Bad Boss

You think your boss sucks? You’re not alone.

What do you do with a boss who charges you for the flowers the company sent to your father’s funeral?
Have his car towed. Five days in a row.
Jay describes a boss so bad he charged employees for the chairs they sat in ($200) and even for the company’s new building signage—in addition to charging Jay $200 for the flowers the company sent to his father’s funeral.
Along with his co-workers, Jay ultimately got revenge by reporting to authorities that the boss parked his car in the handicapped space in the mall next door.

There’s something bosses just don’t seem to like about workers with ailing relatives. Worker X says she is a part-time worker who’s off on Fridays. When her mother was in the final months of a terminal illness, she spent three days each week caring for her, traveling 70 miles one way to her mother’s home. But then:
"A colleague had resigned and my boss, ever eager to save a buck, decided to postpone hiring her replacement by having me pick up the extra workload…. When I insisted I couldn’t get everything done in 32 hours she said she’d “authorize” me to work Fridays. I begged, “Please don’t ask me to work Fridays! You know I spend them with my mother and I don’t know how much longer she has. Please don’t ask me to do that!” She then said in a very nasty and intimidating tone, “Well, I can make that part of your job description and then you’ll HAVE to do it.”
When I asked if I could have some time to think it over she got huffy and ended up making other arrangements…. When my mother died she didn’t send a card, flowers, or attend the memorial service."

One worker writes about a terrible boss he had last year who “threatened to fire” him for using vacation time to visit family after his father passed away. This sensitive and fair-minded boss also pressured staff “into working overtime and would NOT pass our time cards when we put overtime on it.” But fellow employees got their revenge when they let the boss “attend a meeting with an important client with his fly open. Serves the SOB right.” Indeed.

Another worker, Vanessa, says she had a lousy boss in her very first job, when working at a fast-food restaurant as a teenager. One of her duties involved making ice cream sundaes and shakes. The boss started weighing the sundaes that she and other workers made. “If we used too much ice cream, she would dump it in the sink and make us try again to get within the acceptable guidelines!” Vanessa recalls. After throwing away a perfectly good sundae, the boss would yell at the employee for wasting money. The boss even went further and made employees pay out of their own pockets when they made sundaes the boss thought were too large. “To this day,” Vanessa writes, “I cringe when I see an ice cream sundae.”

Here are some strange stories. They are true!

"I worked on a help desk in a plant. I was the least senior of the help desk employees. Since the company had decided they could not do without a help desk during emergency situations, a contingency plan was developed to move the employees to another building on campus and set up the help desk there. Little did I know exactly what the contingency plan called for.
One day, the fire alarm went off. This time it wasn't a fire drill but the real thing. A fire had started in the plant and smoke was drifting into the help desk area. At this time, my supervisor explained the contingency plan in full. One person was to leave the area every 5 minutes until the last person was left. We were to leave the office in order of seniority. Making the least senior person left to make sure all computers, lights, etc. were turned off and the help desk office door was locked.I was the least senior. And with 9 people, I could not leave for 45 minutes even though smoke was filling the room. In my last 5 minutes prior to leaving, coughing and tearing and still answering the help desk phone, a security officer entered the office and yelled at me to leave the area. I explained why I was still there but he told me to leave immediately.That I know, no action was ever taken change the plan nor explanation ever made to the supervisor that an employee's life was more important that keeping help desk customers happy."

"My boss made me wait on a dangerous stalker and then knowingly hired him to bus tables on my shift. It happened about 13 years ago, when I was waitressing full-time at a well-known national chain. Working conditions were pretty terrible, but I was struggling to support myself and needed the job. A very creepy male customer began coming in on a daily basis, demanding that I wait on him, and then harassing me with constant and unwelcome advances. What began with love letters scrawled on the back of place mats quickly escalated into disturbing threats and incessant stalking. Remarkably, my boss's response was to laugh about it. He seemed to delight in the scenario, and even began referring to the stalker as my "boyfriend." Instead of asking the stalker to leave, my boss forced me to continue waiting on him. When I worked nights, the stalker waited out the parking lot, watching me while I worked. Even my co-workers were uncomfortable. The restaurant had picture windows on all sides - anytime you looked up you'd see his eerie silhouette under the lights in the parking lot. I had to ask a male friend to start picking me up after work. Then the unthinkable happened. The stalker applied for a job busing tables and my boss -- knowing that this man was stalking me on a nightly basis -- actually hired him! When I showed up for my shift and saw him in uniform I nearly fainted. That same week, a co-worker discovered a gun and handcuffs amongst his things in the men's changing area. Rather than fire this guy and call the police, my boss accused my co-worker of invading the stalker’s privacy and did nothing! Needless to say, I quit. To this day I shudder to think what could've happened."

"My father passed away unexpectedly due to complications resulting from pneumonia. When I advised my boss that I would need Saturday off to attend the funeral, his compassionate response was that no one could cover for me. (I had not missed a day of work in 4 1/2 years for any reason.) He refused to give time off, and I missed the funeral. I did get bereavement time...a week later."

"I had been invited to lunch with my boss, along with several of my coworkers. Our boss was known for being, well, cheap. We all prepared ourselves for a fast food lunch at best. We loaded up into his vehicle and he began to drive. He passed several good restaurants - no surprise there - and all of the fast food options as well. What could possibly be our destination?A discount warehouse store!... and we were treated to a fabulous lunch of... free samples! I kid you not, he had us racing at top speeds through the store as he encouraged us to try all the different freebies. Then it was back to the office and the long, hungry afternoon."

"Years ago my boss had several business acquaintances who traveled in and out of town on business. Very late one night, I received a call at home from one of my boss's friends asking me to meet him for a drink. When I asked him how he got my number, he told me the boss gave it to him and told him the next time he was in town, he should call me for a "good time". I confronted the boss the next day who acted surprised that I was so upset. He thought I would do whatever it takes to "keep the customer satisfied"."

"Our boss was a tyrant who called us degrading names, humiliated us publicly, and screamed at us for everything from talking as we worked to going to the bathroom too many times. One payday we decided to go out to eat since we were allowed 15 minutes extra on payday. We called our order in ahead so our food would be ready when we got there, but there was some delay and we ended up getting back to the office ten minutes late. Initially nothing was said, but about an hour later our boss called us into his office for a brief tongue-lashing. He told us that if it were up to him he’d fire us all on the spot but that would leave the company shorthanded. So he was going to hold a drawing and have one of us pick the name of the person he was going to fire. He wrote each of our names on a small slip of paper, dropped them into his mail basket, and then told one of the girls to pick a name. For some reason I just knew my name was going to be picked — and it was. He told the other girls to get out and they did. Then he said to me “I’d really like to make an example of you, but it would cost me money to replace you. So get out of here and get back to work and be thankful I changed my mind.”"

"My former employer didn't have maternity leave. The reason, because women only need 2 weeks off to have a baby, "Two weeks of vacation time should be plenty of time to have a baby and come back to work". My doctor told me he would not release me to go back to work in two weeks and suggested that I use short-term disability. When I asked my boss about that he started fuming and said, "your unborn child was a self-inflicted wound and I would not be able to take short-term disability". If I did, he said, "I would be the equivalent of a construction worker who purposefully stepped on a nail to get time off - and we fired him."I had a C-section and my doctor didn't release me to go back to work until 8 weeks. Two months later they laid me off."

"I used to work part-time in a university kitchen. One year, our director bought some food off a truck "because it was cheap." By the end of the week, it had all gone bad and we were in the middle of a fruit fly infestation. The little gnats were so thick in the hallways that you would run in/out of the kitchen covering your mouth, trying not to breathe. And yet, the kitchen stayed open.Sometime later, we noticed water seeping up through the floors followed by this horrible smell which, in turn, was followed by toilet paper. We had a sewer leak right there in the kitchen. And amazingly, NOTHING was done about! We were told to just wear sneakers and we'll be okay. Days later, no one had came and fixed the problem and we were still walking through and making food in standing sewage. As a group, we complained and complained, but still nothing happened and we stayed opened. Not only did we worry about our safety, but also we worried about the safety of the people we were feeding. We were forbidden to call any outside health, including the Health Department. However, by the end of the week, we mutinied and a friend and I called OSHA. We were immediately shut down. Our boss came down to meet the officials and was just "shocked" to find the mess. She "just couldn't believe it." And we got at yelled in front of the officials for "not telling anyone.""

Worst boss in America: G.W. Bush
1. He is not qualified by either training or successful experience in management. He and his friends engaged in illegal activities to get him the job.
2. He is destroying the bottom line and the general economy of the company.
3. He has the company borrowing heavily-at a rate that will destroy the company's credit and lead it into bankruptcy.
4. He is mis-appropriating company assets by giving them to his friends on the board and friends who kickback to him for company favors and contracts.
5. He is spending heavily on foreign activities that have no logical connection to the well-being of the company and are causing loss of life and limb of company employees.
6. He is trying to nullify the healthcare, retirement and other benefit obligations to company employees.
7. There is little hope that he is able to change his policies, because he is does not read, seek the advice of experts and is not curious.
8. He is a poor speaker and communicator, is not respected or trusted by heads of other companies that might do business with us; he is a poor public representative of company values and integrity.
9. It is clear that he is actively working to take the company apart and sell it off to other profit-making interests.