hahaha I also had an employee once (I was a manager, she was a supervisor) who started digging through the trash, even in the ladies' room, to see if people were throwing away things that should have been shredded. Ick factor.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Goes through our trash/recycling bins to see what we've thrown out.

OMG- I had a boss who did this. We had to hide stuff and ditch it after she left for the day.

Ugh- worst job ever

I put all my paper work trash in the classified recycling bins to avoid this

Lies.

Wouldn't tell the staff when the holidays were until the day before

Wouldn't give anyone titles or a reason to work any harder than they currently were

Wouldn't give anyone reviews based on facts or actual metrics

Managed via gossip

Ahhh, that felt good.

Talk to me about my energy as in I sense a negative energy with no examples or recommendations. Since then ive noticed she frequently comments on people's "energy".

My Phd advisor was incredibly micromanaging. Once when working on a conference presentation together (I was typing, he was talking) he grabbed the mouse out of my hand and said I see you prefer to retype everything instead of copy and paste! Weird! In retrospect it was really bad for me bc I got in the habit of not putting much effort into things until he had picked them apart.

Tell me my promotion's been approved by senior management as soon as he puts the paperwork in.

The promotion comes through - six months later.

Anonymous wrote:Goes through our trash/recycling bins to see what we've thrown out.

OMG- I had a boss who did this. We had to hide stuff and ditch it after she left for the day.

Ugh- worst job ever

Wow! That's amazing. I'm glad it worked out in your favor.

My biggest pet peeve ever was a boss that would focus on formatting over content or miss the forest from the trees.

"So, you're saying the total cost for this is $7.8 million?"
"Yes, but keep in mind that assumes a certain yield, so a 95% CI is more like 6 to 9 million."
"Okay. What about the printer costs?"
"$5000"
"How did you estimate that?"
"Its a ballpark figure based on last year"
"Feels low to me."
"Okay, what would you think is more reasonable?"
"I dont know, can we schedule a meeting with the folks on the topic?"
"You want me to schedule a meeting to discuss a $5,000 line item on a $8M project that has $1 to $2M error bars?"
"Yes, we need to be really crisp on this"
"But you do realize that that even if im off, by say, a factor of 10, or even a factor of 100, its within the bounds of the estimate, and that in terms of sensitivity, our efforts would be impacted 2x or 3x more by these ten other line items? In other words, this doesnt matter, no matter what you think about my framework"
"Everything matters"
"Uhm, Okay, I'll schedule a meeting."

A day later:

"So this meeting is to discuss the $5,000 line item. I've called this meeting at the request of my boss, Mr. GoofyBrains."
"I'm sorry, you called a meeting of 20 senior executives to discuss $5,000? You realize having this meeting will cost twice that?"
"Uhm yes, I do. Perhaps my Boss can share some of his thoughts on the impetus for this call?"
"Uh. actually, on second thought, mr executive has a good point. I'm sorry my subordinate wasted your time."

A day later:

"You know you need to think about these things before you do them you know.."
"Uhm, I think you asked me to schedule that meeting."
"I know but sometimes you need to learn to push back; be confident in your analyses."
"I am confident in my analyses. I told you it made it no sense to focus on the $5,000 expense."
"Well, lets just chalk this up to a miscommunication."
"Uhm, ok."
"Now, lets talk about slide 4. I see you didnt indent the bullets."
"Ah right. Okay, I'll fix that. But speaking of which, I think the problem with slide 4 is that it effectively contradicts the strategy we set out."
"No, I'm not worried about that. If we are going to present this to the senior executive tomorrow, it needs to be really polished and look good"
"Totally understand, and agree. I'll make sure all teh bullets are aligned and the fonts match and all that stuff. I'm more concerned though that the framework and approach are highly suspect though. We really need to reconsider the underlying theory."
"The approach is fine. Lets move on"

Day after that:

"Okay mr. senior executive, here is the presentation that my subordinate prepared. As you'll see on slide 4...."
"Okay sorry on slide 4 why did you do this this way? It makes no sense."
"Well, its the approach my subordinate designed."
"Well, its absolutely stupid. Didn't you review your subordinates work?"
"I must have missed this. I apologize."

Two months later I walked into the SVPs office with 100 pages of paperwork documenting the absurdity of my manager's incapability. I told him that either they fire him or I was going to quit immediately, but I couldnt continue to work for someone as incompetent as he was. Three hours later, having gone through a years worth of pointless work point by point with the SVP, the SVP called my boss into his office, excused me, and promptly fired him.

Goes through our trash/recycling bins to see what we've thrown out.

Years ago at a law firm I had a boss who would change her mind about her signature line and would repeatedly have me change 10-20 printed letters from "Sincerely yours" to "Thank you" to "Sincerely" and/or back again. Then would complain it took to long to get letters out. Made me laugh.

We're not talking about analysis here. I enjoy that immensely. I'm talking about formatting.

I am nitpicky and want to see data in different ways. Sometimes you see things one way that you don't see another. As a consultant I am paid to analyze and sometimes that requires looking at things differently.

It sounds like maybe your job isn't the best fit for you?

I'll start b/c I need to vent:

- Ask me to prepare the same 2012 year-end data in 12 different formats
- Nitpick written work that has already been reviewed/agreed upon and then ask me to make completely inconsequential changes that do nothing to improve clarity, style, syntax, etc.

Overall my boss is pretty great but sometimes she can't see the forest for the trees. It drives me NUTS!

So tell me about your crazy-ass boss so that I can feel better about mine.