» Bad Management

Pervy, PR Paul
I have worked at some good places over the years but have had the misfortune to work for some right bastards. One bloke Paul married 40 something with 3 kids, who was the part owner of a PR agency, was a real piece of work. He regularly spoke to his 6 strong female team like pieces of shit, he’d shout, swear and would pretty much do what he could to humiliate us all on a frequent basis. He also got his cock out once on a ‘team building’ trip that they took us on to France, he was and probably still is a complete c**t.

I had to take the company digital camera to a client function and when I went to download the pictures I found loads of shots of him and a very young scantily clad girl in some grubby hotel room. I’d just saved the photos onto my memory stick when he had another wig out in the main office and started bollocking one of my colleagues quite ferociously, I stood up for her and received the same bollocking. He then called us all useless c**ts and began another rant, I lost my temper at this point, told him I’d never been spoken to like this before by a manager and that I had no respect for him professionally or personally and that I was giving him 1 months notice as of that moment. He then maturely shouted ‘well f**k o** then’ at me.. Needless to say the remaining month was not exactly pleasant. It was made worse by the interviews I was made to sit through while they were searching for the poor soul that would become my replacement. They eventually found a guy called Dave, he was really nice and that’s what made it worse because I knew exactly what he was coming into. I gave him my mobile number and told him to give me a call if he had any questions or needed to find any thing. Anyway, I started my new job and had got about a month in when I got a call from Dave, it was pretty unexpected and his opening line was ‘Can I ask you honestly what Paul is like…because he has just sacked me’. Well 30 mins later it transpired that Paul had discovered that Dave had lied at his interview about his previous salary being 18k per annum, Dave had actually been on 17k. Paul wasn’t happy about this and decided to sack him, the ridiculous thing is that I had been on 22k so it clearly wasn’t all about the money. Dave had been in his previous job for 9 years and his MRS. was 7 months pregnant. Admittedly Dave had lied but a grand in the scheme of things wasn’t a lot for Paul. Considering the amount of money he was coning out of loads of our clients for doing fuck all work and the dodgy tax practices that went on in that place. Dave went on to tell me all the stuff they’d told him about me, he also imparted the bollocks that Paul had told some of the old clients about me. Paul being the c**t that he was meant that none of it was a surprise but it still pissed me off. Infact it pissed me of enough to meet up with Dave the next week where I had the pleasure in handing over the memory stick with the grubby hotel room shots and the keys to the office which Paul hadn’t even been arsed to ask me for when I left.

I found out from an old colleague about a month later about the showdown that followed in the office. Paul had decided to withhold the salary he owed Dave so Dave paid Paul a visit early one morning. He gave Paul the hiding he deserved and then left with a cheque. About a week later Paul’s MRS chucked him out following the grubby poster campaign that had been displayed along their road for all to see. What goes around, comes around.
(Wed 16th Jun 2010, 15:19, More)

» Bad Management

du, du, du, du, du, I’m loving it!
I’ve had a few crappy bosses as I mentioned earlier, but I think the best of the worst was with part time jobs whilst at college. Just because it didn’t really mater, it wasn’t like I had a mortgage or bills to pay.

One of my first jobs was in a Numark Chemist in ilford, at 15 years old I was handed a white doctors style coat and told they’d show me the ropes. Which basically involved running up and down stairs of a creaky old town house with boxes of supplies for the pharmacy. All their products were in cages and stored rather precariously on shelves, there wasn’t enough room to swing a cat and the fire exits were chained and padlocked shut. It was like an episode of London’s Burning that they were waiting to film. When I went to put my hand in my pocket I discovered that both pockets on the Doctors coat were glued shut with some kind of industrial strength glue and wouldn’t budge. When I asked one of the other counter monkeys why my pockets were glued closed I was told it was so I wouldn’t nick anything! I worked from 8.30am till 6.00pm with a 30 min break for lunch, at the end of the day I was given an envelope with a fiver in it, it was less the fifteen quid they were taking out of my wages for the doctors lab coat. Needless to say I only worked there for the day.

Next up were a few weeks in summer working at McDonalds while I was doing my BA. I needed to find a source of income and they were hiring so I sat through the cheesy training and health and safety videos and away I went. Before I knew it I was front of house, calling orders out like ‘Order up, large Big Mac and fries, on 2’, it was awful and every minute of it made me cringe. But like the other drones, I just got into the routine and got on with the unsociable hours, the burger stink, and constantly being cheerful. After about 2 weeks of being there one of the regular team got promoted to shift manager, I’d seen the communication on the notice board but to be honest it’d barely hit my radar, he was just one of the many people that worked there. Well within the first day of his new job everyone knew who he was, he was a complete cock. Not only did he have the worst case of small man syndrome that I’d ever seen but he was so damned arrogant, patronizing and rude to everyone, and he was really spotty. Baring in mind he was only in his early 20’s and probably knew bugger all about anything he really seemed to love lording it over people and belittled staff at every opportunity he got. He made people cry regularly and would shout across the cooking area at people who he felt could either work quicker, smile more, reduce the amount of salad they were putting in buns and stop giving away company profits (yes, he actually said that), you know really encouraging us to embrace the…du, du, du, du, du, I’m loving it! Ethic. The hours were crap, the work was boring and mundane and the conversation was hardly stimulating and dealing with that burke daily was really starting to wear me down. Anyway after a 5am start I was due to finish my shift at 2pm and my dad was picking me up. So spotty the short arse decided that as the lunch cover hadn’t come back from their break yet because he had cocked up the rota I’d have to stay until they did. He wouldn’t let me go out to tell my dad who I could see waiting outside, 10 mins passed and I was still there, 20 mins and I turned around and told him I really had to go and started to untie my apron. Wailing like a banshee he screamed at me, ‘take that apron off girl and you’re F***ing sacked!’ Get back to your till. His timing couldn’t have been more perfect, no sooner had the words left his mouth than I saw my dad out the corner of my eye. My dad, reached across the counter grabbed him by the throat and dragged him straight back over it, threw him on the floor and explained in no un-certain terms that he had no right to speak to me or anyone else like that. He then told him to get my f***ing money now as I wouldn’t be coming back. Thanks Dad, McDonalds sucked!
(Thu 17th Jun 2010, 12:37, More)