Worst Boss Stories?

[lasttime]

I have so many bad manager/boss stories it's unreal, most involve charity shops.
The first is that I used to volunteer for a charity that housed people and whilst the paid staff (and there was a fair few) took a decent wage the people that lived on site did all the hard/manual work and barely got £50 a week for 40 hours work. The business manager stole money then got made business manager and committed major fraud on the company credit card. I had a staff member tell me I didn't know how to sort stock (check for holes and stains on textiles) it's literally the same in every charity shop, anyone could do it.
The second the manager was lovely to me until my boss at my paid job got really ill and passed during that time she was awful and continued to be after. She slated other volunteers for stupid things and was the most two faced person I've ever met in my life. I went back after the first lockdown and she joked about spitting on my stuff and having covid knowing I was paranoid about getting it because of my health and because I was still taking shopping to my elderly Nan...

 

[LaurieLaurie]

I suspect my friend of being a twit of a boss. They make comments about ‘their staff’ wanting a break and go on about how things would be done differently in their store when we are shopping together etc.

 

[ColaMonster]

I've worked in Retail for nearly a decade now, and had some terrible Managers in my time within the Industry.

One particular 'See you next Tuesday' was a Department Manager in the previous Supermarket I worked in. One day I was moving some boxes out back in the Warehouse and I heard a commotion going on around the corner. Anyway, I investigated and saw this Manager harassing a female Collegue. I grabbed him by the throat and told him that if I ever saw him hurting this particular collegue again, I would paste him across the walls and not feel about doing it.

The funny thing is, he tried to play the 'Matey' act for months afterwards until he left.

 

[emmer_moans]

My first job was in a call centre - all the managers there were A-holes, my particular line manager was a swigger of Red Bull a lot, I’m talking 3 cans lined up on their desk for the day. We were all on same desk pod and they’d get riled up and say ‘inspirational’ things like “WORK ON THE QUEUES” and get really close over your shoulder whilst you where making calls to take a look at your screen. We’d be given exact toilet breaks per day, staggered so the lines would be covered, e.g. I would be assigned 10:50-11:00am for my first loo break, but if you were a minute over, they would come storming into the loos to look for you (sometimes it’s not just a pee you need, eh, and when stressed you need a bit of time!). The next day your loo break might be like 20 mins after the start of your shift, so not in tune with your body as you would have likely gone before you came to work. If you really needed to pee at a time not assigned to you, you could use an emergency do not disturb code on your phoneto stop calls routing to you but then some big-a timer would flash on your screen counting the seconds and of course all do not disturb code usage was reported on by managers and if you used them too often you’d be hauled in for a meeting. I left after a year and a half. Was full time, tit shifts and on minimum wage, to be treated like a naughty school girl. Never again.

Next job, by comparison was admin for an educational setting. Sitting at a desk and going to the loo at my discretion felt like a luxury after my old job. I worked with one other colleague on my team on the same tasks but it soon became clear I was doing 80% of the output and on the other hand they just pontificated over every little thing, spend hours drafting a pointless 2 line email etc etc. I brought it up with my boss and they were like, “well that’s just Bob, he’s been here ages”. So I transferred sideways into another admin job in a different department. My replacement sought me out in the canteen a few months later to vent all about how Bob wasn’t doing much work, so the pattern repeated. My replacement left after a year and was replaced again, and i heard they also had trouble. In my newer role, I had a good year and then my nice line manager got given the boot (gardening leave) due to a restructure and so we got a caretaker manager for 2 years from another department who knew FA about how to do my particular tasks and took no interest in learning, however would snoop on our emails to see how much we were each doing, and then in the coffee break out room would try to corner each of us individually to get the gossip on each of us and try to get us to ag the other team members off. I looked for a another job and got one. Happily my current job is in a team of nice people who actually all graft and we have a lovely manager who supports us and does not micromanage. I feel so lucky!