Share your stories of being disrespected/abused/shat upon by your employers

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

At least three: the division head, the secretary, and the underling (who was a direct report to the division head–he was higher on the ladder than me and had some say in budgetary matters, but he was still an underling of the division head). I couldn’t confirm it, but I have a feeling another person in the division was in on it too; this guy was a good friend of the underling, and they were pretty buddy-buddy. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if these two cooked up the story over beers after work.

Their mistake was in trying to get the HR woman to buy into all this. While I did not interact with the secretary all that much, I did with the HR woman. We each were coffee-aholics, and got to know each other fairly well as we fed our addictions at the coffee maker in the lunchroom through the day. She knew me well enough that these charges against me seemed completely out of character, which prompted her to ask some questions until she had the full story.

I don’t believe that anybody else in the division knew about it. I did run into a guy who worked in it a few years later; he said everybody was surprised when I just left suddenly. They were not given the full story–probably because the HR woman told me as soon as she had the full story, and I wasted no time getting back to the division head before the really damaging rumours could start making the rounds. Of course, when I successfully confronted the division head, the conspirators didn’t dare speak of their unsuccessful scheme around the office. I told my old co-worker the story, and he was amazed, but not entirely surprised–seems there were other questionable activities and transactions that the underling dreamed up and the division head went along with (but nothing as radical as this), which led to head office pulling the plug on the division and getting out of that line of business.

42

This happened last week: I have a separate accounting computer which is kept in a locked room. There are only two keys to this room: Mine and the Big Boss’s. Nobody is suppose to use this computer. Yes, it’s a nice set up with the Internet and a printer, but it is to be used for accounting only. Nothing else. I explain this to new employees quite clearly. If you use that computer, you will be fired on the spot.

Friday I was very busy doing accounting stuff and left the door unlocked while I went upstairs to go over something with the Big Boss for five minutes. I come back down and Ms. New Employee, a twenty year old part time worker, is on my accounting computer. I go over to see what she is doing on it. “MYSPACE.COM”

I immediately see red, but I conquer my rage and page the Big Boss “Could you come down here for a minute?” (“For a minute” being our code for “get your ass here right now”). She sees Ms. Myspace and tells her to pack it up and leave right now.

43

Wow, does that ever sound familiar!

One company I worked for – I won’t mention their name, but it rhymes with CODAC – gave us all a review. We were evaluated on a number of different things, such as attitude, attendance, work quality, etc. In each area we got a rating from 1 to 7, one being poor and 7 being outstanding. My boss, never one to overwork himself, gave me a 5 in everything. That averaged out to – check my math on this – 5. Above average. Not a glowing review, but OK with me. But when I got the review, boss’s boss crossed out the 5 and wrote in a 3 – below average.

It didn’t take long for me to discuss this with my coworkers, and as it turns out the same thing happened to them. And boss’s boss was the one who did this. We’d met him for less than an hour maybe six months before. He had not a fucking clue what we even did there. So anyway when it came time to get raises, none of us got one. The reason? Our job performance was below average.

Part of the job was sorting mail for another company – let’s call them HAL. With some 800 employees, there was no way we could remember where all of them were. So we kept a database of them, and made a large-size printout above the mail sorting area. The printouts always lagged behind the database, so often we’d have to look someone up on the computer.

Boss lady (who replaced the other boss) got it into her mushy little head one day (the day before I quit) that we didn’t need a computer. Another HAL facility, also staffed by CODAC, would keep our data for us. We also didn’t need the printout. Whenever we needed to look someone up, we would have to call the other facility. Easy, right? After all, the other facility had nothing better to do than answer the phones.

Being that the next day was my last, I was going to rip the boss a new one for that decision. One of my coworkers beat me to it. I wasn’t privy to the entire rant, but I know the word “asinine” was used.

44

My first job out of university was as a real estate paralegal. The woman I replaced walked out at lunch and never came back - on her first day. That should have been a clue but I was jobless (with a liberal arts degree), a friend of mine was an attorney at the firm and she was desperate. My second week, one of the partners ordered me to clean up the carcass of a bird she had run over in the parking lot. The look of incredulity on my face must have given her a clue that there was no way in hell that was going to happen so she asked a secretary who was too spineless to refuse. A couple of months later, she ordered me to mop the vestibule as it was winter and those pesky clients had tracked in salt. That time I laughed outright in her face. I quit shortly thereafter and they never did manage to replace me.

45

During my first job at Panera Bread, oh say four years ago, my manager once barged into the bathroom and demanded I get back to work. That would be understandable if I was in there for a long time, but nay, I was in the middle of a shit and from checking my watch I knew I was only in there for 3 minutes.

That same manager later reduced my hours to 0 and then dropped my name off the roster. No reason given either. He was fired later though, mwahaha.

46

The only thing close to abuse I ever suffered was when I was writing and editing the command informatioin newspaper Aschaffenburg Forum when I was in the Army. I reported to a captain (whom I came to love like an older brother because of the way he treated me) and he reported to the Deputy Community Commander (DCC) a lieutenant colonel who was, quite simply, five-feet-six-inches of anus. His name (and no, I’m not kidding) was DaCunto, and I mention that because I’ve never known a man more aptly named.

Anyway, I pretty much flew under the colonel’s radar, although my captain was constantly getting his ass raked by the guy. Then the DoD command information section in Washington issued its 1976 journalism awards, and there was your’s truly, for a series we’d done on alcoholism in the military. After that, Ltc. DaCunto basically parked a shitstorm generator on my desk. He was apparently offended that (1) we’d dared to actually write that there was an alcoholism problem in the Army and (2) we’d done a really good job of writing it. After that, every single story and page layout had to be personally OK’d by him. This extended the process of publishing the newspaper by a full day, meaning all of our deadlines had to be backed up one day. When we accommodated that, he began finding fault with the stories, sometimes marking off whole paragraphs. Then he started tossing out the layouts, telling me to move some stories to the top (“But sir, the story isn’t long enough to lead the paper.” “Then write more!”). The worst was when he told me one day he wanted the word “soldier” to be capitalized. I tried to explain that “soldier” isn’t a proper noun, so it can’t be capitalized. He called me to attention and issued a direct order that “soldier” would be capitalized.

I never did capitalize that word, even though he ragged me about it constantly until he was transferred to command an infantry battalion several months later. I did get a modicum of revenge, however. The man was as bad as a combat commander as he was as an office manager. In his first field exercise, his battalion was tagged with 40 percent casualties in the first 15 minutes of action, due entirely to his ineptitude, and because his unit was tasked with one of the units I reported on, I got to reveal his miserable failure to all of our readers. The captain helped me write it so it didn’t get me court-martialed, and the new DCC turned a blind eye with, “Christ, Specialist, I don’t have time to read all that crap!”

47

Reminds me of one of my old jobs. Not really a story of disrespect or being shat upon, but is somewhat similar to your story, Sunrazor. Here you go:

I was a technical writer working for the World’s Greatest Boss (WGB). Among my duties, I wrote, edited, and designed the technical manuals produced by our department. I designed and implemented the style standards we would use too. Unofficially, I was also the answer-guy for all your grammar and punctuation needs, so I spent a lot of time counselling others in how to make their documents and memos and so on read well. WGB encouraged this; and even urged me to create and deliver little “How to Write Better” courses that could be delivered to our department from time to time.

One of the more enthusiatic attendees at these little courses was a woman named D. She admitted she needed a lot of help with writing, and appreciated the fact that we had them. D also did not hesitate to come to me with every letter, memo, and document she had to produce, so I could help fix it up for her. This I did, many times, but she didn’t seem to learn much from the experience, since she made the same errors over and over.

Well, one day WGB left for a better opportunity, and somehow (I have no idea how) D was put in charge of our little group. Suddenly, D became an expert at writing and editing–well, not really, since she was making the same errors she always had. But she apparently thought that getting appointed to WGB’s position made her an expert, and she also thought she should prove to the higher-ups how thoroughly she was managing her people. Now, every document I produced had to go through her for proofreading; and my nice, clean, and correct grammar and punctuation was returned marked up, with orders to make her changes, which were usually somehow incorrect. And in spite of knowing the style standards, she ordered changes that were inconsistent with the standards.

The kicker came when I had my annual performance review. For a number of years, WGB had evaluated my written communication skills as “Excellent, no improvement necessary.” But on the the first review from D, I received “Adequate, but needs improvement” in this area. It was obviously time for me to go, which I very happily did.

Ironically, not long after that and on the basis of the “little courses” I had created and delivered for WGB, I got a part-time instructor’s job at a local community college. Naturally, I was teaching writing skills, with a good dose of grammar and punctuation thrown in. Take that, D! :stuck_out_tongue:

48

Well, ok, then I’d shoot them.

49

The fourth day that I was working on a new job, my boss’s 80-year-old father groped me and made obscene remarks. I was horrified. I figured that the man must be suffering from dementia, so I didn’t mention it to anyone.

Then it happened again the very next day. Same kind of aggressive groping, different obscene remarks.

I went to my boss and told her about her father’s behavior. She laughed and said “Dad likes redheads. He thinks you’re cute. So what of it? Every job has its unwritten requirements.”

I guess I could have filed a sexual harassment claim, but I didn’t want a big battle. I just wanted out of there. So I quit. Much to my amazement, they did mail me my paycheck for five days’ work.

50

“I guess I was unaware that beating an 80 year old man within an inch of his life was one of the unwritten requirements of the job. I promise to get right on that next time he comes by.”

Or you could just have set up a camera to record the assault, then called the police and filed charges against both of them.

51
  1. Working in a corporate mailroom. I was among seventeen other employees/grunts, all under one manager. Every month, my manager’s superiors would pick an “Employee of the Month” from all of the company’s divisions, including the mailroom. If one of my immediate coworkers was picked, said coworker would be fired within a month by my manager, through some sort of trumped-up charge.

Happened to me, too. I figure that he was afraid he’d lose his job if any of his underlings looked too good to his bosses.

  1. I pulled a stint as the database designer for a non-profit organization. I managed the network, designed the registration database from the ground up, built two computers from scratch, managed the advertising, and handled the membership, even booked entertainment… all for six bucks an hour, as a temp.

After three months, I approached my boss and showed him that the company could save a dollar an hour on me, if they gave me a slight raise and hired me on full-time. He wouldn’t do it. I quit for a better job that day.

  1. Working in a college computer lab, as a tech. I was part-time, so I didn’t get any sort of benefits package, and I was only making about ten bucks an hour. My immediate boss quit, so my lone coworker and I had to fill his position- I ended up working 56-hour weeks.

Eventually, the head of the department decided that the lab needed another manager… so she hired someone from outside to come in and fill that position, rather than promoting one of us. She picked a Pretty Young Thing who was fresh out of college, who supposedly had a degree in computer science.

The PYT manager was, simply put, clueless. She didn’t even know how to format a hard drive. She lasted about a month, and then quit to work somewhere else for more money.

The head hired someone else to replace the PYT. We ended up with a woman who was fairly good with computers, but absolutely horrible with subordinates. Coworker and I quit within a month, after being treated like idiots by the new manager, simply because neither of us had any sort of formal training or degrees.

52

The CEO of my company (where I’m employed as their Travel Manager) had me change his travel itinerary which involved re-writing his airline ticket.
The airline required the payment of a $100 penalty plus the difference in fare.

He wanted to know if he could get out of paying any more money.
-No.
Could he just pay the penalty and no additional fare?
-No.
How about just the additional fare with NO penalty?
-No.

and here’s the kicker…

Could I just call our sales rep and tell them that I had issued the ticket WRONG in the first place and that the new itinerary was the CORRECT ONE ALL ALONG?

:eek:

“So”, I said, “you want me to LIE for you?”
He responded “Would it work?”
Me- “Yes… but I won’t do it.”
I went on to let him know WHY I wouldn’t jeopardize my professional standing with a peer.

I thought for sure I was walking myself out the door.
I’m still at the same company.
It’s really a great job.
And I don’t get asked to do such things anymore.

53

The explanation for that could be “because he was a jerk” but then again, there may have been other factors at work. Temp agencies hate it when their temp staff get hired full time by clients, so they usually build some kind of penalty for doing so into the contract (the organization might have had to pay the temp agency 6 months of your salary or something). If the non-profit organization used temps from that agency a lot, simply thinking that they wouldn’t get good service in the future if they poached one of the temp’s employees might have been enough to make them back off.

But you were there, I wasn’t, so maybe you have good reason to believe the guy was just being unreasonable.

54

:smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

55

The crap I used to get from my old office manager cow-orker happened mostly behind my back.

I heard one little gem, when she heard my girlfriend was pregnant, she asked a friend of mine in the office if she knew if (and these are her words) my girlfriend was a long term partner or someone I had just gotten pregnant after a one night stand :dubious: Never mind all the barely disguised and quite pointed questions she asked about my work hours to see if she could figure out my living arrangements with my girlfriend. And never mind the gossip she had with one of the admin staff who liked to be kept appraised of the minutae of office gossip :rolleyes:

She also gave the same poor co-worker friend grief when she her first pregnancy miscarried, telling her that it was one of those things that was “meant to be” :mad:

Thinking about her just makes me feel sick that she was ever an office manager. Someone who takes 3 weeks sick leave from the “stress” of paying £25 to have her car unclamped, because she didn’t bother her arse to have her parking permit updated when she moved to a new office on campus can hardly be said to be qualified to manage anything.

56

I had the best job ever turn into the worst job ever.

The shift was perfect. 12 hours on, 12 hours off, 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., Mon., Tues., and Wed. and every other Sun. An average 40+ hours of work per week for me and the company only needed me and three others (the whole production dept.) in my position to operate 24-7. The pay was the highest hourly wage I’ve ever received.

Jody hired me. He managed Production, Finishing and Shipping. The rest of the Co. was a bunch of asshole salesmen who didn’t have a clue about what they were selling and all thought they were my boss and that their orders should be my top priority. Jody made a point of protecting his employees from that shit to the point of getting a number of sales-asses fired for messing with us while we were trying to do our job.

Then came Gregory.

Despite high productivity, low waste, met deadlines, satisfied customers, etc. Jody had not gotten a raise for too long (by his account) and found a (hopefully) better position elsewhere.

Gregory had a favorite word. Proactive. If anything was in place before he took over–no matter how well it was working–he felt it was his Proactive duty to change it.

Almost instantly I was put on the 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Thurs.- Sat. (plus every other Sun.) shift which totally screwed up my whole life’s schedule (most deleteriously, my sleep schedule–I was asleep on my feet for the whole 2 months I remained there).

As bad as that; he gave the sales-pricks free rein to run around the production floor wasting their time and ours in counter-productive attempts to speed up the work-flow (of just their orders, of course). He would even back them up. “Yeah, Mann, why isn’t Dick’s order done yet? He gave it to you an hour ago and it’s only a two hour job and you only had 12 hours of priority work ahead of it. Don’t you realize that he needs it by the Friday after next?”

The end came after he started making Production personnel (like me) come in even if there was no work (which was happening more and more as we missed deadlines and lost clients) and had us work in Finishing when they were backed up (which was constantly, due to Gregory’s decision to “trim the fat” from that dept.). This despite the long-standing company policy of bringing in much lower-paid temps for this. Temps with more experience and more skill in Finishing Dept.-type chores than us.

One Sunday I came in to find that I was working under Joanne (a younger, shorter-time, and lower-paid employee than me) who suddenly had the newly-invented title of Supervisor of Finishing. She proceeded to give me all the shit jobs–not in spite of but because I had the least knowledge of them. Just before my 12-hour shift was over she began making crass remarks about me to the bemusement of her staff. She seemed to be daring me to say something back, so I kept silence. When, however, she called me “the biggest cocksucker in the county” I decided enough was enough and I left with 15 minutes to go on my shift.

The next morning I came in at opening time on my day off just to complain. While I wrote a report for HR she was in a closed door meeting with Gregory. Gregory went straight to the GM. I was called into a meeting run by Gregory in which I faced across the table; Joanne and her whole four-woman crew of the day before. He asked them to tell their side first. Each of them gave exactly the same untrue story of my ‘belligerence’. When it finally came my turn to talk Gregory kept intentionally interrupting me before I could make any point with comments like “You don’t have to respond to that if you don’t want to” and “Are you sure you want to go on record with that”, etc.

After the meeting Gregory again went to see the GM and within 5 minutes the HR Director came and told me to clear out. I asked about my report to him and he just looked at me. The official reason for my termination was ‘abandonment’.

I won’t say what I think is the real reason. Most won’t believe me and I might end up getting Pitted. I did do some research right afterwards and found that no-one had ever successfully sued on those grounds. Oh, well.

57

Huh, that’s funny. In Spain it’s a common way for companies to try out people without having to worry about benefits, plus you never need a reason to fire someone hired through a temp agency (for a direct temp contract, you do).

Rich Mann, btdt: I had something like that happen in one of my temp jobs. My direct manager topped it off by starting her days yelling to the warehouse manager, at the top of her lungs, “I’m going to rip your head off!” I’m told my nickname for her, the Queen of Hearts, is still in use 7 years later.

58

This story relates the only time a boss who was shitty to me got his (delayed) comeuppance.

I had been doing some contract programming for a company for a few months, and they were satisfied with my work. They hired a new manager for the group I was in. After a couple of slightly rocky months, I was in his office discussing something with him. I forget the precise circumstances, and there may have been a third person present.

I don’t remember the exact context, but he said to me, jokingly, “After all, you’re a whore.” (I’m male, FTR.)

I was a bit taken aback, but I tried to laugh it off and, in a dazzling (for me) display of wit, summoned up the standard comeback, “I may be a whore, but I’m not cheap.”

He immediately got serious and replied in a matter-of-fact tone, “You’re in no position to remind me of that.”

A couple more months of shit towards the others in the department as well as general incompetence, and he was fired. I continued to work for that company several months after that. After a couple of intervening projects elsewhere, that company brought me back for more contracting.

59

Not my story, but my late brother #2’s story.

#2 was disabled with Muscular Dystrophy, but had a job working at a very large Event Ticket seller.
He was the only college graduate working there and very good at his job. Nearly everyone working there was barely a high school graduate. Before the disease and depression took away everything. He always received excellent work reviews no matter where he worked.

#2 was still mobile at this time, using only a cane for balance. But, getting off the toilet was starting to be a problem for him. The only way for him to do so, because his leg muscles were atrophying and could not bear weight like that, was to use the handicap bars on the stall and rock back and forth to get up enough uumph to stand up. Sometimes, once he stood up, it was a pistol for him to pull his pants up because his balance was all farked up due to loss of muscle. He was in his late 30’s, probably about 38 or so at this time.
The day after he received another glowing review and pay raise, #2 was stuck on the toilet and he just couldn’t get to his feet. Half hour. More or less. Doesn’t matter. It probably seemed like some kind of hell trapped in that position in that little metal cube not being able to do anything.

When another male employee of bigger stature came in to see if he was OK, #2 said (absolutely humilitated) he needed help rising. This kind soul assisted without any problems and a “don’t worry about it” and helped him get his pants back up.

When management heard the news, #2 was fired the next day.

Fuckin’ bastards.

I had told #2 to sue them. He had a Big Fat Case and all that. ( I also said this to give him something to do other than sleep and watch TV. I didn’t understand depression like I do now.)

He said, " We are not people who sue. Besides, by the time the case is final, I’ll be dead."

I understood the first part, having been in this family and all it’s jocularity my entire life. ( Honor & integrity…bah! It doesn’t pay the bills.) and the second part, well, yeah, that is a given, given his circumstances.

" Yeah, you may be dead, but you can will the damages due to you to ME! Your Favorite Sister! only sister. Won’t you think of my future!!!111!!!"

It was 12 years before he died a long, slow, miserable death. That was the last job he ever held and it just shattered the small amount of self esteem he had left. Fuckers.
I spit on you T****** M*****.

60

Go ahead, you can say it. Feel free to spit on Ticket Master.