# Dumb Ass Managers: the fun-eaters

- **Episode:** [225](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/225.md) (2025-08-21)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** managers, fun-eaters, leadership
- **Time:** 26:29–28:56 (start 1589s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/225?t=1589](https://truthliesandwork.com/225?t=1589)

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[26:29] Al Elliott: Let me ask you about DAMs, or do you call them DAMs? DAMs? How do you say that?
[26:34] Joel Zeff: From the book, Dumb Ass Manager. Can we say that on the podcast?
[26:38] Al Elliott: We absolutely can, and we just have
[26:40] Joel Zeff: Okay. Dumbass manager. Um, we've all come across a dumbass manager, and I have a chapter where I kind of talk about different managers that I've encountered in my, in my work and travel. And, and, and I think some of those managers might seem, uh, familiar to some people. And, and the one that you have to really be afraid of is the, the DAM, the dumbass manager. And they're, they're out there
[27:08] Leanne Elliott: Yeah
[27:09] Joel Zeff: And what they want to do is they want to eat your fun. They want to eat it and take it. They don't care about you. They don't care about whether you have opportunity or you're being fulfilled or you're receiving positive support and appreciation. I've had dumbass managers. Um, I had one that I stopped talking to. He stopped talking to me first. So I said, well then, okay, I don't, I'm just gonna talk to the principal of the ad agency if I need to talk to anybody. I don't need to talk to you. Uh, there was here, I think it was a bad situation. That job was, was bad from the get-go
[27:56] Leanne Elliott: Yeah
[27:57] Joel Zeff: I did meet my wife there, so I guess Yeah, I guess that would seem pretty positive. We've been married 23 years. And so, you know, that was a tough job. I knew as soon as, like, I knew the first day, I'm like, I made a bad choice here. I remember going in the office, my office, and I had I don't, it was literally the worst office chair. I don't know. It was just, I, the first thing, my first action of my first day was I went into my office and took the office, this nasty office chair and threw it out into the hall. And I asked for a new office chair and they refused. And so I took one from the conference room and I said, you can have this back when you buy me a new chair. That's a true story