This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Yahoo! It's Wonder Woman vs. Non-Amazons in Another Work-a-Day-World Adventure

Another chapter in the Mommy Wars: Yahoo Boss Orders Largely Female Workforce Back to Office So They Can Get Some Work Done? Really?

After Marissa Mayer left Google and took over the financially floundering Yahoo last year, they used to respectfully call her CEO and Savior. Not anymore. Now they call her Wonder Woman -- because they can’t help but wonder what the hell this woman is trying to do to her company’s workforce.

If you start paying attention, though, it’s pretty easy to see what WW (AKA Ms. Mayer) has been trying to pull. Just look beyond the gee-whiz cuteness of this blonde CEO and start focusing on her dysfunctional yet calculated behavior. She wants to be your BFF, but she also wants to royally screw you. She wants to do all those lowdown, cutthroat things a CEO can do, but she still wants her employees to like her. Really.

She’s a lot like that perky cheerleader in high school who steals your boyfriend but still expects you to make her homecoming queen.

A big clue about her CEO personality disorder hit the fan a few weeks ago. It happened when WW issued this divisive, controversial edict from Yahoo HQ: NO MORE WORKING AT HOME. That is, if you don’t want to leave home and come in to the designated workplace to work, no more job for you.

WW wants these employees -- nearly all of them women -- off the company payroll by June, before the fiscal year (or quarter) ends. That way, she can show shareholders (and loyal sycophants alike) how she single-handedly turned Yahoo’s fortunes around. She didn’t, of course. She merely engaged in a sleazy practice of eliminating jobs to make her bottom line look good. With 200 or so fewer workers to pay, there definitely will be a nice financial surplus. Not real profits. Not actual earnings. Just more money than Yahoo had last year before she came aboard that sinking ship.

Of course WW tried to soften her blow with a lot of corporatespeak about “all hands on deck.” She started spouting about boosting morale and encouraging innovation and collaboration. But the real reason behind this mandatory migration back to the traditional workplace setting had nothing to do with any of her Successories talking points. It was really about control.

Turns out the legal boundaries between paid work time and personal, unpaid free time are a lot fuzzier and grayer than anyone realized. By demanding that all employees work together at a common company site, WW is ensuring company ownership of all ideas and innovations. It’s about the money. It’s all about control of the money. What happens at Yahoo legally and financially belongs to Yahoo now.

But WW didn’t want to tarnish her special Superwoman image as benevolent visionary. She didn’t want her real intentions about power, control, and hard cash to sully her persona as likable leader. So she targeted the most vulnerable, expendable segment of her company's workforce -- women. Then she deliberately directed the discussion to be about Mommy Wars, not big business copyrights. WW and her p.r. machine turned her unethical actions into another catfight between management and non-management...just the red meat that the pundits and the public love to devour.

So this female CEO deliberately tried to make herself look good at the expense of her female -- not male -- employees.

And what’s wrong with that? Nothing. Nothing if you’re playing a psycho-bitch business executive in a Joan Crawford movie from the 50’s. But if you’re running a major corporation in the 21st Century and you’re still pulling this Queen Bee crap, your moral, ethical, and practical compass points all need a major overhaul.

The real problem here lies with Mayer’s emotional intelligence. She just doesn’t have any. That shortfall might account for her startling lack of common sense. Everyday cause-and-effect thinking seems to elude her. And let’s not forget that missing empathy chip in her brain, either.

WW just doesn’t get it. What’s worse, she doesn’t realize how profoundly clueless she is, either. Consider the dysfunctional way she tried to “clean house” at Yahoo.

At first, WW was really friendly to all Yahoo personnel. Super-nice in that “free stuff for every employee” way. Free cafeteria food. New smartphones, iPhones, or Android phones. Friday meetings where executives had to give “no B.S.” answers to questions from every employee.

Then, without warning, WW abruptly turned on her predominantly female work-at-home workforce. She didn’t just eliminate a popular company policy, she delivered a harsh ultimatum.

Needless to say, these employees in question didn’t like her decision. They didn’t appreciate her ultimatum, either, especially since she had been so nicey nice to them at the beginning of her reign. Then WW suddenly launched her sneak attack against them.

After her ultimatum inevitably generated unfavorable blowback, WW’s p.r. machine went to work. She actually defended herself by denigrating the character and work ethic of those workers she’d planned to oust.

Accounts of WW’s valiant struggle against aimless, non-productive work-at-home workers began appearing in The New York Times. Things got real personal real fast. WW couldn’t, by law, give out the specific names of these “lazy workers.” She could, however, lump them all together and denounce them all as slackers who weren’t earning  their paychecks. WW didn’t directly accuse. She just deviously implied that these women who worked from their homes weren’t working.

She just insinuated that they were goofing off and wanted to keep goofing off on company time.

Contrary to what WW believes, most women don’t work from home so they can goof off. Quite the contrary. They’ve turned their own homes into professional workplaces because they’re hard-working, well-organized professionals. They’re doing it for productive reasons, even for innovative, creative reasons. They believe they can better manage demands of their homesteads, workloads, schedules, and families by NOT commuting everyday to an outside office.

Furthermore, no daily commute also means saving money on gas, car repairs, clothes, food, and most importantly, childcare. No wonder WW’s p.r. attacks caused so much frustration. But WW wasn’t through with them. She had one more turn of the screw in her arsenal.

After putting their work ethic under such unfair public scrutiny and after eliminating the most viable, affordable solution for their childcare concerns, this clueless CEO still managed to insult them with the unthinkable. WW actually built a nursery next to her office. That’s right. Her own private nursery at her own workplace. Not a company daycare for any other employees to use. Oh no. Just a special nursery for Supermom and her little prince because WW and her baby are soooo special.

How typical. This is what really happens for too many women when they finally break the glass ceiling. They take the shards out of their own hair, then use them as warning spikes to other women coming up behind them. My company, my perks. My child, my nursery. Make your own childcare arrangements, slackers, I’m special.

Sorry, you’re not THAT special, WW. Someday you might even be running a doughnut hut on the poor side of town. Better wise up fast, girl, before it’s too late.

If you don’t want these women, or anyone else to work for you, OK, that’s one thing. It’s quite another thing, however, to publicly attack their work performance so much that they won’t be able to find work after you un-employ them. Don’t you get it?

Stop acting like a stereotypical, insensitive male boss and start acting like a human being once in a while.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?