Have you ever had a job where you felt your boss was a bad boss?

Two of them.

I won’t give too many details. But in one of them, I was working for a county (public) agency. The governing board of my agency was run by an out-and-out racist who wanted the agency to favor blacks over whites in employment, services, responsibilities, and so on.

At one point, the chairman of the governing board told our director to do something that was blatantly illegal and discriminatory. Sadly for him, it was caught on video tape. What the director of our agency (who was white) should have done is to say “This is illegal and I will not follow your directive.”.

What she did is say “yes sir”.

Our agency was sued. The director threw most of the rest of us under the bus trying to save her own ass. Ultimately she was fired, the agency lost the lawsuit, and the county had to pay $20 million in damages.

All this because the director had no spine.

Not 100% all bad, but I had one who I guess was frustrated with me because I had an injury, and the business I had just been moved to was doing poorly. At one point she was truly awful to me and I went above her head, tried to, but made the mistake of telling her I was going to talk to her boss and does she want to come with me. When I got upstairs her boss (the store manager) was not in her office. Her secretary told me, “she just left out the back.” I was so pissed. The store manager had brought my manager when she was hired, and she obviously was already siding with her, and she avoided me.

The store manager set it up for the HR manager to meet with my boss and myself to talk it out. We did. Pretty much the next day my boss laid the fuck off of me. Then, like I have always done, my department turned around by the 6 month mark once I had a chance to adjust the inventory and improve the merchandising.

They tortured me for nothing during the worst time, because my injury was extremely painful at times and then adding all that stress on me didn’t help. I had already been with the store 5 years with a great track record of exceeding sales plans and devoted staff members who worked very hard for me.

I am more annoyed with the store manager sneaking away than my direct manager for being a bitch. Both I would get along with now though. Both of them were very smart, and overall very good at their jobs.

I had one in the Nineties, and the one I have right now isn’t too hot either.

The older one was an asshole, who would yell at people and threaten them. And, he would take full credit for things done by others, and never credited his staff for anything.

Things changed for me when I had a very visible role in a project, and clients began to bad mouth him and compliment me.

My current boss came over from another department and yet knows more than any of us on how the business should be run.

A few.

There’s guy who screamed all the time and threw a chunk of wood at me.

There’s lady who went off her meds, left town, and stopped paying us all.

There’s lady who laid off all of management except me and told me to shut up and get back to work as I was lucky to have a job — now doing everyone else’s job.

Yeah, a few.

Yes, she was certified insane. lol
Back in the late 90’s I worked in customer service and accts. receivable for a large import Co. My boss was Chinese and owned the manufacturing company in China. She was very educated but flighty, temperamental and just plain mental. haha
She would put me on a task and then, not 5 minutes later come by my desk and ask what I was doing and why I was doing it and then, proceed to send me off on another venture.

” What are you doing?” “Why you doing THAT!?”
“No, no, no, you need to do this, understand! ” Gah!

She had the memory and attention span a Mosquito and then, she brought her son into the business and they fought like cats and dogs. I would, literally, have to take my phone and RUN out of the office into the warehouse when I was speaking with a customer as they would be having a screaming match in the office. haha
I loved my customers and many of them refused to deal with anyone else but me, but, I had to move on, this woman was impossible.

Most of the bosses I’ve ever had were more accurately not present than actively bad. They all delegated “supervisors” who had no real power but a whole lot of assumed power. Massive pain in the ass.

Yes, he was a “hatchet man”! We had a group of ten and two of us got laid off, my layoff was two days after winning a international corporate award (100,000 people in the corporation).
He wasn’t competent at his job and rewrote the legal language a couple of contracts. One cost the company a multi-million dollar government contract. I was told he went to a meeting on Friday afternoon and Monday morning his office was empty.

I’ve had several that were super and we stay contact twenty years later.

In 20 years working for the same hotel company and having 17 different jobs, I ended up reporting to 25 different supervisors. So yes, I’ve seen a few bad management styles.

- Micro-management
– Sexual harassment
– Sexual relationships with people that report to them
– Nepotism
– Lack of management to the point where theft occurred
– The ol’ “Do as I say, not as I do” mentality
– Doesn’t provide proper training
– Doesn’t give reviews or even feedback
– Doesn’t share business goals

Staff…i’m monitoring your IP addresses , just sayin

Oh, yeas, I once worked for an idea guy. He was constantly messing up operations and changing things around at the last minute. He was hell to work for.

Sure. Theyre little people with a little.power and it goes to their heads.

Yes, I had one who was offended by cooking odors from the company lunch room and called the entire company to listen to him rant for two hours, calling it “permeation characteristic”. I was cooking beef liver, so I can hardly blame him for being offended. But how was I to know that the vent fan only blew into the next room, not outside like I assumed? I quit the next day, figuring he was in the going out of business business. I was a temp, so I didn’t have to give notice.

I worked many years in advertising and had too many bad bosses to count. Advertising is a high-pressure business in which most agency managers are promoted either from “creative” or “client service.” If you’ve ever worked for agencies you almost surely had bosses from either or both of those ranks that got you hooked on booze or tranquilizers, or made you want to jump off the agency roof most days of the week.

So happy to be retired from all that!

I left my last job because of my boss. I still feel guilty about leaving the team to her and can hope that some of the work I did helping them be stronger and challenging her behaviour will stick. But you know what people are like. Hard to change the habits of a lifetime.

Most people quit their boss before they quit their job.

L***** Huelster.

She was the manager of an Express clothing store when I worked there in my early twenties as a consultant for women who were willing to pay to have someone put outfits together for them.

After a while she had some friends in. She called me out from the back. She casually mentioned the quality of my “ass” to them then requested I lift the bottom of my suit jacket to expose my rear. I complied doing everything I could to wordlessly send the message that I considered this move well below me.

Fast forward a while. She and I are closing the store alone. She asks that I go to the back corner of the back room to shut off the lights. I comply. I turn from the breaker box in the darkened corner to leave. Her face is right in mine. I feign cluelessness to force her to make a move or withdraw. She finally does the latter.

Fast forward some more. She has me leave a little early to pick up a VHS she had reserved and bring it to her apartment. “Goodfellas” to give you an idea of when all this was taking place. She asks me to join her in her screening, mimosas (LOL) waiting in her kitchen. When she indicates her disappointment in my lack of interest in joining her I hear myself respond with an “I don’t care.”

I’m fired within a week.

Oh Travis D.. Let me count the ways.

Actually, I only need one example to sum it all up.

I have bad dandruff and I hate people so I should never handle food or talk to paying customers.

At the theater there was this constant bullshit game where Nancy (a manger) would come up to us ushers and try to get us to help concessionist when they were busy. Concessionist shifts were the worst. So I struck up a deal with Nancy. I would never get scheduled for a shift as a concessionist. In return I would never giver her shit for asking for me to help them. And I was pretty diligent about hopping behind the counter if it looked like they were sinking.

Everyone was happy.

So there is this big room behind the concession stand where we made ice and stored all the boxes of soda syrup and so on. I was back there breaking down the boxes of syrup and reloading the machines. It wasn’t my job but I had the deal with Nancy.

So Travis (General Manager) was back there talking to someone while I was working. He got pissed and told me to fuck off and while I walked out he flipped me off.

I have had worse bosses. Travis just managed to piss me off the most.

I outlasted Travis. Our safe was broken and you were supposed to need a combo and key to get the money when we did drops. Ours only needed the combo (armored car guys had the key) and Travis was to cheap to have it fixed. 50K was stolen one night and the manager that night bolted. It was fantastic. (Travis was fired and ended up working at Hollywood Video)

At one time I took a job as a cashier in a gas station/convenience store. Then the money in the safe came up short. It was not an exact dollar amount, meaning somebody had found a way to pull paper out of the safe but not coins; checks included some change, and that’s how the shortness included change. This had been going on for some time. They would fire the cashier and make no other changes. That is why it was so easy to get the job.

So then the perp got greedy. He partnered with a big guy who came into the store with a shotgun, tied the cashier in the back, and took the entire safe out of the store. The safe was found outside of town the next day, and the manager deposited $30,000 in his bank account. Stupid stupid stupid. So the new manager called and asked me to come back. I asked what changes he was making to money handling procedures to protect me from false accusations in the future. He was flabbergasted. He couldn’t believe I was smart enough to ask any such question.