Prague Zoo Praha Prague Zoo News 2025

Jana said:
Over 30 staff have publicly testified against the current zoo director Bobek describing his behaviour in his position. His penchant in constantly humiliating his subordinates, especially women.

In my humble opinion, this little narcistic piece of s**t that holds grudges and will take revenge on anybody he finds has crossed him, lover of his power and public image, should be also investigated regarding financing of various investments that were done under hig reign, figures probably wont ad-up.

The main problem is how much all this will tarnish the zoo´s perception. Public owned zoos depend both on ticket revenue and council subsidies and this can damage both for at least few years. Most zoo staff here love their job and the zoo. His behaviour must have been so unbearable they decided to go public.
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I was sort of expecting that in this day and age this would be a thing of the past. For what it is worth, Bobek always seemed quite dominant and brash in his approach to people and media. It seems finally his personality and the way he and his deputy lead the ZZ Praha is quite somewhat not so desiruous. The very fact that a good portion of staff have now publicly testified will hopefully be the game changer!

@Jana, any chance(s) that the candidate you highlighted (Zámečník) would still be in the picture to succeed Bobek now? How will this be decided ... as I am yet to fully understand what Council or Praha City has to do with the leadership of a zoo facility (has this to do with public financing?)???
 
Kifaru Bwana said:
, any chance(s) that the candidate you highlighted (Zámečník) would still be in the picture to succeed Bobek now? How will this be decided ... as I am yet to fully understand what Council or Praha City has to do with the leadership of a zoo facility (has this to do with public financing?)???
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No idea re your first question... Prague zoo is a příspěvková organizace that is 100% directly owned by the City of Prague; and all important decisions (like name of a director, annual budget, amount of subsidies, investments etc-) is decided by vote of the City Council.
 
After Bobek, deputy of the Department of Contact with the Public Markéta Hoidekrová and deputy of the Trade and Services Department Eliška Pellešová are temporarily put in charge of Prague Zoo. Since November, Štépán Kyjovský, boss of Department of Environmental Protection of Prague Municipality, will be in charge, to prepare the zoo for a handover to new director.

It seems that Bobek wasn´t the only one bossing and mistreating employees. Secretary of the director Renata Švejdová and deputy of Economic and Operational Department Šárka Nováková were also accussed of similar behaviour by employees (Švejdová especially of sexism and mistreatment of young women, Nováková mostly of bullying the employees and cutting the bonuses of those she didn´t like, she was also described as a main perpetrator). Both have resigned. Source: https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/...aji-po-skandalu-se-sikanou-dalsi-hlavy-288577
 
It's quite sad that in a scientific establishment of a certain caliber and status things like this still happen, but being owned by the city I guess it's ordinary...
 
Mickey said:
It's quite sad that in a scientific establishment of a certain caliber and status things like this still happen, but being owned by the city I guess it's ordinary...
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Not sure why such a prejudiced post is necessary....

I can tell you that no matter which institution, this sh*t can happen, be it a city, a scientific institution or a for profit company.
 
lintworm said:
Not sure why such a prejudiced post is necessary....

I can tell you that no matter which institution, this sh*t can happen, be it a city, a scientific institution or a for profit company.
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Prejudiced in what way? Not saying I wasn't, but I don't get in which way.
Being from a Country with high corruption mine was a sort of comparison, here corruption and misconduct in public entities is ordinary and an everyday occurrence, not saying that Prague or Czechia's public entities are bad or at the same level as the Italian ones, but I thought there would be elected people above such petty and abusive behaviour.
 
Mickey said:
Prejudiced in what way? Not saying I wasn't, but I don't get in which way.
Being from a Country with high corruption mine was a sort of comparison, here corruption and misconduct in public entities is ordinary and an everyday occurrence, not saying that Prague or Czechia's public entities are bad or at the same level as the Italian ones, but I thought there would be elected people above such petty and abusive behaviour.
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The way you wrote it, read to me like: this kind of things don't happen in a serious scientific institution, but in a government situation it is apparently normal.

(1) Bullying has nothing to do with corruption;
(2) Bullying unfortunately happens in any type of work place and
(3) It is not "ordinary" in a governmental situation...

There are good and bad people everywhere, such simple generalizations are something I hoped Zoochatters would be above, this is not facebook...
 
lintworm said:
The way you wrote it, read to me like: this kind of things don't happen in a serious scientific institution, but in a government situation it is apparently normal.

(1) Bullying has nothing to do with corruption;
(2) Bullying unfortunately happens in any type of work place and
(3) It is not "ordinary" in a governmental situation...

There are good and bad people everywhere, such simple generalizations are something I hoped Zoochatters would be above, this is not facebook...
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I must stand up for Mickey, because I must admit, I do not fully understand your reasoning and points. Mickey is from country with a high corruption (me too), and his observations regarding state institution is quite correct. Czech Republic is also former Eastern Block country, and while it is in a much better situation than most of its former socialist neighbours (especially Hungary and Slovakia) regarding corruption it still has socio-cultural baggage regarding power imbalance between citizen and anyone representing state institutions, which is clearly imprinted in mentality of its people, especially those who remember days of communist rule.
First, I would like to address your apparent dislike of generalization. Generalization is basic and necessary tool to talk about anything that occurs in quantity. I do not know how and why people should be above such things as generalization and simplification - both just a neutral language tools without which any conversation addressing systemic issues wouldn´t be possible. Generalization isn´t bad per se - because it is essentially tied to statistics, ´bad´ (I really do loathe to use such subjective term here) generalization should be the one that is statistically insignificant. Which would be a fair point to use against Mickey´s post, instead of vague
lintworm said:
There are good and bad people everywhere...
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which is a generalization and simplification pronounced much above anything that Mickey has written. And also truly something you would find in comments to most Facebook posts.
To your points:
(1) Bullying has nothing to do with corruption; Bullying in workplace often has a lot to do with corruption. In corrupted environment a lot of people get their positions because of nepotism and are protected by their superiors, which gives them a unique opportunity to bully their subordinates without consequences. So GENERALLY, more workplace bullying tend to happen in such places. Or we may ignore the rate of such bullying, and say that GENERALLY good and bad people are everywhere - to generalize even further, without addressing any issues.
(2) Bullying unfortunately happens in any type of work place; Absolutely. Thanks for your generalization and simplification of this issue. Me (and probably Mickey) wouldn´t generalize this important issue to such extent as you and say that rate of this behaviour is very important. I must admit your statement appears to me as if you wanted to diminish this issue and stop any issue-addressing discussion by stating ´it can happen anywhere,´ without addressing rate. If bullying happens to 1 employee in 1,000 it is quite different to 1 in 100 or even 1 in 10.
(3) It is not "ordinary" in a governmental situation; doesn´t matter if it is ordinary, it matters if it is generally (=statistically) more common in a governmental situation (I would say institution). Which I think is worth discussion and in my own experience as someone from post-Eastern block country, it often is.
To me, it seems that you really want to diminish any insight that Mickey can have into such situations, and for some reasons you do not like generalization when other people use it (you do not mind using it plenty yourself).

EDIT: I read this after myself, and maybe this post seems more confrontational than I meant it to be. Every one of my points is aimed against what appears to me as lintworm´s misunderstanding of generalization and his own use of it (while chastizing others for it), not against him as a person.
 
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hawkkeye said:
I must stand up for Mickey, because I must admit, I do not fully understand your reasoning and points. Mickey is from country with a high corruption (me too), and his observations regarding state institution is quite correct. Czech Republic is also former Eastern Block country, and while it is in a much better situation than most of its former socialist neighbours (especially Hungary and Slovakia) regarding corruption it still has socio-cultural baggage regarding power imbalance between citizen and anyone representing state institutions, which is clearly imprinted in mentality of its people, especially those who remember days of communist rule.
First, I would like to address your apparent dislike of generalization. Generalization is basic and necessary tool to talk about anything that occurs in quantity. I do not know how and why people should be above such things as generalization and simplification - both just a neutral language tools without which any conversation addressing systemic issues wouldn´t be possible. Generalization isn´t bad per se - because it is essentially tied to statistics, ´bad´ (I really do loathe to use such subjective term here) generalization should be the one that is statistically insignificant. Which would be a fair point to use against Mickey´s post, instead of vague
which is a generalization and simplification pronounced much above anything that Mickey has written. And also truly something you would find in comments to most Facebook posts.
To your points:
(1) Bullying has nothing to do with corruption; Bullying in workplace often has a lot to do with corruption. In corrupted environment a lot of people get their positions because of nepotism and are protected by their superiors, which gives them a unique opportunity to bully their subordinates without consequences. So GENERALLY, more workplace bullying tend to happen in such places. Or we may ignore the rate of such bullying, and say that GENERALLY good and bad people are everywhere - to generalize even further, without addressing any issues.
(2) Bullying unfortunately happens in any type of work place; Absolutely. Thanks for your generalization and simplification of this issue. Me (and probably Mickey) wouldn´t generalize this important issue to such extent as you and say that rate of this behaviour is very important. I must admit your statement appears to me as if you wanted to diminish this issue and stop any issue-addressing discussion by stating ´it can happen anywhere,´ without addressing rate. If bullying happens to 1 employee in 1,000 it is quite different to 1 in 100 or even 1 in 10.
(3) It is not "ordinary" in a governmental situation; doesn´t matter if it is ordinary, it matters if it is generally (=statistically) more common in a governmental situation (I would say institution). Which I think is worth discussion and in my own experience as someone from post-Eastern block country, it often is.
To me, it seems that you really want to diminish any insight that Mickey can have into such situations, and for some reasons you do not like generalization when other people use it (you do not mind using it plenty yourself).

EDIT: I read this after myself, and maybe this post seems more confrontational than I meant it to be. Every one of my points is aimed against what appears to me as lintworm´s misunderstanding of generalization and his own use of it (while chastizing others for it), not against him as a person.
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You are probably right with your argumentation and I did generalize a bit too quickly. But my main point still stands (and this is my final post on the matter). Unless @Mickey has detailed knowledge about the functioning of Czech scientific institutions and governments and the amount of bullying taking place in either, their comment was of Facebook quality with easy allegations without any back up. I see where the emotion comes from and can relate to it to a certain extent, but I would have hoped Zoochat would remain about substance and not about lazy oneliners.
 
lintworm said:
You are probably right with your argumentation and I did generalize a bit too quickly. But my main point still stands (and this is my final post on the matter). Unless @Mickey has detailed knowledge about the functioning of Czech scientific institutions and governments and the amount of bullying taking place in either, their comment was of Facebook quality with easy allegations without any back up. I see where the emotion comes from and can relate to it to a certain extent, but I would have hoped Zoochat would remain about substance and not about lazy oneliners.
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I understand that you do not want to write more about it. I am certain I dissected your post, wrong logic and your whole ´I can do it but when someone else does it´s bad´ stance quite thouroughly and you not addressing nearly any of it, while trying to pretend that your post still hold any weight in this discussion clearly speaks for itself, so this is also my last post about it. Let anyone decide their opinion based on what was written.
 
I apologise for my vague and biased reply, which was the result of an unthought emotion, and I thank you @lintworm for actually calling me out: I don't engage with Facebook groups and comments anymore because of the complete chaos and uncultured replies and takes on even frivolous matters, no one is there for educated discussions that's for sure, so if someone calls me out for behaving like the average Facebook commenter, that is a warning to behave differently, or I could become "the one thing I swore to destroy", so thank you lintworm.

And thank you @hawkkeye for breaking down lintworm's bullet points into more elaborate reply than mine (and what I probably should have done as well, argument rather than just saying "the world is bad booh-ooh"), but I do not think at all that lintworm is against any type of constructive criticism (as his G&G ungulate taxonomy breakdown thread demonstrates thoroughly, if one wants to find proof in just one thread as opposed to his many replies in other threads) he is simply stating that my post should have been of better quality and not a one liner without any backup information and just for the sake of it, to dump my own emotion on a matter I care about, in line with what some people post on social media.
He also did apologise for his generalisation as well, and again in his latest reply simply stating what is a genuine concern and critical feedback, not like he just shrugged it and said "well he started it".

This is my last reply on the matter too, we are going quite off-topic, I do not think there needs to be any more replies on the situation but if not so it's better to take it elsewhere.
 
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