Forget the ‘toxic boss’ — meet the toxic underlings
The writer is author of How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking
Amid the spectre of hybrid work, working-from-home and “quiet quitting” — all ways of working that are universally suspected of demonstrating minimal commitment — the once-looming figure of the “toxic boss” seems to have receded into the background. Instead the focus is falling on a new scapegoat: the “toxic underling”.
These are the people closer to the middle of the food chain who are supposedly making life difficult for everyone, especially the higher-ups. And they’re painted as exactly the sort of people taking advantage of the new hybrid landscape.
It used to be that everyone moaned about the people above them, not the people below or to the side. The toxic boss was a staple of early 2000s popular culture, reaching its zenith with fictional middle manager David Brent in The Office and his American counterpart Michael Scott. Everyone could get behind hating the toxic boss. He — or she — was easy to despise. (For the female version, see Jennifer Aniston as the leering, manipulative manager from hell in the 2011 movie Horrible Bosses.)
There’s even a painful real-life reminder of the shouty, sweary version of the type in the current BBC documentary Trouble at Topshop, tracing the British fashion brand’s declining fortunes after it was acquired by retailer Sir Philip Green in 2002. Green’s leadership style involved shouting a lot, using two mobile phones simultaneously and taking a £1.2bn dividend out of the group to pay to his wife. It makes you yearn for the manager whose toxicity resides simply in doing the robot dance in an ill-fitting polyester suit.
Nowadays, though, the bad boss is forgotten. Instead the label “toxic” is liberally applied to anyone who is annoying. And if you label them as an “underling” in your mind, then it’s a double whammy: you’ve insulted them and you’ve promoted yourself.
I have a theory about why this has happened. The toxic bosses who once united us in companionable ridicule may be simply less visible now, because in my experience they are the ones who are currently least likely to be back in the office. Largely because of their status, they may be most able to camouflage their absence. Out of sight, out of mind. Once standard-bearers for presenteeism, these titans of industry now find themselves “OOO” on certain days. The last thing they want is everyone else staying out of the office because then they might have to come in. Anyone who calls out this double standard is a “toxic underling”.
There’s more going on here than hypocrisy, though. The cultural stereotypes lampooned in The Office already look out of date. Since the advent of “flat hierarchies” (however delusional an idea that is), many workers are encouraged to think of themselves as “stakeholders”, agents of change and masters of their own destiny. The pandemic cemented that idea, with many people having no choice but to manage their own schedule and commitments. Whether employees ever really had any meaningful additional power or not, they began to believe that they were not underlings at all but somehow equals. If you don’t believe that this attitude is common, you probably haven’t interviewed anyone for a job lately.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Viv Groskop
