When good jobs go bad

I've often wondered how to account for a bad job on a resume. You have to show that you worked there and had that experience, but feel awkward about showing that for concern that interviews (and screeners) at job prospects will wonder why you spent only a short time at a particular employer.
Companies have bad employees from time to time and that's okay, but how does an employee reflect that he had a bad employer? I've never been able to figure that one out.

I once had a great employer, I thought, who hired me and gave me a chance to get back into useful programming, as opposed to the niche that I'd gotten myself into for a number of years, of which there was no market for. This employer let me work there, although I was getting paid entry-level pay, for the same work that others in the company were getting almost 50% more for. Still, I was grateful. When I got enough experience to apply for a better job, I took it. My employer initially accepted this, but later he was resentful of me and sent me hateful e-mails, saying that I had "recruited" from his staff. I didn't know it at the time, but he'd had some turnover after I left. It was a small shop. Who was I going to recruit? He was one of the programmers. We had another programmer in California. I wasn't going to be able to recruit him. And then there was another programmer that had already indicated that he was leaving, before I announced that I was leaving. So who did I recruit? I never found this out, but I felt awkward having this company on my resume for fear of what this guy might say about me. A crafty screener would only have to ask "would you hire this guy again" to be given an answer of "no" and that would be the end of my job chances. So I couldn't put this company on my resume, although I'd done a good job there and they were a good employer for all I knew the whole time that I was there.

Recently, I worked at an agency for the State of Oklahoma. I didn't realize it when I took the job, but it was going to be "the job from hell". How could I reflect that on a resume, and account that it was a bad employer, not that I was a bad employee?

When I took that job, I just knew the people I was working with seemed to be nice people. My interviewers were wonderful, I thought. Both were a couple of nice ladies who I felt I would get along with well, and I felt it wouldn't hurt to be working for a state agency at a time when the job market seemed in flux. Working with a company that had a set budget seemed like a good idea, and the benefits were reasonably good.
Well, the first thing I found out was that the project I was working on was somewhat covert. It was a project to replace another system that never worked right. The other system costed approximately $8 million and never quite did what it should've done. However, upon further investigation, I found that a majority of the reason it didn't do what it should was that they didn't have good data; because the system didn't validate data when it was entered, and people doing data entry just entered data the fastest way they could with no regard for accuracy or the ability for usability.
And it appeared that the reason they didn't have validation was because someone in management requested that it be removed.
So another effort was going on to replace this system. This created a political conflict within the agency because we were an effort off from the IT group, and so the IT group hated us and would provide us little or no support. On top of that, the original group that had started this replacement system had all left. None of them were really programmers. They were network engineers that had done a good job prototyping the initial system, but didn't really know how to develop a full-blown system, and the people put in charge of running the project, because it wasn't a part of IT, didn't really have a clue of how to run an IT project. They didn't know how software development was done. The people put in charge of this project (paid for with state tax payer dollars) were good at being parole officers and dealing with offenders, they never quite understood why things work the way they work in a software development lifecycle. We couldn't get real nailed down requirements, and the initial replacement system was so poorly documented and designed (for lack of direction) that it got scrapped (unbeknownst to the bosses in OKC) and a replacement replacement system (to be a replacement for the $8 million system) was embarked upon.
In good faith, we were doing well, but under pressure to deliver a finished system. The replacement system had been a three year effort when I started the company. Within a couple of months, we were under a strict deadline to have the full system delivered within another couple of months, as if our replacement for the replacement system had been going on for 3 years. It had been going on for maybe 3 weeks. So I should've known then that it was time to look for another job, but I didnt' want to be seen as a "job hopper" and just felt that I needed to put in some extra hours, not get stressed out, and just get the job done. I'd worked under adverse conditions in the past (over a 30 year period), and so I didn't see this as anything more than a challenge. It could be fun, I thought.
Well, the demands became ridiculous. We were given little direction for what needed to be done. We were developing a system that we knew very little about what the process was, and the people to ask were rarely there. When they were they, they didn't want to go over requirements. It was something they wanted to avoid. We did the best we could, with what little we had. There were 3 programmers and a project manager. She, the project manager, was a fish out of water. She meant well, but had no experience at running an enterprise software development effort. All of her previous experience had been in game development, which she seemed well suited at, but she didn't know a thing about how databases work, or how to get functional requirements from SMEs (subject matter experts), or how to understand the problems developers would have in meeting a schedule and turning those requirements into functional logic that would produce the finished system. She knew games.

One of our programmers had a "melt down" and went on a cursing tyraid about "working for idiots". I found out later that this wasn't his first time. This time, he was asked to resign. He later said that this was the best thing that ever happened to him. He went elsewhere making much more money, and seemed happier. And he didn't seem to go on any more tyrauds either.

Next, I felt pressure. I knew nothing about SQL Server Reporting Services at the time, and told them that in my job interview, but I suddenly had to become an expert overnight. There was a big pressure to have about 30 working reports for management, even though we didn't even have a system that had data tables yet, that these reports would run from? How can you create reports when you don't have data? I never could get our leader to understand this. I got frustrated. The reports were never acceptable to her. She wouldn't tell me how to gather the data that she wanted. I did what I thought would work, but I wasn't the SME, she was, but she was never around to get the answers, and the PM was no help.
I did the best job I could do. I struggled and got the reports, and then the day before the deadline, she finally got around to reviewing the reports and decided that they weren't working right. So she threw a fit. I felt enormous stress. It wasn't good for my health. Upon repeated interruptions while I was still trying to fix what she didn't like, I finally had to tell the PM that I could only work on one thing at a time, and that these logic changes were complicated and that if I were stressed anymore, I might just decide that none of it were worth it and just leave. I'd had it.
Well, I expressed this twice in a two week period, and so the big boss let me know that she wasn't pleased with me. Well, after getting it all to work and more time went by, I finally decided to give my notice. I was too stressed out. I wanted to work on building my house full time (see http://www.freewebs.com/stocktonunderground) and that my wife agreed that it would be worth it for me to be under less stress and just get work done on the house. My wife saw me not sleeping at night. I was so stressed out that it was affecting my health; and nothing I did at work was ever good enough.

I kept thinking that maybe it was my fault and that I could've handled it better, but I was so glad to be over that job. Well, 4 months later, I just had lunch with the remaining programmer. Actually, he is no longer remaining. He turned in his resignation last Friday. He was frustrated with things, just as the guy that went on the tyraid. He just didnt' cuss them out like that guy did.

It seems that from the time I left 4 months ago, the boss was gone for 2 of those months, and then she returned for a few days and then went on a vacation for a week or so. After that, she was gone to meetings in OKC or anywhere but the office. The PM had committed to an additional system, and a deadline of two weeks, without even checking with Steve (the programmer) first. It was around the 19th of the month, and the system was due at the end of the month. During that period, they spent a week in OKC in training, but it was training for what the PM wanted, not what Steve had requested. The deadline didn't get pushed back either.
There were approximately 8 screens of which 6 were done by Steve, and 2 were done by the PM and a junior programmer they'd hired. At the final week, Steve put in over 80 hours to get that system in. His 6 screens worked. the other 2 didn't. That was beyond his control. The PM decided that she wanted to "pretty up" the screens, and so she did that the night before the deadline. What she did was treat them as a WYSIWYG concept, with no regards for these being software systems. At the end, she found out they didn't work, and so Steve was called in at 7:30 (he'd been at the office til 3:30 that morning) and told "get your butt up here because we've got a problem". Well, the data-sources had been removed. That's why it didn't work. The PM had done it again, as she'd done multiple times in the past (even when I was still there), and she still didn't get it.

Steve fixed the problem, but the boss was still furious because those final 2 screens didn't work. Steve had done 6 of the 8, and it was his fault that the system didn't work. Steve was publicly humiliated and derated in the office. He was the only guy there. He later told me that he'll never work for a woman again. I think that's a bit strong. I'm not against working for a woman again, but I am against working for someone that doesn't know how software is developed. I'll never do that again.

Steve has taken a job already. He starts August 4th at a company where I knew a few of the people working there. It's a good employer and he'll be making more money.

Steve and I (as well as Joe who left before us) have a problem of how to report this employer on a resume. You want to account for your time, but how do you report a bad employer? Employers report bad employees, and I'm sure none of the 3 of us will be seen as "rehireable" at that company. So we're the bad employees the way they're going to tell it. How does an employee, that does everything right that he can, state that he had a bad employer, without appearing to have "sour grapes" and/or being unprofessional? Looking back, it seems like there's a trend. None of the original programmers were there. Joe left. I left. Steve left. At some point, it can't all be the programmers' fault. There has to be a common denominator that indicates the source of the real problem.

Anyway, I'm struggling with this. I still like the lady that I worked for there. Maybe she was just dealing with stress from her boss, who was quite demanding. There were stories in the office about how extreme that lady in OKC could be, and to tell you quite honestly, that woman would never have been allowed to get away with some of the things she got away with in a state agency. If it were the private sector, she'd have been fired decades earlier. I like my boss though and it troubled me to see how things went when Steve left. I wanted it to work out for all of them; for them to deliver the system, meeting expectations and all have continued careers working for the state.

How do Steve, Joe or I, list this employer on our resume, and document how things were, so that if screeners do contact that agency and find that we're listed as "no rehire" that there's a logical explanation to back up our view that we were not bad employees?