Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant™ (TOT): How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job

Getting Started: Advice for Employees

GETTING OUT of bed and dragging yourself to work can be a chore even if you have the world's greatest job. But if you've been hitting the snooze button repeatedly before hitting the shower, there may be something—or more likely, someone—making you want to avoid work.

If your boss acts like a bratty bully or a confused little lamb—or just seems impossible to deal with, you can now breathe a sigh of relief. You are working for a Terrible Office Tyrant (TOT) and help is on the way.

TOTs aren't really any different from toddlers. And fortunately, once you can see that the tyrants are really just wearing training pants, that cell phones are just pacifiers, and that the conference room is just a playground, your work life will be easier to handle.

Using a "Levity Lens™," to see the silly side of the awkward and stressful in the office, can show you that the little devils at work are just playing sandbox politics. And once you understand your boss's quirks and strange behavior, you may not even need the snooze button. That's where Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant (TOT) comes in.

All bosses, just like the rest of us, have vestiges of childlike behavior in them—some more than others. And that means your boss will invariably show a sign or two of being a TOT. In other words, for you to succeed and thrive at your job, you need to become a TOT tamer.

Please note: That's TOT tamer, not TOT kicker, or TOT torturer, or any other aggressive (or arrest-worthy) monikers. ...