A father’s curses

Rob and Steve, two brothers in management at an industrial company near Torrance, Calif., had a father with a hot temper and a filthy mouth. Their father owned the business, so his mouth became everybody’s problem. His employees amused themselves by appointing a “Cuss Count Committee,” which recorded the boss’s swear words and the duration of each harangue.

“He would walk around and find things to curse about,” Rob told me. “Even when he wasn’t shouting, his language was an embarrassment. He used the F word more frequently than the word ‘the,’ and he didn’t care if the Pope heard him.”

One day Steve was giving five customers a tour when he heard his father approaching and shooting off rapid-fire F bombs. Rather than expose them to his dad’s verbal fireworks, Steve chose the only alternative: He quickly ushered his visitors into the newly remodeled men’s room on the pretext of showing off the workmanship.

“It was awkward,” Steve recalls, “because two of the customers were women, and an employee was occupying one of the stalls.”

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Such desperate measures were taken only when customers and other outsiders were in the building. In the front offices, employees on the phone with customers or vendors were instructed to say things like, “Can I put you on hold a second?” when an audible blue streak was in progress.

Whatever the strengths of a family business, an abusive boss is one liability that few major corporations would tolerate (see “Bobby Knight, meet J.P. Morgan,” by Ivan Lansberg, FB, Winter 2001). So in such situations employees and relatives must squander their energies on covering for their boss’s inadequacies.

“We thought we could keep the outside world from knowing about his manner,” Rob reflects. “He ran the business well, but he sounded so rude, crude and unprofessional, we feared it would cost us business.” Of course, the secret was impossible to keep.

Rather than fight the boss’s profanity, some employees simply resigned themselves and joined in. “It was contagious, I guess,” Steve says. “Besides, when the boss swears, how can you criticize employees for swearing?“

Prospective employees were warned about the boss’s temper and salty vocabulary. They were told that loose language was almost part of the company’s culture—or lack thereof. One sensitive chief accountant stormed out after two weeks on the job.

Rob and Steve never discussed their dad’s mouth with other employees. “He was our father, and we had to support him,” Steve reasons. Besides, he acknowledges, “To admit that we objected but couldn’t do anything would have reflected poorly on us.”

After their father suffered a mild heart attack at the age of 67, Rob and Steve convinced him to step down. At his retirement party, employees presented him with an impressive (and, considering the circumstances, highly appropriate) gift—a trip to the remote island of Bora Bora.

James V. O’Connor (jimo@oconnorpr.com) is a communications consultant in Lake Forest, Ill., and the author of Cuss Control: The Complete Book on How to Curb Your Cursing.

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