Four stories, head to head. You pick the winner.

Each story below is a composite, pieced together from patterns that senior women across the region keep describing. None of them comes from a member, a client or an actual submission, since our Baltimore mailbox has not opened yet. That changes next month. For now there are four bosses, and the job is to pick the worst.

Here is the working definition. A bad boss is a repeated pattern that costs you money, standing or sleep, and that getting better at your own job would not fix. Each entry in this list arrives with a cost attached, since the most expensive manager is usually the one who does the most damage.

Option A. The Credit Converter

Not once does he speak in a hurtful way to anyone in Baltimore. He just converts. Her analysis turns into "our thinking." An idea she floated in a meeting he skipped shows up in his Thursday update to the CEO, under his name. When she mentions it, he looks puzzled and a bit wounded: "We're a team." The cost: two promotion cycles in which the committee could not point to one thing she had done, because everything carried his name.

Option B. The Weather System

She is brilliant on Monday and dangerous on Wednesday, and nobody knows which kind of day it will be until she walks through the door. The team runs a private channel to warn each other and spends the first hour of every morning reading the room instead of the business. The cost: a senior team that quit bringing bad news forward, which is how a $4 million forecast miss turned into a $4 million surprise. Treat that figure as illustrative. The pattern itself is not.

Option C. The Sponsor Who Wasn't

In each review he dangles the word "next" in front of her, and for three full years she takes that promise at face value. In year four a peer lets her know the role was filled from outside, and that he sat on the panel and never once said her name. According to McKinsey and LeanIn's 2025 study, roughly 93 women are promoted to manager for every 100 men who receive the same step up. A sponsor who won't speak up for you is not a sponsor. He is a delay.

Option D. The Twenty-Four-Hour Clock

Her inbox fills with his brainstorms around 11:40 at night. and expects a reply before his 6 a.m. run. He never says so out loud. He simply notices who answered. Across two years in Catonsville she keeps replying, until her physician questions how she is sleeping. What she pays includes a scare about her health, a résumé with one job title stretched across too many years, and a habit of checking her phone during dinner in Towson or Columbia.

Counsel from veteran leaders

Senior women who have survived all four rank them in a way that surprises the younger people in the room. The Weather System is the most frightening and the easiest to leave, since everyone can see it. Of the four patterns, the Clock causes the most physical harm, yet it is also the easiest to end, since one plain sentence will do it: "I'm offline from 8 to 7." Anything urgent, call." The Credit Converter and the Sponsor Who Wasn't cost the most, because they stay hidden from the outside and look polite from the inside. Years later you realize nothing he promised ever became anything.

The verdict

Which boss is worst comes down to what you decide to measure. Judged by pay and time spent in the role, the quiet bosses come out ahead. Judged by the warning you would give a friend first, the loud one should be chosen. Women across Central Maryland who have worked under all four types agree on one point: the boss who does the most harm is the one you find yourself excusing again and again.

Vote

Pick A, B, C or D and send it to the Baltimore chapter. We will publish the split next month. If something similar happened to you, share it as well, and we will change the names. Next month's features ought to be shaped by you.