When your boss's hobby becomes your job obligation

Nan Worth harbors no animosity toward the Boy Scouts of America. But she winced when a new owner took over her former company and she felt forced into giving donations to the little troopers.

The owner, a former Scout who adorned his office with merit badges and posters of knot-tying instructions, began a fund-raising campaign, complete with a Boy Scout cutout in the lobby, speeches about the importance of being a Scout, regular status requests about funds raised and a knot-tying contest to help raise awareness. The winner would be honorably mentioned in the company newsletter, Worth recalls.

Just two hitches: Tying square knots and lariat loops wouldn't help her get her job done, and she didn't feel free to make contributions as she saw fit.

"We all felt like if we didn't give enough, we would be on his blacklist," says Worth. "He knew who contributed and those who didn't."

When the boss has a pet passion, staffers can find themselves engaging in activities they've never tried — probably because they never wanted to. Sometimes an executive's personal pursuits can help build communities. But it can also stir mild guilt trips or bigger shakedowns. And so the staff is a captive audience for their manager's jazz-band gigs, elegies over his approach shot to the 17th green, or any other avocation mistaken as part of the vocation.

That includes the rabid love of chocolate of Paul Karlin's former boss. "If you want to stay in this department, you are going to have to learn to love chocolate," she told him.

At first, he thought she was kidding. Then colleagues warned him, "It's a big thing to her." So even though he doesn't like chocolate, he took some that she offered, waited until the coast was clear and wrapped it up for later re-gifting. "It was really strange," he says. "Really strange."

David Woodburn, a former senior engineer, worked for a golf-obsessed division whose employees would discuss the Tuesday night golf league at great lengths on Wednesday morning.

He felt left out. "Did I golf when I started that job? No. Did I start? Of

course," he says.

It's hard to rail against interests so often bathed with the best intentions. But that won't stop Russell Blair, a retired judge. "People who insist on sharing their 'bliss' with subordinates should be required to wear a T-shirt that says: 'Now that my life is perfect, I'm going to fix yours,"' he says.