Share Your Bad Boss Story

Ever had a bad boss? This Yahoo post got me thinking of bad bosses and I thought I'd share my list with you:

• One of my early bosses had an "in" group that she liked to work and associate with (outside of work). If you were in the group, your career with that company was set. If you were not in the group, you could be replaced whenever she wanted you to go. I was not in the group and left before I was shown the door (the really sad part of this company was that I had five bosses in two years and the first one I had was one of my best bosses ever -- he left too.)

• A few years later, I had a boss who couldn't make a decision. He wanted to see the data, the artwork, the plans again, again, and again -- and yet he would never make a decision to "go" or "not go." I remember one Saturday morning (yes, I was working Saturday mornings then) he asked for a change on a package that he's previously taken off and added back on a couple times before. I lost it and shouted that "there wasn't time!" since the product was going to market soon. He asked me if I needed some time to cool off and I said I didn't. He then relented and we went with the design as it was. Fortunately, I was soon promoted and away from him. He left the company a year later.

• Several years later I worked for the nicest man in the world, and yet his management style was to let his subordinates work out any disagreements. And when the disagreements couldn't be resolved, he didn't do anything (other than encourage us all to work them out.) What we were looking for was leadership and what we got was nothing. As a result, nothing happened and the company was gridlocked. Eventually, this executive was replaced by the company's board of directors.

• Unfortunately, the man above's replacement could have been Attila the Hun's long lost relative. He ranted and raved throughout the company with an ego bigger than that of most movie stars. He was also quite overweight and didn't like other overweight people. So he told me to fire one of my managers because "he wasn't doing a good job." Trouble is, he was doing a good -- he just happened to be overweight. I refused to fire him. I told my boss that we needed to document the man's poor performance for HR reasons and he saw the reason in this. So I put the employee on a probation period (he did have some areas where he needed work, so this wasn't a total farce) and gave him regular updates on his performance. Eventually, my boss forgot about the issue, I took the employee off probation, and all was back to normal.

In a different situation, this man tried to blame me the failure of a program he had initiated and told me to carry out. When his idea didn't work out, I was the fall guy with the company's board. I couldn't take it any longer and left soon thereafter.

I've also had my share of great bosses, and I'll share that list tomorrow. But for now, how about sharing your own bad boss story?

Comments

[Ruth]

Years ago, I had a boss that was apparently working towards the title of Worst Boss Ever. This story is just one example of many that I could provide.

The company needed a money order to give as a deposit for something, and the deadline for turning in the deposit was less than an hour away. She had me issue a company check to the post office to buy it. I did try to tell her that they would not accept a check for postal money orders, but she insisted that she had done it "all the time". So I take the check and proceed posthaste to the post office... where they promptly refused to take the check as I had predicted. I was now down to about 35 minutes before the deadline, so I went to my personal bank and had them issue a money order from my own bank account. I made it about 10 minutes before the deadline to place the deposit and heaved a sigh of relief.

I then go back to the office and tell my boss what I had done to meet the deadline. She promptly starts screaming at me, telling me that I should have brought the check back to the office, erased the payee name and type in the company bank name so I could go to that bank and get the money order WITH AN ALTERED CHECK. Never mind that the company bank was 30 minutes away so there was no way to get it back in time, plus I have yet to see any bank that will accept an altered check for buying a money order!

She then informs me that the company will not reimburse me - if I want my money back, I will have to add it to my pay for the week and pay taxes on it. At that point I am just stunned so I mumble something and leave her office.

It wasn't until after the next week's payroll was processed that she realized that not only did I have to pay taxes on it, they did too - the employer part of FICA and Medicare, plus work comp and liability insurance premiums.

It took me a few months, but I did find another job after that happened.

[FMF]

Wow, Ruth. That is a bad boss.

[Kevin]

Ruth -

I hope you "grossed up" the amount of the money order, so you at least got the correct amount after taxes. Regardless, that is pretty crappy behavior of her after you saved her butt.

I guess I've been pretty lucky, I haven't had any really horrible bosses other than the one that wouldn't talk to me for 2 weeks after I gave my notice. Long story short, it was a small company and the month I quit they would be taking inventory at the end of the month. Well, I was supposed to start my new job on the 24th, so I wouldn't be there to help out. He demanded that I stay at least through inventory, but I declined, not wanting to piss off my new company. After that, I was ignored for the final 2 weeks, and all communication went through either his wife (who also worked in the office) or the office manager. It didn't really upset me too much though, since they basically lied to me about the status of their new office building during my interview process. (They were in a temporary trailer when I was hired, but told me their office would be completed in a matter of a couple months. After I was hired I found out the building hadn't even been approved by the city yet.)

[Walden]

I currently am working for my Worst Boss Ever. She comes in late every day, puts in a full days work, maybe 2 days per month (leaves at 11 for a lunch meeting and never comes back, that kind of thing) puts all the work on my shoulders, then makes comments about really looking to me to "step up" and run the department when she goes on vacation. She'll work late maybe 1 day every other month, when our Vice President happens to stay late too! The last promotion I got, she told me what my raise would be (non-negotiable) then CHANGED THE ### on the HR paperwork, went on vacation and didn't tell me. I found out on my next paycheck, she was on vaca, so I went to our business manager and HR to get the original paperwork. You can clearly see where she wrote a "0" over a "1". The situation escalalted because I refused to be satisfied with anything less than I was promised, and she acutally had the gall to call me out in a meeting about having a bad attitude - by the way, I have always gotten "Exceeds Requiements" in the attitude section of my reviews. I can't wait until I find another job, but I'm not leaving this one until I have a better one!

[Isabel]

Oh me, me, me! I love sharing bad boss stories. :)

I once managed a small local office for the Worst Nonprofit Organization Ever. (Sadly, and miraculously, the org is still in business. But I am long gone.) My boss, the Regional Director, reported to the CEO. Both were evil, unethical human beings. And both worked in other cities, thankfully.

My boss once directed me to find cheaper office space (which I did). He leased it and then ordered me to come in on a Saturday and personally move all of the equipment out of our office space into the new space. Nevermind the fact that he wanted me to do heavy lifting and was a cheapass on hiring movers; my main problem was that it had to be done on a Saturday because we shared the building with our landlords -- and he was not planningn to pay rent for that month, or honor the remainder of the lease agreement. (!!!) I tried to talk sense into him, but he said that I had to do it or I would be fired. Since I was young and inexperienced, I did it. Faced with the same situation today, I would quit.

Another time, he hinted that I should fudge some numbers related to meeting our federal grant objectives. I flatly refused, and he backed down.

He didn't forgive me the insubordination though. Soon after, he asked one of my subordinates to snoop around on my computer and try to figure out how I accomplished some of my key tasks. His plan (which he openly revealed to her) was to promote her into my role, and offer me a demotion into her job -- assuming, of course, that I would quit rather than take the demotion. I think the goal (versus just firing me outright) was to save on an unemployment claim. My subordinate felt icky about the whole situation, and finally told me what was going on. I worked with her to resolve the issue (she went back to him and said she wasn't comfortable with his plan), and then he just started ignoring our office, which was a blessing.

So do I win: worst boss ever?? I certainly hope so, because I can't imagine working for someone worse than that....

[luke]

Worst boss? Let me count the ways...

One of my early bosses was a real Tyrant. I worked as a programmer, and everything was on the ultra cheap. My 'desk' was a cafeteria table in the middle of a room with no other furniture, except for stacks of magazines on the floor. When the boss was unhappy he'd stand in front of me, yelling, and pound his fist on my monitor. One day I was so depressed I couldn't get out of bed, and didn't answer the phone for a week. This passive-aggressive strategy worked for me: he fired me by sending me my last paycheck (most people never got their last paycheck).

Later, in my first 'corporate' job I had a *fantastic* boss. She left about a month after I started and was replaced by a Crazy. She had arbitrary favorites - who could do NO wrong - and arbitrary 'problem' employees who would be criticized for everything from font choice to posture. EVERY person in that group had at one point been called into her office and reduced to tears. I was in the latter group at first, but one day I made a reference to astrology (which I knew a little about at the time), and *suddenly* I was a Golden Boy, praised at every opportunity. This new status was worse because it was so much weirder!

Then there was the Guru, who would personalize every move. If I wasn't organized, it was framed as a personal failing and he would tell me in detail what this meant about me and my life and what a better personality would do.

Most recently was the Jerk, who bought my company from my previous owner(who was great). He treated us like a cash cow, making money while he did nothing for the clients except show up at contract renewal time and raise our rates. We got to hear constant graphic descriptions of various 'babes' and really hateful attitudes about any race not his. At the end he arbitrarily docked my accumulated vacation pay, and I sued him to get it back.

It's amazing how BAD some bosses can be, and how many employees are like me - willing to put up with it, give them the benefit of a doubt ("maybe I AM a terrible person...") and hang in there long past the time to move on.

[beloml]

I had a boss who, on the second week on the job, told me that he and his girlfriend (who was not his wife) were speculating that my ten-year marriage was a sham. Why? Because as a woman with short hair, I must be gay.

On the way to an event that I coordinated to encourage minority students to go to college, he said it was a waste of time. "Mexicans don't care about education."

He once crashed our entire organization's server for three hours during a work day downloading music files to his computer.

One of our college-age part-time workers was joking about how she found President Bush "hot." The boss later called her to ask if she would be interested in dating older men (he was mid 50s).

Another time he grabbed this young woman's bare leg (she was wearing a skirt) and ran his fingers up past her knee to illustrate where someone else had gotten tattoos.

He once yelled down the hall, past four offices, for his assistant to come at once. When she got there, she found him holding four pieces of paper that he wanted her to staple.

[Foobarista]

I've been lucky in that all my immediate bosses have been excellent. But the founding CEO of my last company did (nearly) everything wrong: he dithered, would change his mind ten times a day, held long meetings that wandered aimlessly without result, and nitpicked over trivial spending while ignoring massive holes in the company budget. Fortunately, he wasn't an engineer (and hated engineers) so he left engineering alone - which meant the company was nearly successful in spite of him. The two things he did well was to recruit good people - even if he drove them crazy - and he was a master at finance and fundraising.

An important lesson I learned in watching him is that vast intelligence can be a liability if one isn't "wise". He was one of those insanely brilliant prodigy types who got his MS degree when he was 16, but he was so lost in his "life of the mind" that he refused to let things run and learn from data instead of trying to infinitely reason things out.

As for being a "bad boss": fortunately, he wasn't evil or unethical, just congenitally incapable of making and sticking with a decision for more than five minutes.

Eventually, the Board became disenchanted with him and fired him. The new CEO couldn't save the company, although she did her best, but she did manage to get the company sold for a decent amount where it was within weeks of shutting down.

[Slinky]

Not my boss, but my fiancee's current boss is just awful. He's got to be bipolar. For those of you who haven't dealt with such a personality that means he'll be perfectly nice one moment and screaming his head off at you the next. And you never know what will set him off. He used to smoke like a chimney, but he quit smoking. Good for him, right? Well, he stopped smoking and started drinking. Then he stopped drinking and started smoking...pot, that is. My fiancee is stuck in a small room with just him and the boss 5-6 hours a day. He is currently searching for a new job.

[Liz]

Wow - I'm feeling pretty lucky right about now. My current boss is great, as were my last several ones! Not to brag, but to show there are good ones out there. :)

[Ben]

And a second to Liz's situation, my boss is great. He makes informed decisions, doesn't micromanage, and gives me flexibility when I need it. I feel like I have the right balance of him being involved and letting me make decisions. He also understands the need to spend money now in order to save money down the road--something that's quite rare.

[guinness416]

Oh boy, here's my worst boss story: http://guinness416.com/?p=24

Never again ...

[Frosty]

I don't know if he was the worst ever, but my last boss is in the running. I was working over 60 hours a week for the first 3 months trying to meet his unrealistic goals. He would throw daily fits and complain about small things. When something made him angry, even if it wasn't related to work, he would FIND something work related to yell at us about. Luckily they were paying me for extra hours...up until month 3. They then said they wanted to go straight salary and offer me stock options for over time (this was a start up). They raised my salary and I was fine with it...until I learned what it meant in his mind to be a stock holder. In his messed up world he though that shareholders should be working on their own time to make a company be successful. That includes coming in on Sunday to sweep the office and organize the lab. I told him that was the wrong view. Just because I own stock in Microsoft doesn't mean I fly to Redmond on weekends to write code.

Because I was working so much I wasn't getting to spend much time with the family, so my wife was unhappy. I started to cut back the hours and he got pissed. When I told him that my wife was unhappy and that I needed to scale back for awhile, he told me that my priorities were in the wrong place. I promptly started looking for a new job.

The really sad thing is he's my older brother and I haven't talked to him since I left the company.

[He's_No_Friend_of_Mine]

My current boss had also been a good friend for the past 18 years. (friend in the past tense) He not only misled me and other employees about our salaries but has given no one raises in the 7-8 years we've all been with him - not even cost of living. When each of us has gone to him individually asking for salary increases we're told that no one makes the kind of money they did back in 2000 and if we don't like it, we can leave. (It wasn't until very recently that several of us compared notes) What was really the icing on the cake for me was when the company made an error on my 401K and he flat out refused to fix it - even when I pointed out that they were legally required to do so. First he tried to blame me for the error but I was able to prove via emails that it wasn't my error. Then he refused because it would cost him money. He's a brilliant man but his people skills are getting worse and worse as his greed increases. The only reason that I stuck around this long was that I had to deal with a death in the family and then went through a divorce. Now that those are behind me, I'm job hunting - I wish the economy would improve so that I could hurry up and get the heck out of here. Ironically, he still considers us good friends. It's a good thing we don't sit in the same office; I would have been tempted whack him upside the head a long time ago. :-)

[Becky]

I've just left a company which is the worst place I've ever worked. I was the the only person in the place with a university degree but made to sit at a small table in the middle of the room, whilst everyone else had their own large desks. I had two bosses, both of whom were awful in entirely different ways. Boss No. 1 was a semi-literate fat middle aged woman (who I think the word "bitch" was invented for) who made negative comments about everything I did including telling me not to wear knee high boots to work. When I notified her that I knew my father was definitely going to die of cancer (because the treatment is not working), she stated "Oh but you knew that already didn't you really." When I reported this to the senior and equally horrific Boss No 2 (the fat one's boss)he simply said "Oh, people are stressed out at the moment and say things they don't mean." Also I had a sick note for taking two weeks off to be with my dad and the fat woman made me come in for one week (which is illegal) and did not thank me. I have so many stories but the above pretty much sums up the backward attitude of the people. I wish the place would blow up tomorrow with everyone in it.

[CherylM]

Probably not the worst boss ever, but...

I had been getting progressively sicker during the course of a few days, but was too swamped with work to be willing to give in to my illness. (I was young and stupid). Finally a co-worker dragged me down to the company nurse. She gave me a quick once over, and told me to go to the doctor immediately.

So I went to tell my boss. Who then had me come into his office for 1/2 hour to discuss a project as I steadily wilted.

The karma's sweet topper was I had Mono and tonsilitis. So my boss spent the next 3 weeks in terror wondering if I'd passed all of those illnesses along.

[Donna Freedman]

When my mom was diagnosed with bladder cancer, one of my sisters was going to travel to Florida to help her out after the surgery. However, she could stay only for a couple of weeks. I went to my immediate supervisor and said I'd need some time but wouldn't know the exact date until my mom's surgery had been scheduled.
He said: That's not enough notice for me. Bladder cancer is one of the more curable kinds. So why don't you give your mom a chance to be the strong woman she probably is and stay here?
I was a relatively new employee, and also depressed and in a really bad marriage, and I didn't know what to do. So I did nothing. Well, not really. A couple of weeks later I quit, and flew down to Florida to help out after my sister had to go back to work.
My mom died about nine months later.
I now know that I should have gone to Human Resources and reported the supervisor. Family leave act, right? Wish I'd thought of it then.

[openmic]

I've had my share of bad bosses too, but I'd like to just complain about the two worst.

The first I'll call "Daddy's Girl". Daddy was a good businessman and had founded a then thriving business that had $49.5 million in revenues at its peak. His fatal flaw was feeling that he needed to create a legacy by passing his business down through his children. Only Daddy's Girl was ambitious enough to actually accept a job, so he put her in charge. Her only qualification was being his daughter. She loved her power and abused it continuously. She was rude and abusive to employees and customers. She barely showed up for 20 hours per week, and did very little company business during those hours -- and complained about any work she did do. When Daddy retired things went downhill fast. Daddy's Girl fired everybody who wasn't in her favor. That eliminated most of the company's experience and credentials. Every poor decision she made became somebody else's fault. It took several years, but Daddy (who still owned the company) finally pulled the plug when revenues came down to less than $0.75 million. It was too late for the company though, and it was sold. Daddy's Girl got a golden parachute while the rest of us got unemployment.

The second I'll call "Super Ego Guy". When I interviewed for a job, management warned me about him. He was not my (or anybody else's) boss, but he acted as if he was everybody's boss. He was rude, abusive, and unaccountable. Even when customers complained about him he found ways to deflect the blame onto somebody else, or change the subject entirely (usually with a made-up accusation about a different project). Management asked me to reign him in, but nobody in management had the guts to support me. The owner told me that he enjoyed the turmoil that Super Ego Guy caused -- it was entertaining. He didn't care about all of the money he was losing in cancelled repeat business and constant employee turnover. Super Ego Guy attacked me every day because the processes I put in place were exposing his mistakes and corruption. Then Super Ego Guy talked the owner into officially making him the head of our department. The first thing Super Ego Guy did was abolish all of my processes and gloat about how I was going to be forced to play his politics. I resigned the next day, and within a month almost everybody else in our department also left.

It doesn't help the companies involved, nor bring back jobs, to complain about past bad boss experiences. But it does make me feel better to vent. Thank-you for giving me this opportunity and for your tolerance.

[openmic]

Ooh, just felt that I had to post another. I'll call this guy "Yertle" as in Dr. Suess's story "Yertle the Turtle" who was king of all he could see, until he fell into the mud.

Yertle was the owner of a small business who realized that he was potentially missing out on profit from servicing the equipment that his company installed. So he hired a manager, who in turn hired me. Yertle was all about greed and power, but was also clueless about how to treat customers and employees. I only worked there for just over a year, but during that time he was constantly being sued by customers and ex-employees, and was even punched out twice by employees. Yertle's favorite accusation was "insubordination" whenever anybody did not agree with him. I was called insubordinate for refusing to add charges to customer bills (for labor or materials that were not delivered), for refusing to fire a good technician because he was African American (and for pointing out that was unethical), for telling him about how a customer I visited had ranted for an hour about how bad we were and how he was going to hurt our business, and for refusing to pay for a new company truck out of my own pocket. He finally fired me over some trumped up charges (he did that every year to rid himself of his highest paid employee, to “cut overhead”) that he later had to rescind under threat of lawsuit by the state’s unemployment office. His reputation got so bad locally that he had to fold up shop and move somewhere else. Unfortunately, that probably means that other people are suffering him (unless he’s provoked somebody to do worse than punch him out).

[geri]

one of the worst bosses i had, would work less than anyone else, while constantly telling everyone how hard she was working. she was truly the most passive aggressive human being i have ever met. she grabbed any credit available, and shirked all blame.
she was able to move her office from the 2nd floor of the hospital where we worked, to the 3rd floor, so it was very hard to keep track of her movements, but she would do stupid things like forget we had just installed caller ID, and would call from her home or cell phone, and tell us she was upstairs working.
she later worked for another hospital, and told everyone she quit, but the truth was, she was about to be fired. she allowed her friends at work to get away with showing up for 10 minutes a day{they were salaried, and if they showed up at all, it would count as a full day's work}. she tends to bring her "yes" people along with her to new jobs, so the old crew isn't available to report just how little time she spends doing her job.
another truly bad boss{although not a direct supervisor} actually admitted, in a public meeting, how surprised she was to discover that if you have more patients, and they are sicker, that those patients require more staff, services and support. this was AFTER laying off support staff and respiratory therapists.

[Lisa]

My boss is simply the boss from hell. Every one hates her and she knows this. So she makes our jobs a lot harder. Here is a discription. Smooth talking, autocratic and venomous. If you are late, there is no excuse acceptable even if that excuse is completely legitimate. You can never make a mistake. She wants to fire every one and has fired people who have been there since the company almost started. She is slavery, slavery, and slavery some more and never does any dirty work, never helps the employees, and never gives praises to those who well deserves it. She never even thanks anyone and if she doesn't like even if they are the best at what they do, she never thanks you for your hard work. Cheap, and the comapany somehow gets away with not paying people somehow for their overtime sometimes. She is such a B that she tries to intimidate every one and her power makes her giddy and allows her to make brash decisions that screws everthing up. Like, she fired an employee and had to hire her back... like if I was that girl I would tell her hell no! then she fires another critical employee and then did not have anyone to cover the shift and started mandating and overworking people and pulling people from other departments and threatening them with termination if they did not go to the department they don't even work in that she requested. She has a Lower Boss who she forces all the work on, and then that boss throws out all her anger at us. I am looking to leave ASAP! she doesn't care if you hurt your back, or if you crash your car, just get there. what a B!!! she is cold, vindictive, and I wonder if she realizes that everyone gets old and the world is round...nope! I don't think she is sensible enough to think ahead. She is so calculating that it is terrible to come to work and everyone dreads her and is miserable!

[Stephen Chapman]

I think I can top every bad boss ever. I had a really good boss who resigned after a new president took over and implemented a lot of changes that effectively demoted my boss and everyone in our department. When they ran the ad for his replacement, several big names in the profession applied and then withdrew their names when they found out that in effect they would be middle management.

My boss came from the government and whenever he had a problem, he could just call someone and they would deal with it for him. I knew something was not quite right when, two weeks before he started, a letter that I had drafted for the president's signature came back unsigned. Another letter that I had not prepared that completely changed the meaning of what was decided was sent in its place. I spoke to the VP of finance and she told me that the President had shown it to my new boss and he thought it was okay. Considering that he knew nothing about the situation, I do not understand how he could offer any opinion.

He started in October and I met with him the first day and presented him with a five page summary of all "hot" issues in my area. He just scanned it over and just hummed a couple of times. He asked no questions and made no comments. I would try to engage him in conversations about work but whenever I tried, he would glance at his blackberry and tell me about what was happening in the all staff emails or take a call from someone else.

He then began excluding me from almost everything. He would call meetings with all my co-workers but not me. I was away from work with a lung infection for six days in January. Not one call to see how I was doing. The day I got back he told me to get coffee and sit with him. He advised that he did not think there was enough of the work I was hired to do to justify my position and he was putting me into another position. My new job involved something that I had no training in and would put me in a lower salary scale that, within two years, would mean a $10,000 reduction. He promised me a new letter of position, a job description and training. That never happened. In the mean time, his pattern of excluding me reached new levels. At one point I kept track of every word exchanged between us. During one memorable week I said ten words to him and he said six to me. He never commented on how I was doing in my new position or provided me with any feedback - either good or bad.

I think the ultimate example of his ignoring me came one monday morning. He has a vacation home about one hour from the city. So he figured he would spend sunday night out there and come in monday morning. However, he forgot his keys. So he asked our secretary to open his office but she said that she had lent her keys to another cowroker on friday and that person had not yet arrived. When he asked how he was to get in she informed him that I had the only key that opened all the offices. Rather than ask me as he walked by my office which was right next to mine, he walked by me, placed his briefcase on the floor and then went to the very farthest office and asked another co-worker to open his office. She too informed him that I had the only key that opened all the offices. He told her to try anyway. Big surprise - it didn't work. So then he said "so just how am I supposed to get in?" At this point I just got up and opened his door.

In September I was absent on one day as I was acting as pall bearer at an uncle's funeral. The next morning I came in and saw one of my coworkers - who normally didn't arrive until an hour later. I was then told to have a seat in his office. He advised me that he was discontinuing the position that I was hired for. I informed him that he had done that some 8 months before. He then told me that he was going to eliminate the position entirely as it had not worked out the way he expected. I told him that I was never given any feedback or direction so how could he say the job was not going as well as it should. He told me the decision had been made and that I was to give him the keys to my office, my parking pass and that i was to remove my personal belongings (under supervision). I took the keys off my key ring and tossed them on his desk and left. I went into my office and phoned my father who is a lawyer specializing in employment law who told me not to sign anything but get there as soon as possible, I asked loudly if anyone had an empty box and he told me to conduct myself in a civilized manner or he would call security. I went nose to nose with him and asked how I had not been civil. He claimed that I threw my keys at him.

the long and the short of it was I received a settlement 5 times greater than was originally offered to me. Further, he quit and of 15 people in the department, five showed up for his retirement party. The others, and myself had a party the day after.

When I tell people about this they ask why I never went to HR. My boss was the director of HR!

[Annie]

My worst boss isn't really even my boss, witch strangely makes everything worse!!

She is my boss’s wife and an impossibly evil woman who my boss bows to in total terror.
She calls me once a week to berate me, as an example: she called me this morning and asked about something that I had apparently told my boss the night before about radio advertising. I told her that I hadn't, and that I knew nothing about it and she unleashed on me claiming that I was lying! In the end it turned out that it was one of my co-workers, but I still had to spend 10 min trying to convince her that it wasn't me.

Next she sent one of my co-workers out to buy and hang Christmas decorations when that co-worker was trying to assist 3 customers. At our company we work for commission and have no retainer, my work mate was attempting to make her rent and this horrid woman was effectively preventing her from doing her job!
For two weeks straight she refused to pay me because I "hadn't done my invoice correctly" despite the fact that that was the way I had been doing it every week for over a year! Of course she only withheld my pay after a particularly good week monetary wise, so I think it’s more likely to be a case of greed. I was terrified because I was trying to afford my part of the bond for the apartment that my partner and I were trying to move into so my partner came into the store and told me to call and talk to my REAL boss; I got her on the line instead and asked to speak to him only to be told that he "didn't want to speak to someone who was simply wasting company time"

In the end I got paid when my partner yelled for her benefit that we were getting legal representation, since withholding my pay without proper cause is illegal.

My pay went through that midnight.

Nice person huh?

[Cindy]

My boss is very qualified to be manager...night school high school diploma and a two week technical class! She has no experience and no education..a dangerous mix. Well, in her efforts to micro-manages every detail without knowing the task. Further, her ears are soley for her glasses because she does not listen. She "tells" us to punch her out at the end of the day when we leave while she spends the day Christmas shopping. She does all this while "praising God".

Well, enough is enough. She just fired a co-worker in order to create a position for a church friend of hers. The fired co-worker is pregnant, has cancer, and her insurance is through work! Teri Shinevarre should not be a boss!

[Princesa]

My worst boss was from my last job & it took a nervous breakdown for me to finally quit. I am a new nurse and usually, it takes a min of YEAR or 2 to feel comfortable with the profession. I was only about 5 months in and I guess she wanted perfection. In front of other 2 staff members, she asked me if I 'skated my way through nursing school" and that I wasnt 'independent" enough...that im acting more of a "student" than an RN..Also, that just because majority of my family members are nurses doesnt mean I'M cut out to be one..that i should have "heart" to be one. She also threatened to fire me if I dont improve. She even got the charge nurses to watch my every move & report to her if I dont show independence. Geez! What does she want me to do? Put a patient's life in jeopardy bcoz i might get canned for asking "second opinions" or asking questions??? She crushed my self esteem and she was so irrational for even having the audacity to say that to someone NEW!!! So instead of constructive criticism, she insults me! Of course I remained humble & didnt say anything insulting back. I even said "thank you" after our meeting. Sometimes i wish i did say something back bcoz her words still haunt me to this day.

[Dheera Sujan]

Is there anyone here who wants to do a Worst Boss Ever interview for us for Radio Netherlands? The programme that will be broadcast on NPR stations as well as international stations around the world.
If so, please contact me with your story:
[email protected]

[BSD TEAM]

There is one overall encompassing truth to the things that are happening on the one of the biggest cable company in US. First and foremost the team lead and the manager know very little about the environment and the technologies that the BSD supports as well as lack the necessary leadership skills to be effective well rounded leaders. For example the team lead constantly places blame on the team members for not getting things done, but the truth of the matter is that she has difficulty conveying her thoughts and does not grasp the technologies that are involved in the environment. The lack of communication skills by the team lead is never questioned and never brought into discussion although this has caused most of the issues and work being done incorrectly or missed altogether. In an attempt to appear as though they are trying to lead the team in the right direction but cannot because the team member are not doing what they are being asked to do, they actively lie about situations and manipulate the truth to the director and senior leadership of the team. This manipulation is causing team members to become disillusioned with their prospects on the team. On another note there are several team members whose skill set is under utilized and suppressed in an attempt by the manager and the team lead to redirect blame and to prevent themselves from being seen as unknowledgeable and to make it easier to push blame on those that do not push back. For those of us that do push back and try to correct the unfair practices of the manager and team lead we are shunned and prevented from participating in any meaningful capacity. This is easily accomplished by giving tasks to those members of the team that do not push back on their unfair practices. These practices by the manager and team lead are coming to a head as the majority of the team has quit, or are in the process of pursuing a transfer out of the team. Below is a list of things that occur on the BSD that have caused me and others on the team to resign from Company all together.

1. Micromanagement - Manager and team lead constantly looking over your shoulder. They do not request or respect the professional opinions of any of the engineers. Considering the engineers are the only ones that really know the environment this is an absurd behavior.

2. Lies/Manipulation - There have been multiple instances of the team lead indicating that they have provided everything for a particular task but in truth they have not and will place blame on the members of the team. The problem with management is that they take these accusations at face value and do not ask for your perspective on the issue. This is by far the most frustrating and repeated scenario on the team.

3. Lack of Planning: There is no planning on this team. Tasks are given out with no regard to the team members schedule or specific needs. Several new members to the team have left because they were expecting to be one shift and then placed in another without being consulted for possible personal commitments or any thought given to their needs.

4. Unfair Practices: - There are several members of the team that have superior technical skills that would add tremendous value to the team and to Company but are prevented from doing so because if they were allowed to show their skill sets it would make the team lead and manager seem as though they do not have the technical skill set to lead a technical team. Their resources are underutilized and in fact stopped so as not to appear unknowledgeable. The only way to win with this type of "leadership" is to do all of the work necessary to accomplish a task. Including gathering the requirements of the tasks and ensuring that you understand the technology requires you to complete the task, leaving management with very little to do other than get this item taken care of and ill place blame on you when you do not complete it.. Even after you have completed your task successfully the team lead and management will take credit for all your hard work and blame you when something does not go well.

4. Lack of experience: - The team lead and manager do not have the technical skills to set the teams direction or give guidance to junior member on performing any tasks. The team lead and managers solution to lack of experience is to blame the team members for not getting things done.

4. Lack of team work: - Because of the manipulation described above everyone is out to protect themselves and their job security. This has created a bad team environment where knowledge is not shared and teamwork is non existent.