Anyone have a boss who deserves to be in a gorilla cage (or worse)?

I used to work for a security company; my senior supervisor was a retired Marine colonel. Two months after I started I was called into the office (about nine miles from my post) concerning my uniforms’ condition. (What he said about them was unfounded, but that’s a topic for another time.) Anyway, he told me about an inspector who had come on to the post to evaulate me. As he proceeded to denounce me–and part of what he said I could prove was wrong–he sounded more and more like Morton Downey, Jr. or Father Coughlin! (I stayed with that job for two years; I was then removed from the post with no explanation given. I haven’t worked as a security guard since.)
Please post here incidences of a current/former bosses of YOURS who should be swinging on a tire in a cage in a zoo, eating bananas.

Do I!

On Monday, my boss was out of town but had been in the office over the weekend. I came in and found one of his shirts, a pair of trousers and his overcoat on my chair. Well, I hung them up. At 3:30pm he calls and says, “Did you take my clothes to the dry cleaner?”. Uh, no. It’s not as if we have some understanding about this, mind you. I was supposed to figure out that his clothes lying on my chair meant that I should take them to the cleaners. And he was pissed off that I didn’t.

This sort of thing happens every day here. Fortunately, tomorrow is my last day.


“I should not take bribes and Minister Bal Bahadur KC should not do so either. But if clerks take a bribe of Rs 50-60 after a hard day’s work, it is not an issue.” ----Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, Current Prime Minister of Nepal

Oh, you mean like my current (soon to be former!) boss who stood in front of my office door and screamed and cursed at me for not getting him his free upgrade to 1st class so he could get free drinks? You mean something like that? Where it was in front of all my peers and was completely humiliating?

That might work. There are more stories where that came from and I’ve only been here 6 months.

Lucky, you should’ve taken 'em to Goodwill. “Oh you mean that nasty set of clothes? They were so dirty I thougth you wanted to donate them to charity!”

Geez, what a jerk. Do you look like his mother?

Lucky, you should’ve taken 'em to Goodwill. "Oh you mean that nasty set of clothes? They were so dirty I thougth you wanted to donate them to charity!
Geez, what a jerk. Do you look like his mother?
Huuuuuuuuugh! :smiley: :smiley: What a chop!! :wink:


“If you drive an automobile, please drive carefully–because I walk in my sleep.”–Victor Borge

A long-ago boss from hell, whom I would’t inflict on any zoo on the planet. He:

  • at the first supervisors meeting blandly informed us that he always (quote) fucked someone on staff so he’d have a spy, so which one of us was it going to be?

  • informed female staff that he liked us dressed in tight and frilly, and called a black staff member “his little chocolate drop”.

  • drank like a fish and was 3 sheets to the wind by noon.

  • while drinking would physically molest staff and more than once tossed lunch on the public floor.

  • got drunk and urinated in the garden outside the windows of the hotel restaurant at a state conference.

  • got drunk, grabbed me on the ballroom floor of the same conference and when I declined to dance, shoved me over shouting, “well, you can forget any promotions, bitch”.

Unfortunately I’m not exaggerating or joking. It all happened, and it was 3 years of unmitigated hell. For a lot of reasons, most of them political, legal remedies didn’t work. More subtle methods did, though, in spades.

Veb

What a monster! I hope he got beaten bloody or insensible or both by some woman or her angry husband. And for the racist remark–well, remember what happened to Reginald Denny? :frowning:
And what does “spades” mean as you use it here?

Oops, didn’t see that one soon enough, Monty. We made sure no one did the normal covering and glossing for him to begin with. Whey the Mayor called, “Why, we haven’t seen him for days! You don’t know where he is either?”

We also documented everything in triplicate (the photocopying costs tripled) and kept files at home or in our cars. When he tried to shift blame, well, there were the docs.

And we quietly went around all established lines of command and reached some responsible souls who could solve the situation. It’s such a pisser when it’s the boss who’s the problem. You want to respect the position even if you can’t respect the person, but when it gets that toxic there aren’t a lot of choices. We didn’t want a huge, ugly public housecleaning that would damage our institution. Getting the dirty laundry hauled out quietly seemed better for all.

Veb

I read you, Veb. :slight_smile: And there is always the possibility that he could repent… :)?

yes I have a bad boss like that:

http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum4/HTML/002117.html

One of the reasons I left my last job was that I realized it was my boss who belonged in therapy, not me. Sober alcoholic, with severe self-esteem problems. She’s in a position for which she is completely incompetent, and it’s with a nonprofit. I just keeping thinking about all those donations being poured down the black hole of her too-high salary. Any confrontation turns on the tears faucet, and I think she has some paranoia, too. Can’t be her problem, must be the staff ganging up on her! Just in the past few weeks, I’ve been hearing more and more from current staff about ethical lapses (reporting more hours than she worked, putting in for “reimbursibles”).

It’s really more sad than anything else. But the problem of “what about when it’s the boss?” definitely applies here. No one really knows what to do, the Board is filled with cronies or people who don’t want to rock the boat.

Definitely minor compared to the above (may I take a guess? Is/was this boss a District Attorney?). But still a major problem for this tiny nonprofit that depends on good pr. She’s disintegrating like paper in water.