happy holidays
An former boss of mine once fired me the day before the christmas holidays.
After the conversation he said: 'oh, before i forget. I have something for you'.....

He gave me my christmas gift set.
Wished me happy holidays
and send me on my way
(rcn, Fri 19 Jun 2009, 9:40, Reply)

Terry. Greatest boss on earth and the tale of the scratchcard.
My boss and I got on famously well when we worked at the boomboomshakalakalakaboom plant. Terry would always complement me on my collection of putney elbows, and every lunchtime we would down flanges and wongmuppets and head off to shant in search of ferret weasels.

"Same again gents?" the barman would ask us. This would usually result in Terry unzipping his microscooter and spewing forth an acid like rainbow liquid from his marmite jar. "Balackomormanat" Terry would say, hand over a £7 note, and we'd eat our steak.

Anyway, back at work, Terry ruled with an iron fist, or as I liked to call it, an iron fist. People were scared of him at first, but after a few weeks of rape, limb removal, and 'tracks of my tears' being played over and over in the office, people got used to him and would often bring him in little treats such as wagon wheels (real ones, not the chocolate snack) and speculums. All in all, the team got on well, and production was on the up and up. It came to the point when Terry had to hire in a group of robots from the Terminator films to help assemble the new B566667/OA4 model we had been working on, which proved very popular with the clients. After all, it was lemon scented and very sharp.

The robots happily downed thier lazer guns and worked very dilligently, and when production bottomed out, Terry had to let them go again. He didn't relish having to tell them, but whilst he could tell they were distressed at the news, thier emotionless faces were an added bonus as he settled up with them. Even at thier leaving drink he was quids in, as they didn't drink. A few bags of McCoys between them and that was it.

All this came to an end last week however. Terry was arrested after 6789 indecent images of waffles on his computer. He had taken it to PC World and the engineer alerted Birdseye. The company has now folded, and Terry is looking at 5 years in prison. I still can't believe that a person I respected and admired is nothing but a filthy potatofile. It was the best job I ever had, and now it is all over.

I'm very quiet and enjoy backgammon.
(Spaff_Quaffer Wise fwom your gwave., Fri 19 Jun 2009, 9:20, 8 replies)

A few years back
I was working in a office job in Liverpool. It was a 24/5 job, so we worked shift.

The boss worked days, 9-5pm or 2-11pm, He was quite a pedantic, rule follower. Procedures had to be followed, and no one was to step out of line. So if you wanted to do any mischief, do it outside of his working hours.

One night shift i came into the office, about 10:30pm. There was a loud banging noise coming from the staff room. I walk closer, and I see my mate wobbling the vending machine side to side, making the sweets fall out, and collecting them. He was doing quite well, about a dozen bars of chocolate were already on the floor next to his feet.

He notices me and quickly begs me to keep this a secret, he could get the sack!

With a bribe of a Kit Kat Chunky in my hand as I left - i never told a soul.

Until a few weeks later, when the same thing happened.

I returned to the staff room on the same shift, only this time, there was the noise of more than one person.

As i entered the Staff room ,there’s my mate pushing and pulling the side of the Vending machine, and kneeling on the floor, is my Boss, with an open Twix in his left hand and his right hand inside the retrieval box.

The both saw me, Froze, laughed like little school kids then offered me the usual bribe...

I like kit Kats...
(Dan dan dan They tik urh jerbs!!!, Fri 19 Jun 2009, 9:00, Reply)

My Boss
He was charismatic I'll give him that, but God he a completely obnoxious, right wing fascist. Still, we all did what he said, mainly cos we were scared of the consequences.

Here ends my evidence to the Nurenberg trials.
(kitescreech still here, Fri 19 Jun 2009, 8:16, 2 replies)

My boss is pretty nifty
Once, some people were shooting in a copse near our work. He didnt like these people, so we set a few 1000 shot roman candles off near them. He also fired a few barrels of his shot gun over their heads, hopefully scared most of the pheasants off.

We once made a UFO out of glow sticks, bin liners and helium balloons and let it float around one evening, after we made a crop circle.

The day Tony Blair resigned we made an efigy of him and put in on a cross in a field, that made the local paper.
(Dr Zoidberg is going for a scuttle, Fri 19 Jun 2009, 7:47, 3 replies)

I'm VERY close to my boss
She thinks I'm a real stud - first time we met we totally clicked.
(Capo, Fri 19 Jun 2009, 4:10, 2 replies)

I have the patience of a saint and nerves of steel!
My supervisor...

Drenches herself in nasty perfume that smells rotten. It gives me a headache, and our whole hall smells like her perfume. The good thing is, you know where she is. It's like an early-warning systems for stinky bosses.

Smacks her gum, very loudly. Her office is right next to mine, so I have to close my door sometimes to shut out the smacking. Then she comes in to my office and smacks her gum in my ear.

I give her documents to review and never see them again. Until I get in trouble for not releasing that document. Sorry, that's not happening until it's been approved! Because she has a habit of making me think that a document is ready to go, and then at the last minute she'll have to make some (pointless, unnecessary) changes. So I always have make absolutely sure that this is really the final version and she really, really isn't going to have any more changes.

Takes my supplies. Takes things out of the cabinet over my desk and leaves the door open and leaves the things she took out of the cabinet on my desk. If she doesn't leave them on my desk, she leaves them in her office, and then when I need them, I have no idea where they are.

Lets the printer run out of paper and doesn't refill it. Takes my printouts off of the printer, so I think maybe I just forgot to print it and I print it again. Can we please stop wasting paper?

Hates it when I type. I have been "spoken to" about typing too much - I had only been typing for about two minutes!

Borrowed my sweater when she had to work outside one evening. I have no idea what happened to it, but it must have been messy, because she took it home to wash it, and she brought it back to the office much smaller than it was before. She must have used really hot water, because I had washed it before and it was fine. But now it is too tight. She said she would buy me another one, but I think you've all guessed by now that that didn't happen. I liked that sweater. It was black with nice pearly buttons. I miss it.

That's really just the beginning, but I don't want to bore everyone. More later, maybe. I'm not even going to get started on my really crazy boss from a few jobs ago. That could take a while.
(magiceyes, Fri 19 Jun 2009, 3:35, 3 replies)

Well, I got sacked 2 days ago
got 15 days holiday pay + a month's paid but not worked notice period. So if I can get another job within about 3 weeks I'm actually better off than if I'd kept my job.

Given that HR didn't want to concede either of these, clearly my boss rocks/rocked!
( uberdeity Wondered why Owen Lars knew of the term "hell" on, Fri 19 Jun 2009, 2:36, Reply)

blimey - only a few hours and three pages of answers already
you can tell this question's Born To Run.
(tjn whizzing on the electric fence of life, Fri 19 Jun 2009, 1:29, 4 replies)

Glass collector
Long story short. Me, 16, Glass Monkey, heavy metal bar, swarmy cunt faced prick off a boss. He tried to make me clean a toilet that had a broken pint glass blocking up the 6 liters of diarrhea and vomit with a plastic bag (the tesco type bag with the little holes in it). Told him to piss off and do it himself, he never he sacked me and got the other glass monkey to clean it.
( RBX13 the cake is not a lie, Fri 19 Jun 2009, 1:12, Reply)

I think my boss is great!
But everyone else thinks he's a prick.
I'm self-employed.
( P45 Sent by my Bosch 509e in the year 2000, Fri 19 Jun 2009, 1:07, Reply)

Sacked by Stabilo
It was 1991 and the depths of a proper recession. Twas on a train from Leeds to London that my South African boss produced a list of the entire London Head Office staff. He then asked me what each one of them did. If I did not produce a satisfactory answer he put a blue Stabilo mark through their name. Having come to the end of the list he threw it at me and said that the next day I was to sack all those who had the blue mark through their name. Thus became the legend - 'You've been Stabilo'd' amongst the whole company.

It was on the same train journey that said boss was attempting to use his mobile phone (an enormous contraption the size of a briefcase) to call his secretary. 'Can you hear me?' he cried on a regular basis as the reception was rubbish..'Can you hear me?'. Much to my delight, and the rest of the carriage, a voice piped up from a few rows back 'We can all fucking hear you, mate, why don't you just give it a rest'. I think its the one and only time I ever saw him embarrassed.
(tell me about the rabbits, Fri 19 Jun 2009, 1:03, Reply)

I've always had lovely bosses!
None of them were mental at all really. The only thing I can really think of is for my last supervisor being a clean-freak, extra-ordinarily so, but she's a biochemist/microbiologist - I think that practically counts as good work practice.

Nope, I'm sad to say that I've had a good life. ;_;
(DeactivateThisDisaster No., Fri 19 Jun 2009, 0:04, Reply)

Worst boss I ever had
This was a while back when I was working as a plumber for a summer job. Anyway, this boss was really old-school - bit of a dinosaur to tell the truth. Basically, to cut a long story short, it turned out the princess was in another castle.

I was livid.
( Pretender, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 23:59, 1 reply)

What goes around comes around
Cue 10 years ago, me having to leave a job at a factory, due to the fact that my ex boss promoted on breast size rather than ability to do the job.
As a person of the male persuasion, who could also see right through his bullshit, my career was doomed.
10 years later I'm back. I'm working for a customer this time.

I'm sure you can write the rest of this yourselves
(Sir Tainley Barking Ezekiel 23:20, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 23:43, 3 replies)

Mistaken identity
I once got berated by a boss in front of a customer for apparently ignoring her tannoys. She was away with phrases like 'unprofessionalism', 'disciplinary' and 'taking it higher'. I felt I had to say my piece. After all I didn't ignore her, not on purpose anyway.

"Sorry but I didn't hear you."
"I know fine well you heard them Gary, I've been calling your name for five minutes now. I could see you milling around at the other end of the store and there's no problems with the tannoy over there."
"Erm...my name isn't Gary."

The customer laughed and she stormed off. Now whenever I see her she makes an effort to drop my real name into conversation at least once.
(Peter Sutcliffe's Right Bollock, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 23:19, Reply)

Pea toasted
When I was in my second year of university, I worked in a KFC to make some bucks. I only worked twice a week, and I also got to have as much food as I could eat on my break.

All the food I could eat turned out to be usually 3 to 4 family buckets of chicken that found its way to the industrial fridge so that I could take it home and share it with my housemates. It was a pretty sweet deal and I was relatively happy.

Then a new manager was appointed, and was not all that cool. He leched on the 16 year old girls, stole money, didn’t authorise overtime when it was done (“oh must be a payroll error!”), chronically understaffed the entire place to lower costs (“I am just sweating my resources here pal.” He cut my hours without asking me so he could give them to the under 18s, and introduced the rule where you had to pay for your food on your break.

I complained and he said that if I didn’t like it, then I had to lump it. The weasel. This is a man that brought his own bottle of coke to drink on his shifts as he couldn’t stand to drink the pepsi from the KFC taps. What type of monster does that?

Anyway, I am a pretty happy-go-lucky bloke so I gritted my teeth, took the money, and accepted these changes.

Then he gave me 2 weeks notice because I hadn’t fucking scrubbed the floor properly. I was glad at the time because then I couldn’t be bothered to work in his fowl regime.

So I planned my final night. I won’t document the sleepless revenge filled nights that led up to it, only what happened.

Picture the scene.

10pm on a Saturday night in Exeter, two hours after my last shift starts.

£9.95 spent on an ad in the local paper that promised a free meal to the first 200 people that came through the door after 10pm.

Me switching off all the deep fat fryers (that take an hour and a half to get to temperature).

‘Killing in the name’ by Rage against the machine (last 2 minutes of the song) repeated and burnt onto a custom CD playing on the branch stereo (glued shut) at 95% volume.

Me, and 4 other Colonel Sanders refugees, vaulting the counter, past the baying drunken chicken hounds brandishing copies of the local rag, with our middle fingers up.

Finally, dickless clown losing it as the place gets mobbed.

Then I went for a maccy ds.

EPILOGUE.

Its probably cooler in my own mind than what actually happened but what the hell.
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 23:09, 10 replies)

the boss? he's a w***er
many moons ago while at college, I used to work in various different restaurants and bars round manchester - nights and weekends fitted in nicely with sixth form. after an apprenticeship washing pots, I graduated to commis and general dogsbody, and was working at one particular pizzeria/trattoria style affair where every sunday night, the owner (and head chef) would disappear to the upstairs office about half an hour before service finished.

One night, the sous chef sends the young lad doing the pots at the time upstairs to the office to tell the owner there was a phone call for him... he walked into the office the see the edifying sight of the owner, pants round his ankles, knocking one out over some topless woman in the NOTW.

The owner sacked him on the spot... but we still ended up finding out why. the dirty old get.
(tjn whizzing on the electric fence of life, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 23:02, Reply)

same job, 3 very different bosses
boss no. 1:

cheaper and tackier than a secondhand leopardskin thong, but i couldn't help liking her. her office was in her living-room. she would conduct business calls with all 6 of her children screaming and fighting in the background. she would often stand, completely naked, applying false tan with a car sponge, whilst our drivers were stood in front of her, waiting for the night's job sheets. constantly pregnant, she would often put me in charge. i really didn't like that, as she would fuck things up and then dump them in my lap.
the final straw was when her partner stole the night's takings and blew the lot at the casino, meaning none of us got paid.
we all quit that night.

boss no. 2:

a former driver, he began his own company 2 weeks after our mass walkout. he happily took on all our old clients and, at first, things ran smoothly.
after about 6 months and some careful eavesdropping, we discovered that he was stealing our tips and double-booking jobs in order to squeeze every last penny he could from us. the customer complaints started pouring in. he would hire utterly unsuitable people, if they were willing to work for less than anyone else.
again, i was often left in charge of the shitstorms he created.
i finally left when my bag and purse were stolen from his car. i reasoned that, as he had purposely not locked the car, the responsibility for replacing my stuff was his. he told me to fuck off, so i quit.

boss no. 3:

a former coworker. disillusioned by boss 2's business practices and utterly appalled at the way i'd been treated, he decided to quit and start up his own business, with me as his second in command.
the business went from strength to strength, all our staff were happy and well-paid. our customers were always re-hiring us and recommending us to their friends.
after 10 years, business started to tail off, we just weren't in vogue anymore, so we decided to retire.
boss 3 was and still is my best friend, someone i can always rely on. we've actually just got back from the chinese!

length? 12 years, but it feels like i've known him forever :)
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 22:59, Reply)

Sainsburys
Many moons ago, to pay for my college booze I started working at Sainburys. Now my dad used to work there too, so my interview consisted of the interviewer sitting back saying
"No point doing this because i guess your dad told you everything already (he hadnt)"
"err yeah sure" was my reply.
Suprise suprise i got the job.

Anyway, first day comes around and my dad is showing me around, "right son, he says, I know you dont want to work on the tills so i have sorted you with a place in the Meat/ Fish department"
I am introduced to Andrew the dept boss, a big geordie bloke. Nice polite introductions are made and shown about the department. Then my dad leaves.

Andrew turns to me, "Right Fishbone just one little thing. IF YOU EVER CALL IN SICK DUE TO HANGOVER, I DONT GIVE A SHIT WHO YOUR DAD IS IM GONNA COME ROUND YOUR HOUSE, GRAB YOU BY THE TESTICLES AND DRAG YOUR FUCKING ARSE INTO WORK... ok, good"
Scared the shit out of me it did, and it worked. Turned out to be a top bloke who I shared many drunken nights with... and turned up to work on time in all manner of booze related states.
(Fishbone-didi, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 21:47, Reply)

Best Boss Ever
As a poor student interested in beer, I took the job that fitted into this view of the world. I became a barman at a small pub near the quaint Northamptonshire village of Rockingham. I had two bosses, one an Aussie and one most definately not (who has now unfortunately left). This story concerns the latter, called Simon.

He is built like a brick shithouse and looks like a thug but is one of the nicest people you will ever meet. He used to do magic at childrens parties. I also introduced him to Sickipedia, which he absolutely adores, sometimes only going on the internet for that alone. Anyway, onto our story.

He employed a young girl called Gemma, a lovely looking lass with, unfortunately, a boyfriend. Now, she went into said pub for a meal with said boyfriend. She had a new hairstyle, which Simon commented on making her look 'like a cancer patient'. Said boyfriend's Dad had died from cancer recently, Simon knew about this but forgot until the words were out of his mouth.

If you're reading Simon, you're a fat useless cunt but I love you. Come back!
(The_Reaper, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 21:28, Reply)

How to subtly tell the boss to STFU
I used to have a boss who would distract me for ages whenever I asked even the simplest of questions. To give him the hint he was taking too long (we used to sit next to eachother), I'd reduce the time it took for my screensaver to appear in the hope he'd be reminded he was taking ages.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 21:04, 4 replies)

Oh, where to begin, where to begin. . . .
I used to work at a spa/salon owned by a woman who was a little special. She went by DJ, which many of us joked must stand for DisJointed since her connection to reality was tenuous at best. Her exploits are many, and I know that even if I spent an hour trying to remember them all I'd still forget some moments of jaw-dropping insanity.


There were the small things, like the unpaid electric bill, which went back several months and had a comma and a few 0s before the decimal. And the unlicensed stylist she hired because he was 'a genius', and the colourist who came in drunk, and the colourist who was a meth user who frequently disappeared during the day. There were also a lot of thick, unmarked envelopes seen in the hands of law and code enforcement employees as they emerged from her office, which may or may not have been connected to the constant disappearance of cash tips from the locked box in which they were kept. One guess who had the key.

DisJointed used to call the front desk staff from her office and instruct us to go out, find MethHeadColourist and bring her back so she could apply dye and other chemicals to people's hair (while undoubtedly high; nice and safe, that), which we interpreted as 'go have a cup of coffee at the nice cafe down the block and get paid for it'. She was a stylist herself, and would frequently leave mid-haircut when the need to wander aimlessly like a mental patient, lock herself in her office with all the lights out or completely disappear for several days at a time struck her, which was at least once a week.

Then there were the less-small things, like the time she got in a fistfight with a costumer for a hair show to whom she owed a lot of money. . .in the retail portion of the business, while we were open. The fight spilled out into the street, the police were called and DisJointed broke her finger trying to pull off the other woman's shirt. Then there was the Saturday morning when everyone came in to find the place trashed, with all the cabinets emptied, piles of product and towels on the floor, the supply closets nailed shut and DisJointed rambling like the town drunk. Rather than deal with it, quite a few just quit on the spot.

The place is still open and she's still around, both of which I credit to those nice, unmarked envelopes she likes to give to the people in charge of shutting down businesses or arresting lunatics.
(louveciennes , Volvospotter, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 20:51, Reply)

Drunk in Charge
All of my bosses for the last 15 years have either been c*nts or totally useless. It seems to be a requirement for most management positions. I've been promoted to management quite a few time, but I don't seem to have that ability to agree with everything 'Upper Management' says. Anyway.

There is one manager that stands out in my mind.

I was at college at the time and working in the evenings and on Saturdays for a well known double glazing company. "I'm not trying to sell you anything blah blah blah".

Gary was the manager of the small office. He was one of those typical Essex types, probably on £30K per year but pretending he was on £50K. He drove a Ford Cosworth (of course)!

At the time I lived reasonably close by him and he of course had my contact details. One Saturday I received a phone call from him:

Gary: Smurf, any chance you could pick me up on your way in today?
Smurf: Yeah, no problem. What's wrong with your car?
Gary: Well, I went out last night and had a few drinks and the police didn't like where I left my car.
Smurf: Why? Where did you leave it?
Gary: Up a lamppost.

He was a total twat, but he did have a good sense of humour.
(Big Smurf Brush me daddy-O, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 20:21, Reply)

My boss smells great
My boss is Hugo Boss.
(Clayman, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 20:07, 2 replies)

Too much ambition? Or just nuts?
My ex-boss was onto a good thing. He and another guy had got together developing simple computer applications for a little niche in the market. He was the business brains, and the other guy was the techie brains. It was going very well, so a friend was recruited as more techie brains, and I ended up on the bandwagon too.

This could have worked. It was raking in enough money to keep them both in a pleasant enough lifestyle, but it wasn't enough. This guy wasn't going to be happy until he was running something with a seven figure turnover. He hired a factory unit, and proceeded to stuff it full of programming staff.

This was where it all went wrong. He'd start project after project, and then shelve each one weeks or even months into development because he'd had a better idea. Most of the products were based on what would be useful to him or his business. What the potential customers actually wanted seemed to be irrelevant.

But the biggest mistake was supposedly the cleverest part of the plan: Hire talented but unqualified programming staff, and pay them bottom dollar. That worked fine when they were just hacking out code, but then he decided to promote some of us to management roles.

We didn't have a clue, and we certainly didn't have much in the way of discipline or self-control. Every time he'd run off to a meeting, we'd be flying round the car park on office chairs, hanging off one guy's Yamaha. Even the projects that he didn't lose interest in never got finished.

The company found itself briefly in administration while one lucrative contract was sold off, before being wound up. He took the opportunity to come round to several of our houses and personally call us "cunts" (This was years before the Internet, let alone b3ta, so I hadn't heard the word much prior to that.)

When I left, I courteously thanked him for giving me the experience I'd need to get a proper job.
( Horatio P Lemming, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 20:04, Reply)

loony
Suspicious of my manager's autism were confirmed when someone recently left that had worked for her for 10 years. In his card she wrote "from Claire" and put 4 pence and a euro coin in his leaving collection.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 19:39, Reply)

My boss is all of the awesome.
The other week not only did he take me off probation and consequently give me a small raise, he also tended to my twisted ankle when I stood up and fell over, and booked me a taxi for my finishing time on the company tab so I wouldn't have to walk far.

He also gets naked on the fire escape on Friday afternoons (to get changed to go out after work), tries to put sambucca on expenses and went mad when we hid his Blackberry to make him leave it alone.

Ladyboss encourages me to dye my hair insane colours, helps me pick underwear and buys me sushi.

I feel quite left out among people with bad, evil, mental bosses.
( Maladicta, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 19:24, Reply)

oh christ
I forecast a rant of biblical proportions and more from me this week... m u s t s t o p t h i n k i n g a b o u t t h e q u e s t i o n . . .
(The Cats Twat, Thu 18 Jun 2009, 19:11, Reply)