

Not just fired but destroyed, in her eyes. I got six months of unemployment because, despite my two-weeks’ notice, I was fired within that time. Men just fire me and try to make it sound as if it’s nobody’s fault. Women, well…

By Speider Schneider

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