A taste for power

Was it just a coincidence or does a taste for alpha males start that early?

The horror!

Several months ago, in an effort to make people feel better about their jobs, I invited readers to send in anecdotes (Business Spotlight 4/2008) about really, really bad former workplaces. After waiting for all the horror stories to finish coming in, I have fantastic news to report: the readers of this magazine seem to be a very satisfied group. I can say this because of the surprising number of e-mails I got: exactly two. Ironically, one of them was about a place that was almost unbelievably generous — with "excessively high" salaries, a great restaurant and daily foosball matches. The sender of the e-mail admits: Working conditions were almost perfect. What was the problem? The work itself was awful: "Working there was so boring and strange that I had to quit the job after six months. Whenever I hear those stories about extremely comfortable working conditions, I always question whether there is a special reason for them." That wasn't quite the kind of anecdote I was expecting, but it will probaby still cheer people up. The other e-mail was along more classic lines. The sender wrote about a firm that fired her and her boss for intolerable behavior. Their crime? Eating a piece of cake that she had brought in for the team on her birthday — on company time. Now that's more like the kind of heart-warming story I was looking for!

KATHRIN ENKE is an American editor and translator based near Stuttgart. She is still getting used to her new boss: her baby daughter, born in September 2007. Contact: k.enke@spotlight-verlag.de