I've generally not had bad management experiences...
...well, apart from when I worked at the cinema. Two particular supervisors spring to mind.

The first liked to supervise by CCTV. At the cinema, the supervisors were also members of the department they were in charge of. This supervisor decided that meant that he could sit up in the office when we had queues out the door and had just enough staff to cope including him. He would phone down to tell us what to do. Then, when it got quiet, he would suddenly appear, tell us what needed cleaning, restocking, etc (most of which we already knew and were on top of) and vanish again.

He also boasted about the fact that he knew the code word for the taxi company that would take people home if they worked after midnight and was tempted to use it to go into town for nights out.

The best story about him was the time he called me a little cunt, in the middle of the cinema, at the top of his voice. Unfortunately, there were no customers around at that point otherwise I'd have happily reported him.

But the other nightmare supervisor took things further. Due to college, I generally worked the closing shift on a Friday and Saturday. Now, in an ideal situation, there would be three of us on the closing shift. This allowed for two people to close the department and start on the bigger cleaning jobs while the other one cashed up the till. Also at this time, they decided that that each supervisor would work a certain number of closes a week. Except whenever it was my supervisors turn to do so, she'd be ill. Every time.

As said above, the supervisors were also members of their department. Meaning we were always short handed for the close those days. Now, you could close the department with two people. I knew this from experience. But, imagine the problems when it was supposed to be just me and her on the close and, yet again, she was ill.

(The third close shift was opened up to anyone who fancied some overtime. strangely, no-one ever did fancy volunteering to work till midnight...)

So it was just me. Someone from another department did agree to help out, but they wouldn't be available till about 10:30. Unfortunately, this was also the day that all the tills, apart from box office, decided not to work. End result? We had no hope of getting the place cleaned properly. After that, there was always three people scheduled for the close.

I did get some satisfaction, however.

At the time I was an officer in the Boy's Brigade. As such, I could not work Wednesdays. Guaranteed, at least once a month, I'd have to remind her of this. Despite this a) being on my available hours and b) having been the case since before she became my supervisor. One week I asked for the Friday night off, due to it being open night (where the boys showed off for their folks). Sure enough, I was off on the Friday but supposed to be working on the Wednesday. I pointed out that I couldn't work Wednesdays and she started to rearrange the rota so I was working on the Friday. I pointed out that I couldn't work the Friday afterwards.

Now, had I been in her position, I would have asked the person why not. She decided to point out that she had other peoples availability to worry about (which she got paid for). I thought about trying again and decided against it.

Instead, I went into work on the Tuesday (cos I was buggered if I was losing money cos of her stupidity) and passed on a letter to my manager pointing some things out, finishing with that thing and stating that I would not be at work on Friday, I was not arranging for someone to cover my shift, I was not phoning in sick and if the area was short staffed (as I knew it would be, it being a Friday night, traditionally our busiest night) she was to blame.

Length? Each was my supervisor for about 6 months.
(williamthebloody, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 13:20, Reply)