Send me your tales of horrible bosses — or excellent ones

When we moved to Utah in 1995 — back when we were young and relatively inexperienced reporters — my wife and I both worked for the same newspaper, and for the same editor.

She was a great boss. She worked hard, all of the time. She often was at the office before we arrived and was still toiling away as we left for the day. (That's not good for work/life balance, maybe, but we knew she was dedicated!)

She knew how to do her job, and she knew how to do our jobs, so she could speak with authority, and we respected her. She wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty and do "grunt work" if it needed to be done. She was demanding, but in a nice way. (Well, as nice as a newspaper city editor should be. Everyone gets a bit, um, terse on deadline.)

She defended us when we deserved it and corrected us when we needed it. We knew we had her support and that she was helping us become the best reporters and writers we could be. Going to work was fun, because she helped create that kind of atmosphere.

She's still a good friend of ours, not to mention the best boss we've ever had.

I thought of her and how lucky we were to work with her early in our careers when I received a press release about bad bosses.

According to a survey developed by OfficeTeam, a staffing service specializing in placement of administrative professionals, 46 percent of the 441 office workers contacted said they had worked for an unreasonable boss.

That's not surprising. Frankly, I was glad to hear that 54 percent of respondents never had worked for someone who was unreasonable. Lucky!

More interesting to me were the answers when those who had bad bosses were asked, "How did you respond?" The poll showed that 35 percent stayed at the job and tried to deal with the issue, while 24 percent stayed and "suffered through the torment."

However, 27 percent quit working for the unreasonable boss once they had another job lined up, and 11 percent quit immediately without having new employment ready.

You'd have to be in a pretty bad situation to quit without having somewhere else to go. I would guess that most people are more likely to face a bit of "torment" until they are able to move on to (hopefully) greener pastures.

If you find yourself dealing with a bad boss, the OfficeTeam release did offer suggestions for coping.