I worked a job where I didn't get home until 2a or 3a in the morning one time, and boss was mad I didn't come in to work until 10a the next morning.
Same boss - I told her I was working from home on a particular morning doing a work task. I reminded her the day prior, as well. The next morning, she called me asking why I wasn't in the office.
I had a boss that would randomly call at 4:58 on her days off. There were 4 of us that worked for her, and she'd pick a different person each time. So you didn't know who she'd call that time...and sometimes she didn't call at all. I guess to make sure we weren't cutting out early when she had a day off.
She also would pick on someone for about a month. Nothing that you did during that time was right. Even if it was how you had been doing it for a long time. We called it the "victim of the month". She also wouldn't allow us to wear jeans, even though our place of employment didn't have a dress code. We finally wore her down to let us wear jeans on Fridays.
Post by maudefindlay on Mar 4, 2024 12:01:04 GMT -5
My first job out of grad school and I was working with a patient who had a swallowing disorder. I had written orders for this patient to be on a safe, pureed diet consistency. The patient had dementia and his POA and his doctor all fully supported this. The guy had choked on meat 2x requiring the heimlich at the nursing facility. One day the facility director called me to his office demanding I put the patient back on solid foods as he was losing weight and that looked bad for when state did audits. He told me if I refused he'd find someone who would. I realized then to never be alone in a room with this man. I refused. I rang all the bells, called the doctor, the POA, my boss etc. Then I got a fluoriscopic exam of the guy's swallow which showed physical reasons he could never swallow solid foods again. I then got a new job. Fuck that Tony Soprano wannabe trying to intimidate me. On my last day he was "so sorry" to see me go and that there had been a misunderstanding between us. The only misunderstanding was that you Sir misunderstood my power. I hope I scared him.
This isn’t as bad as some others but I should have known what my future would be when I agreed to transfer offices. My only hesitation was the 2 co-office leaders. I worked on a joint project with them years before when I worked for a different firm but in that project, my role was Senior to theirs. One was a complete egotistical asshole, the other had a Peter Pan never grow up complex. I interviewed with my department head and her boss and they were great, so I figured there were 2 buffers between us, and I wouldn’t really have to interact with Assole or Peter Pan much.
About a year later, my department head’s boss retired, my boss was promoted and soon after that they did a complete re-org of the office. My new department head was a young, unqualified favorite of Asshole boss and Asshole boss was our immediate boss. He liked to micromanage us, so I had to start interacting with him a lot, he purposefully excluded me from meetings I’d previously been a part of, he sat in on all my performance reviews and we didn’t see eye to eye on anything. I got assigned to several of the most difficult clients the firm had which Peter Pan boss was involved with so I got to deal with him daily, too.
They promoted a very tech bro-y, youth is valued more than experience culture even though we weren’t in tech. Asshole would peer pressure everyone into taking fireball shots any chance he got. Peter Pan would drive us to meetings in his sports car and invite select groups of young coworkers on his yacht. It was no surprise I got laid off during the pandemic and I think they thought they were doing me a favor because I had kids virtually learning, but they used me as a scapegoat for some financial/ contract issues which means I don’t think the international firm will ever hire me back (and nobody contacted me when they started hiring again). Middle age mom with a medical issue that caused me to gain weight and no time for happy hours did not fit in and I felt really judged by them. Getting laid off after I’d done things like work late on Christmas Eve for them and their difficult client really did a number on my self esteem. There are a lot of amazing things about the company but it also was a bit of a relief, like I’d escaped a cult, and I’ve heard the same from other people who have left.
Post by EvieEthelGarland on Mar 4, 2024 12:10:05 GMT -5
My first post college "real" job was at the headquarters of a national non profit that everyone here probably holds in high esteem. My boss would comment on the size of my breasts. Tell me it was good I joined the gym in the building so I could stay in shape and get laid more. Ask me each week if I got laid that weekend. He was 28, not 68. In my 21 year old naivete, I went to HR. I was "laid off" when he was on vacation a few weeks later.
That was in 1996 and that man still works for that company.
This one is stupid and funny to me, but I had the best interview of my life with a boss and was so excited to work for the firm. We had a great rapport in the interview, we could have talked for hours and he offered me the job right away. Once I started working there he literally never talked to me again. This was a small 35 person firm and my desk was like 50 feet from his office along a main walkway. I learned he was very egotistical and only interacted with his small group of favorite employees. I never worked with him or on his projects. I haven’t seen him since I quit. My current boss has been friends with him for decades, I think they went to college together, and she was just baffled when I told her (because I was like, I worked with him but IDK if he’ll remember me). She is an amazing boss and nothing like him.
Post by lilypad1126 on Mar 4, 2024 12:27:50 GMT -5
I don't even know which bad boss story to start with.
My first "real" job, when I was 25, my boss brought in her old clothes (that were no longer her size) for me to wear. She thought I needed "better" suits and apparently hers from years ago were probably my size and I would be grateful to have them. First, what the hell?! Second, not my size. Third, she was 60 at the time, so even 10 - 15 year old suits from her were not in style (nor were they my style). Then, and this probably the best part, about a year later, she got offended that I didn't wear them and demanded them back. By that time I had donated them, so that was awkward.
My next job, the big boss did my performance review (even though she didn't directly supervise me). I got the lowest marks I'd ever gotten (all 1s and 2s). And the comments were things like, Lilypad must arrive late because she never checks in with me when she gets here (our offices were in different buildings), and Lilypad does a poor job marketing our product (I didn't work in marketing or sales, so wtf?).
Then the job I got fired from, 2 months after getting a GLOWING performance review (all 4s and 5s which I'd never seen before). And the reason given? "Lilypad didn't pick up the phone and call the other company, she sent an email instead". We didn't have a phone number and the only number you could find online was one that said "Thanks for calling, please go online to find the answer to your question" and then would hang up on you.
I am certain I have more, but those are the 3 that come quickly to mind, lol.
Ooh I forgot the best part of my layoff. They obviously didn’t think ahead about a transition plan and then realized they were totally screwed when they started dropping balls everywhere. The person who took over for me was a genuinely nice person who didn’t deserve that shit so I answered when he texted me questions. I didn’t have access to any of the files so I couldn’t help him much. HR freaked out when they found out and then offered to pay me hourly for any time I spent helping him (and then he was able to email me files). It was more of a PITA than it was worth and I should have told them to get fucked but I’m too nice of a person and we needed the money (before we knew there would be extra pandemic relief $$).
Post by litskispeciality on Mar 4, 2024 12:59:00 GMT -5
Oh I had another one at a big for-profit diploma mill that had 3 "campuses" (aka office buildings). She was based out of campus A, however she'd visit campuses B and C until B closed. She'd call mid-morning to early afternoon on Friday's saying she was on her way to the other campus, which lead to "everyone be on your best behavior <boss> is coming". An hour or longer would go by and then said boss would call and say "gee traffic is just so bad I'll go back to my home campus A, have a great weekend!" We later found out campus A never saw her again, we think she just went home. She eventually got a higher level boss, then moved away so I never found out how things played out.
Meanwhile the rest of us had our codes watched and our calls monitored, so it wasn't like they couldn't track her location once she settled "somewhere".
My former boss told me in my performance review that I needed to smile more because several men were intimidated by me. He then went on to say I needed to be more subservient to my male Indian colleagues to show respect to their culture.
One former boss was always locking himself out of his yahoo email account. He'd repeatedly ask me to "call yahoo and figure out what was wrong". I think he asked me to call google once. And also always forgot how to open tabs in his browser.
I had one hell of a boss - it was a wife/husband owned company and gosh I would dread going in. I was their longest standing employee and the Husband and I got along okay (I managed all of his major accounts) but the wife and I didn't really click for whatever reason. Sometimes it was fine and sometimes it was just awkward. He was a man-child though - if he was in a mood he'd throw boxes, slam things, yell.
1. Worked at a grocery store as a high schooler. Middle age boss lured me into the walk in cooler, grabbed me and kissed me on the mouth.
2. New boss and his minion arrive at our state agency. First order of business is to have a round table discussion about our positions and our projects. Colleague states that she is administering a Violence Against Women Act grant and working on several initiatives aimed at survivors of sexual assault. Boss’s response: “You know, women lie about that sometimes.”
Very shortly after starting, minion revamps the employee manual to place, up front and in bold, the reminder that we are at will employees and can be fired at any time, for any reason.
1. I worked for this woman who was absolutely miserable in her own life and took it out on everyone. I left every day either crying or with a stomach ache because of her. She wanted nothing more than to get married and have kids. Unfortunately, I was planning my wedding during the time I worked for her. I found another job and tried to give her my two week notice, she walked me out that day. My mom and I went and celebrated with margaritas 😂
2. My last manager, who I have PTSD from, laid me off after 14 years at the company with no warning. In our meeting with HR, his “proof” that I wasn’t meeting my job requirements was a picture of a single piece of trash in a parking lot (I was a property manager).
I just remembered I had a boss tell me a coworker complained I was wearing crop tops, sneakers and jeans to work. I literally only wear dresses?? I don’t even own jeans or sneakers.
I guess they never noticed that and I could never figure out what the anonymous coworker thought they saw or who they confused me with.
I had a boss who was the head of a small, well loved non-profit. She was desperate to be perceived in high regard and had a long list of petty grievances against the staff. So, weird combination.
She used to look out her office window and bitterly complain to me when she perceived that the staff were taking too long at lunch. Those lunch complaints only seemed to coincide when they had a group lunch. So, it was really a complaint masked as a time issue because “they were leaving the office to talk about her” - direct quote.
Lady, they did that IN the office, they didn’t need to have lunch together to gossip about your shenanigans. You know that, right?
She was also hung up on perceived injustices about arrival time and departure time. Those complaints also coincided in who she liked or didn’t like. But any suggestion to actually track time was shot down because she knew they were working all their hours and “disnt want a record so she we didn’t have to pay overtime rates.” Uhm, okay.
My first job out of university, I worked for a small company that managed projects in Eastern Europe. I had been there a couple of months when I had to go to Ukraine for a conference - my boss who worked elsewhere would be meeting me there so I was travelling alone. The day before I left, the accountant came up to me with an envelope for $2,500 that I had to take and deliver for the conference. Apparently sending money via western union or whatever was too expensive so they preferred to send a 21 year old with cash. They also warned me I needed to be careful with it as people were targeting people on their way from the airport over there as they know people trave with cash. This was over 20 years ago so that was a lot of money for broke me.
1. About 15 years ago, my boss comes to me and is all excited. I found the best website! He then says “ok type this in w w w dot g o o g l e dot c o m”. I was like……google? You just found google? He was maybe 10 years older than me, and I was 27 at the time. I still laugh and tell people that story. Hahaha.
2. My next job, the owner ended up in federal prison bc he bribed state legislators. They also used to all join hands and pray during staff meetings. It was wild. They also asked us to wait to cash our paychecks pretty often bc they just didn’t have good cash flow. I was an accountant so could see it all happening and was relieved when they laid me off.
3. My last job my boss was terrible. She would shut her door and just want to gossip about the staff and she said she was “coaching” me. She once told me that the staff needed to leave their personal issues at the door and that they should never need to use their personal cell phones during the day, even on their breaks. Meanwhile her kids and husband would call her desk phone constantly.
She had another manager spy on our dept and report back to her as to when we arrived. She didn’t come in until 9:30 but would tell me that since I arrived at 8:10 that day, that leaving at 5:02 looked bad and was unfair to the rest of the dept. Ignoring that I regularly worked past my “core hours” - during year end close I worked 70+ hours. She made me take 15 min of pto for leaving early so I could pick my kids up bc my H was traveling. She also gave me an out of cycle evaluation 2 days before my last day. My previous evals had been glowing, exceeds expectations. This one had multiple needs improvement, she wrote that I was constantly on my cell phone (I wasn’t), that I didn’t complete a project ( I did). It was bizarre. I wrote a rebuttal and copied her boss before I left. She’s still there 5 years later but every single person in the dept has left bc of her.
Post by midwestmama on Mar 4, 2024 13:51:34 GMT -5
About 20 years ago when I was in college I worked in my college's IT department in the summer one year, prepping new equipment for deployment and then deploying to employees. Part of the prep would often involve installing additional sticks of RAM, since it was apparently cheaper for them to buy CPUs with less RAM, and then buy RAM in bulk, and pay college students peanuts to install it. (I made a little bit above minimum wage.) One time my boss accused a few of us who had been working on installing RAM of stealing some of it, and then she found where she had left it later that day. I don't think she ever apologized to us.
About 15 years ago I was in a performance review meeting with my boss at the time. I was 5 months pregnant (with DS, my oldest) and was visibly pregnant and everyone knew I was pregnant. Boss tells me in the performance review that I basically needed to decide which was my priority - work or family - and my decision would impact my progression there. I had really good benefits there (read: most everything was covered 100%, after a small copay or co-insurance amount if in-network), so I stayed until after DS was born. (Glad I did - he was a $10K baby!) After about a month into my maternity leave, I got serious about applying for different jobs. I ended up getting an offer about 3 months after my return from leave, and it felt amazing to turn in my resignation. Also, within around 1.5 years of this boss telling me this, this boss had put another employee on a PIP right after she returned from maternity leave, and fired another employee shortly after she returned from maternity leave. (The employee who was fired did have an outburst on the phone with an employee before she went on maternity leave, but I don't think it was bad enough to fire her (hence why they probably waited until after she returned from leave, rather than try to terminate her while she was pregnant).) Interestingly enough, this boss had 3 children/maternity leaves at this company (all before the above situations), so it was rather strange that she seemed to have such a bias against pregnant women/new moms.
I had a former "big boss" who would do laps around our work area and complain if we weren't at our desk. On vacation? Left early because you have hours of calls with Indonesia that night? Elsewhere in the building because you're in meetings? It didn't matter, she would complain about who was missing. She would do this the week of Christmas and be shocked that butts weren't in seats.
I was supposed to fly with her overseas once. A few days before the flight, I noticed the weather forecast for our city the day of the flight was fucked, so I asked the admin to change my flight so I would leave a day earlier, spend a night in a hub city, then continue on with my original agenda. Big boss was mad at me both me and the admin and kept her original flight. Big boss got delayed for 3 days, missed most of the meetings, but I got there on time.
I had a boss that started out great, but when a VP handed the department over to an Assc VP who did not see eye to eye with her she turned psycho. The only way she could make herself look good was to throw everyone around her under the bus regularly. We all learned to become offensive and track all the things in an effort to cover your own. She refused time off for people and when they did take time she would save emergencies (I swear she did, it was like she kept "issues" in her back pocket) just to make sure your time away was spent stressing. She compared my kids to her dog and said that she doesn't have to be there for everything her dog does, I shouldn't need time off because of my kids. My mother died on a Sunday and she reported me to said Assc VP for not attending a meeting the following Tuesday. She created enemies across campus and burned so many friendships I don't know that she has any left. When the Ass VP did a major re-org and left her with very little, she deemed all of us that no longer reported to her unloyal and we were the enemy. Then things got really bad. We still had to communicate and work with her, she just wasn't our direct supervisor. It hit a point, H told me, I'm leaving you if you don't resign, I don't even know who you are anymore. Thankfully I was offered a different position within the university at that same time and was able to resign and start new. I bumped into her not too long ago and she apologized for how she treated me when my mother died, her father had just passed away and she didn't know how hard it is. I told her I was sorry to hear about her dad and walked away. All of that said, we have a new employee in our office and she just told me that 'someone sure spoke highly of you last night, she was singing your praises'. When she told me it was she-bitch-from-hell I about spit my coffee out of my nose. Maybe people do change but...I would still have hard time being anything but professional/cold to her if on campus. If I see her in public I go the other way. She is now temp faculty with no contract. I often wonder how those poor students are doing.
A bunch of years ago, there was a big wave when we had a bunch of mid- and senior-level associates in my practice group all due to be out on maternity leave at the same time. During a big group dinner, my female practice group leader dismissed all the men to go socialize and asked all the women to stay so that she could tell us that it was all our responsibility to make sure we covered for the women who would be out on leave. I was flabbergasted that she would suggest this was somehow more the responsibility of the women and not the men - just because we also had uteri?
My first job out of college, I worked in administration at a hospital. Everyone in our suite (about 15 people) reported directly to the Executive Director, except for me and one other woman. In our cases, our immediate boss was the one who reported to the ED.
First year there, we had a potluck holiday party for everyone in our suite. It was fine, standard office party.
Second year, the ED decided she wanted to do something nicer for her team. So she planned a holiday luncheon at a nice restaurant, and invited everyone in the suite except for me and the other woman, since we didn't report directly to her. So the two us had to sit an empty office all afternoon while all of our immediate coworkers went to the holiday party.
As a consolation, she did end up giving us christmas gifts. I got a nail care set that had been opened and had pieces missing.
Oh so many good ones, but this is always my go-to favorite for this particular boss.
Department admin, T, is one of my friends and happens to collect happy meal toys. She has they all sitting on top of her file cabinets. She’s well liked and this is well known.
Boss, S, was rumored to be sleeping with two of the lead managers for our division. Goes out to lunch with them and they hit up the adult bookstore. They come back and call everyone in the cube farm around (probably about 10 people in the office at that point) so they can give T a gift to add to her collection. Turns out to be a “jumping jolly pecker,” a little wind-up toy about the size of happy meal toy, a little penis head with feet. You can imagine the rest.
Early 90s, so while the world was different, three of these idiots were managers and should have known better.
My boss once had a tantrum in the office not to me, but to other people/ in general. I decided it was a good time to get lunch. She also discussed my complicated job status unprompted to random strangers including whether I was eligible for unemployment, when I was invited to a co-workers going away party. In hindsight, I should have skipped that party.
My other boss had a hot tub party and invited her friends/ co-workers. There were about 4-5 women total. They were talking about it very loudly at work, and one of the non invited ones came over to me and asked me if I was invited and I was like what party? I didn't care that I wasn't invited to a party of woman that were 20 years older than me sitting in a hot tub, but it was kind of humiliating to be put on the spot like that and then that co-worker threw a fit that she and I weren't invited. Then to show her inclusivity she had a party where everyone was invited which was also super awkward, and we left early. I don't get the point of her throwing another party and then sort of forcing me to go because I was excluded from the hot tub party. She didn't really force me, but I felt that I HAD to go by that point of the drama.
I also remember the admin there gave everyone a free gift but refused to give it to me because I wasn't the right category of staff. Another staff caught wind and confronted the admin decision who said that if she gave it to me she would have to give it to everyone. Even though I was the only one that had a desk and sat on the floor in that designation and no one would know. I didn't even want the stupid free thing, it was just her being such a swearword about it. And I am not sure why the other person asked because that just stirred up the drama. I mean I'm sure they were trying to be nice, but it just made it all worse when she refused to give me the free thing (that she had extra of) that cost about $1. Kind of the equivalent of not giving someone post its because they were designated as factory manager and not factory boss. So petty.
At another job, my boss frequently made impromtptu bad decisions and inappropriate comments. We would yell inappropriate and he would apologize. My co-worker said he hit on her once. I'm not sure what really happened since I wasn't there, but it seemed like the ask them out once and never again thing so not sexual harassment but also inappropriate as her married boss.
My first boss (founder of a law firm) quite literally tried to pimp me out to another lawyer at a conference. The rest have been great compared to that!
I was pregnant when the pandemic hit and worked for a very anti-WFH university.
A week before it went university-wide I announced I would be WFH, and my boss repeatedly, repeatedly announced I was "on vacation". He didn't want to make WFH a thing, despite me working overtime (recalling students FROM ABROAD)!
He told me that Covid was not dangerous to pregnant women (as if he knew anything) and I should utilize the EAP to see a psychologist to get over my fears of coming back to the office. I was very pleased to use that email as evidence a year later when he was under investigation, and ultimately fired, for bullying staff.
Everyone was WFH the very next week and he never made me take vacation time.
Post by mainelyfoolish on Mar 4, 2024 17:04:17 GMT -5
Many years ago, I had just received my replacement business cards with a new logo after our company had been bought out by another company, and I noticed that my job title had been misprinted. It was a small error but it made a difference (think assistant manager vs. manager’s assistant), so I mentioned it to my boss. He yelled at me because he had been the one to order the cards printed that way and how was he supposed to remember my job title?!
At my old teaching job, I had the principal's daughter in class one year. He didn't agree with a grade she received on an essay (supported by a very detailed rubric) and she cited NOTHING in her essay, so she also was deducted for improper citations/plagiarism, because it is plagiarism when you don't cite sources even if it's inadvertent or not purposely cheating, which the students were well aware of as we spent so much time on it in class and they also turned in drafts, etc. where i marked this.
He demanded to know why this was considered plagiarism (via email), so I replied very respectfully as I would to any parent and explained it.
Well after that he absolutely blew me up via email. He kept spamming me with angry emails as I was teaching during the day, called me condescending (), said I wasn't a good teacher, blah blah blah. I ended up pulling in the assistant principal and basically saying I was not comfortable dealing with the principal alone as it related to being the parent of a student. This wasn't the only occasion where he did this, either.
He ended up being asked by the board to leave before his contract was up and being escorted out of the building by security a few months later.
My first school had a principal who was great when he started, but by year 5 was ready to retire. He claimed he couldn't because his wife wasn't ready to retire yet, but over the course of the next four years he so fully checked out of doing any actual work that the assistant principals were running the entire show. That worked reasonably well when we had competent AP's, but then one transferred to a different district and one was sent to a school that was in crisis (half of the English department was fired for being involved in a coke ring--no joke). That left Big Dummy and Vindictive Jerk.
Vindictive Jerk had only taught and been an administrator at a middle school before moving to high school, and she really didn't understand how high school scheduling/course assignments work. She wound up giving me a fourth prep for the most arbitrary reason possible even though our department chair only had one prep, and when I tried to point out why that didn't make any sense she claimed that my job was easier than my department chair's because she had more students total than I did. The department chair only taught on-level 11th grade English and I taught AP Lit, on-level 11th grade, and a test-prep course for English language learners. Two of those preps naturally had fewer students per section than an on-level 11th grade class, but that didn't mean teaching them was easier. My union had no teeth so I both kept the new fourth prep and had the worst possible schedule the following year. She then had the gall to ambush me in her office after I applied for an in-district transfer because I didn't tell her before I applied that I was unhappy. Bitch, please.
Big Dummy was a micromanager. Midway through first quarter he got frustrated because he'd go into teachers' rooms to do required walk-through evaluations (to be fair they were required to do over 170 of these every year--the district was out of its mind and deserves some blame for what ensued) and would spend half of his 7 minutes there trying to figure out WTF was being taught and which standards the class was working on. So he devised these binders that would contain full printouts of the detailed state standards for every prep each teacher taught (each set would run 50+ pages, and most teachers taught 2-4 preps), to which we were supposed to add detailed daily lesson plans. That type of plan takes a lot of time to write, doesn't really benefit students, and was solely for his benefit on the off chance he'd walk through your room on any given day. You were also required to keep the binder open to a page containing the day's standards description and your lesson plan at all times, just in case he did a walk through that period. The binders were huge and teacher desks were small, so that meant you couldn't do anything at your desk at any time while a class was in the room.
He could only "require" them for the one department he supervised--Social Studies--and their department chair was one of our union reps. She filed a grievance, so the next week he retaliated by calling a buddy of his at the district office and accused the entire faculty of insubordination, not following district policies, and not teaching required state standards. I have no idea why anyone believed him, but overnight a team of district people moved into an empty classroom and started scripting our lessons. All of the oxygen was sucked out of that building the day those people took over, and while some good came out of it--both Vindictive Jerk and Big Dummy were demoted and to this day haven't been able to return to the high school level--around 20% of the faculty submitted our resignations by the end of that year.
Two schools and principals later I worked for a guy so incompetent that one day I asked him if we had a standard permission slip for parents to sign so I could show the Outsiders to my 7th graders, and instead of saying either "no" or "I don't know" he prevaricated for months and I wound up having to host a district office lady for a talk about bullying six weeks later before I could show the movie. I also wound up finally making the movie permission slip myself, and from what I understand it's still the one they use today.