moral compartments

A company I worked for a few years ago appointed, as managing director, a woman with enormous self-confidence, middling competence and a very tenuous grasp on notions of decency and civility. Reader, she was a bitch*. We've all worked with or for them, and I need hardly add they come in both genders. This one was rude to good people who had worked at the place for years, fired or pushed out nearly all of the senior women at the company within weeks, and had a tendency to bully people in meetings. I was sort of fascinated by her. How did she justify such unpleasant behaviour to herself ?

I had a theory. She was happily married (to a stay-at-home husband) and had two children.  She had a genuine love and passion for her family; her home life was the first, and the last thing she talked about in every meeting, and she did so with warmth and wit. It was the most likeable thing about her. But my theory was this: she had invested her entire stock of moral capital in her home life, and didn't have any left over for work.

To her mind, her first priority was being a great mother and wife. This formed a self-justification for her to behave as shittily as she liked at work. In the office, she didn't have to prove she was a good person to herself or anyone else. She just had to get results**, so that she could bring home the bacon for her family. 

Now, I'm not saying this new research proves me right, but it pretty much does. Have a read - and look out for the quote from Dieter Frey with which it closes.

And if a colleague keeps going on about their home life - beware.

*If someone can suggest a non-misogynist epithet of abuse that carries similar force, I'll take it. 

** She didn't, by the way, and lost her job after a relatively short tenure.

Comments

[ejoch]

I've encountered similar people - act like a **** in the office and pleasant outside. Worse, some of them thinks this makes it ok - so for example they're allowed to yell and scream in the office but as long as they're a 'good egg' in the pub somehow that's fine.
Sometimes people justify it to themselves simply on the basis that it works - but that's insane, because it doesn't. Alright, if you're senior enough, to some extent you can do as you please. But when middle management act like that, all that happens is all those in the firing line resolve never to do anything helpful/beyond the call of duty, for that person.

[peter]

ejoch -- are you talking about "Gordon" (not his real name), a British boss-from-hell recently publicly criticized for bullying the staff who work at his home-office?