It wasn’t just Isiah. His boss, James Dolan, chairman of Madison Square Garden, had long cultivated a workplace rife with hostility and disdain for lowly employees. In this searing column in today’s New York Times, Selena Roberts writes that Dolan was handed his job by his daddy, Cablevision boss Charles Dolan, to “focus him.” Then, says Roberts, Dolan went to “work”:
For years, he has wounded careers and savaged dissenters while assembling a cult of personality where only his sycophants survive amid a game of Jim-nastics.
He fired one employee for serving him a glass of flat Coke, and another for failing to recognize him. Roberts charges that he created a locker-room atmosphere in which the words “bitch” and “p—-” were tossed around like dirty towels.
Remember his video deposition from the trial? Anucha Browne Sanders’ lawyers asked him how he felt about Isiah allegedly calling her a “bitch.” Dolan responds, “It’s not appropriate. It’s also not appropriate to murder anyone. I don’t know if that’s happened here.”
Say what? Murder who? Huh? And this guy runs a mutimillion-dollar enterprise? (For a hilarious take on Dolan et al, read Bill Simmons’ Idiot’s Guide to the Isiah Trial on ESPN.com.)
Is there an epidemic of jerky bosses in the American workplace? You, like me, have probably noted a deluge of books hitting the business shelves in recent months about dealing with horrible bosses. I have a few right here on my desk:
Toxic People: Decontaminate Difficult People at Work Without Using Weapons or Duct Tape, by Marsha Petrie Sue
Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work, by Paul Babiak and Robert D. Hare
The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians—and How We Can Survive Them, by Jean Lipman-Blumen
The Ape in the Corner Office: Understanding the Workplace Beast in All of Us, by Richard Conniff
and of course,
The No Asshole Rule, by Robert Sutton (okay, when I wrote this piece defending assholes at work, I was NOT thinking about the ones who call you bitch)
Clearly, there’s something going on. A new survey by Harris Interactive for The Marlin Company finds that
Nearly one-fifth (19%) of U.S workers are aware of a threat or verbal intimidation by someone in their workplace and 11% are aware of an assault or violent act, yet fewer than half of U.S employees (43%) say that their employers offer training on workplace violence, according to a new national survey. In addition, 28% of U.S employees report they have been so stressed at work in the last year that they have yelled or screamed on the job, and 20% have been driven to tears.
Now, I don’t know that boss training is the answer. (Funny how these consultant types always seem to think everything can be solved by a workshop. An expensive workshop. Led by them.) But I do know that flogging bad bosses in the public square puts other bad bosses on warning. Browne Sanders reportedly wept and dedicated her victory to all the women and other workers out there without the means to pursue their own cases in court. Maybe Isiah and Dolan can dedicate their humiliating loss to all the other snakes in suits.