Worst Boss Stories?

[Red hair dont care]

I'm one of those people who seems to be a magnet for awful bosses (that said, I have had a handful of truly amazing ones) - but for the most part, they've been assholes:

1) Partner in a law firm ... worst man I've ever had the displeasure of working for as a legal secretary in the late '90s. I was paid a salary for working a 40 hour week, yet worked 60+ hours easily. He would ring me up on a Saturday at 8am demanding I come into the office (a 1.5 hour drive away); when I got there, there'd be a note saying not to worry. This happened several times. If I dared question it, he'd fly off the handle. He threw a stapler at me once - if I hadn't managed to duck then I would have been seriously hurt! I worked until at least 7pm every night which other partners started to question - they were all scared of him though so when he told them to mind their own business they'd back off. He'd be really really mean to me, then give me presents to make up for it. Would never apologise; would just hope the gifts would suffice. He was so mean and tight with his money - he drove a crappy little 20-year-old Japanese import car which, sitting in the carpark alongside the other partners' cars, just looked pitiful. His kids hated him, and one day I had to spend most of my afternoon typing a letter to his son (as he dictated it), about all the stuff he'd done wrong in his life and why he was being cut off. One day someone rang him for a verbal reference on someone who'd worked for him previously; they asked if anyone was in his office (I was), and he said "nobody at all" before proceeding to give a really scathing verbal reference for this person, who probably didn't even nominate him as a referee. Bad form on his and that man who called's, part. He was a ***what Freda says*** through and through. I reported him to HR on a couple of occasions and it was clear whose side they would take, so I went in super-early one Sunday, packed up my desk, shoved a resignation letter under the HR Manager's door, and got the hell out of there (when I got to my car I couldn't stop shaking). They sent me a 'thank you for your wonderful service' letter, along with three months' severance which was a relief (especially as I could have sought legal advice and walked away with a lot more). The crazy thing was, when I went for this job I had to do heaps of psych tests to check I was the right fit - obviously he wanted someone he could walk all over. Thankfully, the woman who put me in that job found me another one working for a lovely female partner right away, and she knew full well of this man's reputation so it wasn't an issue.

2) IT Programme Manager ... in my first project management role ... he was SUCH an mole. Hated women, especially ones that got on well with the business (there was very much a 'projects vs the business' atmosphere), and went out of his way to leave me and another female project manager out of communications, morning teas, everything really. Would call me up out of the blue and say the Steering Committee were waiting for my update (I didn't even know there was a meeting, and the Project Co-ordinator, also a female, was kept in the dark in that regard too). We all got given the boot after a few months which was a blessing in disguise (the company decided to outsource all their project management to a vendor).

3) Another IT Programme Manager (there is something about IT PMs) ... used to tell me that drinking a can of Red Bull (which I did every morning) was comparable to taking speed and would go on and on about how he worried for me. I thought he was joking, but his oddness didn't stop at that. Such a weird man. Not awful as in evil like the first man in my first example, but peculiar. He would sit at his desk - which was opposite mine and we faced each other - just staring at me, or make weird sounds and pick his nose. It was horrible. He banned people from wearing headphones to block out the noise or listen to music, so I just had to put up with him. Whenever someone called me he'd stop what he was doing and just stare at me. Such weird behaviour. Sometimes he'd instant message me to ask if **** looked like they were constipated or if ***** seemed like she'd been drinking - I'd just ignore him. I'm not actually sure what he did all day either. He ended up finding a better job (his words), which was a relief. His successor was fabulous.

4) Recruitment ... OMG ... pack of witches. They owned the firm and were sisters in their late 40s. The biggest witch of them all had the gall to go on about women's looks when she herself had a face like a slapped a. She would go so far as to not shortlist someone if they were overweight or had what she thought was a terrible hair colour or cut, and would go on about women not looking 'feminine' (she herself had a very short man's haircut, wore trousers and baggy shirts, and not a whisker of makeup). I lasted two weeks there - I told them in my exit interview that we were placing legal staff into jobs, not models, and needed to focus more on finding the best candidates for the jobs ... they didn't seem to get it.

I do hope you have a nice/good boss now. What absolute holes.

Years ago my boss was an horrendously sexist man and an absolute twit. Sorry.
He was talking about how us girls want to work and not get pregnant else cannot work. We only worked in a normal office not heavy carrying or anything. Anyway restructure happened he got shoved off. Yes happy days, but then we got made redundant notlong after.

 

[HowlOwl]

I had another boss who not only would stand far too close, he sacked two excellent, long-serving female sales reps (this was for a builders’ merchants) and hosted “sportsmen’s dinners” to which he would only invite male customers. I said, surely there were female buyers? Also he had a company calendar produced with glamour shots. This was in the early 90s but even then I thought this all felt a bit dated.

 

[Annie101]

In the late 90's we had a perverted boss, always trying to touch us or saying something very suggestive, My best friend from Swindon stabbed him with a pen when he tried it with her. Those days no one took it seriously - so good on her

 

[Norfolking Good]

When I was still teaching my head of dept was a nightmare. He assumed all women were just baby machines and referred to pregnancy as ‘Egyptian Flu’ (I still don’t understand the reference) and whenever I put a student in detention he would undermine me in front of the student and tell them they didn’t need to attend making me look a joke. If they had attended he would be the one supervising so he was just lazy. The reason I left in the end was every time he had a free or his kids were working he’d come into my classroom (usually with 30+ kids present) and say how much he hated teaching and how depressed he was. Utterly unprofessional and cringe and he wouldn’t take the hint I was also teaching and to bugger off. All the other humanities team knew he was like this but had been there years so they just ignored it, but I was newly qualified so felt for my own mental health I had to leave as it was so depressing!

 

[PreciousVenus]

My worst ever boss was such a micromanager, in a relatively senior role I had to send EVERY email to her first so she could 'approve' it. Absolutely every single email I wrote, and she would red pen them with ridiculous feedback like my emails were too short and to the point. She complained that I didn't ask her enough questions (even though she had specifically assigned a mentor to me) and told me I should be sending her '20, 30 emails with questions per day'. She didn't bother to give me any training but then complained when, in a meeting, I mentioned having spent a bit of time trying to work out how to do something for myself rather than bother others who were so busy they were literally going off sick. One time, I used the wrong parameter in a report and she shouted it across the whole office that I'd done everything wrong and I left the office in tears. I started looking for new jobs at the end of my first week and she was surprised at 3 months in when I handed in notice.

Although actually, my worst ever boss didn't do anything wrong, quite the opposite. He was extremely fit and I fancied him SO MUCH it was very distracting.

 

[Tinkerbell cat]

The worst boss I ever had was my manager in Tesco when I was 17/18. I worked mostly part time so Thursdays/Fridays and the odd Saturday.

One day I was helping pack a little old ladies bags and she had asked me could I help her push her trolley out to her car as it was a bit heavy so of course I did. The woman had parked just out the front in one of the disabled bays so it literally took about 5 minutes - if that! The woman gave me a £1 tip for helping her bless. I went back in and my manager was demanding where I was. She didn't care that I was helping a customer.

She gave me the job of bringing the milk crates out onto the shop floor, now I was 18, very slim and small, not strong at all but still gave me this task. I would be expected to bring out 3 or 4 at a time and try to keep them all in a straight line to get them down to the milk but often they had a mind of their own and wouldn't play ball. It was so stressful as you would have one trailing off in one direction, one going somewhere else, my arms not able to keep them all together and customers walking about.

These were just minor wee things until something awful happened one Sunday, one of my best friends committed suicide. I wasn't due back into work until the Thursday which was my friends funeral. I contacted work on the Wednesday and told them about my friends death and that I wouldn't be in on Thursday but I would be back on the Friday. It was a different manager I spoke to but they were lovely and told me they would pass on the message to my manager. Thursday morning came and work rang me, my manager demanded to know where I was and when I told her she just hung up the phone. I was punished the rest of the weekend by being given tit jobs that nobody ever did like cleaning the bottom of the fridges to take scuff marks off. The marks had been there clearly years and weren't going to come off. She laughed at how I couldn't even clean a fridge properly.

A few months later my stepmum who had terminal ovarian cancer was in hospital with not alot of time left, I asked could I leave work a little earlier on the Friday to go to the hospital as it was about 40 mins drive away and she said no. I left at 5pm when my shift ended and on the way up the motorway, my brother got a call to say she had passed away. I never got to say goodbye. In hindsight I should have just walked out about I was young, a bit scared of my boss and didn't want to lose my job.

I wasn't the only person to get treated badly, two other girls on the team did too and I am still good friends with one of them now. The men on the team got nothing but special treatment though. It was sickening. I stuck it out a few more months. I went to Turkey with my then boyfriend and his family and when we got back I realised I was done, so just never went back in. Looking back I can't believe I put up with how she got on and I was timid like a mouse and just got on with it.

 

[Rbarb-bkini]

Some of these are truly awful, I can't believe how horrid a person can be just because they're in a position of power. I absolutely draw the line at managers not being sensitive in situations involving bereavement.

I've never had a bad manager however I had a boss who wasn't always professional, and often told me very personal, private information about other colleagues which they absolutely shouldn't have.
One time a person who used to work for the company called this manager and left a voicemail begging for their job back and the manager played it on speakerphone in front of the whole office. I was appalled.

 

[Edgewood]

I worked at a Montessori School that the owner hired me to run because she didn't have the qualifications to do so. She was a complete terror to most of the teachers but had two favourites who in my opinion were unspeakably awful. They called in sick one day out of every week (they were in their twenties, still living at home and their Mummy would call in sick for them, on different days of course.). When they did work, which was rare, they never followed any rules and spent their time documenting things so they could tattletale to the owner.

The owner would come by and take them for lunch and to get their nails done, leaving us short-staffed and when they came back, she'd complain that nothing ever got done, and when we said we were short two teachers, she'd fire back that we always had excuses.

The owner didn't follow the ministry of education rules, she enrolled too many students and started an affair with one of the dads. She frequently humiliated the children who attended her school, she paid most teachers minimum wage and never spent a day working at all, except to tell the parents how she is a visionary and started her school to make the world a better place.

 

[skvallertant]

I worked at a Montessori School that the owner hired me to run because she didn't have the qualifications to do so. She was a complete terror to most of the teachers but had two favourites who in my opinion were unspeakably awful. They called in sick one day out of every week (they were in their twenties, still living at home and their Mummy would call in sick for them, on different days of course.). When they did work, which was rare, they never followed any rules and spent their time documenting things so they could tattletale to the owner.

The owner would come by and take them for lunch and to get their nails done, leaving us short-staffed and when they came back, she'd complain that nothing ever got done, and when we said we were short two teachers, she'd fire back that we always had excuses.

The owner didn't follow the ministry of education rules, she enrolled too many students and started an affair with one of the dads. She frequently humiliated the children who attended her school, she paid most teachers minimum wage and never spent a day working at all, except to tell the parents how she is a visionary and started her school to make the world a better place.

OT, so sorry for breaking the rules, but I went to a Montessori skola between kindergarten and age 11 or so, and I honestly don't think it's a good way of teaching kids wannabe hippy vibes. I was really behind when I came to the UK for highschool. I just never see it talked about so I wanted to have my say haha.

 

[Edgewood]

The name "Montessori" isn't trademarked, so anyone can open up a school and call it a Montessori. This owner had very little Montessori materials and only one credited Montessori teacher for the entire school.

 

[Mrs Cucumber]

I worked in a devout Christian care home when I was 17 and fresh out of college. The senior leader hated me, when allocating patients she would ignore me, not tell me my patients or not assign me any.
She would go around the bedrooms after I had taken my patient up to the lounge and mess up the bathroom and pull the bedsheets back then complain I hadn't done them.
She would undo their hair, after I had plaited it.
She sent me home one day (unpaid) as my tights had a ladder and I had no spares in my locker!

One day I was getting a resident ready and her daughter arrived, she said she needed to talk to me. Turned out she had been secretly filming in her mums room as she was worried about her mum and had caught the team leader on camera! She showed it to the management who suspended her, I quit and I went to work in a new home where the resident was going to!

 

[Kittypops]

When I was still teaching my head of dept was a nightmare. He assumed all women were just baby machines and referred to pregnancy as ‘Egyptian Flu’ (I still don’t understand the reference) and whenever I put a student in detention he would undermine me in front of the student and tell them they didn’t need to attend making me look a joke. If they had attended he would be the one supervising so he was just lazy. The reason I left in the end was every time he had a free or his kids were working he’d come into my classroom (usually with 30+ kids present) and say how much he hated teaching and how depressed he was. Utterly unprofessional and cringe and he wouldn’t take the hint I was also teaching and to bugger off. All the other humanities team knew he was like this but had been there years so they just ignored it, but I was newly qualified so felt for my own mental health I had to leave as it was so depressing!

Not heard the saying 'Egyptian flu' before either, but maybe they thought they were being oh so hilarious about 'mummies' etc?

These stories are all horrific

 

[Norfolking Good]

I’m glad I’m not the only one, but it sounds plausible. He was a bit very old school and a terrible example to NQTs coming into the profession. So glad to have refused his offer of a permanent post.

 

[Rxt156]

The worst boss I ever had was my manager in Tesco when I was 17/18. I worked mostly part time so Thursdays/Fridays and the odd Saturday.

One day I was helping pack a little old ladies bags and she had asked me could I help her push her trolley out to her car as it was a bit heavy so of course I did. The woman had parked just out the front in one of the disabled bays so it literally took about 5 minutes - if that! The woman gave me a £1 tip for helping her bless. I went back in and my manager was demanding where I was. She didn't care that I was helping a customer.

She gave me the job of bringing the milk crates out onto the shop floor, now I was 18, very slim and small, not strong at all but still gave me this task. I would be expected to bring out 3 or 4 at a time and try to keep them all in a straight line to get them down to the milk but often they had a mind of their own and wouldn't play ball. It was so stressful as you would have one trailing off in one direction, one going somewhere else, my arms not able to keep them all together and customers walking about.

These were just minor wee things until something awful happened one Sunday, one of my best friends committed suicide. I wasn't due back into work until the Thursday which was my friends funeral. I contacted work on the Wednesday and told them about my friends death and that I wouldn't be in on Thursday but I would be back on the Friday. It was a different manager I spoke to but they were lovely and told me they would pass on the message to my manager. Thursday morning came and work rang me, my manager demanded to know where I was and when I told her she just hung up the phone. I was punished the rest of the weekend by being given tit jobs that nobody ever did like cleaning the bottom of the fridges to take scuff marks off. The marks had been there clearly years and weren't going to come off. She laughed at how I couldn't even clean a fridge properly.

A few months later my stepmum who had terminal ovarian cancer was in hospital with not alot of time left, I asked could I leave work a little earlier on the Friday to go to the hospital as it was about 40 mins drive away and she said no. I left at 5pm when my shift ended and on the way up the motorway, my brother got a call to say she had passed away. I never got to say goodbye. In hindsight I should have just walked out about I was young, a bit scared of my boss and didn't want to lose my job.

I wasn't the only person to get treated badly, two other girls on the team did too and I am still good friends with one of them now. The men on the team got nothing but special treatment though. It was sickening. I stuck it out a few more months. I went to Turkey with my then boyfriend and his family and when we got back I realised I was done, so just never went back in. Looking back I can't believe I put up with how she got on and I was timid like a mouse and just got on with it.

UGH retail bosses are the absolute worst. I don’t know of anyone that’s had a positive experience with one. They only care about profits.

 

[Kellybobz]

My grandad was diagnosed with mesothelioma and was put on end of life care. I lived with him, my nana and mam so I was very close to him. I worked part time in a retail shop at 16yrs old and my manager once introduced me to her husband as the one with the grandad who is dying. He did sadly die on a Saturday evening, family were all present and it was my first ever time seeing or dealing with a loved one passing, I was distraught as he was more of a father to meq. My manager rang the landline Monday late morning, after I had rang to explain the situation and was granted special leave, to give me a shift for that afternoon, saying it would be just what I needed but they were actually wanting me for a stock take that wasn't due for days. Luckily my mam answered as the old 16yr old me probably would have agreed.

I had a similar experience, my dad suddenly passed away on a Saturday and I found his body. Telephoned my manager at home on Sunday to say I wouldn’t be in on Monday, her response, ok but you’ll be ok and back on Tuesday. Needless to say, I wasn’t, I took 2 weeks annual leave and had a breakdown 8 months later.

 

[Lizzie Mintdrop]

My worst boss broke his girlfriend's foot pushing her over in front of everyone. He also threw a full glass washer tray of glasses at a 20yr old bar man. He fell out with me because I got a boyfriend and then lost his tit with me because he found out I'd had a termination. Awful, nasty bully

 

[ClockworkDolly]

Inspired by the worst interview stories thread - what are your worst boss / supervisor / line manager stories?


My worst boss was when I was on a 15 month placement. I'd taken a pay cut to retrain in a job I'd wanted all my life and what they promised in the interview was fantastic. The first day I got there he told me that he wasn't going to do any training and that he'd just hired me to do free (it was paid by another company) data entry for 15 months. That was 99% of what I did as well, but the worst part was that he worked directly with me every day and just could not remember my name. Instead of Anderbeau, for instance, I was Abigail. Aside from the rare times he'd go totally off piste and call me Sarah. Eventually he gave up and just started calling me 'A' but sometimes didn't even get that right.


I was so pleased to see the back of that place.

Shame you didn't call him A - A for hole.

 

[Lauryloo]

My last job was a nightmare.

I was having a tough time. I returned from maternity leave bald after losing all my hair, my baby had an at that time undiagnosed disability and then I caught pneumonia. My boss made me come in for a meeting while off sick as they didn't believe me and proceeded to tell me I wasn't ill enough to really have it. Took me absolutely months to recover, and I handed my notice in as I was just so shocked at their behaviour while I was ill. I mean, it's not like it's something my gp is going to put on a sick note for the craic

 

[Tinkerbell cat]

UGH retail bosses are the absolute worst. I don’t know of anyone that’s had a positive experience with one. They only care about profits.

It was the worst, because when I returned on the Friday to work, my friends funeral was the Thursday, they brought me into a back to work meeting so my manager and another manager and asked me lots of really hard questions like how close was I to my friend, was it necessary I went to the funeral and things like that. I kind of just buried it at the time though because everyone else that worked there went through it all too so I knew I wasn’t alone.

I remember getting cornered too by a another manager one day practically bullying me into doing overtime even though I couldn’t bare being there, I burst into tears and my dad came to get me.

worst thing is, I actually really bloody enjoyed the job. Shame the managers ruined it for me because I loved sitting on checkouts chatting to the elderly or mixing with the customers. Last retail job I’ve ever done.

 

[AnderbeauJohnson]

worst thing is, I actually really bloody enjoyed the job. Shame the managers ruined it for me because I loved sitting on checkouts chatting to the elderly or mixing with the customers. Last retail job I’ve ever done.

When they open up again you might enjoy a few hours a week in a charity shop if you've got spare time / one near you - I've done various shifts in them and you get customers who love having a natter on the tills.