Describe Your Worst Boss You Ever Had

[jennygirl]

I am writing a "Worst Boss Ever" article for my February E-zine (www.bizshrink.net). Can any of you tell me about the most monsterous or outrageous boss you ever worked for?

[Bucky]

1. Two-headed Mogo, the hungry, angry, intemperate boss from hell

[XemaSab]

2. Allyson

She did not have a CLUE about what she was doing. Not a CLUE.

She went to a pre-bid meeting, and the client told one of my colleagues "Don't let her meet with clients!" :o

She had been there about 6 months when she told me she still hadn't had any billable hours yet. :o

The absolute worst part is that she was really only there about 25 hours a week. The other 15 hours she was taking care of her twins (who were 11). Taking them to doctor appointments, taking them to soccer practice, and so forth. If the kids were four, then I could understand, but 11-year-olds can take care of themselves.

The thing that just sent me over the edge was when I volunteered to be a docent at a local beach one evening a week. It was my FIRST DAMN DAY and she came to me and said she was going to have me work late because she needed someone to do a page turn on a document. She couldn't do it because she needed to take her kids to soccer practice, so me and the HEAD OF THE OFFICE stayed late and looked over the document. I was SO PISSED.

[grace0418]

3. Sadly, I had to decide who was the worst from a highly qualified field.

I suppose the worst would be a man who owns his own company that manufactures a high-end interior product. He was actually diagnosed with borderline personality disorder among other things, but he never took enough responsibility of his condition to realize he shouldn't be fully in charge. And everyone around him just coddled him rather than helping him realize he was shooting himself in the foot with his behavior.

One minute you were the light of his life, the best thing that ever happened to him. He couldn't get enough of you. I was that person for awhile, the "only one he trusted". I often had to go to his house because he didn't feel like coming into the office. He'd sit around in whatever dirty clothes he found lying around because he couldn't be bothered to dress himself. Sometimes that was little more than his wife's too-tight work-out shorts and a tank top---not pretty. Anyway, for awhile everything I said or did was solid gold, but it was hard to keep up with his every changing (and sometimes downright irrational) priorities. And it was also hard dealing with some of the situations and decisions he would force me into because I didn't have enough experience for that kind of responsibility. Before long you were the worst, most terrible thing that ever walked the face of the earth and he couldn't get you out of his face soon enough. This could turn on a dime, several times in a day. This sometimes involved yelling, throwing things, obscenities and complete humiliation. It ALWAYS involved a lot of mind games that left you feeling like a complete loser. I cried all the way home on the bus on many, many occasions.

I remember one woman he hired was a college friend. He just loved her. She was a very sweet person but not the brightest bulb, but she was an office assistant and not in charge of too much so it wasn't that big a deal if she made some mistakes and was slow. Everyone knew she'd been going through a rough time and was glad he was helping her out with a job. That was until he decided out of the blue that he'd had enough of her and, even though she was supposedly a dear old friend of his, he fired her. Over the phone. On December 24th. Did I mention he was on tropical cruise at the time? Yep, he called from his vacation to fire his friend on Christmas Eve. She rode the bus with me and she was devastated. I felt so bad for her.

But it wasn't too long before I met the same fate. He sent me to Asia to work with one of our suppliers on a product. The trip went pretty well and he was ecstatic when I got home, gave me a raise and everything. This was in July/August. By September I was gone. Because I had dared to tell him I couldn't work late one night because I was planning my October wedding.

[MadBadger]

4. Mine looks like Sadaam Hussein

Moustache and all

[Bennyboy]

5. My Father!

In 1975 he told his employees he would provide health insurance for his employees so they would not vote for the union. Two days after the vote, which the union was voted against, he cancelled the insurance and never offered it again. In the time I had about 2000 dollars worth of tests done, because they found that people who had the same procedures I had when I was a kid got cancer. I was barely 18 and in debt to the hospital for 2 grand.

He fired me after I dislocated my shoulder on the job, took my truck away and made me walk from the job site.

The list is endless.

[bookworm65t]

6. Ohio's Worst CPA

My immediate supervisor was a CPA who wanted to take the financial manager job at my agency for "humanitarian" reasons. He told us that he didn't mind going from a salary of $60,000 a yr to $28,000 :silly: :crazy: :wtf:


Turned out he wanted to punish his ex-wife for divorcing him by lowering the child support payments. He was with us one year, and when he left, we discovered that numerous creditors hadn't been paid, charitable contributions were not deposited (cash and staledated checks, and we were being heavily spammed by too-numerous-to-count porn sites (his second activity behind computer backgammon (sp?). Took two months to get everything squared away. Unfortunately it helped cost me my job, since my employment funds were needed to retire debt. It wasn't long after his departure that I found out that he was a suspended CPA, which happened 3 years before we knew him. Recently I checked on his status, and it is still suspended (after 15 years!). Don't know why he wouldn't try to reinstate himself. But I have no use for his egotism and incompetence.

:blush: looking back, I can't believe I bought into his crap and let him get away with it. I should have checked into the CPA claim, that's for sure.

Also, I have also worked briefly at some conservative firms, and those were hell.

[blue neen]

7. My boss was a Pharmacist who came to work drunk.

Yes, paralyzingly drunk.

[MorningGlow]

13. Mr. Gower?

[blue neen]

18. Mr. Gower eventually straighened up, didn't he?

That would make him and my ex-boss very different, indeed!

[MorningGlow]

21. Only because he almost killed a little kid by putting poison in the

diphtheria compound. Yes, I watch It's a Wonderful Life every year--does it show? :D

Scary to think that your boss also could have killed someone by filling a prescription incorrectly, though...

[blue neen]

33. You're not kidding. We were terrified everyday that would happen.

It really was a horrible experience.

[MorningGlow]

34. Someone should have reported him

Did anyone do that?

[blue neen]

35. Yes.

The customers safety is always paramount.

[amerikat]

8. 2000 pounds of ego, stuffed into a 400 pound body.

He ran the craziest business you could ever imagine.

[MissB]

9. Shoulder-rubbing Promise Keeper

Icky. Micro-manager too. Never happier to see that one gone.

[BlueIris]

10. The crazy freak who admitted to me--during the interview--that she had

obsessive compulsive disorder. Yes, I still took the position, and lived to regret it for three years.

[Faygo Kid]

11. Only two bad ones in 34 years, but one was nasty and venal. And now unemployed.

I lasted 10 months, which was longer than any of my four immediate predecessors. Totally disrespectful of her employees, nasty, ugly temper. The horror stories weren't occasional, they were daily, and often multiple. I regret not keeping a diary. I could have written a screenplay, and I know who would have played her in a deliciously vicious fashion: Kathleen Turner. Perfect.

Example: The one Christmas I worked there the staff got together and were terrified: What to get her for Christmas. Apparently it was an annual shit-your-pants concern. The year before I got there they told me that she had bought a new house, so they commissioned a local artist to paint a picture of it for her Christmas gift. She hated it, and threw it against a wall and pitched a fit. Christmas!

A couple of years after I left, her big shot protector retired from the Board. She had been there over a dozen years in her position, but the remaining Board members then through her ass out on the street as fast as they could. Beautiful karma.

[Flying Dream Blues]

12. There was my boss in publishing with Mafia ties.

He got calls from people like "One Thumb Louie", etc. and would shoo everyone out of the office to talk to them. He either liked you or hated you, and didn't like our department to talk to the department down the hall, which he called "East Berlin". If he didn't like someone he would jab the middle of his head and say, "He's a mutt. I got 'im right heeeah, his muddah's dead." He hated his boss's secretary (nice person by all accounts) who sat right outside his office, and when she got a beautiful plant for some occasion, it turned up poisoned (died overnight in dramatic fashion) and we all knew who did it. He liked to play mind games and when someone did something wrong and he knew who, he would torment you as if he thought you did it, just to watch you suffer.

I've actually had three real doozies.

[Wapsie B]

14. When my grandmother died I tell my boss and she says, "Well how does that affect me?"

And it goes downhill from there. A real piece of work, that one. Perfect example of shit floating to the top.

[LostInAnomie]

15. The dumbest person I have ever known in my life...

... also happened to be the principal of the school I used to teach at. She knew nothing about education, she knew nothing about administration, she knew nothing about motivating teachers, she knew nothing about creating a positive or even cordial work environment. What she did know is that if you are a decent looking woman and half the school board members are lecherous old men, sucking dick is a good way to get and keep a job.

[MrScorpio]

16. This woman... I really don't want to talk about her

I will say that I had to come to peace with myself by forgiving her.

I'll leave it at that

[MorningGlow]

17. I wouldn't know where to start!

There was one chick who was hired to be a VP when the stupid corporate overlords thought they could make our local news Web site independent/make its own money. In 2000. When everybody had figured out five years earlier that you can't make a profit off a site that has the same information as at least a dozen free sites. So she was taking charge of a losing enterprise, but still--she knew NOTHING about Web sites. (She had been in media buying for TV in NYC.) Plus she was about as sharp as a puddle of melted butter. I had to interview people for the "huge staff" we were going to have (never happened), and for every imbecile and lunatic who turned up she'd say "I think we found our new (fill in the blank)!" If I had let her hire the people she wanted, the place would have imploded from the level of stupidity.

This woman could help us with NOTHING. She was unable to give any advice. She alienated the entire staff of the TV station, and they only worked with me to get the news up on the site because I had been there before her and they knew I hated her.

This woman did the "horsey dance" in front of her entire staff.

When things got too tough, she'd mentally shut down and say, "Okay, can we have fun now?"

I became the de facto manager of the entire site; I called all the shots, managed the staff, smoothed things over with the TV folks--even during Sept. 11. (She was on her honeymoon in Italy and we were ECSTATIC that she wasn't around to get underfoot.) But she made more than three times what I did.

I outlasted her. She made it about a year. Her take-your-plant-home walk of shame was immensely satisfying.

Then there was my last boss--editor--before I became a freelancer. On my first day, after I had slogged through a snowstorm to get to the job after my morning orientation off site, I knocked on his door to announce my presence, and his first words to me were, "What are YOU doing here?"

It went downhill from there.

He micromanaged me at times, and yet when I asked for advice/help on some assignments because I was new, he flat-out refused and yelled at me to go do it myself. He decided that I was a bad writer (ahem I'm doing quite well freelancing though) and rewrote all my stuff (made it worse--other people said so). Plus he went around TELLING other people I was a bad writer (one of his peers told me). The general consensus was that he was afraid I was going to try to steal his job, but I just wanted to be able to do MY job in peace.

He set me impossible tasks--at one point I had to cover for two other people who were out for several months PLUS do my own job--and out of spite I survived and succeeded. He hated that. If I made even the tiniest mistake, he'd be all over it, outright yelling at me for my "incompetence."

When we got a new VP, he immediately poisoned the guy toward me, and of course the VP believed him. I was pulled off my assignment and banished to the basement like Milton in Office Space. (My coworkers bought me a red stapler.) And yet whatever measley tasks I was given after that, I did them astoundingly well and got raves from everyone I had to work with. Never from him, though.

Telling him I quit was also resoundingly satisfying.

[WinterParkDonkey]

19. Two come to mind.....

an obituary ahead of time. He didn't even say anything when I was able to have one faxed from Ohio.

The second was my supervisor at UCF. This guy wasa real piece of work. I received excellent and superlative reviews for 9 years until he started working there. He tried to demote me by six labor grades and when that didn't work he tried to get me fired.

[WinterParkDonkey]

20. Sorry....cat interfered with message

I was working at a hospitality consulting firmin Orlando. Believe it or not, my aun't grandson and my grandmother died on the same day. When I asked to take off time to go to Ohio for the funeral my boss said that I had to give him a copy of the obituary ahead of time.

[Richardo]

40. "take-your-plant-home walk of shame "

:rofl:

[jmowreader]

22. Let me tell you about the SECOND worst boss I had

I thought about telling you about the worst boss I had but I just had one of those "Nam flashbacks" I get when I think of the guy. Let's just say I'm lucky to be alive after a year and a half of that guy.

The second-worst boss I had was a lieutenant. He wasn't really a bad guy, but he tried to help a little too much. This led to him getting us captured by the OPFOR three times on the same exercise, he fueled his Jeep with diesel twice--once I can understand, but twice?--filled eleven plastic water jugs with non-potable water...you want me to keep going?

[baldguy]

23. Only one?

I once worked in sales for a mail-order computer manufacturer & distributor. The company brought in a new guy as VP of Sales whose first act was to decimate the sales dept. The only people to survive were those who had clients who'd walk if their rep left. I was one of the lucky(?) ones.

At least until he started playing games with my client's equipment. Each month they ordered between 50 and 100 systems which required one particular model & revision of a motherboard from one manufacturer, and it took about three weeks between the time we ordered the part and it was delivered to us for assembly. Mr VP of Sales decided - without telling me - that these motherboards weren't "critical" for the customer & refused to order them for two weeks. Of course the client wasn't very pleased, but they did keep the existing orders with us (due to my intervention) and actually placed another order with us.

The next month, he did it again. Again, without telling me. When I called the client & told them their order would be delayed AGAIN, they pulled $225,000 worth of orders from us. When I confronted his with this news, he determined that it was MY fault. :eyes:

This is also the guy that told us after 9/11 that we should be calling the former tenants of the WTC to sell them new office equipment - in spite of the fact that most of the people we dealt with who worked there had been shredded when the towers collapsed.

When I quit, I asked his three times for a meeting to talk about it - but he kept blowing me off. Finally I typed up my letter of resignation & left it on his desk. Then I sent a company-wide email saying good-bye & walked out in the middle of the day.

...

My next boss wasn't much better. He told me point-blank (after I was hired) that to be successful I would have to break the law.

I didn't last very long there.

[Skittles]

24. fucking Aggie boss

we worked 12 hour night shifts and every night he'd come in demanding to know who was getting food, where they were going, and put in a big-ass order. But on nights when we were swamped he'd put his IM on "Away" and sneak out to get food - for himself only :mad:

[Lady President]

25. Worst Boss-- needed babysitter

My worst boss expected the people that she managed to babysit her children while she conducted an affair.... She was married with three kids under eight. Her husband was a consultant and worked out of town most of the time. She started an affair with a much younger man who worked in the maintenance department. He wanted to go out on weekends, so she needed a babysitter. She demanded her employees watch her kids. She also had us break things around the office so he would have to come to our floor and fixed things. Fortunately, I was good at breaking things which saved me from babysitting duty. If you weren't a sitter or destructive, then she would fire you.

She ended up pregnant, divorced, and fired.

[noamnety]

26. My worst boss

would randomly let himself into the women's room without warning or knocking to start "urgent" conversations with us while we were sitting on the toilet. This was in a building where the foundation was settling enough that we couldn't even latch the stall doors. Sorry folks, but I'm enough of a prude I at least want a closed door between myself and my male boss during a business meeting if I'm changing a tampon or taking a dump.

When I quit, I asked for a meeting with his supervisor so she would be aware of ongoing issues between him and his employees. Several had retired early because of him. He yelled at me about that, apparently I should have requested his permission before complaining about him. We ended up having a meeting between myself, him, and his supervisor. During the meeting he was yelling that my decision to quit was another example of me making decisions "unilaterally" without consulting him. The supervisor's eyes got big and her mouth literally hung open at that. I think she realized the scope of the problem when it was clear he was irate I had decided - all on my own - that I was quitting, instead of checking if I could get his permission to quit.

The meeting worked out well for me - I had my termination papers filled out and in hand when I walked in, but the supervisor convinced me to take a lateral transfer to another building.

[jmm]

27. Where do I begin?

So many bad bosses, so little time. For a few years in college I had a seasonal job. At first it was great but the manager stepped down and the new manager who was awful. She would constantly try to get me to flirt with the male customers. As if that in and of itself wasn't bad enough it was a woman's clothing store so the vast majority of our male customers were in relationships and she knew I was living with somebody but it still didn't stop her from acting like I wasn't doing my job if I didn't hand out my phone number or go out to eat with random guys. For example, one day a man came in and spent an hour complaining about his girlfriend and why he needed to break up with her while I was helping him exchange clothes she didn't want and pick out new stuff for her. After I rang him up he asked when I was going on break and offered to take me out to eat. My boss overheard me decline and came over to say I could take an extended break. I said straight out that he may not care about his girlfriend but I cared about my boyfriend. He offered to pay for all my coworkers to order from the Cheesecake Factory if I would go but I still declined. My manager then attempted to guilt trip me by telling all my coworkers what happened and how I ruined the chance for them to get a free meal.

Once I was scheduled to work 16 days straight, 10-12 hr days and that only stopped when I called out the manager during a meeting for state labor law violations. Suddenly the new schedule came out and I was only on for 3 hrs in a week. I needed the rest so I waited until the end of the week before I brought it up to the district and regional managers. I by far had the best numbers in the store so they took a bad hit in my absence and they didn't under schedule me again.

The only time I received a personal call was one evening when my mom called to tell me her mother had a stroke while at dialysis. She was in a coma and the doctors didn't think she'd survive for long so the family was rushing to the hospital to see her. After I hung up the supervisor yelled at me for taking a personal call and when I told her what the call was about she said I couldn't leave because she and I were the only ones scheduled who were trained in certain functions. I let her know that I wasn't asking her to leave I was telling her I was leaving. I was her only grand daughhter and we were very close. The next few days were spent in the hospital while she was on life supports, helping my mom arrange her funeral, and getting lectures on the phone from more supervisors and the manager who were upset that my grandmother's death was interfering with their bad work scheduling.

[Roon]

28. Didn't work for him, but I could describe the worst boss I ever saw

I was at McDonald's and a customer was sitting at a table eating an ice cream cone. The manager comes out, sees the oversize ice cream cone and started SCREAMING at the employee about how that was too much! SCREAMING,YELLING, and GESTURING to this poor gal in front of a restaurant full of people.

I should have complained about him but I didn't do such things back then..but I won't stand for that kind of stuff today. The whole incident made me very uncomfortable.

[Terra Alta]

29. an assistant manager wrote me up

This happened in 2007, when I was going through a bunch of shit and my depression started really getting to me. I missed quite a few days at work, was called into the office and was told I would get written up if I missed any more. This was in April of 07. I didn't miss a day for the next two months despite having some days where I had to drag myself out of bed, and spent the entire work day in a daze and sometimes crying. In June of 07 I hit rock bottom... to make a long story short I was admitted to the hospital and was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety.. spent almost a week there. I came back to work in early July.. I had an APPROVED leave of absence meaning my whole time out of work was not supposed to count against me. Nothing was said to me for a whole MONTH after I came back.. I thought I was in the clear. Then that same asst. manager called me to the office again saying I had missed too many days and she was writing me up. I was like, WTF, I had an LOA and it wasn't supposed to count against me. She said it didn't matter and went ahead and wrote me up anyway. I guess I could have gone over her head but at the time I was just too stressed out and didn't want to cause any trouble. The write up stayed on my record for an entire year. As for the asst. manager, she transferred out in 2008 and NO ONE shed any tears over it. She screwed over lots of people not just me.. she got her jollies over writing people up and firing people and hopefully one day it will come back to bite her in the ass.

[unpossibles]

30. this guy who's nickname behind his back was "Rage Against The Fax Machine"

because he accidentally knocked the output tray off the fax machine/copier one day, and screamed to the office "what am I supposed to do, catch the faxes on my dick?!?"

He was a sexist, racist jerk to everyone, yelled at me for being lazy if I only worked 11 or 12 hours (salary of course), and had the most unrealistic expectations about everything. Drove a new Audi despite our paychecks sometimes bouncing, and would take money out of petty cash to go to strip clubs. Also, I had a client one day who was a preacher with his 10-11 year old son, and this tacky clown was in his office with the sales manager loudly describing his exploits at the strip club the night before. Stay classy.

Oh yeah, also the forklift in the warehouse had no brakes, and who knows what else was broken and dangerous.

I constantly stuck up for my fellow employees when he was crappy to them, and finally I just picked an argument that I knew I'd lose. The only time I've been fired and I was proud of it. I also reported him to OSHA as soon as I got home for the forklift.

[Richardo]

42. "Rage Against The Fax Machine"

:rofl:

[annonymous]

31. Never work for someone who sued to get promoted.

Twenty years ago, I worked for a woman who I will call Dragon Lady. I worked in a government agency that did engineering and construction and had no woman supervisors working in either area. She filed suit and won a promotion even though she wasn't supervisor material. This woman believed every woman working for her was competing for her job. She also liked to play mind games i.e. summoning someone into her office and offering them a small chair while she was behind a great big desk. She had me place her calls because she managed to alienate most of the people she worked with. Part of the problem was that English wasn't Dragon Lady's first language and she spoke very formal British English and used a bit of British slang. I had trouble understanding what she was talking about because my only exposure to British English was from Monty Python. Dragon Lady used the term "water closet" to describe the ladies room and said I dressed like a party girl. I found out "party girl" was British slang that meant slut. Dragon Lady spent most of her career in Europe and didn't understand what Business Casual was. She didn't understand that women wearing pants was perfectly acceptable. Dragon Lady was also dishonest. She claimed overtime when she was not entitled to it. I was a part time student and needed a regular schedule with no overtime. Dragon Lady would give me these last minute assignments and expect me to complete them and as a result I would be late for my class. I finally had to complain to Personnel so I could get my scheduled hours changed. I managed to get another job but I avoided using Dragon Lady as a reference.

[LeftyMom]

32. I think he was an undiagnosed manic depressive.

He could never seem to decide if the business was rolling in money or about to fail at any moment. He'd expense top shelf liquor but complain about adding me to the health plan or buying a file cabinet.

[MorningGlow]

36. Thought of another one

The manager who was having a contest with another manager--who could hire the most "hotties" to have the best-looking department. I was much younger and I suppose could be considered a "hottie" at the time, but I also knew my stuff. But he hit rock bottom when he hired a size 2 airhead fresh out of college who could flip her hair but didn't even know how to turn on her computer. Yikes.

When I quit, I blew the whistle on him in my exit interview (I didn't plan on it--it just came out); I thought the HR lady was going to faint. I ended up having a private meeting with the president of the company; I was too young and stupid to realize they were afraid I might file suit (I had no plans to do that--I just wanted out). The president asked me, "What do you want me to do?" I just said, "Make it STOP!"

My (female) replacement was built like a (male) truck driver. :evilgrin:

[Mopar151]

37. Rudy

Eugene "Rudy" Stahl Rapid Machine (formerly RS Machine) Hudson, NH

2 sons work in the shop, Mom runs the office. The Stahls use 1 bathroom (presumably slean, I never saw it), Reggie the temp and I used the other one - dirty, no light, no soap.
RS Machine had gone broke, an investor had recaptialised the shop and repositioned it as a fast turnaround, prototype shop. The Stahls must have looted all the good tooling, even office furniture, and hid it someplace. Place was a sweatbox - I got dehydrated and sick as hell my first day (stomach bug, + diuretics + type 2 diabetic), barely made it home alive. Go to the doc the next day, get fixed, go home to find the job re-posted on C/L. Spent the next 3 days being berated for anything and everything, and finding that the tooling and machines I was to use had been crashed repeatedly, that #2 son's machine programs were gibberish, and that the Stahl's could barely bring themselves to be civil to anyone but each other. I was happy to be fired 3 hours after the skeezy temp service finally took my W-2 and next of kin. I got paid illegally late, with a check that took a week to clear my bank. Sue me Rudy, you prick- I dare ya!
There is something wrong with Rudy - bipolar mania?, maybe borderline personality, I dunno, me - but the rest of the tribe avoids him, and they all arrive in seperate cars.

[lizerdbits]

38. The Martyr

I never had any problems in meetings or when other people were around. But if we were discussing a project in Martyr Boss's office or even in there for my performance reviews the conversation inevitably turned to how everyone else was out to destroy her. I don't know the background as to why she believed that. I do know from working on one project that she refused to collaborate with others since she believed that everyone was not just trying to destroy her but steal all her work. If she had work taken from her it was because she refused to collaborate and it didn't get done. Since she was always the victim and did no wrong, this was clearly due to a conspiracy against her. Everyone hated working with her except her prodigy, Martyr Girl. Thankfully Martyr Girl left and they moved us all to another supervisor, probably to help push her out the door, about 3-4 months before she found another position.

[LibDemAlways]

39. The nun who was principal when I taught 8th grade at a

Catholic school in the early 80's. She was new to the school and extremely paranoid that the well-established faculty was out to get her. She would call us each individually into her office and question us about our after-school activities that included such heinous crimes as going out as a group to dinner on a Friday night. By mid-year she fired one very charismatic teacher and by the end of the year made life so difficult that there were mass resignations. The next year she hired a bunch of recent college grads she could control. Just an awful person.

When the 8th graders wanted to give me a bracelet as a gift at the end of the year, she took it away and wouldn't let me have it. She was a piece of work.

She's gone now and normally I wouldn't speak ill of the dead, but in her case I'll make an exception.

[cbdo2007]

41. I basically worked for a year and a half once with my sole purpose being

only to fix my bosses mistakes.

She would work on a big project and mess it up royally, I would then spend the next few months fixing it. In the mean time she would be messing something else up, which I woudl then spend weeks or months fixing that too. Eventually, she got fired and I had fixed everything so they didn't have any other work for me to do as well.

[bif]

43. Creative Director I worked for.

He was a total prick. If you were presenting an idea to him that he thought was boring, he'd point his hand at your face and pretend he was using a tc clicker to mute you. And that's just one of the many rude things he did to his employees!

[Lavender Brown]

44. She never handed me (or her other employees) anything,

she would always throw papers, pens, etc. at us - HARD. The few months I worked for her, at least 5 people quit in a short period of time. She was insanely sexist, and insisted her employees (she never hired men) wear only suits with skirts, never pantsuits. I went on a stockings strike in the summer when it was unbearably hot. One day she came into the office and threw a package of her own navy blue support hose at my face. I can't believe I lasted there as long as I did. Weirdest experience of my life.

[LiberalEsto]

45. The 2 bosses who wound up in the looney bin

Over the years I had the bad luck twice to work for supervisors who turned out to be mentally ill.

The first time, in 1971, I was a waitress at a bakery bistro. The manager started acting a bit strange, giving irrational instructions and expecting us to follow them. When I timidly asked for an explanation on one order, he up and fired me out of the blue. I was very upset, never having been fired before. I thought it was my fault, though I'd done nothing wrong. Then he fired another person, and another, and another until the place was in chaos. He was eventually committed for treatment.

The second time, in 1977, I was a newspaper reporter on the night shift. There was an assistant night editor who was a nitpicking stickler and kept getting worse and worse. He insisted we write up every petty little piece of police news, whether it was newsworthy or not. He gave us a hard time when we came back from doing our rounds of local police stations without anything to write up. (What were we supposed to do -- go out and commit crimes ourselves?)His news judgment kept getting worse and worse, but he was the supervisor and we had to do what he told us, no matter how crazy it seemed. And he was nasty. We tried to complain, but senior editors refused to listen to us. I felt like I was growing an ulcer and was swigging Pepto Bismol every night.

One night, the guy didn't show up. We found out he'd flipped totally and decided to drive to Canada for whatever weird reason. I'm not sure if he got there, but his family got him hospitalized because he was absolutely batshit mentally ill. When he came back a few months later, he was very calm and altogether different.

[TrogL]

46. Selling home Organs

The company (and the entire industry) went bankrupt decades ago.

I worked out of a store in a rural area. The mall was dead. Completely, utterly dead except for a bit of traffic at a discount store in one end. People would go in and out that store entrance and never come in the main part of the mall.

He worked out of the Toronto store and would occasionally drop by the branch stores just to check up on people. The first time he came in the store he acted so creepy, I was ready to call the police.

The boss had an exact method he wanted followed to the absolute letter. Even though I'm a classical musician, he wanted me to play with two fingers only, one on each manual, no pedals. He wanted the features demonstrated in an exact order. He may as well have written a script and posted it on the wall.

DOne that way, the organs sounded like absolute crap. We weren't allowed to demonstrate the on-board synthesizer (a Moog) because "people hate synthesizers" (all the other music stores couldn't keep them in stock they were selling so fast).

When I knew he wasn't around, I'd play Pink Floyd and lots of other stuff you couldn't do with two fingers and attract a lot of attention and some sales.

One time, he drove me to Toronto on the QEW. Most of the way he drove no hands, eating hamburgers and stuff, steering with his knees. When we got there, he had me play the big monster with the synthesizers, attracting a huge crowd. After I was done, many stayed to ask questions and buy music. Other staff said it was the best day they'd had in awhile. On the way home, he gave me shit.

I quit and went to Radio Shack. A week later, the boss handed me a TRS-80 and said "make this work". The rest is history.

[wickerwoman]

47. Not exactly my boss,

but a middle manager I worked next to.

1.) Slept at his desk at least 1-2 hours a day after lunch. Every day. Then fired one of his employees on the spot for napping in the sound room. Once.

2.) Was one of those "let's think of the company, not ourselves" cheerleaders who, because he came in at ten or eleven and slept after lunch, would often work until nine or ten pm (and expect his team to stay that late too without warning). Would schedule meetings at the last second at 9:00pm regardless of whether or not anyone had plans. They would be non-essential "team-building" meetings like watching a documentary on Donald Trump. If you didn't go, you weren't a "team player" and it would be reflected on your employee evaluations. Would deliberately schedule most meetings as unpaid overtime in order to test company loyalty.

3.) Could not be pinned down for actually important meetings that other people scheduled. I caught him several times sneaking out just before meetings that I had told him about repeatedly.

4.) Delegated *everything*. Spent all day surfing online planning his next vacation and blasting music in our office when I was trying to actually work. Did not really know what he was doing, so tried to fake it by convening a "committee" to decide everything and then presented other peoples' ideas as his own in upper management meetings.

5.) Regularly took off on vacation with no plan in place for continuity of production. Or would assign someone completely inappropriate to fill in (e.g. was supposed to make a hiring decision before going on vacation. Didn't. Left it in charge of one of the people who was passed over for internal promotion to the same position and was deeply bitter about it and determined not to find anyone else qualified.)

6.) Would not fix anything. Took it personally if you pointed out problems in anything coming from his department but would be the first one to assign blame if he could lay it on someone else. Once tried to argue that the buggy software coming from his team was actually another team's fault because they didn't catch it in time. And then refused to fix it while at the same time complaining that his team had nothing to do that week.

7.) Was completely tactless. After managing to fire a girl (who was well-intentioned but not very talented) he went into a department meeting full of her friends and said: "Now that we've finally managed to get rid of ..." Also told a new kid right out of college, "I didn't want to hire you and I don't think you'll succeed. You'll have to work very hard to convince me you deserve to be here." Put tons of pressure on his team and freaked out at the idea that any of them might not be busting their asses for a second, but as stated above, slept, slacked off and smoked his way through every day.

[VillageThinking]

48. At our long-suffering ISP, they called him "Iron Mike"

And he was crazier than a s**thouse rat. He was also an undiagnosed bipolar. I remember him tearing the office apart because he'd lost his (Windows CE device) and he was convinced it was stolen. He started interrogating people, and nearly fired one of the techs. In the middle of his raging, his wife called to let him know that he'd left his (Windows CE device) at home.

He'd go from building castles in the air to doom and gloom in the middle of a sentence. One of my colleagues was his favorite whipping boy, he'd scream at him during meetings (spit strings, how i hate spit strings) and call him an incompetent f**kup.

And those were the good meetings.

[mzteris]

49. omg - where to start?

There was the one who had a two-way mirrored office installed so he could "watch the girls" without anyone the wiser. He asked me once if I was wearing underwear. :eyes: My resignation followed.

Then there was the boss who was a misogynist ahole bastard. Hell, maybe he just hated everybody and not just women. The company would wait until just before someone was "vested" in the "profit-sharing program" and then terminate them. The monies in the account would revert back to the profit-sharing account, which people participated in on a percentage basis based on their pay rate. Guess who had the highest pay rate in the company?? Besides, I don't think more than five people ever reached their vesting date besides the boss, the owner and the owners kids and other relatives. Oh

yeah, that was the same boss who decided my job wasn't necessary for the company anymore after I told him I was pregnant. Of course that backfired - - - never mess with the HR manager. :evilgrin: Worked out pretty well for me in the end.

Then there was the FEMALE boss I had who showed me her "breast lift" - not long after her surgery so I could see the scars. YIKES. My eyes, they burn.........

Then -

oh never mind, that should do ya. I'm getting depressed thinking about going back to work in the job market. Who knows what horrors await me?!