Mean managers have always been portrayed in popular culture from characters such as Scrooge, to David Brent (cringingly bad, but more through incompetence than nastiness) and Basil Fawlty. While complaining about supervisors and co-workers is a favourite pastime for many employees!

Horrible bosses however are not only fictitious but a reality for some people. And they’re not so funny when they’re in the office down the hall! So when your manager is malicious, cruel, or just plain old incompetent, how do you cope?

Here are my top tips:

Talk to your employer

Open communication in the work place is vital. You need to talk to your superior and clearly explain what you need from them in terms of direction, feedback and support. Be polite and focus on your needs rather than telling them (or implying) they are bad at what they do (which is counterproductive and won’t help you meet your goals).

Document your work

Keep track of your accomplishments and of compliments you get from co-workers or clients and record the significance of these. You can demonstrate these achievements and make your manager aware of your successes. In turn if things do turn sour you have evidence to showcase your abilities and achievements to potential employers.

Unintentional

While some of the things your supervisor does may make you unhappy, it might not be what they intended. Until proven otherwise, assume that they mean well and are simply unaware of the effects of their actions.

Do it sooner rather than later

If you have a bad relationship with your boss it’s essential that you do something about it as soon as possible. If not, it can have a drastic effect on morale. It can be tempting to wait; thinking that it might get better on its own, or that your manager might be promoted, transferred or leave the business. This may not ever happen and the problem could escalate or you will grow increasingly unhappy. Don’t wait, act on it sooner rather than later.

Don’t be a victim

Don’t become the victim indefinitely. If you have truly tried to make the relationship work, raise your grievance with higher management. If that complaint falls on deaf ears it might be time to move on! If you do part ways with your manager, remember not to burn your bridges. You might be tempted to “unload,” given that you have nothing left to lose but you should fight that temptation and try to be gracious. Besides, you never know if you might run into that boss again later in your career.

The latest headline to catch my eye was this: “Hosting a dinner party is ‘more stressful than going to work’”. Now, I can perhaps understand if you have a very easy job (was going to insert example here but wouldn’t want to offend any dog walkers etc) or you’re arranging a dinner party for 500 celebrity guests. But I did ask myself how making the table look pretty and looking up some Jamie Oliver recipes is more taxing than juggling a heavy workload, dealing with office politics, handling angry customers and everything else the workplace can hold.

But then I read the first paragraph and realised it was a case of a quirky headline and a clever PR angle. PR is great at masking what doesn’t seem a groundbreaking story when faced with the basic info. That’s the wonder of PR! Let’s look at the facts:

57% of those surveyed said that entertaining friends for a meal is more nerve wracking than commuting to work. So “going” to work in fact meant the process of travelling to work, not working in general. Not really a surprise there, but it makes a good story. (As an aside, since when did stressful and nerve wracking mean the same thing? I think someone has been using Microsoft Word’s synonyms feature too much. I should hope that hopping on the train or into the car isn’t a nerve wracking experience.)

Surveys like these are great ways of attracting some press attention – you don’t need a huge research project; just a few stats, an interesting angle and an attention grabbing headline. Seeing as though the PR in this case obviously worked, I had better give them the credit – thanks to After Eights for the story.

Just in case you wanted to know the other results of the survey: a quarter of respondents said dinner parties were more testing than a job interview – they must have their technique sussed. Hosts’ biggest fear was that the food will go wrong, and 15% of men claimed to have secured a job through a dinner party – there may be a separate blog post there…