Today
I will be sat in a meeting I know nothing about taking minutes whilst my boss makes excuses about why she hasn't done anything about anything and probably try and pass the blame on to us.

She is also taking the whole department in with her so there will be no one to answer the phone or deal with anything.

Tell me of your grossy incompetent bosses. Or if you're unemployed you can talk about what you had for lunch.
( TGB checking Off Topic is still shit at, Wed 6 May 2009, 9:15, 12 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

My boss
is a twunt sometimes. But capable enough.

I had a cheese and tomato sandwich for lunch. Was a wee bit hungover still.
(Poppet some assembly required., Wed 6 May 2009, 9:19, Reply)

My boss is not incompetent but he does keep assuming I'm a mind reader.
Also he keeps asking me if I've done the things he's asked me to do.

I always do everything he asks but still he has to check.

Now sarcastic answers are all he gets.

No dad, I chucked those papers you asked me to fax in the bin.
No dad, I deleted that email you asked me to send because I couldn't be bothered to send it.
No dad, I didn't phone that company up as I'm feeling shy today.
( girlinthehole, Wed 6 May 2009, 9:23, Reply)

I refer you to...
b3ta.com/questions/tightwads/post288233/
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Wed 6 May 2009, 9:24, Reply)

My boss is pretty good
They do seem to get increasingly incompetent as you go up the chain, though.
( The Light in Chains don't touch the Pope's boner, Wed 6 May 2009, 9:26, Reply)

The Bosses Here
Are making the only person in the department who knows the ins and outs of Excel, and is able to analyse data redundant.

Can't get much more stupid than that!
(Herr Doktor Lemminge Is bored, so cheer me up!, Wed 6 May 2009, 9:28, Reply)

I don't see the big boss much, he's in a different office
Mostly I'm the boss, and I entirely refute any allegations of incompetence. It's laziness, pure and simple.
(username1, Wed 6 May 2009, 9:49, Reply)

Dok reminds me
At one of my old jobs, I used to regularly go for a cigarette with the girls from the Risk Analysis department. They were moaning about how their new reports had to be prepared in Excel and it was taking ages as none of them were trained so it was trial and error to figure out things like functions and graphs.

I mention this to my boss, the IT director. He mentions it to the VP. Next senior managers meeting, head of Risk is asked about it. Turns out he knew how to use Excel so was blissfully unaware it was a problem.

I go for a cigarette a few days later and I'm a hero as they're being sent on an excel course post-haste. And my boss liked me as he hated the Risk director.

Hooray!
( The Light in Chains don't touch the Pope's boner, Wed 6 May 2009, 9:57, Reply)

Talking of Excel
My sister works for a county council that shall remain nameless.

Her job is performance monitoring of her particular department. Her entire job consists of opening predesigned Crystal reports, running them, transferring the data to Excel and making pivot tables out of them. All day, every day. She gets paid a not inconsiderable sum of money for doing this, and has just been on a three day training course in Crystal. She doesn't even create the reports in Crystal, just runs them. I can't see how that needs three days of training even for someone as unskilled at computers as my sister.

Worst part: there are twelve people in her department doing the same job. Fuck I'm glad I don't work in the public sector, but I'm pretty pissed my taxes fund this incompetence. Thanks Margaret Blair for this lovely target driven culture...

Edit: you do something vaguely similar don't you Light?
(username1, Wed 6 May 2009, 10:02, Reply)

Well, no actually
I'm a developer. I do proper coding and everything.
( The Light in Chains don't touch the Pope's boner, Wed 6 May 2009, 10:07, Reply)

*standby rant*
The first thing I need to tell you about my boss is that his dad owns 50% of the company. This in itself would not make me dislike him if he was halfway competant. But he's not.

He's chased off three customers in the last two years because he's exceptionly rude to them when they dare ask for a discount.

Timekeeping. His working hours are 9.30 to 18.00. He hasn't yet appeared. This is perfectly normal. Lunch is also an hour - he normally takes two. Then complains how much stuff he has to do. Then will go home at 17.30.

Will not answer the phone, making the rest of the office be his secretarial staff. Then yells at us if he doesn't like the message we've taken because it doesn't contain enough detail, or we didn't ask them e-mail him.

Company rule - do not use mobile phones while working, unless it's a work phone and work related. I have no problem with this, it's a fair rule. Except he's constantly on the phone to his mates. Very loudly. I know more about his social life then some of my own friends.

Has some very unrealistic concepts of how long things take and other people's workloads. He'll give you half a dozen things in ten minutes. Then ask half an hour later when the latest thing isn't done while you're working on the rather urgent thing he gave you first.

Eats very noisily, mouth open with lots of lip smacking and finger sucking. While on the phone.

Constant complaining about his computer. Doesn't understand that computers take mor than 30 seconds to boot, log on and open outlook. Or that sending a 100mb e-mail from a USB drive is going to take some time.

The worst thing is we have to be very careful if we want to pull him up on any of these things, because dad will always take his side and people have gotten in to a lot of trouble arguing with him.

*stabs*
(Potty Jag har smör i min rumpspringa, Wed 6 May 2009, 10:08, Reply)

Haha, I wasn't casting aspersions
I just remember you saying you were involved in some sort of performance monitoring type stuff?
(username1, Wed 6 May 2009, 10:11, Reply)

Not really
If somebody spots a batch job taking a long time to run, I'm the "who" they're gonna call. Them I use my awesome skills to rewrite it to lop an order of magnitude off the run time.
( The Light in Chains don't touch the Pope's boner, Wed 6 May 2009, 10:28, Reply)