“Where were you?”  “You’re not leaving are you?”  “When did you get in today?”

We’ve all been there, we’ve all had that one boss that thought management meant knowing your staff’s every movement.  It’s painful, anxiety inducing and frustrating!  Luckily a new generation of leaders is coming through the ranks and the rebellion against micromanagement is gaining momentum, however the outliers still exist.

Below is an excerpt from an NPR.ORG article that demonstrates just how micro some people are trying to manage.

Micromanagement is routinely the top complaint people have about their bosses, and in today’s good job market where workers have more options, that’s a bigger problem for employers.

People might have their own definition of when a manager crosses into being too controlling, but most people would probably agree that Marjon Bell’s former boss would fit.

On her first day on a marketing job at a Virginia Beach, Va., insurance company, Bell’s boss sent an email barring employees from bringing cellphones to the office. The email said that moms, especially, spent too much time on their phones checking up on their children.

That, Bell says, was just one of her boss’s many rules.

“If we left campus for lunch, [we had] to email her when we left and email her when we got back,” Bell says.

Predictably, few people took lunch.

The boss also monitored the instant messaging system, which displayed a green light when someone was logged in, and a yellow one after they had been idle.

“Usually you had like a 10-minute window before your light turned yellow, and then they changed it to only two minutes,” Bell says. “And I came back from the restroom, and my boss was standing at my cubicle wondering where I’d been.”

Bell says the micromanagement was systemic. Her employer offered a $500 monthly bonus that rewarded co-workers for micromanaging each other.

“If you came in five minutes late, if you left early, if you took a little bit longer at lunch, whoever reported you would get an accountability award,” she says.

Wow.  The lessons?  Job seekers should consider interviewing existing staff to understand the management style at a prospective employer.  Existing staff who are being micromanaged need to become job seekers and micromanagers need to become macromanagers or risk having no one to manage at all.

Click HERE for the full NPR.ORG article.