Transcript + vocabulary list + exercise:
Transcript:
[00:00:00.000] - Oliver
Welcome back to English and Beyond, a new intermediate-level English podcast for people who are learning English as a foreign language. For this podcast, you may not understand every word the first time you hear it. Don't worry. Have another listen, perhaps, or go and have a look at our transcript online, which will flag the most difficult words for you to understand and for you to practice. That transcript is available at www.morethanalanguage.com.
[00:00:36.840] - Oliver
Let's begin now with the episode talking about one of the big bugbears of my life: Horrible Bosses.
[00:00:48.920] - Oliver
Bosses have always been a bit of a problem for me.
[00:00:52.280] - Oliver
It's not so much that I have a difficult working relationship with my bosses.
[00:00:56.550] - Oliver
I don't think, for example, that I'm a person with a huge issue with all sorts of authority figures.
[00:01:02.580] - Oliver
I've never in my life had a shouting match or a blazing rattle with a manager. I've never been in any confrontation to my memory. But I would say that sometimes resenting my bosses has been probably an almost defining experience of work for me. I know that I'm not the only one, of course. An annoying relationship with a boss is as typical of work culture as bad canteen lunches and a a frustrating commute, a frustrating journey into work. I have had the great fortune of having some amazing bosses and senior coworkers, but it's certainly not been the convention. In fact, I should probably include a disclaimer here: if my current boss is listening and has somehow managed to identify me despite my cunning pseudonym, my false name, I promise you this episode isn't about you. Please don't fire me. In any case, it's probably not such a surprise, really, that so many of us experience hardships with our bosses at work. It's a troublesome task, isn't it? To work so closely with other people who you don't necessarily like very much. That sounds very harsh, but it's the reality of the modern workplace, and it's probably always been true, in fact.
[00:02:19.550] - Oliver
Even back in ancient Athens, there were probably many young workers rolling their eyes in frustration behind their bosses' backs at the fruit stores or in the pottery shops. Most people are not best friends with their coworkers, and yet many people have to spend more time each day with those colleagues than with their own romantic partners. Someone might well say to me, "But Oliver, youu applied to these jobs, you met these people, you knew what you were getting into - surely this is your own fault?" And there's probably some truth to that. It's true that when we apply to a job, we do take into consideration a wide variety of factors, including the chemistry with our potential coworkers. Maybe we have no one to blame but ourselves for overlooking this key ingredient to a happy working life. However, it's not always so simple, is it? For example, in my most recent job, I was hired into a team by a great boss who I liked very much and who I had really clicked with from the very first meeting. Unfortunately, she had to move abroad less than a year later for personal reasons. And so, unsurprisingly, the character of the team changed markedly after that. That is not to say that things were worse. In fact, my current boss is probably the most competent person I've ever worked under, but they were undeniably different, and that's really significant. For many people, those changes, which they have no actual control over, really is a huge change for the worse.
[00:03:57.480] - Oliver
However, I also accept that this goes both ways. I'm sure that some of my bosses have felt the same way about me, too. I don't think that being my boss will always be easy, that it will always be a walk in the park, so to speak. In some cases, bosses don't even get a say in who they directly manage, especially if they've been promoted into that position. And so it's a difficult relationship for bosses to manage, too. We can see the impact of these problems in the data, where we see widespread unhappiness with work relationships. The public opinion and survey company, YouGov, revealed that up to one-third of workers in the UK have left their jobs, owing to bad management and a negative workplace culture. This extensive unhappiness is probably even worse when we consider that many people would like to leave their jobs under these circumstances, but can't because of their financial situation or for other personal reasons. YouGov also noted that 82% of managers were so-called accidental managers, having not had any proper management and leadership training. Maybe this partially explains all this workplace tension. With these findings in mind, I have to ask, how many other people, like me, have worked alongside people that sometimes they feel they really disliked or even loathed?
[00:05:26.380] - Oliver
As I often do, I have César here with me to chip in with his thoughts, to pine, to express an opinion. César, you're in a funny situation now because you no longer have a boss at all. So maybe the feelings I've talked about today aren't very fresh for you anymore.
[00:05:42.090] - Oliver
In fact, now you're the boss, so maybe you're just looking at it from the other side.
[00:05:47.640] - Oliver
But looking back, can you remember a time when you've ever left a job, for example, because of a horrible boss, or you've worked alongside someone who just really couldn't stand?
[00:06:01.740] - César
Well, firstly, actually, you can be a really horrible boss to yourself, right? They always say that the worst boss that you can have is yourself. If you're a bad boss, if you're too hard with yourself, or if you don't respect boundaries in terms of, separating your private and public life - why are you laughing?
[00:06:27.120] - Oliver
This sounds very evasive. It sounds like a politician's answer.
[00:06:32.250] - César
Okay, so I will tell you about my experiences with bosses. I don't think I ever had a horrible boss. I had many bosses because my career is short, but I think I only kept the same job for 18 months maximum.
[00:06:51.300] - Oliver
Well, that's even worse than me.
[00:06:52.970] - César
Yeah, but I think it's quite common for our generation, right? It wasn't for our parents' generation, but it is for ours.
[00:07:02.060] - Oliver
Being a generation of feckless layabouts, like terminally lazy people. Yeah.
[00:07:09.170] - César
Apparently so. I remember this boss, it was in London, but she was Spanish. The first day, she told me, "Grab a notebook, grab a pen, because I don't want to repeat anything that I'm about to explain to you." And I was like, wow. She didn't want me to ask her the same question twice, basically. I thought she was going to be very, very tough. But actually, I won her over.
[00:07:38.310] - Oliver
For the listener, I just rolled my eyes quite significantly. Well, that's great. I'm happy for you.
[00:07:46.620] - César
But it's not like I was complimenting her so that she liked me. It was more like we hit it off. We had lunch together normally, and eventually, I think she liked me.
[00:08:04.920] - Oliver
I think that's quite an important part of a relationship with a co-worker or with someone who you're managing, though, because on the one hand, I can see that that attitude that she has is totally fair because she's saying, "We are working hard, we're working in a business. I don't have time and I don't have the patience to repeat myself." In an ideal world, you wouldn't need to ask the same question twice.
[00:08:33.990] - Oliver
It is frustrating, obviously, as a manager, if you feel that someone isn't listening to you. I have actually had that situation as a manager myself, where you feel like someone that you're managing is just too relaxed.
[00:08:46.420] - Oliver
But on the other hand, at the same time, part of being a good manager is also from recognising that other people who are new to something -
[00:08:56.820] - César
Exactly.
[00:08:57.000] - Oliver
- (they) don't have the same framework on which to things that they learn. It's really easy if you understand how something is working to remember one additional detail, whereas if something is completely new to you on your first day, then everything is a challenge.
[00:09:11.360] - César
Absolutely.
[00:09:11.550] - Oliver
Even basic stuff.
[00:09:14.700] - Oliver
To me, that sounds quite nightmarish, that attitude that she had, because it just immediately sets a negative tone. So I think it's impressive that you managed to rescue that relationship and make it more positive.
[00:09:27.820] - César
Yeah, well, in fairness, it was the first time she was managing someone. She had been recently promoted as a manager, so I think I was like her experiment, so I think she was trying to calibrate how hard she should be as a manager.
[00:09:45.790] - Oliver
Out of interest, does she say this to you in Spanish or in English?
[00:09:49.700] - César
Spanish. Spanish. Yeah, because we were working in an office in London, but we were working with the Spanish market. We only spoke in Spanish. But if...it is true that sometimes when you have a horrible boss, it's because their boss is also very horrible. It's like a structure of pressure. Their bosses are pressuring them, so they are trying to pressure the following line, and I'm not justifying being a horrible boss because there is a problem with human resources in that case, if that's happening in the culture of the company.
[00:10:26.170] - Oliver
As you know, that's actually one of the reasons that I left my previous job. Because I don't know if... I'm sure I haven't said this in the English podcast, but before I was a teacher, now I work in a secondary school as a teacher, and before I was a teacher, I was a finance lawyer. One of the things that I really didn't like about being a lawyer, a solicitor, was that everyone always in all of the offices that I worked in, because I had the good fortune to be sent to offices all around Europe, everyone was always in such a bad mood.
[00:10:59.640] - Oliver
They were so stressed and unhappy and overworked and tired that they always took it out on the people beneath them. And I could never understand why they would do this. Then I remember when I was an associate working in Germany and I got my own trainee and I could recognise myself - because I think I'm a nice person, I try hard to be a nice person - but I could recognise myself starting to do some of the same things to this poor young trainee that I myself had experienced. Talking in the same tone or feeling frustrated or just because I was in such a bad mood, I was so unhappy with my career.
[00:11:40.310] - Oliver
That is definitely a topic for another day - what I didn't like about law - but I was so unhappy in this career that I had dreamed about achieving that I was starting to take it out on him, and I hated that. So very quickly, I decided to leave. One of the best things about teaching is that, generally speaking, although teachers complain a lot and we're unhappy with all sorts of different things, like - as in many careers, the pay - actually, most people in teaching want to treat their co-workers well, in my experience, at least.
[00:12:20.000] - Oliver
Everyone that I've ever been managed by in teaching has always been really kind, really understanding. It's made it so much easier for me when we've got trainee teachers to the same because you're just happier.
[00:12:32.490] - César
It's probably because money is not that important, right? Because in education, even in private education, money is not the priority. If you're working in the corporate world, everyone has bonuses or goals to meet, deadlines, so it's slightly more... If you work in a, as they say, fast-paced environment, it's probably very difficult for the bosses to be nice, gentle and patient.
[00:13:01.470] - Oliver
Perhaps. I mean, teaching is, I think for lots of teachers, they would say it's a fast-based environment.
[00:13:07.850] - César
It would be very stressful for me. You seem to manage it very well.
[00:13:11.640] - Oliver
It's a different stress, I suppose. We have talked about this before, you and I, but I think part of the reason that teaching is stressful is because there is a lot of decision fatigue. You have thousands of tiny decisions to take every day, which I never had in law. I I had decisions to make, obviously, but it's every 2 seconds you get asked something stupid and small by a student, something you'd not thought of. Then you have to adjust that. I think it's tiring and stressful from that perspective. To go back to what you said about working in a private school, and even in a private school, it not being driven by the money. I've never worked in a private school, so I don't know. But I do understand from having spoken to other teachers that it is more stressful because there is that client expectation, which I think is maybe actually the issue of lots of jobs in the workplace environment. It's that having a client that you are beholden to, that you are answering to, that creates pressure for the managers, and they then pass that pressure down to their underlings, to their junior colleagues.
[00:14:27.230] - César
Yeah, definitely. I've got a question for you. Who would be your ideal boss, your dream boss, like a celebrity, a famous person that you would like to have as a boss?
[00:14:40.460] - Oliver
Well, I'm not going to go. I'm going to take that as a very serious question.
[00:14:45.150] - César
It is a serious question.
[00:14:46.630] - Oliver
I'm not going to go for someone that I think I would like as... That I like as a fan. I'd probably go for someone like Adele because she seems very down to earth. She seems capable of having a laugh, and she doesn't have airs and graces. She's not concerned about maintaining a particular image. Someone who I think would be an awful boss to work for, who I quite like, would be someone like either Madonna, because I've seen interviews and there's some famous examples where she treats people who work for her -
[00:15:26.220] - César
Her assistants, her assistants -
[00:15:27.020] - César
- exactly - in what I would consider quite a In a disrespectful way. Also Lady Gaga, because I don't think I could bear to...
[00:15:36.800] - César
Her intensity.
[00:15:38.070] - Oliver
Her intensity, yeah. I would spend my whole day with my eyes perpetually rolling in the back of my head.
[00:15:43.670] - César
Especially if she's preparing for a role for a movie, she'll be in character all the time.
[00:15:49.950] - Oliver
Yeah, with some bizarre accent or something like that. Who else, who else?I'm trying to I think of a single man that I would or would not like to work for.
[00:16:06.460] - César
Jimmy Fallon?
[00:16:07.510] - Oliver
Oh, no, definitely not. What about you?
[00:16:12.540] - César
J-Lo.
[00:16:13.490] - Oliver
You'd like to work for J-Lo? Yeah, I think she'd be a good boss, although she has a bad reputation. Anyway, we're digressing quite significantly. I have a question, actually. Obviously, you talked a little bit about already working in London with a Spanish boss, but you've worked, obviously, in Spain. You've worked in Valencia, you've worked in Catalonia. Do you notice a difference in the general workplace culture between the UK and Spain and within in different regions?
[00:16:46.640] - César
Yeah, definitely. I worked in London, but I worked for a German company, for an Australian company, for a Singaporean company. The work culture was completely different. I'm not going to say who had the worst bosses, but I'm going to say who had the best boss: it was the Australian company.
[00:17:06.350] - Oliver
I was going to say Singaporean, Australian, and German.
[00:17:09.310] - César
German, yeah.
[00:17:09.830] - Oliver
You could insult quite a lot of our listeners there, not the Australians. So you, ironically, have chosen the worst country to say that they were the best bosses.
[00:17:16.270] - César
I'm not saying who's the worst, I'm saying who's the best. The Australian company was really relaxed and laid back and very communicative. There was a hierarchy, but the structure of the company, or the communication, at least, was quite horizontal. So you could talk to anyone. You didn't have to go through your immediate boss. You could jump on and talk to someone higher up. But yeah, I think culture is really important because from the type of clothes that you have to wear, the dress code for the office, to how people communicate and how people manage other people. I've seen people, and this has happened in London less than 10 years ago, I saw many people made cry other employees, very unfairly.
[00:18:18.050] - Oliver
You saw other people make other employees cry?
[00:18:22.070] - César
Yeah. Thank you.
[00:18:23.230] - Oliver
Okay.
[00:18:24.700] - Oliver
Interesting.
[00:18:26.280] - Oliver
I saw that a lot in Italy, actually.
[00:18:29.740] - César
Which has, like, probably a very similar work culture.
[00:18:34.280] - Oliver
To London?
[00:18:35.170] - César
No, to Spain.
[00:18:35.790] - Oliver
Oh, to Spain?
[00:18:36.020] - César
Yeah.
[00:18:37.390] - César
Which is like, I'm the boss, so I know better.
[00:18:40.590] - Oliver
But you said London that you've seen people crying.
[00:18:43.400] - César
Yeah.
[00:18:44.520] - Oliver
Well, apparently it's quite universal then. I mean, I've seen people cry in London as well. I saw a lot of people cry in law, full stop, wherever it was. I'm not sure. I think maybe I saw people cry in Germany as well. But Germany I worked in Italy, Germany, in the UK as a lawyer, and Germany was definitely, kind of, the best work-life balance. In Italy, my hours were insane. I would say that I worked past midnight, 2:00 in the morning, more often than not. Not always, I felt, because the work required that much time. But it's complicated how you end up in that situation working until the early hours of the morning. But I didn't feel it was necessary, really. So, it was a very challenging work-life balance there and working culture.
[00:19:38.900] - Oliver
But every Italian that I've ever spoken to has agreed and lamented it, has said that it's a sad fact about Italian working life.
[00:19:49.960] - César
It's presentialism, no? That's how we say it in Spanish. The idea of it's more important to be present than being productive or efficient at work.
[00:20:00.390] - Oliver
Yeah, I think it's presenteeism, but I'm not actually sure. I'm not sure how to pronounce it.
[00:20:06.330] - César
Okay.
[00:20:08.420] - Oliver
Yeah, presenteeism, I guess. I think that's actually quite common all over the world. I've heard that in Japan and Korea, the hours are incredibly long and employees are expected to always be there, always be at the desk or at the beck and call of their boss, that whenever their boss summons them, they have to go.
[00:20:32.920] - César
The pandemic probably changed a lot because obviously no one was present at the office for a few months at least. And now remote working or working from home is way more useful than before. So probably that changed since then.
[00:20:49.470] - Oliver
All of my lawyer friends said that it made it a lot worse. When they were working in the pandemic, it meant that they literally never had any downtime because before, you at least had to leave the office sometimes. Yeah, I see. And therefore were free away from your desk. But the bosses, when you're working from home, the bosses could always contact you and expect you to get to your laptop because it was just a couple of steps from your bed.
[00:21:15.940] - César
But is it worth it working in law? I know the salaries are normally high or higher than other industries, but is it worth it? It wasn't for you because you quit, you left.
[00:21:25.540] - Oliver
Clearly, I'm not the person to ask. Really, we should discuss that in full another time.
[00:21:32.050] - César
Okay, Oliver.
[00:21:34.260] - Oliver
Have you ever had an argument with someone at work? With one of your bosses? Were you shouters at them?
[00:21:39.980] - César
No.
[00:21:40.780] - Oliver
Have you ever wanted to?
[00:21:42.310] - César
No, not really. Because when I was unhappy, I just quit. I got another job.
[00:21:49.310] - Oliver
Yeah, okay.
[00:21:50.360] - César
It's the same thing I do with boyfriends.
[00:21:52.310] - Oliver
I guess I'm much more passive-aggressive. I just sit stew and think, I'm so unhappy. I've only really had two proper jobs, one in law, which I stayed in for a few years, and then now I've been a teacher at the same school for more than five years.
[00:22:18.220] - César
You never had an argument with your current boss, right? Like direct argument. You might have exchanged some ideas, but no.
[00:22:29.110] - Oliver
We've had It's political discussions that could constitute arguments, but I think it's always stayed respectful and professional. I think the reality is that, obviously, I don't agree with everything that my boss suggests or things like that, but she is the boss.
[00:22:48.430] - Oliver
Ultimately, I am not the boss. I think it's really important, to be honest, when there is a difference in opinion, to do what she says.
[00:22:56.440] - César
I mean, bosses lead the way, right?
[00:22:58.370] - Oliver
Exactly. She, she's actually... One of the things that makes her a really excellent boss in this respect, and I'm not sucking up because hopefully she'll never hear this, is that-
[00:23:08.710] - César
What do you mean by sucking up?
[00:23:10.220] - Oliver
To try to impress my boss. One of the reasons that she's really good is because if something went wrong as a result of a decision that she took, or even a decision that I took, she always takes the blame. She always takes responsibility.
[00:23:28.590] - Oliver
The other thing that she's amazing at, which I just honestly don't understand how she does, is that she's incredibly consistent.
[00:23:35.990] - Oliver
The one thing that all of the bosses that I have had in common that I've not been able to stand is that every day they would be different. Sometimes within the same day, they would be incredibly kind, and then they would just be so cold, and that could flip between hour to hour.
[00:23:53.170] - César
That's horrible.
[00:23:54.080] - Oliver
It was always incredibly hard to deal with and very, very common amongst my bosses in law. But But with her, every day, you know exactly how she's going to greet you. It's always going to be very, very positive in a great mood. Sometimes in itself, that can be quite hard to deal with.
[00:24:11.300] - César
When you are moody.
[00:24:13.160] - Oliver
Yeah. I definitely am someone who warms up over the course of the day. But she is totally reliable, totally consistent, totally trustworthy. She is the most moral person I know as well. I think it would pain her, genuinely pain her to lie. I've never seen her be false about anything. That, I think, is a really impressive set of characteristics that does make her actually a very good boss.
[00:24:44.970] - César
You should bring her to the podcast.
[00:24:47.260] - Oliver
Absolutely not. I think it's very important to maintain a professional line. I like her.
[00:24:55.100] - César
A podcast.
[00:24:56.390] - Oliver
Yeah, exactly. I like her, but she's not, she's not my friend. I like her a lot, but we're not going to go out for dinners and everything like that in the future, almost certainly. Although maybe after I've left the job, maybe those lines blur. But based on past experience, I prefer not to blur those lines. She being so sensible herself and competent, I think, feels the same way.
[00:25:26.030] - César
Okay, fair enough.
[00:25:28.280] - Oliver
I think, César, that we've concluded, ultimately, that you've never stayed in a job long enough to hate your boss. Exactly. But maybe, listener, you've had a different experience. Thank you very much for listening to this episode. Have you related to anything? Has your experience been more like mine or César's? Do you despise your current boss? Or maybe you have some amazing stories to share about terrible bosses from the past? Please do get in touch with me at oliver@morethanalanguage.com.
[00:25:56.800] - Oliver
Send me an email. I'd love to hear about it. If you'd rather not email me directly, you can also leave comments on Spotify, if you use Spotify to listen to the podcast, and you can tell us what you thought of this episode and in general, what you thought about your own bosses. Hopefully, they'll never see it like my boss, hopefully, will never hear this episode.
[00:26:18.250] - Oliver
Until next week, thank you very much for tuning in. Hopefully, see you again. Bye-bye.
Comments