Bad Bosses & Co-Workers? 1

[71corvette]

I've seen quite a few postings on this site lately offering some amusing anecdote's at the expense of co-workers, supervisors and bosses. I think the topic could make for a few good laughs and at the very least an interesting read.

I know there are plenty of annoying co-workers, bad supervisors and "quirky" employees out there. I think it will be interesting to hear what experiences others have had. If your office is anything like mine, becoming more and more like the movie "Office Space" with each day, the stories should be plentiful!

 

[Beggar]

Back in the days before voice mail I had an answering machine hooked up to my extension. The night before a colleague had hung out at my place drinking beer and playing video games. The next morning I played my messages and there was one from his wife literally screaming at me and saying that if her husband and I wanted to be f****ts <bundle of sticks> then she'd pack up his stuff and bring it over so he could keep a drawer at my place.

I was thinking, "Uh, gee, I wonder why he doesn't want to go home..." I also felt badly for him that all my cube-neighbors heard because of course answering machines play out loud.

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Bring back the HP-15

http://www.hp15c.org

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[sms]

Speaking of bathroom humor, I called my bosses boss on his cell phone to discuss some issues that he had aske me to look into. When I got off the phone I got up and went to the restroom. As I walked in there he was walking out of the stall. Pretty dedicated to answer your cell while sitting on the pot. Glad I did hear any background noises.......

 

[Dot2Dot]

My co-workers and I have nicknamed our boss the "wizard". He has a tendency to over-simplify solutions to any problem he is presented with. Last week he shared another one of his nuggets of wisdom: "there are two answers to every question". Now there's a jewel I can use throughout my career...yikes.

 

[AndrewTX]

At my previous company I had a project manager who was a stickler for attendance. Our work started at 7:00 am and if you were not sitting at your desk exactly at 7:00 am when he walked around, you were given a little talking to.

The fact that I was in early and was already up and about working, didn't matter. So for the next week the first think I did every morning was walk to his office, poke my head in and say "Good Morning". He must have gotten the message as the morning attendance checks stopped.

 

[EngJW]

AndrewTX-

Yes, I knew of a guy that did his walk around at 7 and 5. In between, you could go home. The amount of work done was not a consideration.

 

[SacreBleu]

Of course, there's the boss who went ballistic when white-out was being used (takes too long to dry, bad for productivity)...One time, he saw a paper clip in the trash (wasteful)...one of his pet peeves was engineers using a straight edge for drawing straight lines in design sketches and in calculations (unproductive). The chief engineer had a soution, because he just couldn't draw a freehand line at all: he would use a straightedge for a guide, but would put in "micro-squiggles" to make the line appear as freehand.

 

[kchayfie]

The worst guy I've worked with is an eternal optimist. Even when the project was clearly about to blow up in our faces he'd keep harping on about how things are going just great and isn't this a great job to be working on. I'm sure if you chopped off his leg he'd be really pleased now he's lost a few extra pounds and doesn't need to spend as much time in the gym!

 

[SacreBleu]

By contrast, the best boss I ever had took the time to QC my work. He made a nicely organized list of problems, had the receptionist hold all his phone calls, and calmly, politely went thru his list of critiques with me (without any derogatry remarks). I learned a lot that way, and it was apositve experience.

 

[livingston]

I once had a boss who made a point of inviting his entire team into a weekly meeting to ream them out about what was going 'wrong' in their projects. People in other departments sent sympathy emails regularly.

 

[techmaximus]

At one of the testing labs that I have worked at over the years management decided to upgrade the fleet of pickup trucks that the techs drove. At the time I lived very close to the lab so I drove my own truck to the lab and used an assigned company truck to get to jobs. I was known for taking excellent care of my assigned equipment so I was assigned a new truck. About one week after getting this new truck I happened to be at the lab at about lunch time so I drove the company truck to lunch. I took the company truck because I was just going to a place right around the corner, my boots were dirty, it was hot out, and I had to go to another job later in the afternoon. Upon returning, the lab manager berated me for misusing company equipment, blah, blah, blah. Obviously he felt that I should have used my own truck to take lunch even though the round trip for lunch was less than 1 mile. So he reassigned me to an older, beat-up truck and he took my new truck for himself. You guessed it, the very next day he totaled the new truck while running a red light (creamed by a semi). I nearly LMAO! He was a jerk.

Techmaximus

 

[vonbad]

I once had a boss who would out of the blue call employees (sales engineers) around the country and just blast them Through the grapevine it became known as kamikazi calls.

 

[corus]

One colleague asked the new managing director in his opening address to us why we didn't get a decent wage. Wrong time wrong place to say it I guess, but his punishment was to have his desk removed from his office to the corridor so he could be watched at every moment of the day.

corus

 

[SacreBleu]

A place where I worked was a combined engineering/architectural services firm. Of course, there was a constant war between the "archies" and us engineers. The archies would have a weekly "creativity" meeting, where they would meet in the Chief Archie's room and lock the door. One of our AutoCAD techs pointed out that he could smell pot smoke wafting from under the door. Early morning, next week, the tech removed the door from the Chief Archie's room, and hid it within the building. The Chief Archie, who was a bit of an "ego", went totally ballistic, not knowing the culprit.
A junior archie treated his coffee cup like a cherished fetish. The same tech (who was a great practical joker, a fellow emigrated from Australia), hid the cup in the hanging fluorescent light fetish just above junior's drafting board. Junior was so upset he couldn't function at all, and the rest of the occupants of the bullpen could see the cup above the light fixture.

 

[epoisses]

In the place where I used to work, process engineers were almost exclusively quite young (25-30 yrs), while the department head was close to retirement and behaved like Principal Skinner. (hope you guys like the simpsons). We had safety meetings during which it was emphasized that putting your hard hat on top of the cupboard was unsafe practice since it could fall down (in case of unlucky combination of hurricane and open window, I presume) and hurt if not kill (you can never exclude) somebody. But keeping it on the floor would mean a stumbling hazard, while keeping it on the desk was not in line with good office hygiene practices. So we needed hooks on the wall. The investment never made it through the management team. This working atmosphere was a good laugh for a few months, but then I gave up.

 

[ScottyUK]

I'm curious what you guys make of this:

Our new HSE manager has a major problem with people hanging coats on the back of their chairs. Seems one of his former colleagues had pushed backward on his chair, got the coat entangled in the castors and tipped over with nasty consequences. Preventing this happening again is going to be one of his missions. Is this over-protective nannying as a result of a one-in-a-million event, or is it a real problem which is more common than might be thought? My initial reaction was "What??? Is he mad?" until I heard the fuller story, and now I'm not sure.

I personally don't like some of the culture developing in the UK where everything is someone else's fault. No-one accepts responsibility for their own actions any more, however stupid those actions are. It is leading to increasingly restrictive legislation and in some instances corporate and state 'nannying', and an ever-growing level of paperwork designed to keep the ambulance-chaser lawyers at bay. How is it in the rest of the world?



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If we learn from our mistakes,
I'm getting a great education!

 

[zdas04]

Scotty,
The question in your second paragraph should have its own thread.

David

 

[SacreBleu]

Scotty,
Sounds familiar. The whole world is infested with absurd managers and greedy lawyers. Keeps me reading Dilbert, and surfing the Web for lawyer-bashing sites. Could lead to the downfall of the Western Civilization.
Seriously, I spend a lot of energy to avoid the ire of certain managers. But I am not worried about the energy waste, because my job is not at all bad, considering the abuse that many other workers in this world have to put up with.

 

[epoisses]

Typical case of mis-management... easily identifiable short-term benefit (although almost neglegible) of reducing risk of accident from 1 in a billion to 1 in a billion+1 prevails (but should not) over less easily identifiable (at least for bad managers) long-term problem of unmotivated employees (are not even trusted with the simple decision of where to put their coats) and organisational sluggishness (impossible jungle of rules and procedures in the name of safety).

When will we ever get rid of this unproductive political correctness???

 

[techmaximus]

When will we ever get rid of this unproductive political correctness???

When it nolong shows a profit, that's when.



Techmaximus

 

[SolderingGunslinger]

There was the day when I made a decent living as a freelancer. There were many small mom and pop radio stations who didn't need a full time engineer, and I was able to put my PE stamp to use from time to time on transmitter site construction projects, besides, there still is something relaxing about firing up an oscilloscope and troubleshooting audio or video equipment...plus, it's a living.

As the big groups started paying the moms and pops obscene amounts of money for their radio stations, I found my client base eroding to the point where I wasn’t living quite as comfortably as I had grown accustomed. I began to look for “A real Job.”

I found one as director of Engineering for a small group of stations which owned the flagship for the statewide University sports network. I made nearly as much as I had working for myself…more when you factored in the 401K retirement and paid health, dental and vision benefits.

Just one thing…I found myself across a cubical wall from one of the Sports Network Sales persons. This lady would talk in great detail of her sexual conquests and the guys she dumped for one reason or another…some of the topics about the dumpees aren’t fit to print. I came to find that this (and I use the term quite loosely) lady was a retired Master Chief Petty Officer. She could swear strongly enough to cause a sailor to blush. When ever she was in the office, I moved my lap-top to the tech shop where the conversations were more civil.

The best thing that happened was when the company was sold to a bigger broadcast group and I received a FAX telling me to clean out my desk. I faxed back that the facsimile wasn’t a legal document and that I did not consider myself terminated until either someone came to do it in person or I received a letter which held a valid signature. It took them three weeks for the lawyers to come up with a way to fire me. By that time I had been in the 401K long enough to become vested in my account and keep everything the owners had matched and I had sent out resume’ after resume’ and had interviewed for and accepted a position at the University of Arizona.

I still like to mention in conversation that I was once fired by FAX.

I remain,

The Old Soldering Gunslinger