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.