Worst Bosses You've Ever Had

[donlapalma]

Tomorrow is my last day at a job which had the worst boss I've ever had. Downright abusive. A despicable human being. Not just me either. Two of my subordinates confided in me that they've been berated and abused by this person. I've never been so close to taking it up with HR.

Note that I work in a professional setting so a certain level of respect is expected.

I'm just glad that I have skills that are in demand so that I can get out of a bad situation rather quickly.

Really makes me appreciate all the good bosses I've had. So let's hear it folks. Worst boss stories.....

[RevolverRob]

My current boss is a sarcastic, demanding, dickhead, who sucks, and I really dislike the guy.

Fortunately, I can tell him that every single day, when I look in the mirror.

Best part of being self employed is being able to tell your boss to go fuck themself. Downside - if you suck it’s all on you.

—

To be honest I’ve never had a bad boss. I worked for the family business, my dad was my boss for a while, but really I was independent without supervision after a couple of years.

Then I worked retail and then corporate for a big sporting goods company and that was actually fine too. I had good managers at both levels and never really had any major issues with any of them.

After that it’s been academia since. And while I’ve technically had a number of “bosses” or supervisors, none of them were terrible either. I have been fortunate and deliberate in this regard. I’m very particular about who I work with and I’ve had the luxury to chose and as a result I have in effect been my own boss since ~2010.

That said, I’ve seen A LOT of shitty bosses and people in all fields. I just never worked for them, sometimes with them, but not for them. The thing I have consistently seen that builds a bad boss is too much ego combined with an inability to take criticism. It’s critically important a boss not be overly invested in their ideas and that they take critical feedback from their employees. The worst people are those who believe they are always correct AND they lack confidence so much they must over compensate. Those people should be employees not employers...

[DpdG]

Cocaine.

Back in college I worked as a cook/barback at a sports bar in the college town. One night while changing kegs I passed the office and saw the bar owner apparently finishing a touch of the finest Colombian nose candy. Later that night he got into a nasty spat with his girlfriend/head bartender. That was the last night I worked there.

[AKDoug]

Worst dude I worked for would lay me off at about 1950 hours worth of work every year for three years so he didn't have to offer me benefits. The pay was phenomenal, and I was young, so I stuck with it. He was also verbally abusive and picked on people like a high school bully. He'd call me in January to come back to work and I'd do it. The third year I got up my nerve and got right in his face and told him to go fuck himself. I was shocked when he cowered like the punk he was. I took great pleasure when he got canned in a company restructure that resulted in one of the good bosses taking over.

I did one more year working for someone else before I took the plunge, scraped together $20K and started the process of buying out my parents' business. Best decision I've ever made. 25 years later I am surrounded by a team of quality people that get treated properly because of an asshole that showed me exactly how not to treat people.

[Joe in PNG]

One of the worst I had was right when I got out of college, and worked for a land surveying company before moving on with my education.
My very first day of work, I was warned that this party chief I'd be slaving under was impossible to please, and nobody could.
And they were right. After a few months, blowing out my ACL was a relief. I would up inside the office, which was a much better fit.

To be fair, I was young, dumb, and had a case of rectal cranial inversion so common with people in their early 20's.

[AKDoug]

One of the worst I had was right when I got out of college, and worked for a land surveying company before moving on with my education.
My very first day of work, I was warned that this party chief I'd be slaving under was impossible to please, and nobody could.
And they were right. After a few months, blowing out my ACL was a relief. I would up inside the office, which was a much better fit.

To be fair, I was young, dumb, and had a case of rectal cranial inversion so common with people in their early 20's.

My story above was a surveying/engineering firm as well. I never had a bad party chief. The ones I thought were bad in the beginning became some of the best dudes I ever worked with. Tough and demanding, but taught me a lot. I always had issues with the office weenies.

[trailrunner]

My worst boss was the epitome of the saying "the beatings will continue until morale improves." I started working in this organization within DoD. I was working in a technical directorate of about 20 engineers. The SES in charge of the group kept having problems with the directorate, and he kept firing the directors. He finally moved in a Navy captain to restore order to the directorate, and this guy was in charge of our directorate when I started. I was supposed to supervise half the directorate under him. I was actually a very good fit for that job, because I had conducted DoD studies before and understood how to do them, I have a strong analytical background, and I can write reasonably well. The Navy captain had none of those skills. He was not an engineer nor an analyst, and could not compose an email without numerous mistakes, let alone a report that was going to go to Congress or be released from the public. He could not articulate the goals of our studies, nor understand the finer details. Morale throughout our directorate was bad, and I spent a large part of my time just interviewing candidates because turnover was so high. One of the employees I inherited had an ongoing lawsuit and I got sucked into that. But the worst part was that he ran our shop of civilian engineers like he would run a unit on a ship. He frequently yelled at us - and I mean yelled! He was a lunatic, and we never knew what would set him off. Maybe that management style works in the military, but we were in a civilian organization. He would get mad, fly off the handle, and lecture us about something irrelevant because he lost track of what the issue was. It was the only job in my career that I feared for workplace violence. I strongly suspect that the underlying issue was alcohol, and that he was sleeping with one of the women who was trying to advance her career. The tipping point came for me pretty quickly. I had spent three long weeks in Japan leading a team on a project. While I was there, I was contacted about another job. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to leave, but on the first day back from Japan, at one of our stand-up meetings, the captain decided to pick on me and berate me for something that he didn't understand. I just stood there and took his verbal abuse, thinking the entire time that he was making my decision easy. That afternoon, I contacted the other job and got an offer the following week.

Another boss I had was dead wood, and he was part of the good-ol-boy network at the lab. He had started working there when he was in high school (his dad got him the job), so by now he had worked there 35-40 years, and had never worked anywhere else. His brother worked there, his wife worked there, and his two grown deadbeat kids worked there. He was a few years away from retirement, so unless you were his supervisor, he didn't care. He and I both came in around 0600, but he would go into his office, close the door, and take a nap until 0730 or so. My office was next to his, but it was clear that I wasn't supposed to bother him, and he wouldn't answer any emails I sent to him. He also had a thing for blondes (even though his wife worked one floor above us). It was pretty obvious and well known throughout the lab, and that caused problems. As one example - I had a very attractive blonde woman on my team. She was OK - a solid performer, but not a superstar - but he insisted that I nominate her for a very high award that was not deserved. Then he promoted her over me, so now she was going to be my boss. I later learned that he socialized with her (and her husband) on the weekends frequently.

[rob_s]

As the work world, and corporate world, trends more towards “emotional intelligence”
, I’ve seen the threshold for what is a “good/bad boss” change dramatically. And not just a straight line that moves left of right but a line that gets gerrymandered between the two.

What was once considered a good boss was someone who ACTUALLY cared about you and knew that you were capable and showed it by demanding your best. Today a dude that pretends to care while actually not giving one measly fuck about and who shows it by simply “leaving you alone” seems to be what most people consider a “good boss”, and that caring, demanding guy with standards is considered an “asshole”.

There will be a reckoning.

[MEH]

25 years ago, during an exit interview with a company, the HR person asked me why I was leaving. I said one word. My managers first name. Her facial expression, that told me that she understood perfectly. That was the end of the interview. That manager didn't last but a month or so before he was gone.

The saying is true - people leave managers not jobs.

[rob_s]

25 years ago, during an exit interview with a company, the HR person asked me why I was leaving. I said one word. My managers first name. Her facial expression, that told me that she understood perfectly. That was the end of the interview. That manager didn't last but a month or so before he was gone.

The saying is true - people leave managers not jobs.

that's been kind of true of my last two positions, even though not directly.

The first, about 5 years ago, that lasted about a year, I worked with a guy that was senior to me that may have considered himself to be my boss but I didn't consider him to be mine (he didn't hire me, his boss did). I went up the chain with a lot of issues about the way he was running the job (all of which turned out to be eventual money-losing issues for the company) to not much avail. When I left, I told the guy that hired me "I'm not leaving here because of him, but I wouldn't have bought a house an hour and a half away if it wasn't for him".

The job that I took after that was kind of the opposite. Loved the guy(s) that hired me, but the division manager left a lot to be desired. When my current employer called and said "do you want to come work here, going back to what you used to do but at a much higher pay?" I can't say that the division manager wasn't a factor.

But the phrase kind of bothers me in some ways. For so many jobs the manager is an integral piece of the "job", so leaving the "job" really is just leaving he "manager". I suppose that some folks may be convinced to stay at shitty jobs because they work with a superstar, but most people are just leaving one job to go do the exact same job somewhere else.

I can also say that, in a major metropolitan area, people leave "commutes" at least as often as they leave "managers". I've seen people bail on bosses they absolutely loved simply because they were offered a position 30 minutes from home instead of 90. This seems to be particularly true after people have their first kid. If they can find the same pay closer to home, they'll typically take it. Hell, even my first example above wasn't really that I left the "boss" it's that the boss wasn't enough of an incentive to make me drive 90 minutes each way. I wouldn't have moved had the situation been different with the "boss", but I quit because of the commute caused by moving.

[XXXsilverXXX]

After moving up to Michigan, I worked at one of the major universities in “grounds keeping” for about 4 months before I walked out, the supervisor was abusive to everyone, would act like a teenage bully three times she got in my face screaming for no reason at all, this woman would shoulder check female students who worked under her. Pick on and berate any male employee she felt like demeaning on that given day. Her boss was very useless when reporting the issue and HR wasn’t much help. Shortly before quitting I found out I had a large growth in my esophagus (non cancerous). Was a great excuse to walk out of a job, pay was terrible, felt more abused working under that woman then I ever did working in the two different jails I worked in. Which says something. Worked out for the best now I make my own hours working for a family members law firm, get paid half what he would normally pay someone qualified to do the work but as long as the work gets don’t no one calls me.

[blues]

The worst bosses that come immediately to mind were all very similar in that they were universally incompetent when it came to leadership, understanding the law, skills in the field, and even cleaning / reassembling their firearms.

They were individuals put in their positions not because of their intelligence, ability or leadership...but because they ticked certain boxes which would fulfill the agency's agenda.

Their hiring did not serve the interests of the mission, nor the public we serve.

[Cory]

I had an E6 squad leader say they were going to kill me outside the wire. I truly, and completely hate him. And he is probably one of the better bosses I ever had. He would backstab anyone on the paperwork, and toss anyone under the bus in garrsion. His english was terrible. And if I was in trouble he would run through hell for me. I was one of his guys. Even if he hated me, and I hated him. It was the squad, and that's all that mattered. I had the chance to leave his squad mid-deployment and scoffed at it. I hated him, but it was my squad. I often flipflop on what I think of him.

My most recent job I left entirely because of the manager. I loved the work. Riding motorcycles, RZRs, occassionally watercraft, was a huge perk. The manager is a short rich guy who married into the owners family. I worked with/next to my wife and loved it. When someone was wildly inappropriate to my wife I told the manager, and the guy was fired. I was then repremanded, written up, and told I was a danger to my own child. Why? Because reporting the problem to my boss is apparently "the wrong response" and he was afraid of me. My wife was there another 2 months. I stayed another year and a half. Eventually his napoleon syndrom grew too much. He was literally screaming at everyone, and I saw him knocking stuff out of others hands. He was always cautious of me, I think because I'm a veteran. I knew things were coming to a head, and made an exit plan. Eventually when he went off on me (over the phone) I told him I quit and packed my things. When he blocked a doorway demanding my keys, I laughed. I told him to go fuck himself, and tossed the keys behind him. I'm still friends with some coworkers, and his antics have gotten worse. I miss the job, but couldn't let him create stress I brought home with me.

-Cory

[Clusterfrack]

Between college and grad school I had a coding job for a county HR department. My boss, 'Katherine', was the identical twin of Sigourney Weaver's character in Working Girl (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096463/mediaviewer/rm323655937?ft0=name&fv0=nm0000244&ft1=image_type&fv1=still_frame). She was a truly evil wench who treated everyone with contempt, and never had anything good to say about anyone or their work, no matter how good it was. Fortunately, she found a lot to do out of the office during the workday. We think she was shopping most of the time, or having affairs, or both. The entire department was happy to cover for her because there was no chance of her being fired and we were happier when she was absent. The only problem with this state of affairs was that Katherine (never Kathy!) could appear at any time.

My co-worker, Carl, was a career IT guy. He was good at his job, but not good enough to work in Silicon Valley. Plus, he was incredibly lazy and had no motivation to look for a better job. Carl's two joys in life (at least at work) were lunch at Taco Bell and looking at hardcore porn on one or more of the three monitors in his corner cubicle.

One day, around 4:30pm I was wrapping things up. For some reason I can't remember, I needed to give a disk to Carl before I left. I went back to his cubicle and found him staring intently into one of the monitors. He looked up and said in a Beavis-like voice, "Hey CF, you gotta check this out. Hehe. Hehe. You're gonna love this one." So I went in and saw... A closeup of a wet gaping beaver.

I started telling him what a sick individual he was, when Katherine appeared behind us both. There was complete silence while she looked at the beaver pic. Then she shook her head and said "You IT people are so weird with your abstract art. I just don't get it. But I don't appreciate you using the department's money by wasting your time on it or any other non-essential tasks. Just because it is late in the day doesn't mean it isn't time to get to work." Then she left early. I think it took 30 minutes for my heart rate to return to normal, and Carl couldn't stop laughing. He asked me if I wanted the file, and I said "No thanks."

[donlapalma]

The worst bosses that come immediately to mind were all very similar in that they were universally incompetent when it came to leadership...

I'm seeing this with my current and soon to be former boss. She gets extremely defensive, yells, belittles, and berates when you ask honest "just trying to understand" questions about work that she has done. I've concluded that the behavior is a defense mechanism and an attempt to cover up her incompetency as a leader and manager.

[1911nerd]

My current boss is a sarcastic, demanding, dickhead, who sucks, and I really dislike the guy.

Fortunately, I can tell him that every single day, when I look in the mirror.

Best part of being self employed is being able to tell your boss to go fuck themself. Downside - if you suck it’s all on you.


When I ran my own company and people said "it must be great not to have a boss", my response was invariably that the problem with working for yourself is that the boss is guaranteed to be an asshole. :D

[AKDoug]

I had an E6 squad leader say they were going to kill me outside the wire. I truly, and completely hate him. And he is probably one of the better bosses I ever had. He would backstab anyone on the paperwork, and toss anyone under the bus in garrsion. His english was terrible. And if I was in trouble he would run through hell for me. I was one of his guys. Even if he hated me, and I hated him. It was the squad, and that's all that mattered. I had the chance to leave his squad mid-deployment and scoffed at it. I hated him, but it was my squad. I often flipflop on what I think of him.

My most recent job I left entirely because of the manager. I loved the work. Riding motorcycles, RZRs, occassionally watercraft, was a huge perk. The manager is a short rich guy who married into the owners family. I worked with/next to my wife and loved it. When someone was wildly inappropriate to my wife I told the manager, and the guy was fired. I was then repremanded, written up, and told I was a danger to my own child. Why? Because reporting the problem to my boss is apparently "the wrong response" and he was afraid of me. My wife was there another 2 months. I stayed another year and a half. Eventually his napoleon syndrom grew too much. He was literally screaming at everyone, and I saw him knocking stuff out of others hands. He was always cautious of me, I think because I'm a veteran. I knew things were coming to a head, and made an exit plan. Eventually when he went off on me (over the phone) I told him I quit and packed my things. When he blocked a doorway demanding my keys, I laughed. I told him to go fuck himself, and tossed the keys behind him. I'm still friends with some coworkers, and his antics have gotten worse. I miss the job, but couldn't let him create stress I brought home with me.

-Cory Second generation companies seem to really have this issue. I'm second generation, but I had to buy the show. I still get my hands dirty every day. My son is third generation. It's not an easy task to groom someone for takeover. I think my folks did it right. Buying it with cash out of your pocket every month really takes away the entitlement mentality.

[pooty]

female

[randyho]

Wouldn't follow the guy out of a burning room and neither would any of my colleagues. An amazing combination of not very bright and arrogant with an unmatched tenacity for the wrong decision. He'd been reorg'd out of his previous job. Lucky us, a good and loyal team.
After we'd unanimously won him a trip to remedial leadership school, I was relieved no one died due directly from his pivot to deployment, the move we'd inspired.
He went contractor. The 'rona's found me to be his COR. It is a restraint test I am, so far, passing.

[Odin Bravo One]

The American Public.

[TheNewbie]

Between college and grad school I had a coding job for a county HR department. My boss, 'Katherine', was the identical twin of Sigourney Weaver's character in Working Girl (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096463/mediaviewer/rm323655937?ft0=name&fv0=nm0000244&ft1=image_type&fv1=still_frame). She was a truly evil wench who treated everyone with contempt, and never had anything good to say about anyone or their work, no matter how good it was. Fortunately, she found a lot to do out of the office during the workday. We think she was shopping most of the time, or having affairs, or both. The entire department was happy to cover for her because there was no chance of her being fired and we were happier when she was absent. The only problem with this state of affairs was that Katherine (never Kathy!) could appear at any time.

My co-worker, Carl, was a career IT guy. He was good at his job, but not good enough to work in Silicon Valley. Plus, he was incredibly lazy and had no motivation to look for a better job. Carl's two joys in life (at least at work) were lunch at Taco Bell and looking at hardcore porn on one or more of the three monitors in his corner cubicle.

One day, around 4:30pm I was wrapping things up. For some reason I can't remember, I needed to give a disk to Carl before I left. I went back to his cubicle and found him staring intently into one of the monitors. He looked up and said in a Beavis-like voice, "Hey CF, you gotta check this out. Hehe. Hehe. You're gonna love this one." So I went in and saw... A closeup of a wet gaping beaver.

I started telling him what a sick individual he was, when Katherine appeared behind us both. There was complete silence while she looked at the beaver pic. Then she shook her head and said "You IT people are so weird with your abstract art. I just don't get it. But I don't appreciate you using the department's money by wasting your time on it or any other non-essential tasks. Just because it is late in the day doesn't mean it isn't time to get to work." Then she left early. I think it took 30 minutes for my heart rate to return to normal, and Carl couldn't stop laughing. He asked me if I wanted the file, and I said "No thanks."



That's hilarious. Needed that laugh.

[VT1032]

The worst bosses that come immediately to mind were all very similar in that they were universally incompetent when it came to leadership, understanding the law, skills in the field, and even cleaning / reassembling their firearms.

They were individuals put in their positions not because of their intelligence, ability or leadership...but because they ticked certain boxes which would fulfill the agency's agenda.

Their hiring did not serve the interests of the mission, nor the public we serve.

This was my boss at my last job in spades... She was what cops call a gypsy. She'd been run out of her last three jobs. She got this one because there were virtually no applicants and she was the only one that would take the money. ZERO people or leadership skills and she couldn't motivate her way out of a wet paper bag. Admittedly, she had quite a bit of higher level experience in the field we worked in, but she was 30 years removed from the nitty gritty, rubber hits the road, type of shit and had no clue how things actually happened at the ground level. Her ground level experience was gained in a time before computers. This lack of knowledge was a problem because she was a serial micromanager. Her greatest sin though was that she was in the habit of accumulating additional responsibilities in an effort to increase the scope of her position and thereby have justification to ask for more money. She performed none of this additional work, but instead doled it out to us, and she received several sizable pay raises (started at ~80k, left 4 years later at ~110k according to a little bird in HR), but when it came time for our raises, there never seemed to be money in the budget. When I started (a month after she did), we had a reasonable amount of work on our plate, but she just kept piling it on, and by the time I left, I was averaging 70-80 hours a week with no overtime.

We had horrific turnover and she just couldn't fathom why... In 4 years, we went through NINE front desk admin assistants... I actually calculated it out after I left and in a 10 person office, 24 different people had worked there at one time or another in the 4 years I was there. Eventually, leadership above her began to catch on to what the problem was and she saw the writing on the wall and quietly found a cushy pre-retirement gig at a state school in Minnesota, and just up and left one day. The guy right below her moved up and was a phenomenal boss for the short time I worked for him and really worked hard to turn things around. I'd been plotting my escape for some time and got a job offer for a federal gig that paid quite a bit more a few months after she left and I just couldn't pass that up. I felt horrible, because I was one of the only people with any sort of institutional knowledge left (because of the turnover rates) and it left them in a lurch, but it was the right move.

[Old Virginia]

On of the funniest Cartoon books I have ever had.

https://i.imgur.com/bmn1CIE.jpg?1