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This is a question Shit Bosses

Shit bosses are the bane of your working life, from their self-defeating penny pinching to their questionable personal hygiene to their outright delusions and paranoia. Tell us about about the petty tyrants and jokers under whose jackboot you've groaned.

(, Thu 9 Apr 2015, 15:55)
Pages: Popular, 2, 1

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My dad's old boss
got taken to court for sexual discrimination after asking his secretary to mark on the calendar the days when she would be on her period, so he could tell when she would be in a bad mood.
(, Fri 10 Apr 2015, 16:42, 4 replies)
I have to be a bit circumspect here as this tale may still be the subject of ongoing legal proceedings.
In my youth I was a bit of a Leftie (I've always been of the Sinister Persuasion). This meant that in most of my jobs I've put my hand up to be the Union Rep. Not a bad gig - get to bunk off if someone needs to talk about an issue and some good management/HR training paid for by the company.

In this job I was one of the youngest staff members. Only older than Doreen by a couple of years. Doreen was the comely daughter of the checkout manager Elaine. Elaine was a right bitch. The sort of woman who would smile, chat and be friendly with you, even go out to drinks on Friday night after work and drunkenly profess to "really likin' you m8!" but would lodge a formal complaint with management against you for so much as looking at her 'wrongly'.
One day Doreen comes to me and says "I think there's a problem with my pay.", my 'gettin' done wrong by The Man' ears pricked up and she told me how since she started with the company over 3 years ago, payroll had been giving her pay-packet to her mother and her mum only gave her $50/week out of it. This of course being a time when you got your pay in a little yellow envelope with all the amounts and YTD tax info written out carefully by payroll rather than just handing over your bank account and tax details.
Hmm. I first asked if she had an agreement with her parents to pay board or rent, she was 18 and still lived at home. And getting a negative response I asked if she had a bank account and was her mum depositing in there? Nup. So in short - her mum, who was also her boss was illegally garnishing her pay each week of about $500-$600.

My first stop was payroll - apparently Elaine was a good mate and even though they'd been a bit iffy about it they decided to give her Doreen's pay-packets anyway. Despite it being against the law - the only people who could pick up your pay if you couldn't had to have written permission and it needed to be pre-arranged. So then I went to my manager. He said it was between Doreen and her mum. So did the store manger.
Umm, no it wasn't because payroll was complicit in handing Doreen's pay-packet over to her mother illegally and without Doreen's permission.

Eventually I took it to the regional Head Office. With a lawyer from the union.
In short time - Doreen had about $65,000 deposited in her bank account (apparently and unsurprisingly Elaine had spent all of Doreen's pay checks), Elaine was shitcanned with no severance or entitlements, store management was given a rap on the knuckles for passing the buck, payroll were on written warnings, Doreen was given the position of checkout supervisor and I was easily the most unpopular person working there. Elaine went on to appeal her termination of employment in one the early cases of unfair dismissal - hence the need to be careful what I say.

Sadly Doreen's drunken post "after work drinks at the pub" BJ's paled in comparison with her mothers.
(, Sat 11 Apr 2015, 8:38, 2 replies)
At a Craig David gig with an audience full of stutterers singing along when he did Rewind
there were some proper shit bo sses sss ssee sselectas
(, Thu 9 Apr 2015, 21:33, 8 replies)
Japanese martinet
He had a simple philosophy. "I hate it when people say 'That's all right, people make mistakes'," he said. "That's just stupid and sloppy. Look at me! I NEVER make mistakes!" He was authoritarian and was distrustful of the concept of freedom. "Freedom shouldn't mean what people say, that you get to make your own decisions. The concept should be renamed 'freedom - properly understood'," he thundered. He was cheap, knowing who in town was currently selling petrol at the lowest possible rate. He was a publicity hound, loved to talk about himself, and promiscuously chased journalists and cameras. He radiated disdain for everyone else. As he told me, "You have the strength and you have the willingness, but gosh, your brain is weak!" He had huge confidence in his analytical skills and disdained all doctors. When doctors told him he had a rare disease that glue sniffers are prone to, he scoffed with contempt. Contempt didn't stop the weak-brained, mistake-prone grim reaper, though; a well-known close friend of doctors.
(, Fri 10 Apr 2015, 7:17, 4 replies)
Mr wannabee pimp
I once worked for someone who insisted all his employees supported his local football club.
I had absolutely no interest in football, but had to comply with any vote or survey on them , if you didn't take part you could be disciplined.
(Brighton Albion if you must know)
He also vetoed any nestle product and would regularly inspect the fridge in the lunch room and would throw any offending item, often leaving his staff with no lunch..
He would only employ women ( there was once one man who didn't last the course)
At christmas he hosted a meal at local restaurant, a long term employee warned me he would be in 'pimp' mode.
Sure enough he turned up in a long coat with fur collar and a pimp hat and proceeded to hand out little baggies with small white tablets in them to everyone.
These were 'nux vomica'a homeopathic anti hangover remedies and he called everyone his 'ladies.
The guy was a first class monumental twat and his staff turnover was so quick the local job centre was sympathetic when you left there and signed back on
(, Fri 10 Apr 2015, 0:50, 2 replies)
Embroiled in the confusion of others
It's my first post ever! So please be nice. I've had more than one horrible boss. I rarely stood up to the first batch, brought up as I was with terrible self doubt I always assumed it must be me and not them who had made the mistake (for a long time I was under the impression that if someone was more confident, richer, popular of healthier than me they must therefore be more clever....)

Worked in a recruitment agency in Slough - industrial jobs, manager saw me coming out of the bathroom flapping my hands (there were no drying implements so I was airing them - we've all done this no?) This chap didn't like me, think it was a class issue, anyway he called me into the back office for a chat, said he was pissed off I was using company time to paint my nails (because I was flapping hands he assumed I was drying nail polish). I showed him my Polish-free nails and explained I was merely drying them. My shock when he ignored this and still told me off. He wanted to tell me off and he wasn't going to let fact get in the way. Soon left for a job with a better salary than his which he hated. I hope he is paralysed from the neck down.

Working in an investment bank, one of the super rich directors asked me to go crawl under his desk and unplug his blackberry charger. When I asked him why he said 'because I don't want to do it myself'. He wasn't watching, it wasn't a perve thing, he was just an overprivilliged twat. Bloody charger was stuck in a mass of tangled cables.

This kind of thing doesn't happen much these days, a wall of unwavering assertiveness/cold cheerfulness and a gaze peppered with a little bit of dominatrix style loathing keeps all of these types well in their place.

Now how do I add one of those witty signatures...
(, Sat 11 Apr 2015, 12:20, 6 replies)
i once worked for bruce springsteen

(, Fri 10 Apr 2015, 13:44, 3 replies)
After a heavy night on the Guiness my bowel movement the following morning trumped along to born in the usa

(, Thu 9 Apr 2015, 17:05, 1 reply)
I once worked in a small factory, where the people working the late shift would sweep and mop the floor last thing
My infuriating boss used to do all kinds of stuff, like send people home on quiet days (we were paid by the hour) and call us in on our days off, with increasingly passive-aggressive demands, if things got busy. One morning, I had this exchange with her:

Boss: "Who worked late yesterday? The floor's been left, it's disgusting."

Me: "Don't know, I was on an early."

Boss: "You must know, you handed over to them".

Me (awkwardly, not wanting to land anyone in the shit): "Er, I can't quite remember. Check the rota?"

Boss (yelling): "Course you fucking remember. Who did you hand over to?"

I caved in and gave their names.

Boss (smirking): "Nobody likes a grass!"

This was typical. I'm glad my current boss is an affable hippy.
(, Tue 14 Apr 2015, 15:45, 4 replies)
My boss is an utter fuckwit, and cunt of the first order.
Then again, I am self-employed.
(, Sun 12 Apr 2015, 14:32, Reply)
Holiday joy...
I once worked in a university coffee shop and had quite a few run ins with my boss. We parted on good terms in the end and she is actually a lovely and very sweet woman, but the first six months were hellish. She seemed to have a bit of an unspoken problem with me being a) a man, and b) university educated, so this led to some slightly unfair work practices.

Many of these unfair work practices revolved around holiday, where other people were allowed to take unpaid leave for their holiday after turning up to work half cut (muggins covered, obviously), but I was vaguely threatened with having my holiday cancelled because she found out there was an open day that needed staffing when I was away.

Her meddling got the better of her when I tried to book a couple of days one August. I asked for a Monday off, then a Friday off the following week. She said no, so my girlfriend's family very kindly bought me a ticket to come down to their house after work for the thing we had planned. I came in the next day and was told that actually I could have the days off! So she'd wasted my inlaws' money, which was bad enough. She also then said that because we were quiet I had to use up some more holiday, so she'd assigned me some days in between the days I wanted which I now had to take off to keep the labour down in the off season (apart from one or two days bang small in the middle of the fortnight when she needed me, so tough). Fuck arguing about it, I thought, she'll just take the whole lot away.

Later in the year we're all being told how much holiday we have left. I get my holiday sheet and am truly delighted to find that she has forgotten to put the holiday she made me take in the planner! So I take my extra leave at Christmas and revel in my small and petty revenge...

She leaves a few years later and then, a few weeks after that, so do I (it just wasn't the same without my nemesis...). So I look in my contract for my notice period and see a beautiful sentence: "Annual leave pay is calculated by averaging the daily hours worked in the last twelve weeks". You guessed it, that's not how she'd been doing it. I'd worked at least ten hours overtime pretty much every week since I'd worked there, but only been paid 30 hours a week for holidays. So along with my notice came a breakdown of all my underpayment and a polite but absolutely watertight request for about £500, as I was leaving so couldn't have the error paid back as holiday.

Cheers boss!
(, Sat 11 Apr 2015, 11:51, Reply)
All my bosses have been excellent.
The current ones doubly so!
Ja see that, Boss? Singing your praises on the internet I am! Gimme a raise.
(, Fri 10 Apr 2015, 13:06, Reply)

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