I heading back home after nearly a year in the Philadelphia area. One of the things I will miss the most is the Gryphon Cafe in Wayne. Simply put, they have the best lattes in United States. They may also be the perfect Coffee house.

Gryphon Cafe in Wayne is in an old building with 20 foot ceilings. When you walk in, it is almost always very warm. There are two ceiling fans on the lower floor, working in vain. They have the requisite art for sale on the walls. They have 12 tables in the back.  You walk up to the counter, order your coffee, and grab a table. Service is slow, but not for lack of trying. I have watched them and they take great care with constructing their lattes. They almost always have crema art done in the foam.

Gryphon Cafe in Wayne is a neighborhood place with families and regulars. There is an older down-on-his-luck gentleman who is usually there, drinking coffee, and everyone seems to know him. He seems very well read.

Wayne is an interesting place. The literature has it as a cousin to tony places like Greenwich, CT, and Los Altos, CA. I am not sure I agree. I have been reading local author William Lashner’s Philadelphia-lawyer books lately. He has a proletarian view of Wayne as wealthy, upper crust, exceedingly white, and snobby. While it is a very pale place and decidedly upper-middle class, I find it to be quaint and filled with people just trying to live their lives. I do not see the ostentatious displays you might see in Atherton or Menlo Park in the Bay Area.

In trying to refine my managerial style, I have taken  to writing it down in order to force a clarification. Having been in the “world of work” for a while, I have been subjected to several kinds of management styles, from Laissez Faire to extreme micro-management. Some worked better than others for me. When it worked poorly, sometimes it was an issue with my managers, sometimes it was an issue with me. We all go through these phases. That said, I despise being micro-managed.

There is a lot of good writing on bad bosses. I am a fan of Jim Miller’s Best Boss, Worst Boss, which you can find on Amazon. I have been thinking about the parallels of two bad work environments I have been in, across the two decades of my career, lately.

In two notable cases, I have been in what I call toxic environments. These are work environments where the work and the management are punishing. In both cases, it involved bullies and bobbleheads.

In both toxic environments, the management culture was one of bullying. It was one where you were not rewarded for new ideas, but rather were rewarded for doing what you were told.

Now, I realize that business is not a democracy. But it is the responsibility of management to set up an environment where it is possible to get the most out of the human potential available. As I Have said in past, Leadership, done correctly, can get people to achieve at a level that even the people themselves did not know there were capable. This was a lesson I first learned in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin from  my advisor, Raghu Ramakrishnan.

Bullies

The bullying comes in the form of a supervisor who believes he or she (usually a he) has all the right answers. In these environments there is little room for discussion. There is also a frequent appeal to authority in workplace conversations, like: “Larry wants it this way”, or “I know the issues, but this is what Larry wants”, or “Larry said to do it this way, and I am just truing to get him off my back.”

This article is meant to test the proposition that your position on the internet can be affected by having content on your site which uses that keywords that you are most interested in. Given that this is the site for BillRoth.net, this content will be about Bill Roth.

This site is built and maintained by Bill Roth, who splits his time between Pennsylvania and San Jose, CA. There are, or course, other people named Bill Roth on the internet in one form or other. The first is my father, whose name, of course, is Bill Roth. Next is the late Republican Senator, Bill Roth.

There is also someone from West Virgina who is a football announcer, whose name is Bill Roth. The Biography on that site about Bill Roth lists the name Bill Roth many times, and this is why I believe that this Bill Roth gets the top search listing.

 Interestingly, there is also a famous Viennese  gastroenterologist named whose last name Billroth. I am not sure how I feel about this.

There are others on the internet who are named Bill Roth. You can find them by searching for the name Bill Roth at your favorite search engine.

 To reiterate:

This site is built and maintained by Bill Roth, who splits his time between Pennsylvania and San Jose, CA. There are, or course, other people named Bill Roth on the internet in one form or other. The first is my father, whose name, of course, is Bill Roth. Next is the late Republican Senator, Bill Roth.

There is also someone from West Virgina who is a football announcer, whose name is Bill Roth. The Biography on that site about Bill Roth lists the name Bill Roth many times, and this is why I believe that this Bill Roth gets the top search listing.

 Interestingly, there is also a famous Viennese  gastroenterologist named whose last name Billroth. I am not sure how I feel about this.

There are others on the internet who are named Bill Roth. You can find them by searching for the name Bill Roth at your favorite search engine.