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Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I had a boss at my last job that tried to be evil but was just too incompetent and off her rocker to do it. We used to call her “the space cadet.” She’d palm off responsiblity for all her projects on to other people in the department, then forget to check and see whether we’d done “our” work. So, of course, we never did any of the work she was supposed to be doing herself…

Thus her evilness was mainly confined to verbal assaults. But she was too chicken to chew us out to our faces, so she indulged in backstabbing instead. Among her “greatest hits”: declaring that a pregnant co-worker’s unborn child was not the result of her husband’s doings (not those exact words, if you catch my drift), launching homophobic diatribes against another (the punchline–she was gay, too), and calling the president of the college “a doddering old fart.” If that last one seems tame, you have to realize that nearly everyone in the college was begging him to get rid of her, and he wouldn’t do it because he felt “she could turn the department around.” Which, truthfully she was…in the wrong direction, though.

Most of all, la space cadet was best known for her lame excuses for not working. Once she failed to show up for work for about three days running. She did not try to contact anyone and calls to her apartment went unanswered. When she finally appeared, we asked her what happened. “I was sick.” Why didn’t you try to call us? “I forgot.” Two people asked her separately what was wrong with her and got two completely different answers…she wasn’t even bothering to get her stories straight! Another time she failed to show up for an evening meeting with the president and a donor. The next morning she came into the office, explaining that she’d had car trouble. I asked her what the garage said was wrong with it. “Oh, I didn’t take it to the garage–it started working again.” How convenient :rolleyes:

I left 14 months ago, and four months ago I got a call from one of my old co-workers saying she’d been fired. Apparently, 18 months into a three-year, $12 million campaign, she had raised $500,000. Oops.

22

My boss is cool…but at my last place…

She was a micromanaging bitch from hell. She was the business manager, and I was the assistant. I’d have to ask for permission to order more toilet paper for the bathrooms. Not, “Hey, I’m going to order more toilet paper,” but “May I order more toilet paper? We’re down to using the cardboard tubes at this point.”

She’d tell me to do something, I’d do it, then she’d yell at me that that wasn’t what she wanted me to do.

I was friendly with my replacement. Turned out she moved her assistant into the office next to hers and kept the adjoining door open so she could listen to her phone calls. But when she had to make a phone call…

I remember one day she and the GM were rushing around in closed door meetings. When she was done, she called me into her office and told me two of the employees had been fired for fighting (punching, not yelling) at the office. One had a broken arm, the other a broken nose.

I was shocked, and began taking notes about changing the alarm system, locks, etc. Then, she said in an accusatory, sarcastic tone, “You already knew about this, didn’t you?” I told her I didn’t, and realized later she thought I had faked my reaction. I was friends with another manager who was at the same seniority level, and she didn’t like it. In fact, she had me keep tabs on what time he arrived at work, planning I guess on docking his pay, but the GM put a stop to that. But she thought I had got the skinny on the brouhaha from my friend and was pretending with her that I was unaware of the situation. How bizarre is that?

23

My wife’s first boss out of college was quite literally the queen bitch of the universe. The godzilla of queens!

She knew everything about nothing, lied on her resume to get the job as boss, and completely made my wifes life a living inferno!

Finally, my wife walkes up to said bitch and with her 25 year old, just got my master’s best attitude said: "Look! I have never been walked away from, cut off, ignored and treated this poorly by any human being in my life! Pathetic! "

Slammed the door and walked to her office gathered her things and left.

HEHEHEHE -> Three years later my wife has her doctorate and gets promoted with-in her publishing house to a senior position, only to find out she’d working with ex-assholes brother…who tells her she was fired two weeks after my wife left the company for harrassment.

24

I’m my own boss now, and while it’s tempting to tell some hair-curling stories about my own nervey bitchiness, I’ll share something from the past instead.

A restaurant owner I used to work for perfected the art of nepostism, hiring and giving all the best money shifts to family members, most of whom were one step ahead of the law and I swear, I don’t know how some of those lazy morons managed to keep that one step distance. When the owner’s brother was shot in a bar fight, he (the multi-millionaire owner) threw a benefit to cover the punk’s medical expenses…then issued a directive to all his staff, from all his restaurants, that if he didn’t find their donation check in the pot, they might as well not show up the next day. This means everyone, from single mother waitresses going to grad school to Mexican dishwashers who had to carry scraps home at night to feed the family.

I spent that evening looking for a new job.

25

Job I had years ago.

I was doing billing for a hospital, and we were an outside company hired for it.

My boss pulls me off what I’m going to work this project for the hospital, while he goes and plays around with his brand new laptop.

Through some process I still do not fully understand, he manages to erase the exact database I’m going to be using. As in, he erases it OFF of our systems altogether. Nowhere in the building does this data exist anymore.

When I discover this, I slump back in my chair, and say, “I’m gonna kill him.”

He overhears me, and had me fired for threatening his life.

26

I think I’ve told this story on the board before, but it’s a good one.

Back before the White Stripes got big, they played a $5 show in Memphis on a Monday night. I was all excited to go until I was told by my cuntsack boss that I was to have a performance evaluation at 9 AM on Tuesday. Now, I knew my boss didn’t like me already (she had made it perfectly clear), and I knew that if I went to the show I would most likely not get very much sleep and would very probably have something of a hangover the next day. So I decided to do the “grownup” thing and and not go to the show I had been anticipating for weeks in order to look chipper enough to convince the idiot I was a good employee.

Tuesday dawns. Guess what the date was? September 11, 2001! I got into work, booted up my computer, saw the Yahoo! headlines, said “Oh my fucking God!” Then my boss called and said “It’s time for your performance evaluation.” I said “Shouldn’t we, like, postpone this?” “No!” So we try and do the performance evaluation (it wasn’t as negative as I had feared) while the freaking world melted down outside. We could literally hear people in the office screaming as the reports came in. I heard somebody say “The Pentagon’s been hit!” Needless to say, my mind was not on the performance evaluation, which lasted OVER AN HOUR!

Here’s the kicker: I was laid off on January 3, 2002 along with half of the remaining employees. The company went under six months later–many employees worked for the last month and never got paid for it. So the stupid fucking performance evaluation had absolutely no impact on my future employment with the doomed company. Sitting in that whore’s office putting on a happy, productive, model employee face while my guts were twisted up in fear and Pearl Harbor happening live on television meant absolutely nothing in the long run. It wouldn’t have made any difference if I came in stinking of gin with a joint tucked behind my ear. The moral of the story is “Always go to the show.”

27

True, that!

I’m still kicking myself for missing my chance to see Stevie Ray Vaughn play live for some stupid, meaninless reason.

Unfortunatly, I don’t think I’ve learned my lesson yet. I am most likely going to miss Big Head Todd tommorrow night so I can pass out candy to non-existant Trick-or-Treaters. :frowning:

28

The boss in my office really acted like a jerk today. I mean, he gets upset just because one of his secretaries forgot to mention that she’d be three hours late due to a parent’s day thingy at her kid’s school. Seems that caused him to miss some personal contacts he was supposed to make because he had to do all of her research work that was needed for a noon meeting. Hey! Who cares about schedules and personal contacts, right? And I mean, people do forget parent’s day until the last minute, right? Nothin’ to get upset about.

Then the other secretary’s sister calls and she just got back from the dermatologist and had to tell all this important stuff, ya’ know? So what does the boss do? When it gets to be 3:30 he goes and interrupts this important phone call to mention that they’ve got to get some payments issued to clients today!

I mean, whatta’ jerk! Like, those people can do without their money until next week or whatever, right?

Oh wait: That shitty boss would be me…

29

About 10 years ago, my boss at a large Music retailer that won’t be named (but rhymes with “Husicband”) was a serious workaholic and all around strange nut.

1> On a business trip to Boston, he called us and left each of us 10+ minute status reports on where he thought we should be on our projects. (um, I thought that was our job?) Mine was at 2:50am.

2> He apparently didn’t like the fact that we were having a division picnic, so he held our unit hostage in the board room giving us a long, boring and extremely useless presentation while the rest of the IT area had the picnic.

3> Called us into his office one at a time to ask us each to work 50 hours a week. “Just to show your dedication”. Didn’t like it when I said “25% more hours, 25% more pay”.

The guy worked 80-90 hours a week. On my last day, at 3:30pm, he yelled at me because I was sitting at my now empty desk, reading the newspaper (he wouldn’t let me leave early, even though I had completed handing everything off.) “We’re not paying you to read the paper!” Ten minutes later he’s in his office looking at another manager’s vacation pictures. Hypocritical jerk.
Boss 1 at last job was ok, but she spent too much time coddling a real nutjob, the woman who was central to the monthly production process. This woman insisted that people panic when things went wrong. She got extremely upset and complained to our manager when I refused to do so after a minor glitch, because it supposedly showed that I wasn’t taking it seriously enough. Boss 1 asked me to panic a little just to mollify the nutjob and was irritated when I refused.

Boss 3, the last one, was a 26 year old newbie manager. Great at organization, shit at people skills. (of course) This jackass would come into the 10am Thursday morning meetings, during the summer, and say, with enthusiasm, “Great News! We’ve got computer time this weekend, so everyone cancel their vacations and plans, because we’re all working!”. Did this for 8 weeks in a row before I put in my notice. When I did, I pointedly said “Just who the fuck thinks it’s great news to have to work every damned weekend and cancel their vacation plans?”

He didn’t get it, because my last week, he pulled the same trick on the two remaining people on the project. One was a consultant who had it specifically noted in her contract that she didn’t work weekends during the summer, but had been forced to do so to the point where her fiance said he’d leave her if she worked that particular weekend. The other was headed home (out of state) to be a maid of honor in a friend’s wedding. When they told him they couldn’t work and the reasons, without even looking up from his day planner, he said “well, I’ll leave it to you two to work it out”.

Fucking putz. I hear he got a job as a Director of Database Operations less than a year later, at another company. I pity the people damned by fate to work for him.

30

My last boss, among many other things, was a completely disorganized and technophobic guy who expected even the lowliest admin person (that would have been me) to drop all other obligations at a moments’ notice to do the most mundane things for him.

Case in point: when they hired me, I told them upfront that I had some ankle surgery scheduled, which would require crutches and rehab. The job was a desk job, so they told me it was no problem. I was only out for a couple of days, and then I resumed hobbling around on crutches.

The rehab was the hard part. I scheduled all the appointments for after working hours, and gave my boss a rehab schedule for a month ahead of time. It was a regular schedule, 2-3 times a week. But it meant I had to leave at 5 pm sharp to get there on time. Several times, I would go into his office near then end of the day and give him the heads-up that I had to leave soon, and his reaction was “But I need you to stay late tonight!” The reason: he had a client project to get out that he’d been sitting on for weeks, and he didn’t know how to type his own edits, open the docuemnt on the computer, or push the “send” button on the fax machine. And let’s not even talk about e-mail!

(I’d been told my bilingualism was a huge asset for that position, but in the end it basically consisted of printing his e-mails and connecting him on conference calls, because he apparently had some fundamental inability to push buttons that weren’t metaphorical ones.)

31

My current boss is great, but my previous one…

I’ve grown increasingly convinced that the last company I worked at was just a front to scam money from a bunch of venture capitalists. The CEO was a 20-something computer whiz who had an idea for a great new database management software. When I first interviewed with them, their beta release was scheduled for next month. When I left a year later, their beta release was still scheduled for “next month.” The entire time I was there, we never produced a single product (I wrote their promos and marketing materials, which wasn’t easy when the product never existed). Anyway, the CEO was a clueless dipshit, but he wasn’t an evil boss.

The COO was a 40-ish smooth-talker who didn’t know jack shit about software. That might not have been a major problem if he’d been straight about it and gotten everyone to work together at getting up to speed (this is assuming that the company was legit). Instead, he’d have a completely new bullshit explanation (usually based on whatever set of buzzwords he’d gotten from the latest BusinessWeek) for how everything was supposed to work, and would answer every question with “I can’t believe you’re so ignorant as to not know that already.” None of the explanations had anything to do with anything that had been said before, but since saying this would be admitting that he was less than perfect, it was simply announced that Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia, and that we were to blame for our marketing materials not reflecting the true state of affairs.

A small company can’t bleed money forever, and the guys who had ponied up the initial $5 million (as well as an additional $5 million about halfway during my tenure there), were going to need to see results before any more money was forthcoming. The top brass had a choice: either take charge and produce some results, or run around in a panic trying to slash short-term costs so the money will last a few extra weeks. You can guess which one they chose. They began actively harassing people to get them to quit. They installed a punch clock so they’d have the necessary records to fire anyone who came in at 9:01. Eventually, they just resorted to calling people into the meeting room and telling them “we’re not making a profit and it’s all your fault. You’re fired.”

The CEO still has a little one-room office somewhere in Tokyo. I think about calling him every once in a while and pretending to be a company interested in his software just to yank his chain.

32

Most of you folks have me beat by a mile but I had a boss years ago who had this fetish about secretly listening in on everybody’s phone calls. He would see the little light on his fancy phone that said you were on, then he would tap right in. We never suspected this was the case, we thought our phone lines were just lousy.

One Friday, discussing the weekend football plans, my end of the conversation went something like this: "Bring some beer? OK … Rum, too … What about Coke? Will there be Coke there, or should I bring some Coke … "

In he comes, saying he don’t want no filthy hippie drug traffickers working at his crappy little process server company. We agreed that my days there were over.

He looked the most like Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss than any human being I have ever encountered before or since. He was also the chair of the local Korean War vets association, and about one day a week on average would come to work in full dress uniform, with hat. True!

33

I’m starting to think that this is how corporate mergers should be done.

34

** Isabelle **I certainly hope you are documenting the treatment you are receiving. Possibly even putting some complaints in writing. My mother in law was treated the same way, and documented everything for two years. Her case was settled out of court, for more than twice of what she made in a year. The a-hole was canned, and she still has the job.

35

Okay, this was a heirarchy of evil, so to speak. My immediate boss was a friend of mine, so that wasn’t so bad. His boss was a bit of an annoying git whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to foist work on other people. -His- boss was his father, a mean old bastard who pretty much hated all of humanity.
So, the job was tour guide, and I had to give a speech and show a silent movie to a bunch of grade schoolers. Oddly, I thought it would be worse than it was, but the kids really seemed to like it. Anyway, the timing of the tours made it so I could -either- rewind the projector -or- give the speech, but not both.
Week 1: My boss’s boss threads the projector for me each time. I figure, this is the way it’s going to go.

Week 2: Occasionally b’s b doesn’t show up, I have to thread the projector, the tours go overtime.

Week 3: I’m cussed out by b’s b for not keeping things running fast enough, and because the ‘speech isn’t interresting enough.’

Week 4: I’m cussed out because I made some changes to the speech to make it more interresting (‘You have to stick with the speech we gave you, word for word!’) (What the heck was I supposed to do to make it more interresting? Light myself on fire?)
At this point I’m getting flak from b’s b’s b (dad), and when he lets loose, he -really- lets loose, swearing in front of the grade school kids, etc., telling me that I should -make- time to get the film threaded and do the speech. Hey, if I could just -create- more time, yeah, that’s the solution!

Week 5: When hired, I gave very specific hours that I could work. These hours do not match my schedule in the slightest. I tell my boss this, he says he’ll look into it. More screaming from (dad).

Week 6: Still bad hours. Now getting flak for not being able to make said hours.

Week 7: Planned vacation. I told everyone up the chain -when I was hired- that I needed this week off.

Week 8: I come back to find I’ve been fired. Not showing up for scheduled hours. The worst part? They won’t even tell me. Just keep telling me I’m ‘not scheduled this week’ until I push the issue with my boss, who confirms my status. The next week I came back for my final paycheck, and the (dad) actually has the balls to suggest I pay to get into the museum before I go to the offices to get my check!

36

Years ago…when I was just out of school 1-2 months, I had a boss who was the biggest unmentionable orafice to ever grow a hemoroid, with the slight difference that such an orafice would be smarter and smell better. To him, all college educations were a waste of money & time. “Look at me, you didn’t see me wasting my money there…and you report to me!”

He had a drinking problem. He had a coke problem. He had a button problem, because he’d where shirts that were to small and the buttons popping off damn near took peoples eyes out.

The business was a finance company, but his pride & joy were Repossessions. He’d drive around all night looking for these cars to have them taken…and when he got one, all the personal possessions in it were ‘up for grabs’ (by him). That, and he’d drive it around as his personal car until it was time to ship it to the auction.

I once recieved from him a performance evaluation in a bar, after which he insisted on driving me back to the office. He was drunk, driving a reposessed car, and I asked him for the keys. He says “get in the car or your fired.” I get in…and its worse than I susected…he can’t even keep the car on the road. We manage to get within a 1/2 mile of the building and he drives up the curb and hits a telephone pole. Then he gets out and starts puking his guts out. I got out & walked the rest of the way. I figured if he was so smart, he’d think of what to tell the cops.

The next day he berated me for leaving him there. I had resumes out that night. After I left, I heard he totaled a car that someone wanted to payoff in cash and that a major law suit was filed. Personally, I thought it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

37

For awhile after college, I worked in a fairly well-known fabric store in the CA East Bay. I had put in an application some time earlier, and when the boss called me for an interview, I had just planned a 3-week trip overseas. So I told her that, right up front. She said that was OK, just come on in for an interview and we would see what happened. At the interview, I gave her the dates for the trip and she noted them down. When she called to hire me, I again mentioned the trip, now 7-8 weeks away. She waved it off, saying it would be fine.

Of course, when I saw the August schedule, my trip was not noted. I reminded her of the dates, and she was dumbfounded. A trip?! I had not mentioned any such thing! This would screw up the vacations for everyone! How could I pull this?! I was pretty annoyed, but I had bought our tickets and there was no way I was going to cave, as she clearly wanted me to do. She tried to schedule me for the day I would be flying back, too.

When I got back, I found that I was scheduled on the next holiday weekend, unasked. (The policy was that employees were asked if they were willing to work, since several always were.) I didn’t make a fuss, and didn’t really care (Labor Day, woohoo), but that was the last time I was scheduled for the entire month of September. She had essentially fired me without having to tell me. I scrambled around to find something to pay the rent and landed a much better job at a school–I heard from her once more, to ask if I could work one day. I said no, and nothing ever happened again.

That aside, she was more generally psycho. She would fly off the handle unexpectedly, for random errors, and then scream at the employee in her office–which was right behind the cutting tables and the registers. Every customer could hear her yelling and ranting for 10 minutes at a time to some poor worker. She also wanted us to work overtime for free, and not to take lunches or breaks. The list went on…so I was well out of it. Ever since, she has been my model for How Not to Behave Professionally.

38

Shitty boss story #? I was hired as a technician, yet the installer/driver had enough one day and quit. Boss reviews my application and sees a CDL, so I’m the new driver.

One morning, I arrive and the truck is sitting quite low. After collecting the incoming bills of lading and doing some calculator work, I determine that the truck is only about 4 tons over GVW.

As usual, Boss McBunghole is vibrating all over, wanting me to be gone 20 minutes ago. I refuse to drive the truck, and he threatens to issue a disciplinary letter, and suspend me for insubordination. I shrug and tell him to go for it, and begin to copy the bills of lading on the office copier.

Then he throws the breaking ball-he tells me how important it is for everything to get to x today. Fine-get a second truck and driver. I’m done copying by now.

Next he goes postal, starts screaming that he’ll fire me, rape my cat, and everything else if I don’t drive the truck right away. I sit down at a spare desk, grab a phone book, find a number and dial.
While he’s ranting, the phone is answered, and he hears me say, “Hi. This is danceswithcats. I’m at 123 Dingleberry Drive, in West Hogshead. Can you send down a Trooper with a portable scale ASAP? My supervisor wants me to drive an overweight truck, and I think an Officer of the Law should explain some things to him about vehicle safety. Thanks.”

I’d pay money for a picture of his face. I thought he was either going to explode or have a heart attack. He had the warehouseman pulling goods off the truck when the Trooper arrived, and tried to tell him that it was “a misunderstanding.” The Trooper didn’t buy it, but since the vehicle wasn’t in motion on a public street, no citation could be issued.

After that incident, he learned quickly that my pre-trip inspections took twice as long when he was being a shit as they did when he was civil. :smiley:

39

I worked for a large trade mag publishing company that was evil at one time. The pay scale was extremely uneven, and the entry-level copy editors were at the bottom of the barrel, making just $13.5K for professional work. I had an “in” with one of the company accountants and learned that the 20 or so publishers made $90K or so per year, and also had perks like a $750/month car allowance, primarily for tax reasons. Some of the salesmen made more than the publishers. There was one junior copy editor per pub, though a publisher might have three pubs or just one, and salesmen for the most aprt worked for specific pubs. So there weren’t a LOT of junior copy editors in relation to other, higher-paying positions.

One year the company’s profits were a little low, so management was looking to cut some funds – guess who took the hit? Yeah, the junior copy editors’ salaries were cut to $12.5K a year. They could have gotten the same effect by cutting car allowances by $100 a month, but … heaven forfend!

40

I love these stories…makes me want to kiss my boss’s feet.

Ivylad once had a job as an overnight clerk at a convenience store. The manager would bitch about thinkgs he’d done on the overnight shift, even though he followed the checklist to a T.

One day, she left him a note next to the register, so it had been seen by all the clerks that day. About how this was done poorly and this wasn’t done and this should have been done differently. At the end she writes “If you can do the job as I ask I will find someone who can.” With a smiley face, no less!

Ivylad writes at the bottom of the note, “Find someone else” and left at the end of his shift.

Later, her boss, the regional manager of the convenience stores called Ivylad, asking him if he’d like to work at another store. As a manager, no less!