Horrible Bosses
Horrible bosses is the perfect title for this movie. Instead of making their organizations better off, management, or lack thereof, is negatively affecting the culture and lives of subordinates. Managers are failing to do their jobs due to personal flaws, barriers to communication, and unprofessional workplace environments.
Nick, Kurt, and Dale are three friends who work hard in their everyday jobs. One thing these gentlemen have in common is that they absolutely hate their bosses. After much effort to deal with their managers, the guys have had enough. One day at dinner the three joked about how better off their lives would be if their bosses were not in it and playfully joked about killing them. However, Dale manages to make his dream a reality when he gets in contact with a murder consultant, Motherfucker Jones, whom Dale thought was a hitman with experience. Although Mr. Jones was hired to commit the murders, he insists he will only coach the guys in dealing with the matter themselves. In the end, Dale, Kurt, and Nick do not perform any murders. However, Nick’s boss Harken ends up killing Kurt’s boss Bobby, after finding a cell phone in Harken’s house belonging to Bobby. Harken ends up in jail after the murder evidence points to him as the culprit. Additionally, Dale manages to simmer down his perverted boss Julia.
Nick works for a wealthy financial firm. As a result of all the hard work within the company, Nick is expecting a promotion. With the decision of the recipient looming, Nick becomes more and more anxious. Nick takes on more job responsibilities thinking in the end he will be better compensated. Dave Harken, is the manager in charge of the company and is ultimately making the decision for the promotion. After piling up Nick’s tasks and responsibilities, Harken insists Nick is doing a great job. Thus, Dave promotes himself to the position he was dangling in front of Nick, resulting in Nick’s extreme frustration.
Dale is a dental assistant for his boss Julia. Every day, Dale has to constantly disregard sexual harassment by his Dentist boss. Julia harasses Dale by telling him to have sex with her. Furthermore, Dale has to put up with the extremely unprofessional sexual acts committed by Julia regularly. Dale refuses to give in to Julia, for he is engaged and doesn’t want his fiancé to find out what’s really going on in the dental office. The sexual tension in the workplace is causing Dale distress.
Kurt loves his job and his manager. The only thing Kurt cannot stand is his boss Jack’s son Bobby. Bobby is the second man in charge at Pellitt Chemicals. Although being told that when Jack steps down Kurt will be in charge, Jack has a heart attack out of nowhere and Bobby takes over. Bobby soon starts to carelessly run the place into the ground by making many lousy business decisions after another. Kurt wants Bobby out, however way possible.
Discourse between managers and subordinates is very unprofessional. There are many reasons why managers do not get their tasks completed. Some examples include laziness, time management and shifting it to the “back burner”, incompetence, too many talking heads, false business, flawed system (economic and professional mess), personal problems, too many subordinates, and system structure. Many of these examples are shown in the film and prove that the bosses are indeed pretty horrible. Personal problems affect Julia in her dental office. She cannot keep her hands off her patients and performs unprofessional and unethical sexual acts on them. She needs to keep her sexual life very distant when at the workplace. At the chemical company, Bobby indicates many reasons why he is terrible in charge. Bobby is not very productive because he is lazy. He sits behind his desk and does nothing. He claims he needs to cut down on staff, but, as a manager he should do this himself and he delegates this task to his subordinate Kurt. A reason Bobby is so lazy is also because he is incompetent. He should never have been the manager in the first place but was handed down the position when his father passed. Mr. Harken struggles with job completion because of the structure in his firm. As president, Harken gets the task of nominating his vice president. However, Harken decides to take on the duties that otherwise would have been handed on to someone else. The structure at the financial firm maybe too much for Harken to handle. This overload of work will cause him to in turn shift tasks to the back burner. By taking on all this extra work, Harken’s productivity is less efficient.