You've had the boss. The one who screamed at you in front of the whole office. The one who promised you a commission and then explained why it didn't apply. The one who made your life miserable every day while HR told you to focus on improving your attitude. You are not alone, you are not crazy, and you are not powerless. Richard Lowe spent thirty-three years in corporate America working for, around, and occasionally surviving some of the most dysfunctional managers in the business. The micromanager who required written justification for a $75 software manual. The racist executive who nearly used a slur in front of witnesses.

The boss who showed his entire team a framed certificate from a psychiatrist confirming he was legally insane, and explained that it made him very difficult to fire. The HR VP who made unwanted advances on a subordinate who was alone in the building at 9 pm, then called him an idiot for saying no. The startup owner who pocketed an employee's $85,000 commission by ruling it was earned on company time. Every story in this book actually happened. The names have been changed. The dysfunction has not been exaggerated. This is not a book written by a consultant or a business school professor. Lowe is not going to tell you about management theory or the importance of growth mindset.

He is going to tell you what it is actually like when your boss is broken, what you can actually do about it, and why the systems supposedly designed to protect you mostly won't. The book covers the full range of workplace nightmares: the racist boss, the religious harasser, the pathological liar, the manager who mentally retired twelve months before his actual retirement date, the unethical boss who needs you to bury expenses in the wrong budget, the micromanager who wants to review every email you send, the genuinely unstable executive, the screamer, the sexual predator. Each chapter is built around a real story, followed by hard-won advice on how to handle it.