Horrible (& weird) Bosses

[youvalss]

I thought it would be interesting to hear about your past/present horrible/weird bosses.

I'll start with the first boss I had when I first came to Canada. I must say I appreciate him giving me my first job here, but he was a weird guy.

He was a depressed/lonely (divorced)/schizophrenic and seemed to have lots of issues. Some weird/funny things he used to do:

- He would think that you're not feeling well (which didn't necessarily had much to do with your real condition) and stand not to far from you, looking at you and say: "You look sick, are you sick? I don't want you here...you look sick".

- He would come in every day around 1pm, never earlier, and he never missed a day from what I remember.

- If we stayed a few minutes after 5pm, he would just shut the lights and tell us to leave.

- I was designing some posters and things like that, and he would come over every now and then, stand next to me and ask: "So...what are you working on?"... and if he didn't like the answer - instead of discussing it with me, he would call/yell to my supervisor and say "Why is he working on that?" - instead of just telling it directly to me... (keep in mind that there were only 6-7 people working there).

- He hated holidays (being lonely, I guess), so he thought others shouldn't get in holiday spirit as well. He didn't feel like letting us go early on Christmas eve, and I'm sure that if he could he would have had us working on the 25th and 26th.

- I was told he had a house in Arizona and would go there for a while every winter. So after the New Year's Day, he was just gone and we were told he already left for the month. He also took his son and our supervisor with him, and since it was a very small company, we didn't really have any supervisor while they were away, so it was like a small vacation.
But he did talk to us on the camera (Skype)...he would sit on the bad shirtless (maybe even wearing only underwear) and ask how things were doing and all that (sometimes we would email him some of the things we had created).

- Oh yea, he didn't really care about any workplace culture, so he cursed as much as he wanted...

I must say it was a weird, yet entertaining experience for the most part.

[ImTellinTim]

I've been pretty lucky. I've had one boss for a summer cleaning job on campus who was miserable with his place in life and took it out on us. Other than that my bosses have always been fair, sane, and let us get our work done without hovering.

[C the Lyte]

I fear becoming a horrible/weird boss.


Contribution time:


Had 1 that was real touchy feely kinda person. He would pat you on the back, but leave his hand on your back, and it wasn't a manly pat either. He was training a guy one day, grabbed the guy's hand (hand was still on the mouse), and proceeded with training that way. Also, had a weird fascination with younger boys... like tweeners and pre-teens. And, adopted multiple young men and mentored them...


So, yeah.

[youvalss]

Lyte, I think you have set the bar...

[kehlis]

Yea, that guy needs to have a seat over there...

[Cusefan]

The company I worked for before my current job had a pretty bad boss. He just wasn't good at at giving orders. he fired me because I complied with police in a DOT inspection. I looked into legal action and was told I might have a legitimate claim but I decided to just wipe my hands of it and move on. That is not until I called state troopers and the Syracuse PD to let them know that every single one of those company CDL trucks had illegal defects.

I also had a real bad LT in the Army, he was the most incompetent person I had ever seen in a leadership role. Maybe he was dyslexic but he couldn't read out loud, he was fat and out of shape, and on one occasion he nearly got me and three others shot. This man had no idea how a chain of command worked so he would discipline soldiers without going to their sergeant. When we were doing a nighttime live fire exercise, he was supposed to set off a flair to shift machine gun fire then so the flanking team could move then another flair to cease fire. He set off the shift fire flair twice... It was a good thing my platoon SGT noticed the mistake because we were very nearly killed.

[RockinDaMike]

I really only had one mean boss but she was a hot MILF with fire red hair and had perfect TnA so she pretty much told me what to do without complaints. I was pretty much her lap dog at this Alaskan restaurant and did so many jobs outside of my job title. I was exhausted almost every shift.

A positive though is that she would let me order prime rib with Alaskan king crab legs for 20 bucks anytime.

[slickdtc]

Bad bosses? Tons. Way more common to me then good ones/ones that actually cared. Mainly in the restaurant business.

To be fair, working in a restaurant pretty much sucks from top to bottom. Servers are cut throat competing for tips, so a job that requires teamwork and help ends up with the worst model for it. Cooks often just suck at their job, messing up orders or literally not being able to do their job ("cook") correctly. Management is overworked and subsequently underpaid, and only reason they take those jobs is because they were probably promoted from the floor so the company knows they can pay them **** because they probably don't have a college degree and feel like they're trapped in that role even if it pays enough to make ends meet. Since these people have really only worked their way up the ladder instead of actually being really qualified for the position, they often don't actually give a crap about the restaurant or their employees, only that they don't get too many customer complaints (really can't control that) or that costs are down. They're not real managers, just in title. Typically lazy ****s too, will run the staff ragged and get on their case but won't get their hands dirty themselves despite having been in that position before.

My favorite/best bosses weren't afraid to jump in when the ship was sinking. They did it in different ways: silently but leading by example or delegating responsibilities while also jumping in where they needed to to keep the operation running smoothly. I always tried my hardest and respected the hell out of those guys. In turn, they went to bat for me to get me a raise or promote me to a larger role. When I'm in a position of power in the future, those are the managers I want to emulate.

I worked at a chain diner style restaurant for a couple of months. The work was easy and laid back, but the management there was nonexistent. As in, a customer had a legitimate question or issue they wanted to talk to the manager about. When I'd go back to tell them, they would cower and send me back to deliver the message despite the customer specifically asking for the manager. I ended up walking out when they tried to get me to serve salad from our broken disgusting salad bar machine/holder that was already browned. That and we slaved through a week with no AC in the summer when people's dessert would literally have melted before it got to their table. Place was disgusting and should have been shut down. Management has all gone a few months after I left according to people I still talked to that worked there.

I left my last job for a new direction kind of abruptly, or seemingly. But in the months and weeks leading up to that, I knew there was an issue with a new hire & our GM. I was semi-management so I was privy to some work gossip. Basically I saw the writing on the wall and got out. A month or two later, GM resigned before he was to be terminated for sexual harassment after months of taking time off at the last second. He knew what was going down and stopped caring. I wasn't gonna be around for that ship to sink.