Aren’t bosses supposed to be our “betters”…at least when it comes to knowing their way around a business? From pension thieves to downright violent supervisors, these managers made us long for the well-meaning incompetence of Michael Scott. File a complaint to these twisted stories about the world’s most horrible bosses.
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. Love Them While They’re Cute and Cheap
We found out she fired all high school workers after 3 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.
3. No One Likes a Mini-Me
Had her 8-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.
4. 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 work group. 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?
5. 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 rant 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. 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.
6. 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).
7. 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.
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.
8. 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. 1 min late, 3 mins late and 6 mins late. I lived an hour from work and had to deal with traffic; I left my house 2 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 till 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.
9. 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, 2 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 some day. 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 off of 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. 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 took from him, I never took 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 back talk? 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, and 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.
10. 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 not permitted (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 illicit, 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!
11. 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 prejudiced based on race. 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 intolerant 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.
12. Big Boss Is Watching You
My supervisor at this nonprofit was maybe a couple 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 lunch time, 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...
13. 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 2 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 2 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 a 5-min 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 4 of their most experienced employees have left, and 3 more are still looking for jobs.
14. 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!
15. 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 the 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.
16. Don’t Look up for Sympathy
After my ex mistreated 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.
17. 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.
18. 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 got him angry. Never hit anyone, though. He was actually awesome, but everyone was scared of him.
19. 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 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.
20. Respect Your Army Men, 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?"
21. Double Duty Let-Down
She was a power-hungry monster. She hated the idea that staff have 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.
22. Go Back to Business School
She's just a freakin' idiot. Her writing skills are on about a 3rd grade level, and I cringe that her garbage gets sent out as representing our organization.
23. 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.
24. 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.
25. 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 profanity 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.
26. The Boss With a Double Life
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 hoax...
27. Not Worth the Time Card
Instead of taking 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 back bone and just did a horrible job managing an office supply store. He was let go shortly after I quit.
28. 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...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 mistreated me. I went to the owner the next day and was fired. I can't imagine working in a situation that bad again.
29. The Most Unladylike Leader
My last boss. 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.
30. 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 mistreat. I quit and I’m currently unemployed.
31. 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 6 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.
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32. Mean Girls: Management Edition
Elizabeth at Dairy Queen when I was in grade 12. She was a horrible tormentor 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.
33. 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).
34. 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 different 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.
35. 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 suuuper 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 11pm cleaning by myself.
36. 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 myself, 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 took food out of his kids’ mouths. Like dude. It’s five minutes.
Don’t pay me for it then. It’s not that serious.
37. Sometimes It’s Best to Keep Your Mouth Shut
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 nonsense 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.
38. 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 angry 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.
39. 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!
40. Don’t Inhale 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.
41. Getting Schooled by Upper Management
I worked at a school for several years, and the principal took 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 run around, so I eventually just gave up.
42. 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 4 months of me leaving.
43. 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 sales people 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 misuse. 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.
44. 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.
45. 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.
46. 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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47. 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 take 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.
Sources: Reddit, , , , , ,
