In my column last week, we asked, "Do you have a temper problem?"
41.7 percent said "Yes," while 58.3 percent answered "No."
Then, we asked, "Have you worked for someone with a temper problem?"
83.3 percent responded "Yes," and the remaining 16.7 percent said "No."
Finally, we asked, "If you answered "yes" to the second question what (have you done) (are you doing) about it?"
Responses:
>Walk on egg shells!
>I grin at the sunuvuhbich & go about my business!
>I tried to cope with it and stay positive for quite some time and subsequently found a better job and left the company. I have to say that my boss had made me receptive to the headhunter call. I found out later that the boss with the temper problem had a nervous breakdown and was ultimately terminated. Years later one of the senior managers of the company asked me why I had left, and I told him. The response was that the hothead had run off a lot of very talented people, but he was very well connected in corporate politics.
>Found another job
>I found another employer. Worked around the man for 4 years and saw it directed at others, but not so much at me. When he turned on me - I left. Interesting decision at the time, may have handled it differently today. I generally stay calm on the outside...
>Jim, Thanks for sharing this. I think of a couple of times in my career where I found myself in hot water with the people above me. Some of these had a turning point when I opened my mouth and said something based on emotions, not facts. Which reminds me some of several analogies used in James 3:2-8 about the tongue being like the rudder on a ship, or the bit in the mouth of the horse. Yeah, mind over matter. And I have to intentionally direct my will to behave, because letting "emotions" take the wheel and drive, I usually end up in trouble.
>I try to think, "that guy thinks he is correct; even though his opinion is stupid, I wonder how in hell he got to that conclusion. Maybe I should seek to understand him BEFORE I blow him up!"
>The philosophy of Buddhism or perhaps more pragmatically, without the gongs and incense, Nihilism helps: "all is but a passing cloud of illusion, without permanence, significance nor meaning". Recalling the into dialogue to the Rocky Horror Picture Show can also bring amusing comfort, where the imagined perception of extraterrestrial aliens of humans is that we are all just like ants mindlessly scurrying foraging in endless futility for fodder in a flat 2 dimensional space. In simpler words, the dude (too often a manager with an MBA for some reason) losing his cool doesn't know he/she/it is just another insignificant ant snapping his mandibles, ha, ha, ha ! Fools they all are !!!
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