Story form the interwebs: Entire coffes shop staff quit because of the management
dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/gorilla-coffee-workers-arent-coming-back/

According to an e-mail message sent by the former staff, the baristas quit because of what they call a “perpetually malicious, hostile, and demeaning work environment” under Carol McLaughlin, one of the two owners, and demanded that she withdraw from daily operations at the coffee bar.
( Crap Little Monkey Deathstar, so good they built it twice, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 12:55, 10 replies)

My Boss
I work as IT support at a school and my boss is an idiot.

Mad management practices? Him. Something he told me once sums him up completly.

"Updates? There are always updates so there's no need to bother with them."

A week later the school servers got infected with the conficker virus. It took me 2 minutes to find the updates that would of prevented it and 5 more to find that they were sitting on our system ready to be distrabuted for oever a year. He only installed 1 of those updates.
( Crap Little Monkey Deathstar, so good they built it twice, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 12:48, Reply)

My boss...
...once used the line in a meeting:

'So we're agreed that whilst sales promotion isn't the magic bullet, it will definitely wash it's face - so when Mr Promo is in town... fill your boots?'

[Client stares back blankly]

'I mean to say, whilst it's not our only tool, we definitely want it in the back of the truck, yeah?'

[Client stares back blankly, then eventually speaks...]

'Pardon?'

Oh yeah - I should have mentioned that the client was Spanish and only spoke English as a third language...
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 12:48, 3 replies)

Far too many to detail
I've been in my chosen profession for 25 years now (shit, that makes me feel old). A few years ago, sick to the back teeth of poor decisions by senior management and bullying my middle management, I stepped out of my career path, and into contracting and consulting on some fairly specialised software. After a couple of years I became pretty good at it, to the point that I'm now one of the more highly skilled practitioners in my particular niche. I also experienced the wonderful ephiphany, that I no longer give a flying fuck about management decisions.

My job is to provide professional advice, I do that and do a pretty good job at it. When they ignore that advice, I walk away with my invoices paid and not a care in the world when things don't quite go the way of management's vision. If I'm really lucky, they'll call me back to do the same project a couple of months later, when things have gone titsup from ignoring my advice.

Hurrah for clueless managers, they keep me in business.
(lardyboy Next stop, Fissplap Central, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 12:47, Reply)

... so it's 10pm on a Friday night, and the woman at the bar asks for another glass of red wine.
Having finished the previous bottle on her last drink, I get a new one out and proceed to open it.

During the process, due to my supreme powers of klutziness, I somehow manage to snap the neck of the bottle and thrust my thumb onto the jagged glass, severing it to the bone. Blood everywhere.

Being the only member of staff in the building that evening, I have to then:

A: Wrap my thumb in a bar towel, which instantly becomes a dripping, blood-soaked rag

B: Get everyone out of the bar

C: Clean up, close up and lock up

D: Get myself to hospital

I do £20 out of the till for the cab, and it being 10pm on a Friday in Central Mordor, A & E is completely chocka - tramps fighting with themselves, junkies passing out with needles in their arms, children with pots stuck on their heads - the lot. I turn up and say "I've cut my thumb ... ". I realise the contrast but the nurses are already weary, do me some butterfly plaster stitches, and give me just wan smiles and tell me they'll be with me when they can. I 'phone back to the bar and leave a message on the machine detailing what happened, to kill some time.

I get out, stitched and bandaged, at 4am, and start the 2-hour process of getting home. I leave a message on the answerphone to the effect that there's no way I'm going to be in for 10am bottling up, but I am so skint that I know it won't be much beyond that.

On my arrival at around 1130, I am something of a hero to the locals - good job on sorting them all out, closing the bar, cleaning up and getting to the sawbones - was I OK and look at that bandage.

Management saw it slightly differently, however. I was immediately taken out back, and asked why was I opening a new bottle at 10pm? Why couldn't I have used butterfly stitches from the first aid box and closed at 11pm? Why hadn't I turned the fridge lights off? Why was the jukebox still on? Why wasn't I in for 10am bottling up? And why in god's own teeth is there £20 missing from the till?!

I handed in my resignation there and then. Broke? There's being a whore, and there's being a crack whore.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 12:45, 4 replies)

HM Forces
The amount of times i hear "oh you will get that when you get on the ground". Never get it.

This is important shit, like rifles.

Be the death of me one day these cunts.
(queensguard didnt do it, all lies., Thu 10 Jun 2010, 12:41, 5 replies)

Working in ad sales
Back when t'internet was still a bit new to many folk.

Karen, my mad supervisor, accused me of 'spending too much time typing away on the e-Web', or somesuch.

'I'm sending emails, Karen'
'What?'
'Emails... I'm communicating with clients by email.'
'Email!?! You've got a phone haven't you? Use that!!!'
'I do, but a lot of the time it's good to get stuff in writing and a lot of them prefer to do it this way.'
'Don't bullshit me Snowy - you're messing about... if you don't stop sending emails, I'll take your computer away.'
'That would also mean I couldn't book any ads, Karen.'
'Mark my words, I'll do it.'

Naturally, I ignored her, as I needed to confirm a few things with clients, and she did actually come over and turn my computer off.

'Right - I told you! You're not turning it back on till tomorrow.'
'Karen, I've now got loads of customers to speak to, I can't access their accounts, I can't therefore get their numbers, and I can't book the ads - what am I supposed to do?'
[Pause]
'Admin'

Mad bitch...
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 12:39, 2 replies)

I can't work in restaurants anymore.
My first job was cleaning up the property for a restaurant that was a 10 minute walk from my house when I was about 14 or 15. It was all going nice for me, decent pay (off the books), plenty of hours, and anything I wanted off the menu for lunch totally free. All I had to do was lay down mulch, do some weeding, shovel snow in the winter and otherwise keep the property looking nice. I'd worked there for about a year when I moved house towards the end of the school year. I'd moved about 8.5 miles away from the restaurant, and didn't really fancy riding 8.5 miles to ask if he had work for me only to have to turn right back around.

So, every day, I ring the boss, "Hey, have you got anything you need me to come over and do for you?" He'd say,"Nope, nothing. Call back tomorrow and I'll see." Repeat Monday through Friday for about two weeks, until I call and ask on the third Monday if he has any work for me. His response? "Where the fuck have you been you stupid shit? I've had work piling up and you never showed up, so I got someone else to do it."

I was unemployed until the end of summer when I found temporary work at the Renaissance Faire. Not a bad job I thought. I just had to sell people useless crap whilst wearing an old timey costume and throwing any accent I could pull that sounds like it might be from the UK or Europe. I think any Brits that come to the States and see a Renn Faire might die of laughter, as my fellow Americans seemed to think everyone in 1600s England spoke with a heavy Cockney accent and made extensive use of rhyming slang, including the nobility. Anyway, my first year working there I broke three of my fingers on my left hand prior to the interview some months before the job began. I was much dismayed to see that they'd decided pushing a cart with wooden wheels full of ice around a muddy fairground was the best job for me.

Still, it was fun enough, and I got to see many drunk people do hilarious drunken things, so I signed on the next year as well when the time came round. I was put on my cart again and thought all was well again. I came in one day, and it was typically the busiest day of the season, with this year being no exception. As I'm getting ready with my cart expecting to make some nice tips, my boss comes over. Apparently four of the six or so people working in one of their food booths have called out today, including all three of the kitchen crew. She informed me this meant I got to be manager for a day. Even my power-hungry 16 year-old mind thought something was amiss, but I went over and started working nonetheless. Long story short, trying to have me do four peoples jobs at once with no training or history in any of them ended in me putting a knife through my thumb. Not totally through, it was a deep cut and the it started on one side of my thumb and damn near went all the way around. The cheap bitch also wouldn't let me leave to get stitches, since she didn't want her insurance rates going up. I wish I'd known then how illegal that was.

The one sentence summary: I've had a shit time working in the food industry.
( Ithyphallophobia, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 12:32, Reply)

School Daze
Okay, so here goes.

I have been working as an IT Technician in a Bristol School for two months and I am already having enough. The job itself isn't too bad and my boss and co-worker is pretty decent but there are other problems that exists. The big thing that's going on now is that we are having a new school build through the government's building schools for the future programme, which means we'll have a £30 million shiny new school come september. This is where things have started going wrong.

- Our project manager who is supposed to be in control of the whole project has told us very little abou whats going on and my boss has regular meetings with her to find out what the hell is going on and what we're getting. She also has an amazing ability to make you feel inferior to her and make you think something is always your fault.

-The specification for the IT system was drawn up the deputy head and a teacher, who later on said she knew nothing about computers. We are getting a very nice shiny new network with VMWare and IPTV and Digital signage but which is a bit overkill for a school.

-With the aforemented IT system, we aren't getting any training. Day 1, we'll get the blame when things go wrong because we don't know what we're doing an having to wing it.

-Masses amounts of money have been wasted. Our first cartridge spend for the school year was going to just over £70,000. Our current spend, for a year, is about £7000. Money have been spent on £90 seinheiser heaphones which will get stolen within the first few weeks and no money has been set aside to replace them. The school is getting ~300 desktops and MORE THAN 500 LAPTOPS. To me, this is retarded but the consultants (who are a bunch of lying btards) says we need this and the school has gone along with it. A website will also be bought for £3000 when I would happily do it myself.

So, bad management? Hell yeah. Ton's of unhappy teachers, kids who couldn't give a shit and Senior Management who think this will be the end of all our problems.

EDIT: Moar to come in another post.
(tb2571989 dies at precisely, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 12:12, 14 replies)

I worked in a café in Camden
Called Tupelo Honey. As a student, I showed up needing a bit of extra oof, and looking to line my pockets fairly easily. All great, except I have never seen such dangerous lack of professionalism.

The boss/owner/manager is an absolute witch (grease-matted, raven hair and everything) who was essentially the cook. However, all she cooked was left to cool, then reheated in a microwave, and priced at between seven and twelve pounds. Scrummy.

Among her various crimes, the Bitch-in-Chief would regularly shout at the floor staff for minor or even non-existent transgressions, including once in my case a millimetre too little foam on a cappuccino in front of customers. Even good ideas were stamped on. I once approached her with a cleaning roster I had done (in my own time) to improve cleanliness and efficiency, and the conversation, carried out in front of customers, went like this:

Me: "Kate, I've drawn up this cleaning roster to make the cleaning routines more effective and efficient. Here's a copy for you, and one to go on the staff pin-board."

Her, screwing up my beautiful printouts and throwing them away: "Why did you do that? I haven't fucking got time to go through all this!"

Me: "Quite so. That's why I did. Had you read them, you would have noticed it's all been done. Shall I print out some more?"

Her: "No. Fuck off. Any more cheek like that and it'll be your last shift here. Fucking students..."

Just to iterate, the name of this abominable establishment is Tupelo Honey, Parkway, Camden NW1. Let that serve as a warning to you.
(Omnizor Spooning bits of road for breakfast., Thu 10 Jun 2010, 12:11, 4 replies)

So many
My boss manages by Blackberry. If I can't get my point across in the 200-odd characters on screen then he won't read anything else. If he can't reply in 2 lines of text then he doesn't bother.

A previous boss would give me a task, ask me to report back in a month, and when I did he would show me his solution and tell me mine was wrong. Even if mine was the same as his.

A manager I worked with refused to hire additional people to cover sickness and holidays on the basis that 'contractors in this location are so desparate for work that they won't take any holidays and will work even if they are dying'. Needless to say she was desparately short staffed.

Best one though was when a company run by a very strict christian bought the company I worked for. The new owner tried to get everyone to sign a piece of paper promising they wouldn't drink alcohol at all. They organized a dry Christmas party. A video presentation to all the employees at Christmas contained a message from the boss's wife explaining how a woman's place was in the home. None of this went down well with my French colleagues. The few who turned up to the Christmas party smuggled wine in with them and the request to sign the pledge was rapidly withdrawn by the management.
(Smale is stuffed, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 12:11, Reply)

Buzzword Bingo - a spotter's guide
I've been collecting buzzword bingo calls in my little black book. I've genuinely heard all of these in meetings and conferences down the years, mostly from people completely unaware they were spouting pure, undiluted bollocks.

See how many you can fit into everyday conversation before people beat you up for being an annoying cunt:

- Crown jewel products
- Holistic metadata functionality
- Best in breed & Best in show
- Rear-view mirrorism
- Windscreen-wiper view
- Hockey stick curve
- Stapling blancmange to the ceiling
- Top hat product
- Standard bearers of enthusiasm
- Death by Powerpoint
- Whistlestop tour of our prime assets
- Change evangelists
- Dripping tap communications
- Go-to person
- Corrugated iron product
- Meat and two veg products
- Solutioneering

And the immortal: "This business is not just a sausage factory – we're the whole hotdog stand"
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 11:56, 15 replies)

Outsourcing Bill in an old job....
"Hey I've been reading a book & it says you can get some guy to work for a pound a day! I want one."

Okay. This was the bill for a simple data entry job.

1. Cost of Indian doing a job: £1 (was 1 a day, but he could work 1 hr/a day)
2. Cost of me taking time out of my day to find them: £25
3. Cost of me & supervisor vetting 400+ clients: £100 (wasted as we went for the cheapest)
4. Cost of me taking time fixing the errors produced by person sourced in 3: £25
Total cost of the job: £151

-----------------------------

Estimated cost of me doing the data entry job: £10. Tops.
(rhyswynne - on every social network mullarkey known to man, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 11:44, 2 replies)

Not my Boss - But his boss
In General he is a weasel. Comes into our area just to find out whats going on, and asks us to do things that arent within the scope of our responsibilites. Whenever you are done talking to him, it feels like you've been raped in a way. I cannot explain it. He has a habit of jumping into something and claiming that he is a part of the work, when he had no prior knowledge of it.
(Subway Riding the rails underground, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 11:39, 1 reply)

Inept
Our Business Development manager spends all day tweeting, and when he's at trade conventions Trying to get us some work he spends all day/night in the bar. Tweeting.
(The Boy Monders I have ginger bits in my beard., Thu 10 Jun 2010, 11:37, Reply)

Calculator
A few months ago I was double checking our office price book what with VAT going up from 15% to 17.5% in January, so I'd been checking the most important prices first and putting the VAT on with a calculator. Boss comes along:

Boss: Why don't you use a scientific calculator and put the VAT as a constant?
Me: I am.
Boss: Glad to see that fucking professor in that fucking university of yours taught you something you fucking remembered.
(Hernandez Fiendish probably won't be here until at least, say, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 11:37, Reply)

I used to work in a particular phone shop with the worst manager i have ever met, he didn't know the business, got on the wrong side of a close knit team and generally pissed everyone off.

He finally got his come-uppance about 4 months in, when a customer complained that he had kept her number, and was becoming a little stalkerish!
That is a little frowned upon in our business and he was swiftly shuffled out of the company
there were cheers all around that day :)
(cardiosurgeon ...not a real surgeon since, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 11:35, Reply)

Getting on with work
Boss: Big job you've got today, isn't it?
Me: Yeah.
Boss: Yeah, you've got to move all the codes and stuff, haven't you?
Me: Yep.
Boss: Yeah, and of course, you have to put all the new codes through the system, haven't you?
Me: Yeah, just on that now...
Boss: How are you going to do that then?
Me: I'm writing out the codes before putting them through the system, that way I can -
Boss: Alright, alright shut up and get on with it.
(Hernandez Fiendish probably won't be here until at least, say, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 11:32, Reply)

I think the head honchos in my place must be aware of how bad it is here - as they are currently recruiting graduates - simply for the fact that;

They have no idea how a company should be run,so will think this place is 'great'

They have no idea whats its like to produce quality code that actually needs to work in the 'real' world- so will fit in well with the other developers that currently sit at desks here

They have no idea what project management is, so they will think that someone telling them that each and every project has been delayed is normal

They also- are probably keen to be seen to be hardworking-heads-down kind of people - so again, they will think an office where no-one talks to each other or dares have some sort of 'fun' at work- is great.

O - and they expect to paid Jack Shit for their effort.

I could go on about the office itself (crap wages/lack of aircon- always too hot in summer/cold in winter) and tons more. Instead - I will take that job offer (with a gargantuan payrise)and get as far away from here as possible.

The only benefit they will get- is a toaster in the kitchen (seriously that is the only benefit - most offices won't allow them because of H&S shite)
(audreyforbes audreyforbes, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 11:32, Reply)

Deluded
I used to work in a place where the director was renowned for telling a group of my colleagues that he could "go down to the nearest backpackers hostel today and hire a bunch of techies better than you lot".

So what is worse than management practices that cause staff to be de-motivated, take over frequent sick days, and generally be recalcitrant little turds?

When the manager responsible hires consultants to come and analyse air quality in the office convinced that the real cause is "sick building syndrome".
(russet_gusset up the reds, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 11:17, Reply)

A4
Task: to send out a letter and flyer for an event.

Me: Well we'll need to print it out on A4 paper and then -
Senior Manager: What size A4?
Me: I... oh.
(Dr Skagra glorious glargzhem, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 11:17, Reply)

Current event:
I've had some nasty emails telling me if I don't resubmit my work to the office, I might have to forfeit my degree. I can't resubmit... the office didn't give me the work back in the first place.

Not funny, don't care. I'm annoyed. :(
(Sivvus trolley collision in the fruit aisle led to a jam, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 11:16, Reply)

i have worked for many bosses but my current boss is the worst boss
My boss is an extremely inept, patronising, ignorant, odious abortion of a person. I will be posting many stories here over the next week.

What follows is a recounting of a tale I posted elsewhere about a month or two ago. :

Because the election is around the corner, I am getting utterly depressed at my boss' loud opinions on why you are an idiot if you vote for any of the major three.


Some choice boss opinions.

- "You won't vote for UKIP here because you don't live in a real bad nig-nog area. If you lived in Birmingham, you'd be voting UKIP or BNP."

- "UKIP's vote will increase by 25% in this election, and the main three parties will definitely say "Oh, we'd better change our policies because the public clearly like UKIP's aims."
(This is how he thinks democracy works.)

- "Hey, if you vote for Lib Dems, that old school near you will become a mosque. Do you want that?"

- "If someone raped your daughter, you'd want them flogged, wouldn't you? You'd want to flog the fucker, but if you vote Liberal then you'll be saying [mong voice] OHHHH THERES NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT. [/mong voice] But there is! Get the bastard immigrants out!"
(Apparently only immigrants are rapists)

and, the crowning glory in his racist rant

- "Vote Lib Dems and you'll be living next door to a Turkish Muslim."

I posted the last comment on Twitter and someone replied with "I'd rather live next to a Turkish Muslim than your bastard boss."
(Hernandez Fiendish probably won't be here until at least, say, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 11:14, 16 replies)

FUCK YES
sorry. I have have got a little bit overexcited. I have a few stories to tell.
(tb2571989 dies at precisely, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 11:03, Reply)

I'm right in the middle of it now
I'll post when I haven't had barely 2 hours sleep because of a string of spectacularly bad decisions from those above me
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 11:02, Reply)

I work for a design unit.
Someone came to me with hard copy of an illustration they wanted adjusted.

Them: He did this, but now we want changed, but he's left the company.

Me: OK - do you know what he did it in?

Them: He did it in his laptop.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 11:02, Reply)

First?
Edit: Yay! Story to follow, I promise

Edit Edit: Okay, story:

For about a year I worked as an assitant manager at a petrol station and yes, it was as glamorous as it sounds.

We were getting a lot of bilkins (people filling up and driving off without paying) because the owners were too tight* to put up cameras that covered the whole of the forecourt. Only four out of seven pumps were in the cameras' view, and only two of them were in sufficient range that you could read the number plates of cars pulling up. Needless to say, a lot of people got away without paying.

So their solution? Put up more cameras? No, that would cost money. A much better idea was to implement a new scheme were the cashier was responsible for people filling up. Now, if someone drove off without paying and no number plate was taken down, it would be docked out of said cashier's wages!

I am not entirely sure how legal this was (as you could be docked for certain shortages within the law) and obviously got us quite worried - at rush hour it could get manic and there was no way you could read a number plate from the till for the three furthest pumps.

After having a bilkin myself (and not getting the plate details) I hit upon an idea. Most cars when they are registered are registered in blocks. For example I had an old Rover J245PUD and I regularly saw another Rover of the same model, but different colour, J248PUD.
So, as long as I could identify what make and model a car was, I would note it down. Then if another identical car came along, I would note down their registration, but change the last number, or in the case of the newer style registration, the last letter.

The company would then run it through and report it to the police, the police would find out that it was the wrong car (or a couple of times 'false plates' ) and it would be dropped.

Now, I know what you are thinking. There are two things in here that make me a complete cunt.
1) I provided them police false information, not only comitting a criminal offence, but wasting their time when they could be doing better things.
2) Some poor innocent sod probably got a nasty letter through the post telling them they were being reported for theft.
And you are correct.

I must say, I did not do this without some regret, all I can put in my defence is that:
1) Most of the time the police didn't bother chasing up bilkins, even the ones where we had the correct information and knew who the driver was.
2) I wasn't going to have about fifty quid (for cars, lorries could be up to £200) taken out of my already pathetic wages.
3) It wasn't long before the owners realised their new approach wasn't working and finally put in more cameras.

So to anyone who got hassled for something they didn't do, I am sorry. I was a cunt that had fuck all money, no backing from the people I worked for and the threat of losing my house if I didn't take home all of my wages.

Also, apologies for the long rambling post. I didn't mean it to go on like that.

* Just to note, these were the people responsible for our safety, left us to work night shifts alone, and didn't wire up the panic button. I had to press it once and then call the police later when no-one turned up.
( VandenPlas can't think of anything clever - no change there!, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 10:55, 4 replies)