The boss from hell
I was going to post something about this bloke in the recent Bullies QOTW but didn't, so I'm glad I have another opportunity.

A few years ago I got a job that entailed upping sticks from London and moving to a lovely city some 60 miles to the northwest that is well-known for its university. During the application/interview process I'd had the odd misgiving but decided to ignore them (bit of background - I'd applied to do a master's degree in this place a couple of years earlier, and although I didn't get on the course, we were pretty into moving here from London, so if this job made it possible, that was a bonus).

The company employed about 25 people and was run very tightly by the guy who had founded it. I was put to work on a particular project that had been on the back burner for a while and was left to get on quietly with it.

Now, the work at this place is project-based, and very much driven by publishing and event deadlines. And God help whoever's publication or event was coming up next, because they were very much in the firing line. In my first few weeks there, I saw several colleagues reduced to tears by this guy's bullying.

I just kept my head down and got on with my project, which he never had time to look at, until one Friday he asked if we could meet up the following lunchtime to go through it (my day off). So the wife and I cancelled the day out we'd planned in London, and then at 1130 on the Saturday he rang up to say he couldn't make it and we'd talk about my project another time. Thanks.

Then the project that I'd been employed to do started, and that's when things really started to go wrong. For a start, this guy seemed to believe that anyone who joined his firm already came there hard-wired with how things worked there - what the systems were, how you went about doing things, who the key personnel at clients were, etc - there was no flexibility, and next to no training about this.

He'd ask to see a piece of work with no notice, never mind if it was still in draft form, and without even getting as far as the end of the first line would decide it wasn't what he'd asked for (and believe me, what he initially asked for and what he later thought he had asked for were two totally different things) and once even threw the work back in my face. All the while shouting at the top of his voice about what a bunch of idiots he had working for him, of course. And heaven help you if you printed something off in Times New Roman rather than Arial (not a mistake anyone ever made twice). Or gave him something that was stapled together, rather than attached with Treasury Tags (remember them? We must have been the last place on earth using them).

He used to arrive at the office a bit later than we did, and you could feel the atmosphere change as he walked through the door - quite often, he'd make a beeline for whichever hapless soul he had decided hadn't done a decent job of something, and stand there, berating them, still sweating in his cycling kit (and don't think I never wondered whether I should 'fix' the brakes on his bike for him).

All classic bullying tactics - undermining people's confidence, shouting at them in front of colleagues, changing the goalposts, berating them for not knowing something they couldn't possibly have known, getting you to do something on someone else's project if you'd decided to stay late to get on with your own work, which defeated the object of staying late in the first place.

I'd never have got through it without the support of my line manager (who had the patience of a saint) and the support of colleagues (I remember an email from one, just after I'd emerged shellshocked from his office, saying that she knew what I was going through because she'd experienced it herself).

The lowest point came when I had to travel up to London with him to finalise my project with the publisher - I had prepared everything as meticulously as I could, and I'd planned for every eventuality, but it still wasn't good enough, I was wondering what more I could do (and then, a ray of sunshine, the senior guy we'd gone to meet found me at a quiet moment and asked me how I was coping with it - they had his number all right).

The following Saturday, I went into the office to finish everything off on the project, and my heart sank when I saw his bike outside. I almost didn't go in. And there I was, quietly getting on with my work, when he emerged from his office - I should mention, we were the only people in the building - and stood over me, way too far inside my personal space, and ranted at me for what was probably an hour. I actually had to tell him to back off several times, and I was a wreck by the end of it.

Because his staff were so incompetent, meaning that he had to spend all his time correcting our mistakes and therefore didn't have time to work on taking the business forward (his words), he recruited an entire tier of senior management at vast expense. They saw through him, and didn't last long. And on the day the last of those walked out (the owner said he'd fired him, but we're not that stupid), we all sat in the office, stunned, and decided that enough was enough. We closed the door to our department, and told our line manager every single problem we had with him, and she had the unenviable task of going to him and outlining our grievances.

Of course, he didn't accept that any of this was his fault (this is someone who still slags off a former employee who had the cheek to take him to an employment tribunal for constructive dismissal, and won), but he promised to take a different approach.

I left shortly afterwards, so I'm not sure whether he kept to that or not - certainly he still had time to scream at me about my incompetence in front of a roomful of strangers (and, unfortunately for him, one of our senior staff) at a five-star London hotel before one of our events. I'd have snapped there and then, but I had already been verbally offered another job, so instead disappeared for an hour and sank a couple of pints before going back to the hotel by which time the event was in full swing and he was otherwise occupied.

(As an aside, this is the same hotel that told him his company would never be allowed to hold an event there again because he had verbally abused a waitress).

And of course, when I resigned, his reaction was "That's just as well. I was going to sack you anyway" (No you weren't, you lying bastard, otherwise you'd have done it already).

The funny thing was, I'd been headhunted to my new job, because the place I was working had a very good reputation, and did produce the goods... if only people knew what lay behind the facade. That job didn't work out, partly because of the long commute to the West Midlands every day, but I'm now freelancing and very happy with it, it's also taking my career in directions I'd have never thought possible, particularly in those dark days working for him.

He may well have changed now - I look at the website now and again, and most of the old staff are still there (compared to something like 75% staff turnover in the 15 months I was there) - but I somehow doubt it.

The above is just a snapshot of some of the stuff that I had to endure, there's a lot of stuff I've had to leave out because if I put it in I might as well type the company name and have done with it, but I know that I am not the only one who had to undergo this. It's been cathartic writing this, and I'll leave the final word with an ex-colleague who handed his notice in just before I did:

"I really wish I wasn't leaving - I love the job. It's just such a shame that he's the boss".
(Capo, Mon 22 Jun 2009, 9:11, 2 replies)

the boss from hell
isn't that satan?
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Mon 22 Jun 2009, 9:46, closed)

Could be
Although we had a few other choice names for him...
(Capo, Mon 22 Jun 2009, 15:19, closed)