Nightmare stories are abundant. Just ask Pamela Yaeger, a communications expert from Long Island, New York, who says that, at a past job, her micromanaging boss would literally time staffers' bathroom breaks. When they seemed too long, she'd stick her head in the door and yell, "Break's over. Back to work!" That boss, like all classic micromanagers, wanted to script every minute of her subordinates' day. "She wanted to know what I was doing every second. If she sent me an e-mail at nine a.m. and I hadn't responded by 9:05, she'd fire off another e-mail: 'Are you ignoring my e-mail?' " This boss's favorite line, adds Yaeger, was: "I order you to...."

Joni Kirk, who now lives in Moscow, Idaho, knows that story line all too well. Her micromanaging boss would log on to her subordinates' computers and delete e-mails she felt they shouldn't answer. "She also told us that when we signed documents, we could only use black ink," says Kirk. "She liked degrading us. She'd loudly say in front of everybody, 'I need to speak with you,' and she'd go into a tirade about a perceived mistake. She liked doing that in front of everybody." Instilling terror is another hallmark of the micromanager. Frightened workers are that much more pliable.

Chicagoan Kingsley Day, now in the Department of University Relations at Northwestern University, says he can go one better: His micromanaging boss at a former job expected workers to log hours long into the night and on weekends. "I once heard him yell at somebody, 'I never see you here after 10 at night!' " This boss also had a peculiar prejudice against zip codes. "We were banned from using them," reports Day. That boss was so determined to eradicate zip codes, he would even sneak into the mail room to prowl for envelopes that defied his ban. When he found them, he trashed them, no matter what was inside. He also, like clockwork, "annually announced a reorganization of office assignments, where we all had to shift office spaces." Why? "He wanted us to know he was in charge." That urge to take vivid control is another hallmark of a hard-core micromanager. When workers feel off balance, micromanagers feel that much more in control.