Annoying stuff my boss does

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I have (much to my coworkers amusement).

When I first started working for my boss, he hadn’t had a female employee for a while. Anyway, being from the southern US, his manners dictated that you not curse in front of women. Unfortunately, this is a swearing-friendly office.

So, we would be sitting in a meeting and he would say something like ‘can you believe this shit?’ and then look directly at me (the only female in the room) and apologize.

Being that I was new to the group and trying to lay low, I had not yet let my freak flag fly so I was just playing it cool on the outside and seething on the inside. However, I do not have the best track record for keeping my cool.

About a week in, he did it three times in a row. So, I looked him in the eye and said.

‘I don’t give a shit if you fucking swear. But if you fucking apologize to me one more fucking time, I am fucking leaving.’

His jaw dropped. It was the start of a beautiful relationship.

22

I’m certain this is an actual syndrome. Our owner-guy and several of my customers suffer from it.

23

I refer to this as the “You can write the perfect email but you can’t make them read.”

It is very very common.

24

I’m trying to text you off of my lawn, but it’s not working. Maybe I’ll go back to the old fashioned way and use a cattle prod.

Seriously, “old guys” of 50 think that computers are just a fad?

25

I have a boss who will forward me an e-mail, and I reply all and they tell me not to reply all just reply to them.

The next e-mail, I reply just to them and they ask why didn’t I reply all, everyone needed to know!

Both e-mails contain the exact same text from said boss: “??”

I’ve decided that being a mind reader is a job requirement.

26

My boss is in Iowa and I’m in Florida, so she doesn’t annoy my in the slightest. I work in the client’s office and share office space with the boss lady over my group of employees. So, technically, she’s my boss too. My desk is about four feet away from hers. There is a door that separates us, but it’s open most of the time because it gets stuffy in my corner. Her number one most annoying habit would be clipping her fingernails at her desk, every single day.

Her number two most annoying habit would be the constant whining. I’ll be quietly reading the Dope :wink: and I’ll hear this whiny, screechy, little girl voice: “I haaate this. These people are stuuuuuupid! I don’t understaaaaaand. I haaaaate these people.” Sometimes, I just have to get up and take a walk if I can’t drown her out with Nine Inch Nails + noise cancelling headphones.

Many moons ago, I had this terribly incompetent boss who was very passive aggressive, controlling, and manipulative. She still holds the record for the worst boss I’ve ever encountered. She would call me up at 4:45 in the afternoon and demand that I produce a marketing piece by the end of the day. That’s 15 minutes to write, edit, layout and distribute. For some reason, the grandboss did not allow anyone to work after 5:00 p.m. He’d shut off the lights and set the alarm. At 4:48 p.m., the incompetent boss (known affectionately as “Stupid Bitch”) would call me back, “How’s that marketing piece coming? You about through with that so I can take a look before we go home?” Um, no, I just hung up the phone two minutes ago and have barely had time to launch WordPerfect. (This was back in the early 90s.) At 4:50 p.m., she’d call me back again, “So, how’s that marketing piece coming? You finished yet?” At 4:52 p.m., she’d call me again… lather, rinse, repeat. Mind you, I was 23 and had very little experience successfully dealing with people who pull shit like this. One day, after about six phone calls in 12 minutes, I snapped. “Lookit here, Yvonne. I started on this piece the minute you assigned it to me. However, there is no way I can continue working on it and produce it by the end of the day if you keep calling me every two goddamn minutes to find out why it’s not done yet. You will have your marketing piece in your hands by 5:00 p.m. if you leave me the fuck alone so I can write it!” As the steam poured out of my ears, she said, “Oh, that’s okay. I’m leaving early today, I don’t need it until next week.”

That same woman would send me a handwritten note with a marketing idea on it. She’d write at the bottom, “What do you think?” So I’d tell her what I thought and send the note back. One day she came stomping into my cubicle area demanding to know why I hadn’t completed the task in her note that she’d assigned me. I had to tell her that I was under the impression that “What do you think?” means she wanted my opinion. I had no idea it translated in Yvonne-speak to “Go do this now.”

Yeah. It’s a wonder I didn’t hack her to pieces and bury her in my backyard.

27

Corollary to that:

For every promotion above your natural competence level, you will lose an office skill.

When I was promoted to manager, I suddenly lost the ability to fax. I’d stand there and ask my secretary for explicit directions, do everything she said to do, and still, no fax go through. I’d sigh and hand the paper to her. Blip-blip-blip, she’d send that thing right out. I always said I was afraid to be promoted to VP because I would then lose the capability to use email. I stepped down from that position and took a worker bee gig. Almost immediately, I was able to use the fax machine correctly.

28

I’ve tried with the boss I’ve mentioned upthread, but he gets white-lipped and curls his hands into fists when I try to encourage him to be more efficient with simple tasks like this. Then, I swear he goes out of his way to be an slower luddite just to “show” me that he’s the boss. But this particular guy is just this side of being Adrian-Monk-mentally-ill anyway.

29

Each year I pass out a questionnaire that is anonymous and allows the employees to give their opinions on how the business is being run and what we can do to improve. There are specific questions about how the immediate supervisor of the individual is doing and what they could change. I have seen some very interesting answers from “shower more often” to “stop talking to his mistress on company time”. I will leave the opinions of my personal work performance out of it but I will admit, I have taken many a suggestion to heart. I think all companies should do this.

30

My company does this, via computer; we’re asked to anonymously rate our direct boss and our department head.

I work in research. I know it’s highly possible to link the results of even an “anonymous” questionnaire to the person who filled it out.

Last year was the first time we were asked to do this. Later on, during the employee review period, we had section meetings grouped by type of employee. I am one of a small handful of people who report directly to the department admin, who’s one step below the department head. So about a half-dozen people meet in a conference room with our boss, who has all of our responses (not tagged by name - that she would admit, at least) and spends about an hour going over them with us. I admitted to being the one who didn’t fill out the questionnaire - hey, it didn’t sound mandatory to me - and toed the line in terms of producing “team player” responses in the meeting.

With so few people reporting to one supervisor, it can be very easy for the wrong phrasing or talking about a particular incident to identify exactly who wrote the critique.

I’ll admit my shock that I did see at least one improvement regarding our feedback - but from our department head. We said he felt unapproachable, at least to our employee class. Later on he really seemed to honestly become more interactive, warm, and approachable. Knock me over with a feather.

Evaluation time is coming around again. I haven’t filled out the supervisor evaluation, and last I heard, neither has my officemate.

31

So I take it the jury aquitted you?

32

He fired me then gave me a month’s notice and told me all the while I am there, I have to train the higher ups to do my job. And then they sent me home early each day, to cut my pay. So I would’ve been better off just leaving.

33

I was in the Air Force and in about 93 we received one to the first “modern” network printers/copiers that they put in the area by the squadron commander’s office. I was in a satellite control squadron. At the time you had to really be technically savvy to do the work. also at the time there was a commercial campaign the had the line, “don’t touch it, you’ll break it”

So I was sitting in the office waiting to talk to the commander, and a bunch of guys were standing around the copier staring at it like a chicken looking at a digital watch, trying to figure out how it worked. I said, “don’t touch it, you’ll break it”. They gave me the “pretty lame, smart ass” look, pressed the button to make the first copy and the power went out all over the base. Laughed my ass off. The power outage was totally unrelated, but they didn’t know that. You should have seen the looks on their faces. They wanted to hide, but knew they had no where to run.