What is the worse boss you've ever had and tell us some stories about them?

I had a boss that was really racist, but was too stupid to even realize it.

Examples:

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, she would give the black employees the day off because it was a “black” holiday.

The mother of one the aforementioned black employees died of breast cancer, and she said to me with a straight face, in all seriousness “I bet it was AIDS, not cancer”.

Carol in NYC, working for you was a god damn nightmare. I’m sorry your company went down the tubes after I quit, but I just couldn’t handle your insane bullshit anymore.

I worked for a painting/handyman company…this guy worked out of his house. I would show up at 7 am and each morning he was at his kitchen table with a cold beer. He even had a tapper in his fridge in the basement. We would go to a job…get set up start work and a 10 am he would have to go do estimates and that was the last I would see of him. I later found out that was when this one tavern would open.

I have written on here about my ex-boss, but I will summerize.
He raped a co-worker, and took polaroids of her during it. She was strapped down on a desk. After he raped her, he told her not to say anything about it, or he would put them on the internet.
He showed these pictures to the crew I worked on. When someone told the EEOC that he had done this, he told the entire crew that if any of them talked, he would kill them.

He once gave a crew member a heart attack, on purpose. Mike had already had 3 heart attacks. The boss told several people “Next week, I am going to wire Mike up so bad, he will have a heart attack. I know all the right buttons to push to stress him the fuck out.” On Wednesday, Mike had his heart attack. Thursday morning, the boss walked around bragging about it.

Once a customer complained that the boss (at this time just a worker) was sleeping on the job. The (not yet a) boss went to the customers work, and told him if he ever did that again, he would kill him.

He was driving a large truck that had a problem with the flame arrestor. The muffler would shoot flames if he pumped the gas. He kept it a secret, rather than tell our vehicle service people. When someone cut him off on the freeway, he positioned hims truck along side them, and pumped the gas. The other drivers car was hit with flame, and they nearly crashed.
When he got into the yard that afternoon, he mentioned to the mechanics that he noticed a problem with his muffler.

This guy still has a job with my company. How? I think the company couldn’t believe they had so badly misjudged someone, therefore everyone else was lying.

I once took a job offer to work in a small pastry shop in Alaska based on a phone interview with the owner/baker. He seemed a little quirky on the phone, but I really liked the idea of living in Alaska, so I bit.

The guy was seriously screwed up. I quickly realized that he was almost universally reviled by the townsfolk, who would occasionally ask me “How can you work for that sonofabitch?”. It was just me and him working down in the dank little basement kitchen. He was 6 feet tall but weighed 105 lbs. He looked for all the world like a concentration camp survivor. . When he would taste his own pastries, he would wallow it around in his mouth a bit, then spit it out.

Even though we were both American, he insisted on speaking only French to me. He used to frequent the local supermarkets to get their rejected produce for making his ice cream. He would return with flats of moldy peaches and tell me to sort through them to see what I could salvage. Then he would berate me for rejecting too much (I never ate the ice cream, needless to say).

He once told me that my predecessor had tried to kill him. I was not surprised.

@filmfann I remember reading about this ex boss of yours before…and it’s still just as disturbing the 2nd time around. What a horrible, despicable waste of space. He deserves street justice, big time.

@filmfann I would have a hard time believing that, too. I don’t doubt it happened, but to think there’s people like him walking around and living life everyday like ‘normal’ people really bothers me.

Current. Really raises the bar for acceptability of foul language in the office. Caves in everytime in favour of production whenever ethical issues loom. “Takes the easy way out” ...
Outrageous flirt wherever there is cleavage to be conquered.

It was reporting to the general manager of a brand new downtown Chicago hotel. I had never experienced someone so blatantly sexist before in the business world. It might have been funny if it wasn’t getting in the way of our productivity. I finally transferred back to another one of our hotels in the area, where this manager’s wife was now working. When I met his wife, she said, “I don’t blame you for leaving” and winked at me.

About a year later, the guy was fired. He had become obsessed with the new assistant manager and would literally chase her around the hotel and proclaim his love for her. This woman is openly gay, and her girlfriend worked at yet another one of our hotels. His wife left him.

Fast forward 20 years. Right before I left the company, an announcement came out that the guy had been hired to manage one of the big hotels.

@filmfann Your story is probably the worst scenario I have ever heard. Why didn’t EEOC get involved?

My old boss fired his sister after he cussed her out in front of clients for getting pregnant. He said she’d miss so much work for obgyn appointments and maternity leave. She sued and won.

I worked as a mall Santa one year and had a boss named Bob Chipeska who was always up in my shit. It got bad enough that we had to get together (after a minor incident) with my union rep (an African American little person named Marcus), and have a talk:

Union Rep: It won’t happen again. I can promise you that. Jon here has low blood sugar. That’s all.
Me: That’s right. I forgot to take my pill.
Bob: It’s not just the swearing. Forgive me for prying, but did one of you, um, fornicate…
Me: Fornicate?
Bob: Yes. With a heavy-set woman in the big-and-tall dressing room?
Me: Look, I’ve boned a lot of fat chicks in my time, sure. But, as far back as I can remember, I’ve never fornicated anybody.
Bob: Yes… Well, even still, I think it’s best for all parties considered if we…
Union Rep: If we what?
Bob: Well, I have somebody else interested in the position.
Me: Before you do something stupid you might want to think about this shit.
Bob: What are you talking about?
Me: I’m talking about firing a little black midget. A small, colored, African-American small person. That’s what I’m talking about. I’m talking about your face all over goddamn USA Today, that’s what I’m talking about. I’m talking about 150 of these little motherfuckerers all over the sidewalk out there. Holding picket signs and using bullhorns and shit like that. Screaming and hollering your name out. Unfair practices, get me?
Bob: Oh no, this is not a handicapped thing. I have nothing against you people.
Me: You people? Did you hear that Marcus? He said ‘You People.’
Union Rep: Who the hell is us people?
Bob: No… He said… But… what… No no. Um, I think it’s best if we just forget we had this conversation.
Me: Good thinking. And don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine. Let’s get the hell out of here.

I had to put with shit like that all the time.

@Pied_Pfeffer The EEOC did get involved. They came in, and did everything they could to cover it up. In the end, the girl sued the company for not protecting her. I don’t know what the outcome of that lawsuit was, but she is now a 2nd level manager.

@filmfann She is still with the same company? And where that guy still works? And the EEOC tried to cover it up? Something smells fishy.

It smells like a tuna factory after a 2 week power failure.
They are both managers at my company. He cannot attend managers meetings, because she has a restraining order against him. He is now in a position where he no longer runs a crew, and I have been told he never will again.

Gracious…What a soap opera!

I had this job once at a screen printing shop, where I had to fold clothing and pack em up and get em ready for delivery and all. I often got confused with all the papers and where everything was supposed to go. I guess I asked my boos one too many questions, and then he replied, if you don’t understand, then fuck off.
I did just that lol.

He was also a retard lol…once, this one employee was saying that his task was hard, and from across the room, the boss yells out; hard like MY COCK!!

I admit that was pretty funny though lol, but wow, lack of professionalism.

@filmfann… why isn’t he in jail???

@sarahhhhh At work, the question is “Why isn’t he dead?”

Weird… shouldn’t he be charged and tried by the state? Or was it one of those wishy washy situations where you don’t know if the girl was consenting or not?

I was standing up on a table working on a bulletin board, putting up information for students, at one school I worked for. I didn’t notice the 70ish year old superintendent come in, but something didn’t feel right… I looked around and he was looking up my knee length dress. He also had a thing for hugging teenage girls and asking them to call him grandpa. It was naaasty.

There was a lot of abuse going on at that school under that superintendent’s watch- kids were being slammed into walls, thrown onto the floor and unnecessarily restrained. I reported the abuse and was given a benevolent smile. My psyche couldn’t wrap itself around the fact that this abuse existed in a school, but I took the advice of someone and documented the abuse I witnessed. I turned it in and was promptly fired and told I would be arrested if I came on campus. All the employees were threatened with dismissal if they talked to me. I turned it in to three state agencies, but was written off as a disgruntled employee.

The good news is 10 years later, I was invited back to give a workshop and the replacement superintendent offered me an apology and a job. Seems like my rocking that boat did have an effect—the abuse has been stopped. The old superintendent has Alzheimer’s…