primitives discuss bad bosses

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x9214124

Oh my.

jennygirl (129 posts)        Sun Jan-17-10 01:40 PM
Original message
 
Describe Your Worst Boss You Ever Had

I am writing a "Worst Boss Ever" article for my February E-zine (www.bizshrink.net). Can any of you tell me about the most monsterous or outrageous boss you ever worked for?

XemaSab  (1000+ posts)        Sun Jan-17-10 02:03 PM
Response to Original message
 
2. Allyson

She did not have a CLUE about what she was doing. Not a CLUE.

She went to a pre-bid meeting, and the client told one of my colleagues "Don't let her meet with clients!"

She had been there about 6 months when she told me she still hadn't had any billable hours yet.

The absolute worst part is that she was really only there about 25 hours a week. The other 15 hours she was taking care of her twins (who were 11). Taking them to doctor appointments, taking them to soccer practice, and so forth. If the kids were four, then I could understand, but 11-year-olds can take care of themselves.

The thing that just sent me over the edge was when I volunteered to be a docent at a local beach one evening a week. It was my FIRST DAMN DAY and she came to me and said she was going to have me work late because she needed someone to do a page turn on a document. She couldn't do it because she needed to take her kids to soccer practice, so me and the HEAD OF THE OFFICE stayed late and looked over the document. I was SO PISSED.

grace0418  (1000+ posts)        Sun Jan-17-10 02:50 PM
Response to Original message
 
3. Sadly, I had to decide who was the worst from a highly qualified field. 

I suppose the worst would be a man who owns his own company that manufactures a high-end interior product. He was actually diagnosed with borderline personality disorder among other things, but he never took enough responsibility of his condition to realize he shouldn't be fully in charge. And everyone around him just coddled him rather than helping him realize he was shooting himself in the foot with his behavior.

One minute you were the light of his life, the best thing that ever happened to him. He couldn't get enough of you. I was that person for awhile, the "only one he trusted". I often had to go to his house because he didn't feel like coming into the office. He'd sit around in whatever dirty clothes he found lying around because he couldn't be bothered to dress himself. Sometimes that was little more than his wife's too-tight work-out shorts and a tank top---not pretty.

Anyway, for awhile everything I said or did was solid gold, but it was hard to keep up with his every changing (and sometimes downright irrational) priorities. And it was also hard dealing with some of the situations and decisions he would force me into because I didn't have enough experience for that kind of responsibility.

Before long you were the worst, most terrible thing that ever walked the face of the earth and he couldn't get you out of his face soon enough. This could turn on a dime, several times in a day. This sometimes involved yelling, throwing things, obscenities and complete humiliation. It ALWAYS involved a lot of mind games that left you feeling like a complete loser. I cried all the way home on the bus on many, many occasions.

I remember one woman he hired was a college friend. He just loved her. She was a very sweet person but not the brightest bulb, but she was an office assistant and not in charge of too much so it wasn't that big a deal if she made some mistakes and was slow. Everyone knew she'd been going through a rough time and was glad he was helping her out with a job.

That was until he decided out of the blue that he'd had enough of her and, even though she was supposedly a dear old friend of his, he fired her. Over the phone. On December 24th. Did I mention he was on tropical cruise at the time? Yep, he called from his vacation to fire his friend on Christmas Eve. She rode the bus with me and she was devastated. I felt so bad for her.

But it wasn't too long before I met the same fate. He sent me to Asia to work with one of our suppliers on a product. The trip went pretty well and he was ecstatic when I got home, gave me a raise and everything. This was in July/August. By September I was gone. Because I had dared to tell him I couldn't work late one night because I was planning my October wedding.

Bennyboy  (1000+ posts)        Sun Jan-17-10 03:11 PM
Response to Original message
5. My Father!
 
In 1975 he told his employees he would provide health insurance for his employees so they would not vote for the union. Two days after the vote, which the union was voted against, he cancelled the insurance and never offered it again. In the time I had about 2000 dollars worth of tests done, because they found that people who had the same procedures I had when I was a kid got cancer. I was barely 18 and in debt to the hospital for 2 grand.

He fired me after I dislocated my shoulder on the job, took my truck away and made me walk from the job site.

The list is endless.

Is the benzadrine lad primitive the one who self-admittedly lives with his parents, and took off on a motorcycle excursion to the inauguration of il Duce Bo--does anybody remember?  He was going in a motorcycle in winter.

bookworm65t (821 posts)      Sun Jan-17-10 03:45 PM
Response to Original message
 
6. Ohio's Worst CPA

My immediate supervisor was a CPA who wanted to take the financial manager job at my agency for "humanitarian" reasons. He told us that he didn't mind going from a salary of $60,000 a yr to $28,000   

Turned out he wanted to punish his ex-wife for divorcing him by lowering the child support payments. He was with us one year, and when he left, we discovered that numerous creditors hadn't been paid, charitable contributions were not deposited (cash and staledated checks, and we were being heavily spammed by too-numerous-to-count porn sites (his second activity behind computer backgammon (sp?). Took two months to get everything squared away. Unfortunately it helped cost me my job, since my employment funds were needed to retire debt. It wasn't long after his departure that I found out that he was a suspended CPA, which happened 3 years before we knew him. Recently I checked on his status, and it is still suspended (after 15 years!). Don't know why he wouldn't try to reinstate himself. But I have no use for his egotism and incompetence.

looking back, I can't believe I bought into his crap and let him get away with it. I should have checked into the CPA claim, that's for sure.

Also, I have also worked briefly at some conservative firms, and those were hell.

amerikat  (1000+ posts)        Sun Jan-17-10 04:19 PM
Response to Original message
 
8. 2000 pounds of ego, stuffed into a 400 pound body.

He ran the craziest business you could ever imagine.

Wow.

The American feline primitive worked under the gigantic primitive as a card-dealer?

Faygo Kid  (1000+ posts)        Sun Jan-17-10 04:37 PM
Response to Original message
 
11. Only two bad ones in 34 years, but one was nasty and venal. And now unemployed.

I lasted 10 months, which was longer than any of my four immediate predecessors. Totally disrespectful of her employees, nasty, ugly temper. The horror stories weren't occasional, they were daily, and often multiple. I regret not keeping a diary. I could have written a screenplay, and I know who would have played her in a deliciously vicious fashion: Kathleen Turner. Perfect.

Example: The one Christmas I worked there the staff got together and were terrified: What to get her for Christmas. Apparently it was an annual shit-your-pants concern. The year before I got there they told me that she had bought a new house, so they commissioned a local artist to paint a picture of it for her Christmas gift. She hated it, and threw it against a wall and pitched a fit. Christmas!

A couple of years after I left, her big shot protector retired from the Board. She had been there over a dozen years in her position, but the remaining Board members then through her ass out on the street as fast as they could. Beautiful karma.

Flying Dream Blues  (1000+ posts)      Sun Jan-17-10 06:08 PM
Response to Original message
 
12. There was my boss in publishing with Mafia ties.

He got calls from people like "One Thumb Louie", etc. and would shoo everyone out of the office to talk to them. He either liked you or hated you, and didn't like our department to talk to the department down the hall, which he called "East Berlin". If he didn't like someone he would jab the middle of his head and say, "He's a mutt. I got 'im right heeeah, his muddah's dead." He hated his boss's secretary (nice person by all accounts) who sat right outside his office, and when she got a beautiful plant for some occasion, it turned up poisoned (died overnight in dramatic fashion) and we all knew who did it. He liked to play mind games and when someone did something wrong and he knew who, he would torment you as if he thought you did it, just to watch you suffer.

Wapsie B  (1000+ posts)        Sun Jan-17-10 06:38 PM
Response to Original message
 
14. When my grandmother died I tell my boss and she says, "Well how does that affect me?"

And it goes downhill from there. A real piece of work, that one. Perfect example of shit floating to the top.

There's lots and lots more; apparently the primitives are attracted to bad bosses.

[Karin]

Oh my!  A whole thread just chock full of boucies!  They can't resist making their stories as looooong as possible. 

Also, I have also worked briefly at some conservative firms, and those were hell.

That's funny, my experience has been the polar opposite.  There are no loafers, and no letches (as everyone is happily married).  Also, no out-and-out bitches.  I am blessed to have a DUmmy-free workplace. 

[LadyLiberty]

This is a "The Man is keeping me down!" thread.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Oh, I dunno, there really are a lot of Hell-bosses in the world, they're not a comedic staple because of their rarity.  Terrible leadership and bad/ego-driven decision-making probably have at least as much to do with small business failure in the US as wishful/magickal thinking, bad/nonexistent planning, or other failures to deal with reality do.   

[NHSparky]

I've had a few bad ones, both in the military and afterwards.  I don't dwell on it, but rather take from them a lesson on how to be a better co-worker and mentor to the junior people, even if I'm not "in charge".

[JohnnyReb]

DUmmie definition of a Bad Boss: "He actually makes me work for the money".

[jukin]

We were very busy and needed an extra person for filing, phone answering, and miscellaneous odds and ends. I admit the background search was poor and we got what I am sure was a DUmmy. She couldn't figure out how to properly fill in purchase orders, was terrible with customers on the phone, and was always late or leaving early. The straw that got her out the door was when I gave her some marked up project updates to put into the computer. She said and I quote "It would be easier for me if you did this." I immediately escorted her to the door.  Then ensued an unemployment battle with the state that we finally won.

[The Village Idiot]

Wow.

The American feline primitive worked under the gigantic primitive as a card-dealer?

She was the chair.

[kenth]

"It would be easier for me if you did this."

[GOBUCKS]

I believe that just about anyone who has been a boss, if he's an effective one, has been considered a "boss from hell" by someone.

[DefiantSix]

I believe that just about anyone who has been a boss, if he's an effective one, has been considered a "boss from hell" by someone DUmmy.

The most effective bosses I've had - the ones who could see how much I could do and loaded my plate right to the limits - were always the ones I enjoyed working for the most.