Trouble in t' pub
Bit unfair to call this bad management but essentially part of the job of a (ugh) pub manager is to be able to sort out trouble. The pub i was working in was a good 40 mins from London so it attracted good, friendly travelling antipodeans to work and live upstairs. One of these, a girl whose name i forget (Anne, maybe?) had a boyfriend who we'd never met. Anne was a small, doe-eyed Kiwi and no-one expected her to be dating what looked like Va'iga Tuigamala (off of the All Blacks). And no-one expected him to have a sissy name like Gene. So Gene came to visit the pub and offered to pick up glasses for the evening on Friday as there wasn't much else for him to do. When it came to kicking out time, a sturdy contigent of toughies and 'real' travellers (wink, wink) were causing trouble to Adam. I know this as i was busy tidying up around them and not nearly tough enough to even think about helping. Adam continued to tell them to get out, but they just jeered him and continued to provoke trouble. They could easily do this. At this point, a large dark shadow joined proceedings and the lads turned round and almost suffered a "Donk!" moment as Gene leaned in to their faces and said, ever so politely, "righto ladies, time to finish your wine and fuck off", fully in the knowledge and he could have crushed them in the palm of his hand easily. It was too beautiful for words to see these boys look at each other, look back to Gene (who was grinning from ear to ear), weigh up their increasingly dwindling options, quickly drain their glasses and "fuck off" as Gene had suggested. Pisspoor management but great bouncing. Whatever happened to Gene, i wonder...
( Fray Brentos *mega-belms*, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 23:01, Reply)

I have two bosses
At times they are horrible to me, I have to be at work for 7am everyday without fail, even on my days off at least one of the bosses calls me early in the morning for work related matters, and if it's not one of them it's the poor bloke who is covering for me. I am not allowed a sick day unless it involves being in hospital and then they would probably call me every two minutes.

The day usually starts with me handing in some work which is usually considered wrong and gets thrown back in my face so I have to do it all again and twice as fast as we're running a tight shift. Once that's done with I'll try to grab a coffee and a quick snack which, if I am lucky might involve a few chocolate bourbons, but usually I get nothing. My next task is sort stacks and stacks of work into the right piles for later in the day when they will be folded, stuffed and posted in the right pigeon holes for each person in the company, all the while boss A yelling for me to organise my time more efficiently as he has much more important matters for me to deal with such as a presentation on ease of access to hunting grounds and how a bridge might make it easier to get the prey rather than going through the river. Boss B has an idea half way through my presentation and runs off to the design and construction department to oversee another new project, it's most likely a prototype for the bridge.

After finally getting those pesky pigeon holes stuffed and sorted I try to catch up on my e-mails but boss B and boss A have called a meeting where we have to watch a presentation on a construction company we work with everyday to see how they are solving the problem of inadequate staff and community issues, i've never known staff like it, I thought I was bad but the labourers on this building site are appalling, the bloke who works the cranes is terrified of heights and gets all upset when he picks stuff up, an hour later and having being forced to watch the same presentation 3 times and memorise it for later by pain of deaf I am already beginning to feel a bit tired and hungry so I plod off to the canteen and take my book-keeping books and calculator with me whilst I eat a lettuce sandwich and drink a cold cuppa whilst watching both bosses throw fine food down their necks and drink fresh squeezed juice. The companies finances are a mess and cutting staff pay or hours just won't fix it - I write a note to myself to call a meeting with the accountant.

After lunch I eventually get 2.4 minutes to check my e-mail before the news comes in that Boss B's new project prototype has been dropped from a great height and broken into pieces, I have to go and sort it out before he finds out, thankfully much to my delight boss A decides to help me with this as he knows that B can get very angry when things like this happen and even he doesn't like listening to him scream and shout. Thankfully we got it fixed in time, I don't think I would have been sacked but my day would have been hell, in fact I think hell might have been a slightly nicer place to have been had we not got something done.

A few hours later I find myself in the art department, I quite like it here as the staff are actually nice and I often get free designs from them to put on my office wall and they sometimes even clean up after themselves.

Eventually the day begins to wind down and my colleague starts his shift and we work together for a few hours trying to appease our tired hungry bosses so that they will leave in good mood so that we can continue our work in peace. I decide to order a pizza to save time as we've over-run on the schedule and there's still lots to do. The bosses are pleased with my decision - RESULT! Once again the cleaner doesn't turn up so I have to do it all myself, by which point I feel like a zombie. My colleague and I begin rowing over who gets to clean the canteen, I usually get stuck with it which I hate as there is tons of work to in there. My colleague at this point spends time catching up with the bosses where they usually bully him terribly and sometimes it ends up in a physical fight with boss A putting him in a half-nelson while boss B jumps on his head.

As the day closes and I am locking up the office with the last dregs of cold tea in my tummy, I walk into my bosses office to find them both asleep, I can't resist anything more in the world than walking up to them planting a gentle kiss on their cheeks and telling them how much I love them when boss B's eyes flicker open and he whispers "I love you too mummy, thank you for being so awesome" - My job is ace!
( Mrs. Spatum, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 23:00, 8 replies)

I think I have a good one for this week...
I recently had a rant about this on another board...

Lush-Fucking-Leeds.

As a fresh-faced 18 year old lay-about, my Mum was always on at me to find a job. Her last rant about this was when I was on the way into Leeds to do some shopping, so I decided to do something about it.

I went into Lush Spa Leeds to buy some overpriced soap on behalf of a friend, and saw a notice behind the till advertising a job placement and I thought "Great!! I'll smell good everytime I go home!". 6 days later, I was fully employed by Lush and was having a whale of a time.

Three and a half months after this happened, I had a coursework deadline to meet and was furiously working away on that and a staff meeting for Lush completely passed me by. I realised the next morning at aprox. 8.29, and I rang the office at 8.30, asking to speak to management. I was put onto a stuck up hippy instead as she was the most senior one in at the time and told me to ring back at around 2, when a member of the management team would in in the shop.

I did just that. Rang back at 2pm, explained my situation and grovelled and kissed some (quite substantial) arse and tried to keep my job. The trainee manager told me over the phone that I was still in my probationary period and that I had technically "missed a shift" so she would have to let me go.

I was fucked off. Told to leave a decent job over the phone, with no apology from a TRAIN-fucking-EE!! I was also out of my probationary period by that time, so it was completely unacceptable and unfair.

The thing that fucked me off the most though, was the fact that the trainee and the general manager are metaphorically fucking the HR department of Lush, so any complaints about them are swept away as though they don't happen...




And I paied for the fucking phone call!!!!!


(Apologies for lack of humour/lengh)
(one-winged-angel-616 isn't as depressed as she sounds, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 22:33, 19 replies)

I used to work for the Equality and Human Rights Commission
Have a guess why I almost took my managers to tribunal.
( Claws of Doom I am no longer infected, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 22:32, 7 replies)

*cough*
Oil slick

*cough*
(HaHa!Snakes! was last seen on, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 22:31, 1 reply)

Bad management?!
I had my 'one to one' with my boss last week. He simply stated:

'I don't understand the work you do, and when I'm in a meeting with you, I don't understand what your talking about, but my bosses do and it all sounds impressive, and they love it, so keep doing what you do, and just keep me informed with an update every month.'

I work in IT. Am I actually Dilbert?!

(*one to one being the half yearly appraisal we get that determines whether we get a pay rise/bonus/the sack)
( more balanced than jeremy beadle It wasn't me..., Thu 10 Jun 2010, 22:28, 4 replies)

Felching
Actually my earlier hysterical anecdote regarding workplace meetings has reminded me that a couple of weeks ago I emailed a colleague to say that her report needed a bit of felching out. Felching! I wish.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 22:05, Reply)

Divisions, Divs & SQL
I am mainly an insurance guy, but part of my remit is also training staff in our divisional offices in the mysteries of the database.

As the divisional offices need to produce various lists and labels I have set up a number of database views and queries to assist them.

A little bit of restructuring (a.k.a Downsizing, closing offices and making people redundant) and I am pleased to discover I still have a job.

We now have 4 divisional offices instead of 6 and my twat of a boss decides it might be an idea if X takes care of two and I take care of two.

Yeah great boss, but X knows nothing of the views I have written and how to apply queries to them. The fact that X has no SQL knowledge was not identified as a disadvantage.

Guess who is still doing the rounds of the divisional offices??
( Vambo, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 21:59, Reply)

I once knew someone............
...who got paid fifteen quid a day for sticking mud onto potatoes.

It's true I tell you!

It was in Greece in the early 90s - we were picking oranges and one English guy who had been there for years said that he had been employed by a Greek farmer to do that very job. The theory was that it made the spuds heavier, so when the truckload was taken to the (Co-operative) processing plant where he got paid by the weight of the load the farmer would get paid more.

After three days of mind numbingly boring and pointless mud sticking, he pointed out to Spiro that he was being paid £15 a day to stick on (at best) a fiver's worth of mud.

Spiro sacked him for disagreeing with his masterplan....
(Colonel Blink is now officially a pretentious prick, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 21:44, 12 replies)

Idling Times
How long do people idle their parked cars after starting them? Two seconds? Twenty seconds? Two hundred seconds? Who knew? One day, the bosses realized we didn't have good data regarding this burning question.

To find the answer, my bosses sent my officemate out with a clipboard and a stopwatch to stand at the edge of a parking lot and observe people starting their cars.

It's astonishing how skittish people are! Despite the comforting camouflage of office attire, people eyed my friend warily long before they even reached the parking lot. Bug-eyed drivers burned rubber to get the hell out of what they feared might be a trap.

Rubbish data all duly recorded, of course. More surreptitious methods eventually were adopted.
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 21:38, Reply)

Crossed wires.
At the company i work for, the aftersales director and a couple of his regional managers arranged to go and have a meeting with a big supplier of ours. They were going to lay down the law about the shoddy service and products they were supplying as there had been some major issues.

It was only when the supplier turned up to our office in surrey we all realised that the dick had gone to their office up north.

Yeah, cant organise a piss up in a brewery where i work. No wonder our customers hate us.
(Beaverman Opulence, I has it., Thu 10 Jun 2010, 21:31, Reply)

"Get your foot down...
...but dont speed"

Has my boss discovered warp drive?
(Frample Tromwibbler climbs an obstacle like old people fuck, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 21:03, Reply)

How to disillusion your staff in easy stages.
1. Arrive in the post and promptly promise all the resources and manpower that's been hitherto lacking.
2. Wait until nobody's looking then siphon off some of the teams tasks and hand them to another unit entirely. Preferably contractors.
3. Continue to promise this, that and jam covered tits.
4. Announce that there will be a certain amount of restructuring.
5. Pass some more work over to the contractors. Except they promptly pass as much of it back to the in-house people as they can.
6. When one of your staff points out that somebody else is getting paid for work she's doing, take a moment or two to thoroughly patronise her and make her feel utterly valueless.
7. Lob some more work over to the contractors. Oh look at that, now a lot of the in-house people are twiddling their thumbs.
8.Call a meeting and cheerfully announce that out of everybody in that room right now, 70% of them will be in the Redeployment Pool inside two years. Wonder why your staff are now disgruntled.
9. Call another meeting to address any concerns. In the hour allotted, spend 40 minutes of it promising this, that and jam covered tits. Answer precisely two questions and manage to avoid giving any relevant info to either.
10. announce that the previous cuts were overexaggerated and in fact the team has a bright future. Ten minutes later, the contractors arrive for the meeting where you give them even more of the team's work.
11. Invite yourself along to the farewell parties of staff leaving, bringing friends from Main Office who hammer the buffet and the free booze and scuttle off just before the wine runs out.
12. Fail to notice that the contractors you're employing have just hired new staff who look strangely familiar and who are now getting more money for doing less than they were doing before.
13. Fail to notice that your remaing staff are now making "Sucking invisible dong" gestures at you when your back is turned.
14. Dump the rest of the team onto the Redeployment Pool. Since paying out Redundancy is officially frowned upon, you now have an office full of people who are getting paid to do nothing. And who wouldn't do anything anyway since their previous hard work and enthusiasm was rewarded with you hitting them with the "Fuck you" stick.
15. Suck up the plaudits from higher echelons and go off to play golf with live kittens.
(Big D, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 20:49, 3 replies)

I work for a local authority
Enough said...

I have a good money saving idea that can prevent job loss and increase productivity... 3 yrs later - yeah, that sounds good we'll put it to management then corporate management then councilors then back to management then to my boss then back to me then idea updated then back to boss - management - council - and back and repeat forever then everyone loses jobs because of lack of money saving ideas and initiative... Fucking listen!!!

Out of a job very soon due to this! Have leaving date too! Bastards!
(Something funny, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 20:29, Reply)

I once got hauled to one side and received a 20-minute bollocking for clocking in at 5.57 instead of 6.00,
the reason being that I was claiming an extra three minutes' worth of wages and that was this kind of thing was only one step away from embezzlement. It definitely did more harm than taking 1/12 of the workforce off the shop floor for 20 minutes and denting that shift's efficiency rating, anyway.

There were many more examples of such counter-productive pettiness, but that one stood out the most. I lasted three weeks there; most new starters barely lasted five days and nobody I met had been there more than a year. With that kind of staff turnover, it's no wonder the owner of that warehouse (a certain high-street retailer, rhymes with TK Mixx) is going down the drain.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 20:23, 5 replies)

my cousin
works stripping asbestos.

Full safety equipment and some serious danger money for a rather risky job. Fair enough you say. Not when you discover the boss is happy to pay twice the odds if they'll do the job without gloves or masks, as it means the job gets done in half the time.

apologies for lack of lols here, he'll be dead in about ten years, but hey "at least the kids will be loaded..."
(socialcomet, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 20:18, 11 replies)

"Can you nip over to..
(location a few hundred miles removed) when you're done?"

No.

Short of sprouting a jet engine out of my arsehole and growing a pair of wings, this isn't going to happen. Whining about it won't change anything. Trying to force the issue by adopting a stern tone of voice, then resorting to (inevitably futile) ultimatums isn't going to work either.

When you do find a way to bend the laws of time and space, by all means give me a call back and fill me in on how you intend to collect your Nobel prize. You twat.
(mymilkshakebringsallthemongstotheyard poison hearts, poison minds - joining hate, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 20:12, 2 replies)

Graham Taylor
England football manager during the 1992 European Championship and the 1994 World Cup Qualification.

Do I not like that.

Nice man though.
( TheFinch is getting to grips with the complex plane on, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 20:05, Reply)

Free Meetings
When I was but a lowly apprentice, I had to do a stint in every department, one of which was the dreaded sales. I had a very unhappy time there as my 'manager' was a complete bitch and useless to boot.

I digress. The manager decided they would have a meeting every Monday morning an hour before work. When she came round an told me I asked:
"Are we getting paid for the extra hour?"
"No."
"I'm not coming then."
"You have to."
"Not if I'm not getting paid overtime."
"Everyone else will be there, so you have to be there too."
"Er, no. I can guarantee you I won't be there."

And she was then suprised when I didn't turn up. I didn't hear anything more about it, not that I gave a damn.

An hour of free work on a Monday morning? I don't think so.
( VandenPlas can't think of anything clever - no change there!, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 19:34, Reply)

I like my job, but we've got eighty men and one toilet.

( Digeridude Lord Wellington's Beef Trapeze, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 19:27, 12 replies)

Lies and deceit!
In the past month or two my boss has accused me- wrongly- of lying to him. Twice. I have a menial job working in a bakery at a supermarket. One of my tasks is to make the place nice and clean, which involves brushing the crumbs from the shelves. Every night I'm on I get that little brush, get down on my knees and I brush those crumbs away. My knees ache, my back aches and my black trousers get covered in flour so now I have white knees and look silly.

However, come morning time the bakers, who have been slaving away making delicious hot rolls, put them out in the baskets. The baskets above the shelves. The shelves that I swept. Which are now covered in a whole bunch of new crumbs.

Yes, you can easily see what happens now. I have been "spoken to" several times, all in front of customers, about how I do not do my job and how I should "just listen to him, just listen!". I put my foot down and did not listen. Instead I got him to listen. He didn't.

He still does not believe I sweep those damned crumbs away every night. So now every night I get a witness to see my swept shelves or to see me sweeping. I also have another supervisor who told me of what the morning bakers do and stated that she has indeed seen the shelves before they did this, and they were spotless. I'm biding my time now, waiting for the chance to bring out my big guns. I will expect an apology.

The other thing I will not get an apology for. As I've mentioned on here sometimes I get migraines a lot. At the start of the year I went through a really bad patch and was off work twice in a few weeks for a day each time. One of those was a day I had asked to swap.

He doesn't believe I'm ill, convinced I'm hungover even though I have never drank. I've never been drunk in my life. (I know, shocking! I'm a student to boot.) Even after bringing in the note from the doctors he asked me why I didn't just go to the doctors to see why I was like that and get it fixed. Did I miss something? I DID go to the doctors! And there's no cure!

Apologies for length and boringness! Apart from that my work can be ace. Everyone is a right good giggle and in the bakery I'm all by myself so I can sing and dance with the bread racks to my wee heart's content! My shoes also make it more fun as they collect all the flour and I can now skate around the shop floor. Customers look at me funny. =D
( vix0r was not Matthew on, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 19:22, 2 replies)

My boss is just like that guy from the office
This one time after working there for years I said that he was 'a gay' under my breath.
( WormuIus, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 19:16, 2 replies)

I HAD SEX ONCE.

( baldmonkey a frothy foul-smelling vaginal discharge, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 19:02, 4 replies)

Joy Division are allergic to eggs.

( baldmonkey a frothy foul-smelling vaginal discharge, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 19:01, 6 replies)

He's being groomed
for better things; our little place of work is a step up for him. Usual story: silver spoon, influential family, wanker.

Not respected by most, he has the sense to throw scraps to 'yes-people' so that they flatter him over his pathetic contributions.

He has the mentality of a schoolboy, realities are unpleasant for him, he is currently faced with a resentful workforce yet refuses to strive towards solutions.

When he is eventually forced out, he will land squarely on his feet in order to share his general smugness elsewhere.

He recently got rid of a competent manager and took his job, he has three salaries, the twats on the board of directors let him do what he wants, which is 'laughing all the way to the off-shore account'.

Oh, and one of the stupidest liars ever to walk this planet.

Ho-hum.
(roysin, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 18:55, 1 reply)

In 1997 they changed the coffee machine so that the code for black coffee was 18 when before it was c4
Can you imagine? Bastards. I quit 11 years later. That'll learn them.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 18:51, 2 replies)

A friend of mine was a trainee solicitor at a small firm
She was finding it very difficult to cope with the workload and a difficult client, she sought some advice from one the senior partners.

He sat and listened to her problems and when she'd finished he took a deep breath and said:

'Suck it up, buttercup'
( WormuIus, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 18:44, 1 reply)

While working at designing signs...
I had the new owner tell me that I couldn't use 'Layers' in my CorelDraw/Photoshop designs any more. No reason other than that she thought they took up too much space on the drives.

Of course I ignored her and quit a week or two later.
( Art101 You all have an unhealthy and morbid fascination, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 18:28, 17 replies)

greed and pride come before a fall
recently i was involved in negotiating a dispute. the other side were originally seeking £4,000,000 and we were offering them zero, on the basis that they had suffered no loss. in actual fact, our surveyor had advised we should expect to pay in the region of £2,000,000.

all-parties meeting last month, and we offered £1,500,000 in full and final settlement. they asked for £2,000,000. we held firm. they dropped to £1,950,000. repeat ad nauseum over a very long and tedious day, at the end of which we were £50,000 apart. so they could have walked away with £1,700,000. the guy rang his boss to ask for his permission to settle, as he thought it was a good deal, and his boss refused. repeatedly.

two months later, his boss has only just realised my client, a huge plc, has much deeper pockets (and a much better solicitor, clearly, haha) and they are out of cash. he should have listened to his gimp. we have settled it this week for £500,000. my client is coming in his pants with glee. so that shite manager has cost his company a cool £1,200,000 by failing to see sense over £50k. i am glad he is not my boss.

yes i realise this is dull, and no i am not going to apologise, it took up 2 minutes of your life, it takes up all of mine, have some sympathy!
( rachelswipe with a fork, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 18:02, 11 replies)

PC Direct's last laugh
Some of you may remember the late and seldom lamented PC Direct magazine in the UK.

Back in the depths of the first dotcom bust the publishers decided to shut down PC Direct. This came as a bit of a shock to the staff, some of whom had been headhunted from competitive titles for Direct's relaunch not six months before. The news that they were suddenly out on their ears and unlikely to find new jobs on the whim of crap management left them understandably pissed off and seeking revenge.

Now it was well known that the publishing manager on the title was a tad on the lazy side. Before a magazine is sent to the printers it's the publisher's job to give the proofs a final once over before OKing them, but the journalists knew that in this case the manager almost never did and just signed them off automatically before buggering off for the weekend.

So when the magazine hit the stands there was a management explosion. The cover was a masterpiece, with a picture of a new handheld computer that had been reviewed under the timeless headline 'Best hand job ever!' Every contact email in the magazine, from subscriptions to tech support, had been changed to the publisher's personal email. But all this was as nothing compared to the letters page.

The letter of the month was a standard "is this a good time to buy a PC?" that computer magazines get sent by the truckload. But the editor decided to answer it, and all the other letters, honestly. Thus:

"Computers are constantly evolving and for every advance in speed Intel gives you Microsoft will produce more bloated software to absorb the spare power and ensure you have to upgrade again. It's a vicious circle that screws the consumer but it keeps us all in a job, until recently that is.”

Other letters were similarly blunt, including making reference to the magazine having the life expectancy of a hummingbird's fart in response to one letter from a reader threatening to cancel his subscription and telling another reader that they were a fool who shouldn't be allowed near a computer. Basically it was the page we all dream of writing but never get the chance to.

There was very little management could do, apart from grin and bear it. The manager who signed off on the proofs was got rid of and the entire former staff were blacklisted by the company. However, they'd done such a class job stitching up management that finding jobs elsewhere wasn't too much of a problem.

The lesson to managers – screw with your staff and they will fuck you, and not in a good way.
(paxvobiscum, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 17:51, 4 replies)