misery loves company: bad boss stories
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Anonymous
| Used to work for a cheap, micromanaging boss who everyone hated. He could only keep one person on staff for more than a year. She was a nut job like him and stayed because it was the only job she could do part time and keep her medical insurance. She had some undiagnosed medical problems. We worked in a tiny one room office. He was going through a divorce so he didn't take a shower often and the place smelled like ass. I just don't know how else to describe it. It was wintertime so we couldn't open the windows. He was insufferable, totally corrupt and morally bankrupt. He somehow convinced a school to let him teach a class. All I could think of was that someone like that had no business around our youth. He was like shit dropped into any liquid, ruined everything. |
Anonymous
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I used to work for a man who had a total napoleonic complex. He thought he was very charismatic, but his raging insecurities and anxiety were incredibly obvious. He pit me and another employee against each other by giving us "homework" and then comparing our answers. He talked shit about other employees to me. He brought his dog into the office and it smelled up the place with it's awful gas. He had a bunch of anxious tics and often spoke to his employees like they were idiots. He micromanaged to the point where he would actually sit down at employees' computers while they watched and do minuscule tasks despite being totally unqualified to do the actual work. The turnover in that place was high and I knew going in that I wouldn't stay there very long but I needed the job. He literally drove his employees to drink. We would take boozy lunches together to get through the afternoon. His relative was given a high position despite not knowing anything. He gave an employee shit for being out for one week after the birth of his child. He was super conservative and didn't know how to relate to women or people of color. He told me inappropriate personal details. Man, it was seriously entertaining working there, but everyone was pretty talentless because he couldn't hold onto anyone good.
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Anonymous
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My boss grumbled when I said I needed to take a couple of hours of leave to take my kid for a check up. He always makes this really loud sigh EVERY TIME I request time off for dr.'s appointments. REALLY???
He's a yeller too, but I tell him I don't like being yelled out and walk out. |
Anonymous
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My current boss is on the West Coast and forgets about the time difference frequently. I'm hourly and asked very clearly about whether I was required to check email after hours or from home, I was told that I was not to do either. Yet, I get emails from her at 7pm EST with a task, followed up by an email at 9pm EST asking WTF haven't I completed that task yet.
She also changes her mind about things frequently. We just went through and changed the format of all 20+ purchase orders on our current contract, I checked over and over again that the format was what she wanted before submitting them. She approved them all and thanked me for getting it done. One sub got the new format and freaked out, she called me the day after asking why it was in this new format and who told me to change it?!? I just got a new job last week, I cannot WAIT to put in my notice on Friday 
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Anonymous
when a boss does this, you should just carefully 1) keep the email telling you not to work overtime and 2) keep the emails insisting that you respond off the clock. The sue them for violating wage and hour law. |
Anonymous
| My boss (a dude) ordered a male stripper to dance for another male partner on election day - (political place). Later that afternoon 2 jr staffers' wallets were missing. Awesome judgement. |
Anonymous
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Right out of school I got a job working as the Assistant to the President at a small firm. He was a real gem…. He insisted in only having hard wood floors in the office so that he could properly judge the urgency by which employees ran to his office when called. “Ladies, I need to hear those heels clicking faster on the floor.”
I also had to make sure he always had the proper amount of coffee in his Styrofoam cup. He was very specific on the number of ounces and would often use a pen to draw a line marking the correct amount if he thought I was over or under. When he finished the cup (or his bottle of water) he would toss it into the hallway outside of his office for me to refill. If I didn’t notice/refill it fast enough I would be reprimanded for being inattentive to his needs. I also had to make an identical salad for his lunch at a nearby deli every day. He was very specific on the exact amounts and proportions of every ingredient – 6 cups of lettuces, 2 tbps of seeds, etc After I served it to him on a tray (arranged just so) he would make me watch as he picked through the salad, evaluating my exactness of each ingredient and giving me “tips” of how I could make him a better salad in the future. Honestly, these things were just the tip of the iceberg. Never mind that I was also expected to perform a real job, managing clients, events, etc. These were just some of my other duties as assigned… |
Anonymous
What year was this!? |
Anonymous
| 12:54 here - 1996! |
Anonymous
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I won't even get into the time he brought in a scale that analyzed body fat and everyone was supposed to go into a private office, get naked, weigh ourselves and then report back the results. Or that he was blatantly sexist and would only interview and hire men or women for specific positions and then express these views to anyone that would listen. Needless to say, there was no HR department....
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Anonymous
| My boss used to curse at people in staff meetings. She called one of my colleagues retarded and an idiot weekly! She also once went on a 10 day vacation and told no one because we would be too stressed out the she was leaving. |
Anonymous
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DH had a crazy boss for a (luckily short) time.there was very high turnover in his position and with people working for his boss, and he was warned against the job, but we had a new baby, toddler, unpaid leave for me, and needed income. Boss was extremely overweight and personally quite unhappy. Things fine for a couple months, then out of the blue, boss calls him at home and screams obscenities at him, and accuses him of trying to undermine her and steal boss's job. He goes to HR, and they just nod and say "what in particular? would you like us to do?" and all they do is take a report because boss has been there forever at this family run organization and though boss's HR file three feet thick, boss has outlived every employee.
Starting the next day, boss begins to document 'problems' with his work (which are of the infinitesimal nature, or made up completely). Because he needs this job, he sucks it up and sucks up to boss and does EVERYTHING that boss wants, including redoing things one way after boss specifically asks him to do it another way first (he saves all this on email just in case). He is under the microscope and completely depressed and at boss's beck and call (9 pm request for first thing in the morning? He does it, etc). Boss seems to have calmed down, although still making lots of crazy, minor points about his work and constantly implying that he is incompetent, when in fact he has years more knowledge and experience in the field than boss. Finally, at his next HR review, several months later, he is subjected to a poor review for 'insubordination,' where boss is backed up by the one allyin the office (another very overweight insecure person). DH realizes he is basically being given a time frame to be fired. He talks with the HR manager , shows all the emails that show boss and ally are crazy, lying, etc. HR manager shrugs and just says "nothing I can do." The next week, HR department is dissolved and there is no more HR. More people leave and/or are fired, atmosphere is so toxic but its like 'emperor's new clothes" as no one is brave enough to even MENTION the departures or reorganization at staff meetings. DH quits and-THANK GOD-- gets an amazing job for a wonderful much more prestigious organization earning 50k more/year. Boss's ally later quits and rants on Facebook about "horrible bosses." Three more people in two years have churned through DH's former position. It was horrible though-_DH was severely depressed and really began questioning his self worth and perception of reality. |
Anonymous
The first boss doesn't have the initials P.H. does she? If not then she is almost exactly the same as my old boss. You would come in for work and she would tell you to go over to her house in order to babysit her kids. Or she would make you go to the salon with her to go over work. Nothing better than standing between chairs yelling at your boss while she gets her hair blown out. Also, if you took Thanksgiving off you would have to make it up that Saturday. When I watch Devil Wears Prada I'm shocked at the similarities. We also would have to make her eggs in the morning and usually a steak for lunch. She was unreal. |
Anonymous
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Here's my bad boss story:
My husband was diagnosed with a terminal illness. He had a very small chance to live. We found the only doctor in the country that would do a specialized surgery to cure him of his condition. I told my boss this, and she would give me SUCH a hard time every time I had to help out my husband. I couldn't stop working for insurance and financial reasons. Long story short, she made my life a LIVING HELL. She also wrote an insane, very negative review in my file, preventing me from a transfer. Five years later, her MIL (who she hated) was diagnosed with lung cancer (heavy smoker). My boss would take her to every chemo appointment, and eventually she died. I expressed my condolences and my boss told me that "at least I could be there for her all the time. You just dumped your husband at the hospital all the time. I was too shattered to say anything back. I just quit the following week for something better. |
Anonymous
Sorry- I am cancer boss from above. I read the whole thread and remembered more things (I think I have PTSD, seriously). - She also asked me to move my wedding around because of "staffing needs". There was no staffing needs at all, but she printed out my response (I obviously told her I couldn't), and wrote in my evaluation that I was "not a team player". - She told me that she thought her race/religion/ethnic origin were the superior race. She was drunk, but come on. - She got drunk all the time at work. - She asked my AA coworker to "explain black talk" - She set up my coworker with her cousin without telling my coworker. - She would change her mind all the time, and then claim we had "gone rogue". Then she'd add this in our evaluation. - She told my gay coworker that he would soon outgrow his attraction to men, and he just needed to find the right woman. - she told my coworker that she "looked like a skank". (she really didn't, but in my boss's religion, any skirt above the knee was tantamount to being naked). - She wouldn't let anyone put up photos of obama because that was "too political". Dude we work for the government and he's the president! - She'd show up to work at 11, leave for lunch at 1, come back at 3, leave at 4. Every Friday she left at 12, which is fine, but she never made up the work. She would just dump it on everyone else, (nothing like being given 5 hours of work at 12 to finish on top of your own work!), and then say we weren't "team players" if we had to leave. - Christmas Eve, Christmas, and Easter were not considered to be holidays. Even though the office was officially closed, she would always go to work on those days, and assign work to be done Dec 26th. FWIW, Dec 26th is St Stephen's day, a day I celebrated every year just so she couldn't ding my evaluation as she did my coworkers for not coming into work on the 26th. I was also written up for requesting to leave early on Dec 24th. This is despite putting in a request months earlier and having it granted. - No matter how many times I or my coworkers complained, she outlasted us all. I am sure she's still there terrifying and insulting everyone who crosses her path. |