All my managerial experiences have been good, except one.
Edit: This one has some length to it.

By good, I really mean indifferent. In general, I think you'll agree, the best you can hope for from the high-heid-yins is 'not being a constant pain in the arse'. Anybody who has awesome managers - congratulations. You're a bizarre statistical aberration though, because people are shit and minimal power corrupts absolutely.

Anyway. At the end of last year I got two christmas jobs simultaneously, and with minimal finagling managed to make it so I could do both shifts without conflict. One of these jobs was at the company that grew from the ruins of the Gadget Shop - good chat, excellent managers and supervisors (save one), regular excursions to pubs and gigs with the minions and overlords all thrown together, and I learned during drinks one day that I basically got the job on the strength of being a cocky bastard, walking into the shop and saying 'I want to work here'.

The relaxed and easy going nature of that bunch served only to throw into stark relief the abysmal failure of the management at the "Snivelling" Theatre, Glasgow, to be anything other than self-regarding, self-serving self-abuse artists of the highest order. Management consists of the fat owner and his two supervisors: his son, and the only woman, workplace legend had it, daft or desperate enough to surrender to his foul advances in the last decade. The son was alright, if as spineless as you'd expect from someone who has to do everything his daddy says at work as well as at home. My only real problem with him is that when shit went down, he went and hid rather than take any part.
The other supervisor was a gargoyle-mandibled, pudding-bowl-coiffed, offensively halitotic, quietly venomous harridan, with rather fewer organisational skills than Our Lord saw fit to bless the common newt with, and an IQ that will in fact see an increase when she finally lobotomises herself with her own biro while trying to fill out a shift rota. Legendarily, universally and completely fairly mocked behind her back for having been placed above far more capable staff while yet being unable to reliably perform the simplest tasks without forgetting names, dates, or even whether or not she actually had something to do. I introduced myself to her three times during my interview, and had to give her two copies of my CV. I cannot overstate how stupid this woman was. Her other speciality was noticing one failure to perform to standard, once, and making it the only characteristic she ever associated that person, with even higher reliability than their name.

Her organisational skills, however, pale in comparison to her and her boss's man-management abilities. Basically, the "Snivelling" have worked out that they don't need to give a shit about their workers, since being an usher isn't a skilled job (nodding and smiling are skills mastered by six month old babies) and there are always people ready to do it.
They give an extra special generous helping of not shit about workers hired over the Xmas pantomime period, since they're liable to fire nine-tenths of them at the end anyway. This is true of most industries; however the better places at least have the decency not to be so blatant about it. I learnt I was fired when I turned up for work on the last day of the week to discover I hadn't been given any shifts for the next one. The rota still had my name on it, but everything after that was blank. It turns out, that's their preferred method for firing people.

Seriously.

None of this old fashioned 'telling your employee there's a problem' or 'notifying someone of the termination of their employment crap'. That would take up time that the bossman could more profitably use sitting in the projection booth and wanking over the T&A he insists is included in every show they put on; or that The Amazing Cretin could be spending figuring out which end of her pencil will erase the marks on her computer screen.
They wouldn't even talk to me for a week, but I was incandescently pissed off about this and would not let it go. After being given the run around, I finally nobbled Miss Shit For Brains 2009 and demanded to know what was going on. She was pretty terrified at the prospect of actually justifying herself, but I managed to leave with what I thought was the truth, which made me feel better. I'd been late twice in a row you see, and even though I was still absolutely enraged about their cowardly, snivelling handling of a relatively minor issue, I could at least understand the decision to fire me quietly stop employing me.

Of course, a week or so later I found out the actual truth. My real crime had gone completely unnoticed by me. I'd had my one and only encounter with the lardescent spluff-stain at the top of this particular heap of shit a few days prior to my firing; he'd asked me if I was tired that day, in what sounded like routine, bare-minimum 'interact with the underlings' chat. My source on the inside told me that the word was I'd been fired for "unprofessional behaviour". In other words, while I was standing at the back of the theatre, during the show, in near darkness, behind a bunch of people intent only on the crap being presented to them as 'theatre', keeping their mewling ned-spawn under control and smuggling drinks into the seating area...I'd been seen yawning by Captain Butterfarts from his private little masturbation cupboard. Unprofessional behaviour at its worst, I think you’ll agree. Far more so than treating a problem with an employee (however spurious) by basically ignoring it, putting your fingers in your ears and hoping it goes away. And then lying about it. And also being ugly.

And this isn't even mentioning the "quality" (the word barely applies) of the shite that the theatre regularly parades in front of its audience, or touching on more than the barest detail of the hoops I had to jump through to get somebody to act like an actual fucking manager. My god I'm bitter, aren't I?
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 3:52, 4 replies)

I take it
you didn't take the time to vent at them when you had the chance?
(tweebianmonkey Should be known as Widget, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 8:57, closed)

Started to...
but bit my tongue rapid style when her response to my use of the words "I'm really pissed off about the way you're handling this" was "Are you threatening me?". Very easy for someone that stupid and malevolent to get you in deep shit if she decides to.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 10:10, closed)

By snivelling..
...do you mean the Citizen's Theatre?
(sugar_tits, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 18:34, closed)

No
but I couldn't think of an insulting word that sounds more like Pavilion...er, oops, delete, delete!
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 18:48, closed)