Top Management Story

Writen by Steve Hill

Are you getting the respect you deserve from your current boss? Are you unhappy with the way your team leader is treating you? Do you feel unsatisfied with the way your manager talks to you in a business environment? In this article I am going to write about examples of how certain companies mistreat the lower levels of their staff in what basically are their power trips.

I have a strong belief in the idea that everyone in the workplace such as an office environment should be treated as equals. Whether you are the chairman or a sixteen year old office junior should not make the slightest bit of difference, but I have seen and have been disgusted by the way some members of senior management treat the people that they see as beneath them in the workplace.

The first example that I am going to write about is from when I worked at a famous insurance company when I was just seventeen. On my first day at work I have to admit thet I was extremely nervous but was soon made to feel very welcome by the people who I was going to spend the next few months working with. At lunch time these people showed me where the canteen was and we started to line up to wait for our turn to get served. I noticed that the canteen was basically split into two halves. I enquired as to why this was. The answer was my first experience of the, them and us scenario. The first half was for members of the board, team leaders and other senior management, while the second half was for the ordinary workers! These members of management must have felt quite smug watching all of us lesser mortals eating our food, thinking how great it was that they had made it to the successful side of the canteen, how pathetic!

Now I am sure that most people will admit that from to time that they make a few mistakes, this of course is human nature. I will never forget the way my first boss used to speak to me when hearing about one of my errors. I would be asked to go and see him in his office which was basically a very posh and plush room which he had all to himself. His fifty staff meanwhile were crammed into a rather small area outside of this office. The furniture in his office was probably worth more than the whole of the furniture from the office outside which reminded me of a country like Pakistan where the leaders sit in their gold thrones begging for help from around the world after yet another earthquake.

I would of course go and see him to explain why I had made this error. The way he spoke to me was disgusting and was his way of attempting to strike fear into me. This plan did not work however and I just felt sorry for him, strangely enough. Many a time did I want to enquire as to whether he had ever made a mistake in his life but decided to play ball and keep quiet.

If people want the best out of their employees they need to treat them with respect and as equals because that is what they are!