In the end, there's really one thing that makes or breaks a job: bosses. And there's nothing worse than a bad one. Annoying coworkers and low pay can be dealt with, but a horrible boss brings a special sort of dread to each day. These Redditors have shared their real-life stories about the worst bosses they've ever had—and surprisingly, a lot of them found ways to work around their cruel overlords, and sometimes, they even got 'em fired. Prepare to cringe with these stories of awful bosses who were just the absolute worst.
1. The Ultimate Staycation
I had a boss who refused to let me take an "unplanned vacation" to see my grandma on her deathbed. I quit on the spot. It was strange because up until that incident, she was really cool and laid back. But when I asked for the weekend off to go visit my dying grandmother, she snapped and lectured me about how I needed to "plan" my "vacation" better.
2. Fight You in the Unemployment Line
My boss once grabbed the back of my neck and said, "If you ever say I'm wrong in front of a customer again I will beat your ass." I went to the GM and told him, and my supervisor was relieved of his duties about five minutes later.
3. This One Starts and Ends With a Beach
My boss pitched a sales incentive trip to Cancun if any team hit the goal. My team exceeded the goal, and then they canceled the trip. Two people quit, I accepted a position with their main competitor, and less than a year later, they closed in bankruptcy. Karma’s a beach.
4. Love Them While They’re Cute and Cheap
We found out my boss fired all high school workers after three months because you are required by law to pay them minimum wage after that time period. You can pay them a bit less during the first 90 days. She was a jerk.
5. Cash for the Camera
I took a cell phone video of my boss taking money from the safe and putting it in her wallet. I knew she was doing it, and I also knew that the moment it came out that money was missing she'd blame it on me. She was so stupid that she didn't realize she should stop doing that while I was standing ten feet away with my phone out and facing her.
6. Maybe Find a Solution Instead of Adding to the Problem…
My boss put up a poster that said "Complaining is like vomiting. You feel better but everyone around you feels sick." The morale was already bad, but it was just an awful way for him to take a hit at upset employees rather than do anything positive.
7. Sweet, Sweet Hush Money
I had found another job and was just waiting it out to get my bonus. For about three months, I was free to express myself in ways I wouldn’t have otherwise. I had noticed that my vacation time had not been approved and normally would have asked about it but decided to see how it might play out. My manager called me in about two weeks before my vacation to inform me that it was denied.
I wasn’t the least upset but I informed her I was going anyway. She threatened me every way under the sun which only made me laugh at her. Everyone was surprised when I left her office smiling as they had heard her. I went to my desk, printed off my resignation and gave it to her. I got my bonus, got my vacation, and also got an extra two weeks paid because I was going to a competitor and they didn’t want me sharing information.
8. No One Likes a Mini-Me
My boss made her eight-year-old daughter wander around the office and report who was not working. I was fired because said daughter either lied or had no sense of time and told mama that I had spent 30 minutes chatting with a friend. I actually just paused by his desk to say "Hi" on my way to the bathroom. That was only one of many, many, many, many, horrible things.
9. Should Have Focused on Your Own To-Do List
The CEO publicly praised me for completing a task that my boss had struggled with, so my boss retaliated by forwarding all of his tasks to me in an effort to overwhelm me with work. I actually found his job pretty manageable, which the CEO also noticed and fired him, giving me his job and office.
10. Newsflash: Employees Are Not Your Slaves
I was one of a large number of programmers working on a project. We had a deadline coming up in a couple of months and they over-promised to the client and then asked us all to work extra hard to meet the deadline, and asked us to work 50+ hour weeks. Which we did—and then some: some of us put in 70-80 hour weeks to meet this deadline.
But once that deadline was met, suddenly there was another deadline they needed to meet. And another. People got tired, had lives to lead, and scaled back on their hours. Most of us were still working 50-60 hours a week, but not a lot more than that.
Once they realized we weren't killing ourselves on their project any longer, there was an All Hands meeting where the managers told us that they were incredibly disappointed in our lack of professionalism, because so comparatively few employees were now working more than 50 hours a week.
But then it got worse. One of our harder workers stood up and said, "Look, I have three kids. I'm driving an hour into and out of work every day, I'm taking care of my family, I'm trying to get presents for Christmas, write out Christmas cards, decorate and clean the house for everyone we're having over for the holidays—I'm having a really hard time just getting to 50."
And the manager looked at her and sneered, "If it wasn't Christmas, it'd be because it's Easter, or Memorial Day, or because it's summer and it's nice out. You'd always have some excuse." There was dead silence in the room. When we left that meeting, we didn't talk to each other, but every single worker on that project put in exactly 50 hours a week after that.
Then came Christmas—raise and bonus time! Every worker on the project got a 1/2 percent raise; the managers got a five-figure bonus. We were pissed. For management, the pain came after Christmas. In the first week of the year, four programmers had better jobs lined up and quit. Three more the following week. Five the next.
We hemorrhaged 3-5 programmers every single week for over three months. It got to the point where the managers had to schedule a meeting every Monday at 11 to discuss that week's resignations and rearrange the surviving staff. Screw them.
11. At Ease, Soldier
I got out of the Army and joined the Air Force National Guard in my home state. 20 minutes after leaving my new base for the first time, I receive a phone call from a guy introducing himself as a Sergeant First Class from the Army Reserve informing me that his system shows my name had been pulled from the reserve pool to deploy to Iraq within three months and congratulated me.
I kindly informed him that: 1) I had just returned from deployment before getting out and was still guaranteed more than three months stateside, and 2) I had enlisted with the Air Guard and was therefore exempt. He got irritated, raised his tone of voice and said: “Well you better get that paperwork to me ASAP because my system says you're going.”
I told him I signed a contract that binds me to that, not your system. So, I told him, it’s not my job to update to ensure your system for you. I gave him the name of the organization I was now affiliated with, the city and state it was in, my recruiter’s name, rank, and personal phone number. I said: "Now you have several different ways to contact who you need to in order to get your system updated."
Then I hung up on him.
12. Welcome to the Circus
Several years back, I started a new job and was told the office would re-organize in the new year and my position would be shuffled to a new workgroup. A month later, we're busy running a major year-end event and things are going to trash. Everything requires total coordination across multiple divisions, and it came to a grinding halt with a lady in my office.
She hadn't prepared adequately, and the entire process was hours behind schedule, causing huge problems. She proceeded to have a meltdown and walked around the office screaming at people. Guess who became my new supervisor?
13. Headcase at the Head of It
I was working maintenance at an ice rink. The rule for anyone who knows how an ice rink works is if the Zamboni doors open, you get the heck off the ice. Some jerk decided to ignore the fact that they were open, and that I was standing in the doorway, and decided to rip off one last slap-shot. The puck bounced off the glass and hit me in the head.
I was okay but reported it to my boss because we have to fill out an incident report for things like that. The boss asked, "Are you okay?" I said I feel okay, then he responded with "Well, we don't really have to report it then do we?" I was totally shocked. I reminded him of the protocol, but it was clear he didn't want to do it.
Since he wouldn't do it, I sent a descriptive email of the incident up to the administration, because I felt there should be some sort of documentation/paper trail, in case, god-forbid, I ended up having a brain hemorrhage or something a few days later. The boss was fired by my next shift.
14. A Three-Part Plan That Can Never Fail
Management bought a manufacturing plant. Then they fired everyone. Then they tried to hire them back for $2 less. Yeah, it didn't go well.
15. A Little Out Of Your Price Range, Sir
My boss sold the company and about a week after the official switch to the new owners he called me up to ask me to do something. I told him my consulting fees were $120/hr. He didn't take me up on it, unfortunately.
16. No Suggestions From the Bottom Will Be Tolerated
At my last job at a marketing company, our president and owner went on an hour-long tirade to a client, basically calling them "stupid," "ungrateful," "idiots," along with a bunch of swears. It started because the client, a dentist, presented my boss with some ideas that came from her receptionist. I could not believe what was coming out of his mouth.
They were just the standard advertising suggestions (bench signs, radio ads) that the layperson would know, but nothing so bad that someone deserves to get ridiculed and harassed.
17. Abusing His Position
When I was being fired, I finally told management the dark truth about all the horrible things I'd heard my manager say. He had made threats against his ex-wife and her new boyfriend, and wanted to orphan their child. He was fired shortly after and the police showed up to escort him out.
18. Just Looking Out For Number One
I once had a retail manager who sent out a memo that we worked so hard and did such a great job this month that she got a bonus. We hadn't got anything. How clueless can you be?
19. Sucks For Them
I once worked for a shady company that sold and repaired expensive American vacuum cleaners. I was the service manager. I had been planning a six-week scuba diving trip with a mate for two years. They were well aware of this and said it was fine. When the time came close, I put in my application for six weeks' leave.
I was called into the husband/wife owners’ office and told that I could only take three weeks (I had saved the time up with their permission). I pointed this out but they were adamant that three weeks was the most they were prepared to authorize. I even tried to negotiate five weeks but that was firmly rejected.
So I walked from the office, wrote my resignation letter and left. I had a great holiday diving the Great Barrier Reef. They rang me weekly for a solid three months offering all sorts of incentives to come back but by then I had landed a great government job.
20. Seniority Is the Worst Insurance
I once worked at a company where the CIO (Chief Information Officer) sideswiped a woman's car as she pulled into a parking space. The woman who had the car that got hit got out and stood beside her car to see what damage was. The CIO got out of her Mercedes and brushed right past the woman without so much as speaking to her.
Completely ignored her and walked away. Even with witnesses. The woman that had her car damaged had to go to the HR department and the company cut her a check for damages. The actual business paid for it—not the CIO, she got away scot-free without ever admitting anything or paying anything.
21. The Fall of a Drama Queen
A tenured faculty member was controlling of the personal lives of members on her "drama team." She made them simulate really risque acts onstage and filmed it. I told the Dean. She was terminated. Saw her around town the other day and safe to say...11 years later...she still HATES me.
22. Summoning the Crickets
I told my boss that I was disappointed in one of his hires because he knew literally NOTHING about our job and asked him “doesn’t that cheapen my knowledge and expertise?” His response: “Well, let’s be honest, your job doesn’t really need all that, does it?” There were four other people my level, with varying fields of expertise, at that meeting.
It got real quiet after that.
Las Adicciones Tienen Solución
23. Going Down In A Blaze Of Glory
I had an issue where our district manager was purposely not correcting my pay to reflect the raise I'd been promised, so after six weeks of him blowing me off I called corporate HR and they came down on him like the fires of Mount Doom. He drove to my store and tore into me in front of customers for "not being a team player" and going over his head.
Six months later, we're informed our store is closing and the employees can transfer to other stores. Oh, but not me, I was told I'd never be welcome in the company again because I "wasn't a team player" so I would just be laid off after the store closed. Then he told me he also needed me to oversee shipping our product out to other stores based on a list he had of what store gets what.
In the end, that's how I got my revenge. None of those stores got what he wanted on his precious little list. I spent three weeks shipping whatever to whoever and wherever, playing my own music over the store speakers, and telling customers about a whole bunch of exploitable loopholes in the store's policies and systems.
What was he going to do? Fire me?
24. A Corner Office Is Not a Medical Degree
Jerry. Jerry wouldn't let me go to the emergency room after the heavy down-there bleeding I had been experiencing suddenly got way worse. I went over his head and got permission to go. I called my mom, told her to meet me in the ER. The ER nurse said he'd never seen so much blood. An ER nurse said this. It's determined I need a couple of blood transfusions and will be admitted.
My mom calls Jerry, who then proceeds to tell her that it's just stress, and I NEED TO GET BACK TO WORK. At this point, I couldn't even lift my own head up, but sure, I can take a bus across town and go back to work. I ended up needing another hospital stay later for a D&C. They found a large growth that needed a biopsy. But that wasn't the worst part.
Jerry kept insisting that it couldn't be cancer because I'd be tired and losing weight. I had lost eight pounds in a week and went to bed the minute I got home. I was still recovering from the procedure when Jerry called me to let me know I was fired for taking too much time off. Five days later, I was diagnosed with cancer. Screw you, Jerry. Screw you.
25. Dishonorable Discharge
My (former) immediate supervisor in the Military was a racist, misogynistic jerk who just so happened to also enjoy occasionally harassing me for fun. He would discreetly touch me in front of everyone to see if I dared say anything back, so he could then berate me for "giving him attitude.” The breaking point was when he grabbed my hand and forced me to touch him during a pat-down.
I moved on to a new unit and reported him. Turns out there were seven other women with similar experiences—as there always are. He's gone now.
26. We Can’t Go On Together With Suspicious Minds
I worked at a club in Miami and the owner was out of his freaking mind thanks to years of substance abuse. When the housing market crashed, obviously people were spending far less going out, but he insisted we were all stealing. We had meetings once a week with all kinds of threats. Finally, he put in an automatic pouring system for 50k+, it basically looks like you're pouring drinks from a soda gun, super boring.
The fun vibe and flair we had was totally gone, which made sales drop even more. He ripped the system out two weeks later.
27. It’s Not Me, It’s You
When I left a job I was invited to meet with the CEO because he was unhappy I was leaving and wanted to understand why. I explained that I was not being paid enough and the recently announced pay rise was not good enough. He got irritated and in a patronizing tone started trying to lecture me on how I should have handled that situation better.
I interrupted him, he didn’t like that, so I added “I’m leaving, I have nothing to lose” and then informed him that I had already been let down over pay multiple times, had witnessed others trying to get more pay and being refused, so I had no interest in begging to be paid what I already deserved to be paid.
28. High Rank, Higher Standards
I had a boss who absolutely hated me. After realizing she wasn't qualified for the position and had already slept with two different guys at the company, I came to the conclusion she was a joke and needed to just be dismissed. I never paid much attention to her, and when she'd show up at my building once every blue moon, I kind of just ignored her.
I was busy and didn't have time to play her games. She wrote me up for being late on three separate occasions. One minute late, three minutes late and six minutes late. I lived an hour from work and had to deal with traffic; I left my house two hours early most days to account for this. But when there's a wreck, there's not much you can do as the freeway is backed up and side roads are clogged.
Each time I got stuck in traffic, I called to let her know. Still wrote me up in hopes to eventually fire me. So, I started leaving the house crazy early, I'd get in super early and leave early. She haaaated it. Eventually, her behavior got her fired and people to this day remember her and laugh at what a horrible person she was.
I also had that write up removed from my file, as it was recognized that she was treating many of her employees unfairly.
29. Not Moved by His Excuse
Our executive director was moving and took my practicum student and a low-level employee to his house to help him move furniture. I told him that was unacceptable, both from a respect and a liability perspective. His response to me was, “You know since I hired you, I can fire you, right?” I told him to go ahead and try it, then promptly called our board, who dismissed him that week.
30. You’ve Got to Get Up Pretty Early in the Morning to Outsmart This Kitchen Staff
My mum is the cafeteria/kitchen manager at a school. For the past decade, the admin has been trying to find a way to fire the entire kitchen staff and hire new people for minimum wage. They currently make great money and the benefits are better than my dad's, who works at a Dow 30 company. She's part of a union, for the record.
Yet, they haven't been able to let anyone go without there being a serious lapse in responsibilities. Let one person go, suddenly all of the dairy in the fridge is expired because the new, $8 an hour person has zero training and doesn't know when things need to be pitched and re-ordered. Surprise! Sorry kids, no milk or cheese for the next two weeks! (Bring on the parental complaints.)
Their most recent strategy was to hire [the SIL of a high-ranking administrator who is] a "nutritionist." I researched her, her only "qualifications" are a decade-old two-year degree in hospitality management, and an "approval" from an unaccredited, unrecognized NPO. She got hired making $150,000 a year. Thanks, public records.
The most recent strategy to oust the current employees was a massive testing program on stuff people working for the school for 20+ years have never had to know. Every employee but one passed the three different weed-out tests.
Apparently, the nutrition monster stormed out of the meeting yelling when she found this out.
31. It’s The Little Things
I work at a domestic violence shelter, and our ex-executive director was asked to resign because she had embezzled over 25 grand worth of our grant funding. She was a verbally abusive garbage human, doing things to the employees that were the same things that clients are escaping from. I never did stick up for myself, because it was easier to let her curse and scream about thermostats and cat litter and be done.
She has been skirting the blame in our small town since she resigned and the other day sent a mass text out to all current and past employees once again passing the blame on to our current director and our board. I had had enough of this drama and her, and finally told her that she could politely "lose my number." It's just a small text, but that was literally my declaration of independence from her, and I have NEVER FELT MORE EMPOWERED IN MY LIFE.
32. Duck and Run
My first "real" job out of college was working as a sort of Office Manager/Exec Admin position in a branch office for a financial services firm. The office had 6 financial advisers who came in and out throughout the day, two interns, and the branch manager, who was my official Worst Boss Ever. Nothing was ever said to me in a normal tone of voice...
If it wasn't sarcasm, it was condescending. EVERYTHING was condescending. Nothing I ever did was right; if a Fed-Ex envelope was sealed even the tiniest bit crooked, I got yelled at and scolded for being messy. If it was perfectly straight? I got asked "Did you use a freakin’ ruler to get that line? What, can't you just close an envelope like a normal person?"
Forget trying to have any sort of regular conversation with the guy. If I agreed with him, he would sneer and say things like, "That's how you really feel? Yeah, right," or if I asked a question, I got, "figure it out yourself. You're so SMAAAART." That still haunts me...the way he used to draw out SMAAAART in my face.
I regularly got accused of stealing (which I never did) and was reminded at least once a week that he had cameras ALL OVER the office and he was gonna catch me out someday. I was working with one of the interns on a project, and we had a column that wasn't reconciling. The manager blew up at me, not the intern, and said that I had to come in over the weekend and work on it until the error was complete.
Oh, and I was NOT going to be paid for that. I did not know at that time that I was required to be paid for time worked in a situation like that. I was in a bad living situation at the time and I had grown up in an abusive home, so I honestly thought that working unpaid to be punished for an error was the norm. I could go on and on about this guy...
How he ordered me to pick up his dry cleaning and I had a panic attack because it looked like his ugly suit was discolored, until I ran into his girlfriend and subtly hinted about the suit, and she actually confirmed that it was SUPPOSED to look that way. I felt so bad because I'm pretty sure he treated her badly too, based on her reactions.
She'd say things like, "Yeah, it's a good thing you notice that sort of stuff...Thomas (not his real name) is really picky and intense. Sometimes too much so." The incident that made me decide to leave was right before Christmas: One of the advisers had given me a small handful of Christmas cards for his clients and asked me to put postage on them.
I asked if Thomas had given his approval, and the adviser said yes. Later that day, Thomas saw the stack of envelopes sitting on my desk and started screaming at me about stealing postage again. I explained that those were not mine, they were for Jerry, who told me he had Thomas's approval to mail them. Thomas stomped into his office and called me in about half an hour later.
He said he spoke to Jerry, who denied ever giving me envelopes to stamp. I handed over the envelopes and said to please look at the addresses, these were Jerry's clients and no one I knew personally. It didn't matter...he was still yelling and raving at me for this. At this point, I was extremely shaken and trying to not break down completely.
All the while I was denying that I ever stole from him, I never stole postage, and if he was so concerned about my apparent theft habits, maybe he should check the cameras that he had all over the office. At that point, he picked up his metal wastebasket from beside his desk and threw it at my head. Fortunately for me, I ducked, and it hit the doorframe.
Then he asked if I liked that, huh? Am I going to learn a lesson not to backtalk? I didn't say anything and walked back to my desk, finished out my day, and left my keys behind. I walked home, told my boyfriend what had happened. I thought he'd be sympathetic, but I was so wrong. I ended up getting yelled at for quitting a job without one lined up. Never mind that we had plenty of savings and he had a really good job.
I found a new job two weeks later, and until the day we broke up, I had to hear it that I was stupid and lazy and quit a job without finding a new one first.
33. Bad Grief
I phoned my boss to tell him that I wouldn't be at work for the rest of the week, since my mum was terminally ill in hospital. The next day (just about an hour after she passed away), he phoned and asked why I wasn't at work. I was so angry that I just hung up on him so I wouldn't say anything that would get me in trouble.
The next day I sent the area-manager a WhatsApp message explaining what he'd be done and attached a video of him breaking the freezer door while having a tantrum which cost the store nearly £5,000 in lost stock and the repair costs (which he'd told the AM had broke on its own). He got fired that day and I got two weeks off with full pay.
34. Deli-cate Promises Are Made to Be Broken
Worked in a deli years ago and the manager promised us a no-holds-barred BBQ at his place if he got his bonus for the deli performing well. He got his bonus and, surprise surprise, we got nothing. Apparently the wife wanted the bonus for their kids' private school fees. Doug—you suck.
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35. Exposure Doesn’t Pay The Bills
An ex-client tried to make out that he never said he agreed to pay me after creating him a complex website, graphics, and marketing materials and that it was just "work experience." This was untrue, he even agreed a price via an email exchange and I'm not exactly going to waste my time working for "experience" when I have bills to pay and an established skillset in my field.
Anyway, a swift screenshot of the emails and talks of lawyers soon changed his tune.
36. Bad Management Follows You After Employment
Long, long ago, I was fired from my job as an assistant manager at a convenience store by the district manager who hated me. I applied for unemployment insurance, and the company said I wasn't eligible because I'd been fired for cause. I wasn't, but that was a matter the review board had to decide, and it was still upcoming.
We showed up for the review, and I was prepared to explain how my direct boss had decided to leave keys to the inner safe in the outer safe area overnight, which had resulted in more than $100 going missing, which was the reason they gave ME for firing me. Mind you, this wasn't even my error, but I was the person on duty when it was discovered.
Instead, the district manager tried to say I falsified paperwork. Uh...okay. I settled in to hear her tale of woe. Then she proceeded to show how I'd "padded paperwork" to hide missing money. Uh...no. I showed them that my manager had accidentally put $50 extra into the bank the week before the incident they fired me for, so I made a note of that on the paperwork for the day.
The panel of reviewers asked my district manager how I SHOULD have noted it, and she went off into some incomprehensible and highly illegal (did I mention one of my degrees is in Accounting?) way of "subtracting" the amount from the numbers in a way that would under-report income. I got as far as "But that—" when one of the panel members shushed me.
They informed her that what she was trying to tell me to do was illegal, and they would be informing the local tax office, in case they wanted to perform an audit on the company, thanks to idiot DM here. Oh, and yes...I was eligible for my unemployment money. Win win win, and the look on the DM's face? Classic. I wish I had a photograph!
37. Bad Teamwork Dies Hard…With a Vengeance
About 13-14 years ago, I was working as a web designer for a dot-com. In our immediate group were a creative director, a creative manager, and two of us who were designers. We were all part of the marketing department. The creative director was a joke. He was brought in by the previous VP of Marketing, who he was friends with.
He hardly did any work himself, and just played online poker waiting on us to send him things for approval. And he'd never stick around late when the rest of us needed to stay late to hit a deadline or deal with a crisis, etc. The creative manager, who'd been in charge for a couple of years before the creative director's hiring, still ran the day-to-day.
So, the creative manager gave his notice that he'd accepted a new job, and when I met with the current VP of marketing to discuss transition, I mentioned that the creative director would need to step up and pull his weight. I guess a similar message was expressed by a number of people, and less than a week after the creative manager's last day the creative director was fired!
This kind of sucked because we went down from 4 to 2 people in our group. I was appointed acting creative manager, and we eventually did hire one more designer. I left the company a couple of months later, too, after the latest VP of Marketing was let go and there was going to be a 10th different person overseeing marketing in my 5 years there. And the jerk creative director?
He'd reached out at some point (looking for files for his portfolio, I think?), and it happened to be in the two-week window where I'd accepted my next job but hadn't yet started so I mentioned my new position. Well, he fires off a copy of his resume to the company president and tried to poach my new job out from under me!
On my first day at the new job, the president mentioned that somebody else from that same company also applied for the job and forwarded me the application email to see if I knew him... saw that the date was after he and I had last communicated!
38. Stepping in to Correct the Record
I, along with nine other coworkers, did a Kaizen project where we cut customer complaints from over 100 a month to single digits due to streamlining our process. The plant manager sent out a company-wide email essentially taking credit for the whole thing. He noted how he put together this team and under his direct supervision, he got the project done without even mentioning our names.
That pissed all of us off until the Continuous Improvement manager sent a reply thanking all of us in a big screw you move to the plant manager. I was just happy that the CI manager was a good guy. I left that job a few months after we completed it and still use it on my resume.
39. That Ain’t Gonna Fly
Turned in my two weeks. Fly many states away for what will be my final customer. Sit down with the guy and right off he is demanding and threatening. I forget the actual sentence he dropped but I was just like "nope." So I just flat told him: This is the last time I'll be working for this company, turned in my notice right before I flew here.
A bit unprofessional I guess, but meh. I didn't even have to tell him to drop the attitude and chill, he figured out it wasn't going to be the most productive way to deal with me and immediately changed his tone.
40. Closed on Account of Hatred
My first boss managed a gas station. He was good in most ways—efficient, fair, disciplined, ran a tight ship. Just one drawback. He was racist. I don't mean that he was insufficiently outraged by Dukes of Hazard re-runs. I mean that he used the N-word often and loudly. He resurrected other racist words that would have sent Bull Connor running for a thesaurus.
The truck driver who delivered our tankers of fuel every week was a black man, and they almost came to blows over this. His comeuppance finally came when the corporate office hired a new third-level supervisor who was a young black man out of business school. That boss just could not take orders from a black man.
When he quit, he trashed the office and tore up every floppy (it was the 80s) disk in the office so we couldn't do our accounting for a few days.
41. Steal a Mile in My Shoes
I was fired because I "abandoned my job" while on short-term disability, even though I was on approved leave. They made a date for me to return, never informed me (by their own admission), and when I obviously didn't return to work...I was fired. The locker I had at work had my work boots in it that the company pays $90 a year towards.
However, there isn't a pair under $100 available. So, you always end up having some come out of your paycheck. At that point, they are yours regardless of the company line. They disagreed and said they were thrown out, I reported them stolen, and the HR director responsible for getting me fired was fired.
42. How Soon We Forget
The new principal came in. It was like he forgot what being a teacher is like... he made us sub constantly on our plan periods instead of getting around to calling a sub. If we weren't subbing, he would come into our rooms as we worked on plan time things and go over ridiculous things that could have better been sent in an email.
He fired the lunch supervisor and made us supervise lunch. Then he started giving us a hard time about using the bathroom between classes because if we were in the bathroom, who is supervising the halls? It boiled down to us working before and past contract hours with zero breaks. No bathroom. No lunchtime (you can't eat and supervise).
I went off on him one day because he accosted me for going to the bathroom. I went to the bathroom to change my tampon. I waved a spare tampon around in the hallway in front of God and students and told him I'd had enough of this and if he had time to drive to McDonald's for lunch (he had a fry box in his hands) I could be spared two minutes of supervision to change a tampon.
To add insult to injury, the staff banded together and we documented these things to get him fired. The next person comes in and decides that action of creating unity with the staff needed to be dismantled so she changed where all our rooms were and in most cases what we taught (regardless of our certification). I quit. I couldn't take it anymore.
Kids are my number one concern in teaching and when a school dissolves into politics and nonsense it just isn't worth it to me. I could get treated like crap in any profession and probably get paid more.
Australian Society for Evidence Based Teaching
43. Engineer Your Way Out Of That One, Boss
I have always had a pretty good relationship with my bosses and they're usually reasonable. It's an engineering position and occasionally some people have to travel. I was asked to cover for someone for a relatively trivial meeting on the west coast. It was not my project and the only justification was to send a warm body to show that we were present.
Boss told me to go, I said no. He said, "this won't look good on your performance appraisal." I said, "the only way you can hurt me with a performance appraisal is to roll it up and poke me in the eye." I did not go to the meeting.
44. Big Boss Is Watching You
My supervisor at this nonprofit was maybe a couple of years older than me, and for the six months I worked there, never bothered to set me up with my own computer. I'd work in the mornings and she tended to show up around lunchtime, so she told me I could use hers, which was pretty annoying in and of itself. But that was far from the worst part.
More often than not, she'd come in about an hour before I was scheduled to leave, and stand over me, eating her lunch, as I worked at her desk. I'd say things like, "Oh I'll go find somewhere else to work," and she'd say no, no you're fine. And continue to stand over me as I sat at her desk. It was completely unnerving.
She was also the Director of Marketing, and for about two weeks she had me walk around the city and put up flyers in various cafes/buildings for this class we were hosting. Two weeks later, she's frustrated that no one's signed up. As the Director of Marketing, you should have some sort of better strategy than putting up flyers in coffee shops...
45. Higher Learning for Somebody
About 15 years ago, I worked at a major university in the IT department. After I was hired, it took me a couple of months to realize my boss was a sociopath, as was his #2 guy. Once I realized what I was dealing with, I just tried to keep my head down because I didn't want to job hop so soon after leaving my last job. But they made that impossible.
We had a database administrator and I was interested in becoming a DBA so I talked to him a lot about what I should do to transition from a programmer to a DBA. The VP of IT, my boss’s boss, would stop by and talk to me and ask me about my aspirations, so I told her about wanting to be a DBA and that I was actually taking night classes so I could.
This was a woman who my boss referred to as "she who must be obeyed" in a totally disrespectful manner. As the months went on, I saw more and more egregious behavior by my boss and his #2 toady. We had a large corporation consulting on the transition to their database. This included a young guy who was doing the database install including ordering the right equipment and migrating the data.
We also had student workers in our department. They were students who worked part-time hours. One of these was a young woman. The big corp young guy and the young woman started going to lunch together. Apparently, this was offensive to my boss, who threatened both of them with termination for "fraternization.” The university had no such rule, my boss was just making it up as he went.
About six months after I was hired, the DBA quit. I went into our weekly staff meeting and at the end, my boss announces that I'd been promoted to DBA. My spidey-senses were tingling because of his tone of voice and because this was the first, I was hearing about it. After the meeting, I went to his office to thank him and tell him I really appreciated the chance.
He was very angry. Apparently, his boss had made him promote me. I had no idea. The next thing I know, I'm being called into my boss's #2 guy's office. He tells me that performance reviews were coming up and I would have to be reviewed on the job description of DBA rather than the job description of my old position. That is, unless I turned down the DBA position.
Yep, he was threatening me to get me to turn down the promotion. I asked him to see the written description of my old position as well as the one for DBA. He couldn't give them to me because they didn't exist. Now, I can be a pretty stubborn bitch, and this really pissed me off. I didn't do anything wrong and now my job was being threatened.
Part of my job duties during the six months of my employment involved working with the head of every department of the university, including the legal department. I had a good working relationship with every head of every department. So, I made an appointment with the university's head counsel. I explained the situation to him including my boss's boss making him promote me and my boss threatening me with my performance review.
I told him that, although I was studying to be a DBA, I was really not qualified to be one without some hard work and if the university didn't want me to take the position, I would absolutely turn it down. I also mentioned my boss's nickname for his boss, and the issue with the student worker and the big corp guy. Apparently, the student worker had already filed a harassment complaint, so the head counsel knew about it.
He told me I had been promoted by someone (boss's boss) who had every right to promote me and I should not worry about anything. He said if my boss gave me any more trouble that I should let him know. A week later, my boss and his #2 toady were fired. My boss ended up working at a small city college and is there to this day. I pity his employees. I left the university about two years later and had a successful career as a DBA.
46. If It Ain't Broke, Don’t Take a Sledgehammer to It
Had a boss everyone loved, then she got transferred to another store and the new guy that replaced her decided the schedule that we'd all gotten used to needed to be "shaken up." He posted the next week’s schedule that was completely different than it had been under the previous manager, got a bunch of complaints from people saying they can't work x days or y times and it SEEMED he was receptive since he took that schedule down.
Then suddenly, he just reposted the same exact schedule and said screw everyone. Oh, we had some people calling in sick from time to time under the old manager, but this new manager has pretty much half his crew every single day calling out because of his scummy tactics. Here's the first thing to learn about being a good manager... you don't need to "shake things up" for people to be better workers.
You don't need to "put your mark" on anything if it's working just fine the way it was.
47. Petty Power-Play Falls Flat
I had put in my two weeks' notice at a job and they suddenly had me working bizarre split shifts when they found out that I was training for my new job around my previously set schedule. My schedule had not changed in months. The schedule which was preventing me from finishing college. I finally had my fill and decided to leave.
As I was leaving, one of the supervisors said I had to check in with a manager and I said, "Naw, I don't work here anymore."
48. No Job Is Worth Your Life
I used to work for a smaller company, around 12 employees. The president/owner of the company was completely out of touch on how to appropriately run a business. All he cared for was profit, profit, profit. He had no health insurance and would purposefully keep his number of employees down so that he wouldn't have to pay for insurance.
Employees were only given two weeks’ vacation max, no personal or sick time. If you were sick, oh well, use your vacation or just don't get paid at all. Raises? What is a raise?! Seriously, one employee had been working there for 10 years, he was still making $8/hr and had never received a raise in the 10 years he was there.
He did not care for employee safety, dust particulates and small objects flying around? Nah, you don't need a mask or safety glasses. Fiberglass particulates in the air from cutting? Nope, you don't need gloves or masks or really anything to protect you from it. Machining on a lathe or mill? Long sleeve shirts and hair not tied back is perfectly fine!
One employee got a hernia from heavy lifting. All the guy asked for was work comp for the surgery that he can't pay for, as he doesn't have insurance and he isn't making enough because he hasn't had a raise in years despite performing above expectations. What did the owner do? He refused because, "Employee could have gotten the hernia at home."
This was despite multiple witnesses watching him double over in pain after lifting the component he was building. To this day, the guy still has a freaking hernia (almost 1.5 years later). This guy was just a total butt. Every two months, he would pull up in a new car, then get his employees off the production floor so he could flaunt his new toy to them.
We are talking about Porsche GT3's, Tesla Model S (2 of them), Nissan GTR, Audi S8...The list goes on. When I quit, I just gave him five minutes' notice and walked the heck out of the door. He tried accusing me of stealing sensitive company information, which was way untrue, I left every last item given to me on my desk and told him to leave me alone or I will contact OSHA and tell them what's going on.
He backed off, but since then about four of their most experienced employees have left, and three more are still looking for jobs.
49. Not Tickled to Work With You
In college, I worked in a take-out restaurant just off campus, and we were all employed by the school. I was 17-18 years old (back in 2007/2008) and my boss, the manager, was a 40-something creeper. Hitting on me, touching me inappropriately (trying to massage my shoulders, tickling me, putting his hands on/around my waist) despite me asking him to stop.
Then he friended me on Facebook, I declined, and suddenly my work schedule was changed. I was on shift during hours when I had class, and when I explained that problem, I got taken off the schedule altogether. I told the assistant manager what was going on (which I was explicitly told by the manager not to talk to the assistant) and he reported what was going on to upper management—boom, the manager was fired.
I worried for a while if he was going to come after me for that.
50. Get Your Priorities in Order, Kid!
A grocery store I worked at for just about four weeks or so in 2000 did something stupid. The manager, who primarily employed high school seniors like myself, would state "your employer is your number one priority. You work for them, not the other way around. I don't care about whatever teenager/high school things you have going on. If you can't work the shifts I want you to, I don't want you to work for me."
The only job I straight up walked out on after he told me I couldn't get off for my own graduation.
51. What Goes Around Comes Around
I used to work in a grocery store and I had an HR person repeatedly “lose” my doctor’s note stating that I have Reynaud’s Syndrome and couldn’t be in the freezer. I got a stack of them from the doctor and would have to bring in a new one every few weeks. Finally, I had a department head fax a copy in to corporate for me before dropping off yet another copy to the HR jerk.
The next week the HR jerk called me into her office and told me I was going to have to put the frozen load for bakery away. I told her I couldn’t do it and I had a note on file. She told me she didn’t have any paperwork on file for me and that she could “make me do anything she wanted to.” I called my department manager into the office and told him what she had said.
He got corporate on the phone and asked if they had received the copy of my doctor’s note detailing the fact that I had Reynaud’s Syndrome and had already previously gotten frostbite at work from being forced to be in the freezer when I wasn’t supposed to be. They said they had it, and he then told them what the HR jerk had said.
He then handed the HR jerk the phone. She had to hold the phone about a foot and a half away from her face because they were yelling at her so loud. It was one of the most satisfying days ever working there. She went on leave shortly after that and never came back, and the official story was that she was having health problems
52. You’re Not Worth My Time
They completely restructured the way we're paid. What I used to do involved about 40% client interaction, 20% team/coworkers’ interaction, and 40% paperwork and case coordination stuff. Based on what we do that means only 40% of the time is technically billable, and there are really sticky rules for what is and isn't billable. So, logically, we were being paid on a salary model.
Cue management saying we can only make money for the time we have that is actually billable. A quarter of the department quit. Two of us on the same day.
53. Mandated Scumbaggery
Many retailers put a tremendous amount of pressure on employees and especially managers to open a certain amount of "loyalty accounts" (customer credit cards). I have watched managers outright bribe customers to open new accounts to meet the daily goal, even if they were not likely to be approved, because the managers still get credit for attempting to open new cards.
54. No Wire Hangers!
I once worked at a discount sportswear store, and my supervisor was an absolute tosser. I was on the minimum wage with no overtime payment, and he wouldn't let me go home until two hours after my finishing time because the coat hangers weren't fully extended. Pretty impossible when you're working in the children’s wear department!
55. Big Boss is Watching You…for Now
My manager wanted to prove I was slacking off so he could write me up. So, he watched CCTV footage then wrote, printed out, and SIGNED a detailed 17-page Word document what I did in the past two days. With timestamps (like, 07:59 arriving, 08:01 speaking with co-worker A and B, 08:07 sitting down to my desk, etc.).
He told me that he's not happy with my work ethics, and if I won't improve my efficiency, I'm fired. I took the papers and showed to his boss and told her that I'm not happy with my manager’s work ethics and his efficiency might be better if he wouldn't watch 17 hours of CCTV footage to spy on an employee.
She was terrified (it would've been a rock-solid lawsuit for me, but I love my job) and we had to search for a new manager. Also, I got a raise.
56. This is Not What I Signed Up For…
My boss changed half the shifts to 3 am shipment and the other half were regular retail hours, which he left mostly for school kids. It turns out that four teenagers who go to school had been switched to 3 am and they never came again. The shipping manager quit because she had a second job that was more important during the day.
The new manager was just too stupid to notice any of it and I too just stopped showing up because, I kid you not, he tried to make me a janitor after the contracted janitor serviceman quit. "I need you to come in tomorrow when Les would come in and do all the toilets and floors." Uhh I'm not a janitor so I have none of that equipment. "Bring it from home."
I found a new job two days later.
57. Do As I Say, Not As I Don’t Pay You to Do
We never get promotions or raises. Every person holds multiple positions. Nobody gets paid overtime. If we go over 40 hours a week (and almost everyone does), we don't get paid for the rest, yet we are expected to work overtime to finish the work. If you don't finish, the boss will belittle you. Boss constantly shorts people money, so you need to constantly have a record of your hours.
Sometimes your paycheck will be several days late. No calling in sick unless you can find a cover, but we don't ever have coverage because everyone works too much. The restaurant might be out of a crucial ingredient. In that case, you will have to buy it yourself so that customers won't complain. You will not be compensated.
Where is the boss through all of this? He's going on vacations. He's putting his children through private schools. He's buying new cars. He's virtually M.I.A. until he wants someone to cook him a meal.
58. Don’t Look up for Sympathy
After my ex assaulted me on Christmas Eve, I called out of work on Christmas, explaining what had happened. I had gotten away at 5 am Christmas morning, and was obviously pretty shaken up. My boss accused me of planning the whole thing to get out of working on Christmas and tried to get me fired when I came in for my next shift.
I had to sit down with her and her boss and listen to her make up a bunch of lies about how I was always trying to get out of work (in fact I was one of the only people who would ever cover shifts for others), and being lazy and disrespectful (I was one of only a couple of employees who weren't her personal friends, and was, therefore, one of few people who wasn't constantly standing in the kitchen talking).
When her boss said she'd need to give me one more chance before firing me, she told me I should quit. So, I signed up to work a major event we were having and then left my resignation on her desk that morning—meaning that she would have to cover for me instead of sitting in her office playing stupid games and browsing Facebook on her computer all day.
59. She’s Making Sure You Stick Together
I was filling out some daily report for a lifeguarding job at a local pool. Just basic stuff like chemical levels and stuff. I was leaning over the counter to get a better angle to write. All of a sudden, I feel a sharp pain in my shoulder blade and turn around to see my psychotic boss with an open stapler in hand, cackling like a lunatic.
Took me about a minute to get it out, and I quit the next day, seriously considering suing. This chick worked with kids and was absolutely freaking nuts. Apparently, she did this to everyone. Got one girl in the knee and it took like 5 minutes to clean up the blood. How anyone worked under her insanity is beyond me.
60. The Cutting Edge of Leadership
When working as a dishwasher, the head chef had a tendency of throwing knives around the kitchen. Like at people who pissed him off. Never hit anyone, though. He was actually awesome, but everyone was scared of him.
61. The Paths Not Micromanaged
Took off three months for her wedding during TWO of our biggest cases. You know what? I can let that go, but then she came back and was a HUGE jerk about having everyone catch her up on what happened. "Why didn't you do it this way! Where's the documentation!" "We were understaffed, we did the best with what you left us! If you'd have been here, you'd know that!"
Plus, if you check my timesheet, I have hours on my wedding day because she HAD to talk to me about budget.
62. Respect Your Troops, Unless They’re Employees
My friend was shipping out (army) the next day, and a bunch of us were getting together at a local restaurant after my shift to send him off properly. My boss didn't want to let me go and tried to make me stay a few more hours, asking me, "Can't you have dinner some other night?"
63. If You Can Lean, You Can Clean
She was a power-hungry monster. She hated the idea that staff has a second on shift without doing something, even if there is literally nothing to do. One day, after we had spent 2 hours cleaning the shelf (the last job), she came down and told us to clean it again. Even though we protested that we had just done it, she said we shouldn't get paid if we weren't doing anything.
There was nothing to freaking do! I had to re-clean a perfectly clean shelf. At least I now get paid three times the amount she does in a far better job.
64. Go Back to Business School
She's just a freakin' idiot. Her writing skills are on about a third-grade level, and I cringe that her garbage gets sent out as representing our organization.
65. Liar, Liar, Pants for Hire
She lied...like a lot. The company I was with was only focused on the current quarter. So, my boss just flat out lied and kept pushing problems to the next quarter and the next quarter. She manipulated data and charts, so her superiors thought things were just fine. I was 23 and she told me, "If you don't get [feature] working before Christmas, everyone in your group will lose their job."
When I told her I took another job, she told me every job is hard and I'll regret leaving. I left 6.5 years ago and have never regretted it.
66. Triple Whammy
He had a young Labrador that he kept locked in the upstairs flat above the pub for 23 hours a day, letting it walk (read: run crazily, unsurprisingly—poor thing) around the pub garden and inside the pub after hours. It cut its tail open badly once, and rather than call the emergency vet, he brushed white paint over the wound to stop the bleeding.
He never walked it and never gave it any training or toys to play with. He aggressively backed my little sister up against the wall when she was working there as a waitress to shout at her for giving too generous cheese portions on a cheeseboard, which he'd refused to show her how to assemble. Oh, but that's not all.
He was in a relationship with the cook and used to be violent toward her, once breaking her wrist in a fight in the kitchen and stealing her handbag so she couldn't get home (car, phone, and house keys). She ultimately got the bag back and drove away with one hand, running his foot over as he tried to stop her. I've had other terrible bosses, but this guy was probably the worst.
He's about 29 now and has already had two heart attacks. I didn't work there for long, luckily.
67. Change the Channel
You know those PA systems at car dealerships that you can hear several blocks away? The sales manager used to use them to yell at us, like even when we were inside the showroom. I've never seen a grown man cry at work other than at this dealership, and it would happen fairly regularly. The worst is that he would call his wife and scream the most awful obscenities at her in the middle of the showroom.
It's hard to sell a Camry when there's a man screaming at his wife 10 feet away.
68. The Boss With a Double Life
He threatened me for reaching out to a new salesperson on my list of salespeople to train. Then, he had his secretary take me outside and yell at me for being "rude" and told me to "Not ask so many darn questions." Turns out he was using ad budget from a client to hire a salesperson to rep for HIS company so they could double-dip on the override.
Between that and getting convicted of securities fraud...
69. Not Worth the Time Card
Instead of talking to me, or any employee for that matter, he cut my hours from 20s and 30s to 0. Then he avoided me for the next few weeks until I finally got fed up and just quit. He had no backbone and just did a horrible job managing an office supply store. He was let go shortly after I quit.
70. Commander in Creep
This was when I was working at an ice cream place for a few months. He was in his early/mid-20s, and I was 16. He hit on me all the time, made really inappropriate comments, and was just a gross dude. I would turn him down, and he would only schedule me for shifts he worked...but the worst part? the owner wouldn't ever do anything about it, either.
But I was 16 and didn't have a good home life, and quitting meant spending more time at home, so I didn't consider it. Then once I was in the back with him helping him restock some dry goods (we were closed), and I turned him down again, and he assaulted me. I went to the owner the next day and was fired. I can't imagine working in a situation that bad again.
71. The Most Unladylike Leader
My last boss was such a nightmare. She told me I only made good sales was because I was sexy (our customer base was middle-aged women), and then posted on Facebook about writing an essay on feminism. She didn't do all the work and I had to pick up her slack, resulting in her getting bonuses. She constantly touched me and called me her wife. And then put me down in front of customers.
When challenged about her behavior, she claimed she had undiagnosed autism and I was being unfair due to her disability. She compared a girl who worked there who grew up in foster care to her being an only child. Even though she had been privately educated since nursery school and, at nearly 40, she still got an allowance from her parents.
72. Hurt Me Once, Shame on You
My last boss was a complete dictator. He micromanaged everything. He would send the most degrading emails. Then he would bring in cookies, say he was sorry, and how much he cared about the staff. It felt like an abusive relationship. I tried to leave and applied for eight other positions in our company, and he blocked or destroyed every attempt.
I ended up having a nervous breakdown from the daily abuse. I quit and I’m currently unemployed.
73. No One Likes a Prodigy
I worked in a jewelry store. I was the youngest employee by far, and for a period of about 3 months, the only one consistently meeting their sales targets. I overheard the assistant manager and another employee going through the records and commenting on that fact. They were not happy. When the next roster was made, I had no shifts for six weeks.
Not one shift. By my contract, this was fine for them to do. They seemed genuinely surprised and very mad when I got a new job a month later at a luxury jewelry boutique and quit.
Shutterstock
74. Mean Girls: Management Edition
Elizabeth at Dairy Queen when I was in grade 12. She was a horrible bully who treated me like a complete idiot. Just me, not any of the other teenagers working there. And none of the other supervisors treated me that way, just her. I still have no idea why she hated me so much.
75. Something Is Rotten in the State of Funland
When I was 16, I worked at an amusement park for a summer on carts/stands. My team leader was 19. I remember one time I discovered the crepes were out of date, so I reported it to my team leader as was the protocol, so she could get new stock delivered to my cart. She came over, looked at the crepes, and told me to continue selling them.
I didn't want to, but she wouldn't get me new stock until the expired ones were gone. So, I sold them initially. And there were loads of complaints. I had to refund a bunch of them, and I got shouted at multiple times. When my team leader next came by, I told her this and she still insisted I sell them. I ended up binning the rest because they were just stale and inedible.
I noted it as waste and at the end of the day, my team leader had a go at me for not selling and also for doing refunds (which was within my authority).
76. The Queen of the Boys’ Club
I had a manager who was a huge busybody. Hovered constantly. She'd happily dump work on others' desks that she was supposed to do, and then go to Costco for two hours. She ragged on one guy daily, all day, for mistakes that weren't actually mistakes, just things done differently from her way—to the point that he left the office crying a few times.
This was funny to me, until the day he had enough and walked out on the spot. He snapped, and right after she left for the day, he left a note on his keyboard saying "I'm done." She also doesn't hire young women because they get pregnant, and she doesn't want to replace anyone going on maternity leave, it's too much of an inconvenience to replace someone for a year.
77. A Healthy Serving of Humility
At a little third-party Panda Express called Rice Garden. It’s the only job I just abandoned and after only a month. I got the job, I really got zero training and I don' t know how, but I managed. The manager would show up and then disappear to go talk on the phone somewhere throughout the grocery store we were in.
If I needed help, the only other employee was the cook who spoke zero English and just knew how to do his job, so I’d have to find the manager. It was even worse if I had to leave a customer to go hunt for the manager, just embarrassing to me. He would leave super early for the day and leave us two to work it out. The cook would start cleaning 3 hours before we were closed so he could leave early.
I’d have to serve old food until close, and since I couldn’t start cleaning until we closed, I’d be there till 11 pm cleaning by myself.
78. The Walls Have Eyes and Ears
I took an internship while I was in college for a guy who owned his own recruiting agency. The only people working there were me, the owner, and another guy. The owner was hands down the worst person I’ve ever worked for. He was creepy, a misogynist, and just a jerk for no reason. The office was very small. You could literally hear everything everyone did.
The owner would be in his office typing all day, it was like he was writing a book or something. Anytime I would go into his office to ask him a question, he would immediately close his browser and would get nervous. We used to get all these spam emails all the time from these dating sites and about mail order brides...ugh. He would make these jokes that just made me uncomfortable.
Some days, he would act like he was leaving work early for the day and would come back into the office 20 minutes later to make sure myself and my coworker didn’t leave. Like dude, seriously? He even reprimanded me for coming into work 5 minutes early one day. You would’ve thought I stole food out of his kids’ mouths. Like dude. It’s five minutes.
Don’t pay me for it then. It’s not that serious.
79. Sometimes It’s Best to Keep Your Mouth Shut
The company consisted of something like 1,200 employees at the time and rented out a big conference center for a Christmas party. At the opening of the party, the CFO was giving opening remarks and asked—expecting cheers—if everyone liked their Christmas bonuses. He got booed. See, of that 1,200 people, a bit over a thousand were in customer service.
No one in customer service got bonuses, only people in the "corporate" departments got bonuses. And our awesome CFO decided to rub everyone's noses in it, because clearly the Chief Financial Officer of a company would have no idea that 80%+ of his company didn't get bonuses. At the same party, the CEO made an announcement that the company would be closed on Friday (Christmas that year was on a Thursday), and everyone got a day off.
Now, he had literally just finished making a speech about how everyone was important, and everyone was part of the company, no matter the department. He had shoveled crap hard, trying to make CS happier. The next day, we all got a memo that Customer Service still had to work on that Friday. We apparently didn't count as "everyone" and the CEO just hadn't realized that the announcement wouldn't apply to anyone.
January saw a 60% attrition rate.
80. Game of Thrones Is Less Sexy in Real Life
I worked in a salon as a new stylist. She co-owned with her family, and always put us in the middle of family drama. Anytime we had work meetings, it was always to tear us down and complain, sometimes individually pointing out to each one of us what we did badly on. The only time she helped clean was when she was pissed at us.
She also told us it's our job to clean even though we were only paid commission on the hair we actually did. Just to name a few things.
81. Panic and Point Proven
I excused myself out to the barns because I was starting to have a panic attack (because my manager shouted at me). I didn’t run or anything, just said I was taking my break. She followed me in there, where I was crying but trying self-help stuff to calm myself, and started saying stuff like, “You’re a 30-year-old old woman, what are you crying for? You can’t cry every time someone criticizes you! Just stop crying now!”
This put me into a massive panic, as her tone of voice was aggressive (to me...I’m sensitive massively to tone of voice) and I had a panic attack, hyperventilating and having muscle spasms etc., so they called an ambulance. I think that scared her!
82. Don’t Blow Hot Air up My Brain
The one who insisted I was imagining things when I told him there was a gas leak, and who told me to just keep working when I later told him I was getting light-headed. When it turned out the next day that there WAS a gas leak (I reported it since he wouldn't), and I confronted him about it, he told me that I should've just walked out on my job if I knew there was a problem.
83. Getting Schooled by Upper Management
I worked at a school for several years, and the principal stole my entire pension and severance pay. The school was supposed to deduct a hundred dollars from my paycheck every month, match it, and deposit all the money into my pension fund. Instead, my boss pocketed all the money from 20+ employees' checks, got Botox done, and bought herself all-new designer clothes.
I was counting on the money to pay for grad school, and I ended up having to take out loans because if it. I spent months trying to get my money back, but it wasn't in the US and the authorities kept giving me the runaround, so I eventually just gave up.
84. Pink Eye, But Not a Pink Slip
I worked for a small café, doing a manager's amount of work while being paid minimum wage, and when I contracted pink eye from caring for my sister, my boss got mad at me. After that, I applied and was hired, at Starbucks. His business fell apart without me there and closed within four months of me leaving.
85. Your Body, His Choice
I used to work in high-pressure sales. Once a week, the director would come in, and to get everyone energized, they brought in Monster drinks. She'd leave them in her office for the salespeople to have. Now, I liked the Director, she was nice and professional. My manager, on the other hand, was a piece of freaking dirt in a bag.
I got tired of drinking energy drinks, so I decided to not participate this one week. My boss came to me and said, "You didn't get a monster. You know Wendy (let's call her Wendy) bought these for the entire division?" I said I was aware of that, but I didn't want one. He came up to me and said this: "Listen, go into that office and get one right now."
I was so stunned that I didn't know what to do. So, I got up, grabbed a can, walked back to my desk, and just left it sitting there. He came back and asked why I didn't drink it. I told him I didn't want to have one because my body doesn't do well with so much caffeine. He asked me to walk into his office. Now I wasn't the best at the job, in fact I hated it.
He stated to me that my lack of energy is extremely distracting to him (not to the team, him), and that it shows in my performance. He ended with "If you keep this up, we may have to let you go." All I said to him was, "Ok, well that's unfortunate—but I will not drink something that takes a toll on my body." Lo and behold, I ended up getting fired.
I enjoyed two weeks of unemployment until I got a call back from the same company. They wanted to hire me for a different position, not sales. No interview and higher pay. I took it and I loved it. (Since moved on to better opportunity). Now my ex-boss: He ended up being terminated for substance abuse. He actually had the audacity to request me to be a friend on Facebook.
I didn't accept, but I heard from my prior sales coworkers that he was asking for money.
86. Unwanted Management
My old manager was on his way out, and the CFO thought it would be a good idea for the team to "interview" the incoming manager. It was more of a "what I'm going to do differently than the last guy" type of interview. Right away, I pulled out my phone and got to searching this guy's professional history on LinkedIn and simply Googling his name to see if anything comes up.
Turns out, back in 09, he got convicted of assaulting an unconscious woman. His work ethic was horrible. He'd show up an hour late, take a two to three-hour lunch, and leave a couple of hours early. Realistically, he probably put in a four-hour day when he should've been working eight to nine hours. When he was at work, he would talk about what he'd do to what's her face, how he would do it, and it was overall creepy because of his history.
I left that job on a three-day notice, and when he gave me my exit interview, he went in for a handshake. I refused and told him to go to heck.
87. Small Business, Big Problems
Small business. 20 employees +/-. Boss made a big speech about austerity measures and no raises this year. A week and a half later he drives up in a brand new Silverado with all the bells and whistles. Expensed to the business of course. He would hate to have to pay taxes on those profits. One of the less subtle members of the staff took a literal dump in front of his office door.
88. What A Beautiful Sight
Over the course of six months, through countless phone calls to different union offices and the department of labor, I eventually got my boss fired for changing people's time-keeping information to steal overtime from them. During those months I was treated like dirt by this guy, but I never actually did anything wrong so I couldn't be punished.
At one point, management—against contract rules—denied my time off request to be at my best friend’s wedding and my boss brought me into his office and threatened to fire me. At this point, I had called the Northeast district business associate on him, and I will never forget the look on my boss’s face when he realized I knew he couldn't do anything to me.
89. A Matter of Life and Employment
I worked at a facility that manufactured medical devices, mainly catheters. One day, a work order came in and my manager came into the clean room to hand me the work order and to enter the order specs (things like dip speed, dwell time, extraction speed and cure time) for the production run. Entering in the specs is literally the one thing I wasn't allowed to do.
That had to be done by a supervisor or the manager. After he leaves, just for the hell of it, I double-check the specs before I start the test run. The specs were off. Like, WAY off. I call the manager who literally just entered them in and asked him if he knew something I didn't and if he wanted me to correct them. He vehemently told me to leave the specs as is and run the machine as per his specs.
I ask for his reasoning (something I don't normally do, but I had a funny feeling) and all he said was, "They won't know the difference." Now, considering these catheters go INSIDE of people and can cause serious injury if they are faulty, I call up the production manager and tell him what’s going down. He's on the phone for less than ten seconds, and all he tells me is to stop production and to hang out.
Cool, I hadn't even started so I left the clean room and took a break. Not even five minutes later I hear some yelling, a door slam, and the production manager goes into the clean room to enter the specs into the machine and has me verify the specs right in front of him. He turns to me and says, "If this ever happens again, with anyone, let me know. Personally."
They put him on suspension and sent him home. They started an investigation, (there's a ton of paperwork and lots of paper trails when it comes to medical devices) and it turns out he had been fudging the numbers for a solid month and not with just this customer. The company that had been ordering the products threw a fit, and said they would find another manufacturing company if you don't fire the guy (my boss) immediately.
It was a multimillion-dollar contract at risk, so he was gone after the week-long investigation. All I got was a measly handshake and thanks from the owner of the company. In short: the boss was knowingly fudging the specs on medical device manufacturing. I found out, told his boss, he got fired.
90. Freelancer’s Choice
I took a phone call on my cell when at my desk. The middle manager came up and screamed at me. Yelling about how I was not allowed to take calls for clients while at that office. I was a contractor and made it perfectly clear that I did work for multiple clients prior to doing work for this company. The CTO’s office was 10 feet from mine.
He came out and stood in his doorway listening to the rant. When the middle manager was done, I just looked over at the CTO and said: “it’s him or me and at the moment I don’t give a damn which you pick.” CTO walked the middle manager out right then. Funny thing: I didn’t hang up throughout the incident. And it was my wife on the other end.
I was spending about 70 hours a week at their site digging their staff out of a hole they had dug themselves in.
91. In Bed with the Enemy
I’ve told this story a few times before, so I’ll keep it short. I didn’t get my boss fired, but she blames me. Boss and I didn’t get along, but she didn’t have the authority to fire me. But she promised her boyfriend my job. So, she hires her boyfriend in another position, with the plan they’ll drive me to quit, and then she can just promote him to my job. This lasted for about a month.
She fired him when they broke up. He confessed their scheme to me on his way out (we’d actually become friends at this point), and I tell him he should really tell HR. HR does their investigation, she’s fired because “sleep with me and I’ll give you a job” is textbook sexual harassment. And she tells anyone who’ll listen that it’s all my fault because I didn’t quit like I was supposed to.
92. Skimming Off the Top
Not me, but my girlfriend at the time. We were both working at a small burrito chain, she was front of house manager and I was kitchen manager. Above us was one senior manager and then the owner. We did tip pooling based on hours, and the senior manager always told my girlfriend not to count the tips every night, as he divided it up at the end of the week.
Well. Of course, she counted them every night. That's how she found out his dark secret. Turns out the senior manager was stealing almost $500 a week from employees in tips, and because his previous FOH manager never questioned him it had likely been going on for years. She told the owners and he was gone the next day. A week later his wife left him.
93. Don’t Wake Sleeping Beauty
It was the night shift, and for years this freaking guy had been either locking himself in the office and playing video games all night, or going home and freaking sleeping on the clock…and no, I'm not making that up. Finally, one night, the regional manager showed up for a surprise visit at like 3 AM.
It was a group effort, the night crew took great pleasure in telling the RM exactly where his night manager was.
94. They Don’t Teach Manners in Management School
He'd show up every day and tell us a tale of his risque exploits. Whether true or not, none of us wanted to hear it. If an attractive looking female came in, he drops what he's doing and stares at her, drooling like a dog in a dog treat factory. After she leaves, he had to say a comment about her appearance. After talking on the phone with a certain manager, he always comments on how nice her butt is.
He'd bully us employees and other managers. Called us the B-word a lot despite us getting onto him for it. My female coworkers reported him. We all had a phone meeting with our district manager and HR. He was suspended until the investigation was over and they ruled to terminate him. Surprisingly, HR worked for us that day.
95. PowerPoint or Power Don’t?
He was presenting a PowerPoint that I had put together to all the managers in the building. There was something he wanted to add at the last minute that he had never told me about, and when it wasn't there, he verbally abused me for like 5 minutes straight. Yelling, name-calling, telling me to prove to him that I had a college degree and wasn't just making it up.
I was a contractor, so I was afraid to complain to HR because I assumed, they'd just fire me, but a lot of other people in the room did. After the meeting, I went into the shared drive folder to find the presentation notes where the extra information was supposedly located. I watched the last changed time change from a day ago to the current time, then he immediately called and said it was right there in the notes file.
He was fired the next day for unprofessional behavior.
96. All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy
My boss actively tried to ban friendships. If co-workers became friendly she would schedule them so they would NEVER see each other. "You're here to work! Not to socialize!" She also banned everyone from coming into the workplace when they were not working. It was a pub. She banned socializing in a pub.
This was a corporate pub, so drinking for free was never allowed. She was literally turning away paying customers. A co-worker once asked her if he could bring in his visiting Grandpa to show him where he worked and she told him to screw off. She became insanely paranoid when she learned four people were in a WhatsApp group.
She said the only reason people who work together set up group chats is because they wanted to talk trash about her. She was actually kind of right.
97. But Tell Us What You Really Think
In a company of six people, the owner said in a meeting with everyone that his two sales guys are irreplaceable and that the rest of us are "just paper pushers."
98. Selectively Poor
Management canceled the Christmas party and Christmas bonuses for the whole company because we "didn't have the money for it." I found out later the CEO and the CTO used company funds to take a week-long ski vacation in Whistler instead of doing something nice for the employees. You better believe I spread that evidence around the office.
99. My Boss Is a Heartbreaker
I had a doctor who constantly ignored patients in serious pain. He thought all of them were faking it to get pain killers. After a senior director at Microsoft, who he refused to do an EKG on, died from a heart attack in our ER, it was the last straw. I went to management and told them what I had seen. Thank God they fired him. I couldn't take it anymore.
100. What A Beautiful Sight
Over the course of six months, through countless phone calls to different union offices and the department of labor, I eventually got my boss fired for changing people's time-keeping information to steal overtime from them. During those months I was treated like dirt by this guy, but I never actually did anything wrong so I couldn't be punished.
At one point, management—against contract rules—denied my time off request to be at my best friend’s wedding and my boss brought me into his office and threatened to fire me. At this point, I had called the northeast district business associate on him, and I will never forget the look on my boss’s face when he realized I knew he couldn't do anything to me.
101. Mic Drop
I worked with an awful boss. He would always flirt with the young female staff and make us all uncomfortable, even though he was 50 years old. We all knew his wife and two young children, but about six months into me working there he began to “date” a 22-year-old customer. By date, I mean he used to go downstairs to his office and sleep with her—all while he was on shift.
No one was allowed to talk about it but we all knew. He knocked her up quite quickly and ended up breaking up with his wife, but he still flirted with his staff relentlessly even when his new baby was born. He once told a male employee that he liked asking female staff to pick up things from low shelves so we would bend over and he could check out our butts.
He always broke health and safety rules if he could get out of doing a task he didn’t want to. He was prolific at asking staff to clean human waste—vomit/poop customers had done on the floor—even though legally anyone cleaning that stuff needed to have passed a certain health and safety qualification. I spoke to my assistant manager about this and she confirmed that only management can do it, and I should refuse next time.
One day he demanded I cleaned up vomit in the male toilets, and I refused, repeating what the assistant manager told me. My boss went absolutely mad—he wasn’t used to people standing up to him. He told me to come downstairs to his office to speak about it. At that moment I knew I wanted to quit, so I told him I won’t be going downstairs with him.
He asked me why, and I replied: “The last girl who went down there with you ended up getting pregnant.” I lost my job instantly but it was totally worth it.
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