You show up every day, maybe you work long hours. You give your heart and soul and take pride in your work and accom­plish­ments. You just want an hon­est day’s pay for an hon­est day’s work — and RESPECT. You have tried to make nice, rea­son with the losers and you get shot down time and time again. You can throw in the towel and qui­etly leave or you can go pub­lic and stick it to the man…

And by the droves peo­ple do.

While it may be too late for them to love their jobs, a visit to a employee rant site could pro­vide use­ful infor­ma­tion to help oth­ers not repeat their unfor­tu­nate expe­ri­ence by review­ing what they have posted.

We have all seen job tweets and Face­book posts, some good, most bad. They can be hit or miss in regard to effec­tive­ness, depend­ing if the com­pany is mon­i­tor­ing its on line rep­u­ta­tion. If you’re seri­ous about check­ing out an employer there are two sites ded­i­cated to mon­i­tor­ing work­places and bosses that are as seri­ous as you are.

You can check out com­pany cul­ture rated at Job­Vent. Cur­rent and ex-employees eval­u­ate 9 spe­cific areas of their employ­ment and have 6,000 char­ac­ters for gory or delight­ful details, depend­ing on their expe­ri­ence. The reviews are anony­mous and the guide­lines stip­u­late no per­sonal attacks by name, title or ini­tials, and no obscene, vio­lent or hate­ful comments.

Read­ing through sev­eral ran­dom vents  I found many to be emo­tional, whiny and even “ah ha gottcha”. It’s under­stand­able that hurt and poor expe­ri­ences can have a huge influ­ence so don’t expect impartiality.

The reviews that are pos­i­tive often have the air of an infomer­cial. It’s entirely pos­si­ble they are just very sat­is­fied loyal asso­ciates… or that they are writ­ten by the mar­ket­ing depart­ment in a lame attempt at dam­age con­trol. In any event, a bowl of pop­corn is all you need for low cost enter­tain­ment at the expense of others.

The prob­lem is that you don’t know if what you are read­ing is fact or fic­tion, although when sev­eral com­ments read like deja vú it only makes sense to think there is bound to be some truth amongst the lore.

If you read my post on how to sur­vive bully bosses you know I couldn’t agree more with the phi­los­o­phy “Nobody should have to work with a jerk”. A click through the web­site eBoss­Watch is a sober­ing expe­ri­ence. Although posters remain anony­mous, bosses don’t.

The anony­mous sur­vey lets employ­ees rate their boss so they can “warn other peo­ple about a bad boss or rec­om­mend a great boss”. It appears large sec­tors of, if not entire teams, post about their bosses, for bet­ter or worse.

The Founder, Asher Adel­man, runs the daily oper­a­tions of eBoss­Watch. He says that he decided there had to be a bet­ter way for peo­ple to eval­u­ate prospec­tive employ­ers after expe­ri­enc­ing first-hand the night­mare of work­ing for a toxic boss.

He is seri­ous about the site’s mis­sion, just read the eBoss­Watch blog with cat­e­gories for the worst and best bosses. Tucked between an amaz­ing boss in White­hall, PA, who donated his kid­ney to an employee and the owner and CEO of a bank who gave his employ­ees 60 mil­lion dol­lars is the eBoss­Watch doozie list of the 25 Worst Bosses of 2009. Adle­man pro­vides the sub­stan­ti­ated proof on why they made the list. They take tips too for any­one want­ing to expose a toxic boss. Sub­mit the infor­ma­tion and they’ll check out your claim.

You can fol­low eBoss­Watch on Twit­ter and be a fan on Face­book.

Both sites have been rec­og­nized by national media and any employer should take it seri­ously if they end up men­tioned for good or bad (of course the cel­e­bra­tion will depend on the cat­e­gory in which they appear).

As a job seeker you would be remiss if you didn’t take advan­tage of these tools to screen poten­tial employ­ers. Don’t ever for­get, employ­ment is a 2 way street.

Have you ever vented about your job on a web­site or using social media? have you ever been the sub­ject of employee venting?

I want to hear all the juicy details.

Aretha Franklin — RESPECT