Elon Musk Is A Really Bad Boss, But He Isn't the Worst Bad Boss

The competition is fierce. Meet Scott Rudin, "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap, and George Pullman.

A Pullman dining-car interior, from an 1894 advertisement in the Library of Congress collections.

Elon Musk is trying to establish himself as the worst boss in America, but he isn't even the worst in his two subcategories. Bad bosses are extremely common in the United States, thanks to the same cult of personal freedom that has turned elementary schools into shooting galleries. About one-third of us work for bad bosses.

The worst bad boss of this era in the subcategory Raging Infant Boss would be the Hollywood/TV/Broadway producer Scott Rudin, who once sent one of his assistants to the emergency room.

The worst bad boss of this era in the subcategory Meat Cleaver Boss would be "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap, who laid waste to the payrolls at Scott Paper and Sunbeam, wrote a book bragging about it (Mean Business, available at fine remainder bins everywhere), then got nailed by the SEC for accounting fraud. Dunlap went to his reward in 2019, so perhaps the title for worst Meat Cleaver Boss is now available.

The worst boss in American history was George Pullman (1831-1897), who tried to create a capitalist utopia and created misery and bloodshed instead. To make up for it, President Grover Cleveland had to invent Labor Day.

More on this topic in my latest New Republic piece.