We want to hear about your worst boss. You know the one: the blowhard who talked over you at every meeting; the unhinged lunatic who expected you to answer emergency texts at 3am; the so-called “genius” who couldn’t help but scream at everyone because she was just so darn passionate. Or maybe the one who would lick his fingers constantly and then used his wet fingers to plaster his bangs down onto his forehead, all while never breaking eye contact. (Oh, wait, that’s my story.)
If you have a bad boss story you know you want to share it. Have at it in the comments section below! Also, related:
[referenced url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2017/03/how-to-tell-your-boss-youre-unhappy-at-work/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/dxwdmaakrxkk6glywzta.jpg” title=”How To Tell Your Boss You’re Unhappy At Work” excerpt=”In an ideal world, our jobs would be challenging, engaging, and rewarding all the time, but that isn’t always the case. How do you deal with unhappiness at work? Ideally, it may just take a small tweak to get your career back on track to a more satisfying path, and you can start by telling your boss.”]
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4 responses to “Tell Us About Your Worst Boss”
I had a boss that ran a charity organisation and had a web site that allowed you to donate via it.
By the time I joined as the only developer, the site was well established. Poorly. This was a typical day;
1. Explain one part of the sites functionality to him. Every day even though he was the one that wanted it in the first place. Every day!
2. Reconcile the accounts against what a client paid. That’s right. As a programmer I was expected to reconcile the books. Not his accountant and I wasn’t allowed to write pages that would allow him to do it.
3. Get yelled at for not being able to reconcile within an hour.
4. Get yelled at for the functionality that he didn’t understand.
5. Get yelled at for not delivering new functionality because I was busy with his other stuff.
6. Get called into his office around 35 times a day. Every day. To explain some of the data. And explain item 1.
As well as those daily yellings I also had to deal with;
Got yelled at for leaving early under doctors orders because I’d just gotten out of a 5 day hospital stay for pneumonia.
Got asked weekly why he needed me and why wouldn’t he just outsource to India?
Walked in one time very angry and yelled at me, in front of everyone “What the F#@K are you doing today? I want it on the whiteboard now!”
Here was my list;
1. Packing up all my shit
2. Walking out the door
3. Never coming back
4. Blocking your phone and emails
His phone messages to me after that were hilarious. I never replied and left him to find another developer, who then had to find the code on the server, learn it, learn deployments etc by himself.
I once had a job as a night porter when there was a series of break-ins and instances of vandalism at the hotel.
The boss pressured us to act as security guards (with no qualifications, training or insurance of any kind.) We were made to do rounds of the outside grounds late at night and told to challenge anyone we found loitering around.
When it was relayed to her that this could be legally problematic, she fired all the night porters and replaced them with real security guards.
I had a student job as a theatre usher where the theatre management would routinely send the guys off to be security guards or do other work requiring training, support and higher wages. At one concert, a wave of teenage girls heading toward the stage threw me across three rows of seats. I was lucky to get out without major injuries.
Which is worse?
* The one who wanted everyone to do workplace training through the weird pyramid cult he was mixed up in?
* The one who would come to my office with a baseball bat, sit on the floor making all sorts of hints that I was doing something unspecifiably wrong, while bashing the bat against one hand. Oh and he was sort of flirting with me.
* The company owner who was so incensed by me asking for a pay-rise that he paid me for special duties in cash (right down to the last 5c piece) and then got one of his managers to lay me off, and then came in and tore the inventory poster I’d made down off the wall so that none of my contributions would ever be remembered.
* The other company owner who wanted me to manage his “problem team”, but who would come in and scream at them to the point that they were basically Stockholm Syndrome victims who wouldn’t listen to me.
* there are more…
Just to be clear, I have had a number of great bosses.
Had a boss/owner that hired me for so much, after three months of employment slashed my pay by $20K per year. He did this because the market is dead in the area for IT and he knew this so I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, really had no choice but to say yes to it or live on the streets. I’ve heard that he does this regular to others that he employs