Stories About Good Bosses

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Most of the supervision in my office sucks. Then there’s my immediate supervisor. I’ll call her M.

M used to be a raving lunatic psycho boss from Hell. But somewhere along the way, she changed. It’s a long story, but let it suffice to say that she has now earned the loyalty, respect, and admiration of all her employees.

It’s the little things she does for us as people that keep us with her. Silly little things, really, but they do a lot to let us know that she appreciates us and our work. Childish things, like giving us stickers for jobs well done. It makes us laugh, which is what we need. Then there’s what she did today.

Everyone has been depressed lately. The local government we work for is in dire financial trouble, and things are just a mess. Then there’s the terrorist attack. We’ve all been sad and stressed. So today, she decided it was time to redecorate the office, for Halloween.

She went to Home Depot and bought a bunch of Halloween decorations. Then, she printed a bunch of black and white fall and Halloween type pictures, like scarecrows, pumpkins, and skeletons. She passed them out to us and said “okay everyone, it’s arts and crafts time! Let’s color!”

So there we were, eight grown women, sitting at our desks, coloring with as many different colored highlighter pens as we could scrounge, and having a great time.

Then we hung our pictures on the walls, laughed at each other’s blue skeletons and green scarecrows, and went back to work.

Thanks, boss. We needed that. :smiley:

2

Too bad that there aren’t more bosses like that!

3

I work as a baker(see my username, duh!) and both my current boss and my previous one were great. In both jobs I have been able to experiment with recipes or try new ones, to add to the repetoire of our places of business. In my current job my hours are allowed to be somewhat flexible. If one day runs long or another short, that’s okay as long as all needed product is available. In my previous job I was sponsored annually to do a gingerbread house for a local charity function. I could work after hours and use work ingredients. Both bosses gave compliments when work was well done, and such things are often as important to ones morale as a raise. If I was sick(VERY rarely) I never got quizzed as to whether or not I was goofing off. End result, I LIKE going to work. Happy worker=better product=happy customers=more income for place of business=jobsecurity.

4

Karen was the director at the preschool I taught at for 7 years and she never asked me to do anything she wouldn’t do herself. She never quizzed me as to why I was sick or late, which I had to be 1/2 dead to call in sick because I knew she had to cover for me. She said since we worked from 7 to 3 or 9 to 5, we had to live a lot of our lives from work, so her office was open to use the phone for personal stuff. Nobody abused it. She loved kids and she loved mine so much they called her Aunt Teacher Karen. She was a great boss, giving clear assignments and lots of praise. If I had an idea, she would let me run with it. She encouraged continuing education and new methods. I never had a better boss. When she retired, she recommended me for her position and I tried to be as good a boss as she was.

5

“You can either be popular with the powerful or popular with the peons.”

-Eternal

6

My boss is a great buffer between us and the crap that comes down above us. She takes a lot of the heat and pressure and doesn’t push it back down on us.

She babysat for me once when my son was a baby. And brought dinner for us when we got home from the hospital.

She invites the quilters in the office to her house on certain Saturdays so we can all work together on projects.

She buys us all lunch occasionally. And is supportive of our tendency to want to hold office potlucks.

She is behind me getting my dissertation done. She asked what the people in the office could do to help, and reminded me she’d make any arrangements necessary to help me finish (time off, etc).

Plus, she keeps giving me merit bonuses. :slight_smile:

7

My old store manager at McDonalds was awesome. I loved working for her, and with her. She always made sure I had my 40 hours in, not just because the store needed a manager, but because she knew I needed the paychecks. Even in Janauary, when our sales were sucking ass, and her supervisor kept telling her to cut me down to 30 or so with all the crew people, she took the sales loss. She’d take us out to dinner once a month or so, to remind us that she appreciated the work we put in. At night, she always called to make sure I was okay, and had enough staff on. She’d wake up at 1 am and call to see how my night went, when he got up to go to the bathroom. Leaving that job was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make…

8

Persephone, that’s beautiful! I’m glad you have such a swell person to work with.

Today, I really admired my boss, the veterinarian at an APS Clinic/ Wildlife Shelter. We had a long-planned benefit dinner on Monday, and, being non-profit, we are pretty desperate for money. A lot of funds were raised at the dinner, but he elected to give well over half to relief efforts for pets in New York City now. I’m lucky to work for such a generous person.

9

I’m just off of a psycho boss (shivers), but my new supervisor is right up my alley. While I work in a pretty structured environment (academia), the work I do is creative (Web design, other new media stuff), and she offers me a lot of leeway as a result. She knows sometimes I need to come and sit on her floor and vent. Also, even though she doesn’t know the details of what I do (HTML, JavaScript, PhotoShop…they’re all voodoo to her), she’s smart enough to ask questions that let her know what I’m learning to keep our materials fresh. Finally, she knows that there are a lot of compsci types out there that know more code than I do, but that my design skills are invaluable in presenting an image. :slight_smile: