Viral site lets workers tell off their bosses anonymously

Computerworld - Here's one more reason for bosses to treat their employees well.

CareerBuilder.com launched a viral Web site where people can send anonymous messages to the bosses and co-workers who drive them crazy. The Anonymous Tip Giver site is billed as a tool that allows people to offer "constructive criticism or fun advice" for those bosses who take credit for their work, use sarcasm like a weapon or make workers stay late on their kids' birthday parties.

On the site, announced today by CareerBuilder.com, people can choose from four different characters and then pick a voice that will deliver the message to their intended recipient. Users can pick from a list of messages or type in their own, which will then be anonymously delivered via e-mail, with the character reading the message aloud.

"You can write up your own advice or select from a list of pre-made tips such as 'One out of 10 people think your barking dog ring tone is funny, that one person is you'," said a CareerBuilder statement. "You can even record your message over the phone. Without revealing your identity, in an instant, the fully animated tip is delivered right to the recipient's e-mail box. Voila! Bad boss problem solved."

The new viral site will officially launch during the Super Bowl on Sunday.

But viral marketing campaigns don't always work out as planned. A little more than a year ago, Mozilla, Corp. launched a viral initiative to push its open-source Web browser to new users. The campaign included a Web site, an anthem, a link to Firefox's download and an enormous list of statistics that purported to compare Firefox users with people who used rival Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer browser.

But the campaign didn't work out so well. Within hours after its kickoff, Mozilla shut it down and apologized to users.

Regardless of how a viral campaign works out, plenty of people are unhappy with their bosses or their co-workers.

In a Harris Interactive online poll of 8,038 full-time, U.S. employees, 43% of the respondents said that they have quit jobs simply to get away from a bad boss, according to CareerBuilder, which commissioned the survey. Moreover, 48% of the women surveyed said that they would quit their jobs because of a bad boss, compared to 39% of the men.

And age also is part of the "should I stay or should I go?" decision. CareerBuilder.com reported that 48% of workers between the ages of 35 and 44 quit their jobs because of their bosses, while 40% of workers between the ages of 18 and 24 and 41% of workers 45 to 54 said bosses pushed them to quit.

In the survey, reports of real-life bad boss behavior included stories of one boss who used a taser on a subordinate, one who tap-danced on a worker's desk, another who showed everyone a kidney stone that he had passed, and another who mandated a "talk like a pirate day."

Read more about Careers in Computerworld's Careers Topic Center.