Post your Worst Boss 2

[Neubaten]

For scientific interest.

I'll start with my worst boss so far:


-Insecure personally and profesionally.
Is an engineer, but with R&D background, not industrial.

-Obssesed over control and information (uses to patologically hide it, even when unnecessary)

-Obstruct every posible professional development of underlings. Specially if there's a possibility of outshining.

-Puts down people behind their backs and diminish every positive aspect of everyone.

-Nice with superiors, rude with underlings.

-Uses fear to consequences as an everyday tool.


I've had some other bad bosses, but it's difficult to imagine a more undermining, more soul-depriving, worse kind.

 

[Guest0527211403]

Do we work in the same office?

 

[moltenmetal]

Once upon a time, I worked for a company by a fellow with an emotional age of about four. He threw tantrums, tyrannically directed the work of subordinates that didn't report to him, and fired people because he was mad at them that particular minute. He fired a colleague a few days after his only child had died, because the fellow had "missed too much work" (i.e. caring for a terminally ill child)!

He was not my direct supervisor, but he set the tone for the whole place. You can imagine what kind of toxic work environment resulted, if your imagination is perverse enough.

When colleagues b*tch about our present boss, I always trot out that story. Puts things in perspective right quick.

 

[TenPenny]

That last reminds me of a boss I had.

He would spend four days writing a three page memo about how to fill in expense reports.
He would scream and yell, break telephones, and kick holes in the wall.
He would get extremely angry if we didn't do exactly as he said; then the next day, he'd get angry because we did exactly as he said.
He once sent me to a meeting that involved leaving on a Thursday for a meeting that started the next Monday, in order to save on airfare, and then, on Friday morning, threw a fit and broke things after demanding to know where I was, and being told by a co worker that I was at the meeting he sent me to.
The ultimate was when he fired a long-term (ie, 30 year) employee for not starting his journeyman classes in his trade. The employee happily went home with a smile on his face. The next day, said boss discovered that the long-term employee had a first-name relationship with the family owners of the conglomerate we were part of, and said boss had to apologize to the employee.

 

[cranky108]

I once had a boss that wanted reports on every internal study I completed. These were studies done on a computer than took less than 2 seconds. I used these studies as part of other calculations, so normally no on else was interested, or needed them.
From the reports, for which I don't believe he understood, he would correct the spelling and grammer, and send them back to be corrected.
The bigest problem was he was located in a different state, so the mailing time extended the life of the studies from a minuite, to several weeks.

And his comment of me was I spent to much time in the office, and not enough in the field.

 

[Neubaten]

Wow, you just had provided two awesome examples. I thought mine was bad!!!

Oh my god, firing a guy after his son died...

 

[shamsdebout]

I had a boss would screen-print e-mails and hand to me, I was like wow, he didn't want me to converse with the clients. He was like a tyrant, I was missing out on alot of opportunities to grow in my industry. He wasn't very receptive to suggestions, a co-worker mentioned that he was trying to turn me into a CAD-operator. After getting layed off I went to a firm that allowed me to have quite a bit of responsibities for my projects, from design to post construction.

 

[ornerynorsk]

I received a cheap $5.00 flashlight as a Christmas gift one year for saving the company $35,000 in time on a large DoD machining contract. Yeah, he had all the anger and control issues, as well. Any scrapped part would receive a cursory visual inspection, followed by facial reddening, the wind up, and the pitch. The offending part would then proceed to crash, a'la baseball style, into the opposite shop wall. Boss would then jump in his truck and storm off, only to return a half hour later to apologize. Next scrap part, situation repeats, ad nauseum.

I stayed almost a year and half at that company. It was either leave or spend the next 20 years in prison for 1st deg homicide.

 

[xJAyx]

I was working for a very small consulting firm, the owner/boss was a micromanaging maniac and always cut down our quotes and then blamed me for losing money on the project.
On a start up I had worked about 72 hours in a week without additional compensation. Two weeks later I missed 2 days of work because I was sick, legitimately, and I used sick days. As soon as I was back, without asking if I was feeling better he says "When are you going to make up this time?"
At the start, they allowed me to make my own hours. I would regularly start at 9 and work until 5:30 or 6, the owner would work from 6:30 until usually around 5. At one point they decided to change the policy to everyone has to start at 7:30, take lunch from 11:30 to 12:30 and then finish at 4:30. After this he regularly walked down to my office at 4:20 to start large technical discussions.
The straw that broke the camel's back was that we would regularly do projects where we had no expertice on the client's specified hardware. The company would send someone, usually me, on an integrators course for the project. MOst of the time, this was only for the specific project and we would never use that hardware again. This would ALWAYS be in the project budget for us. 2.5 years after I started with the company they tried to institute a retroactive policy where if you left the company for any reason within 3 ytears of attending a course, including getting laid off or fired, you had to pay back the entire cost of the training, flights, hotels, fees and wages.

 

[materialsliz]

Damn! I'm surprised any of these people you are describing lived long enough to become bosses. They should have died from apoplexy years prior.

I have to ask, particularly moltenmetal and TenPenny: why did you stay and work for these people?

 

[kepharda]

My favorite, worst boss was this.

He was the majority partner in a Consulting Firm and on large projects would have idle Cad drafters who where out of work at the time charge time to the large project.

I remember a meeting where the drafters told him they had little or nothing to do as of yet. This was because the Engineers were still designing, (we were working on PID's and working on the budget and schedule). He directed them all (3-4 people) to put all their hours on the project.

2 weeks later the client got our invoice and freaked out and called the boss to complain. The Boss then came and chewed the asses of the Engineers because we hadn't made enough progress based on the amount of hours billed.

After another month of this and other issues I finally quit mid project, basically the whole thing got worse from there. I swear the Boss had Alzheimer disease or something.

this message has been approved for citizen to elect kepharda 2008

 

[jmw]

Why stay and work for these people?
Because they are not unique.
Bad managers are the rule, not the exception. Often it is better the devil you know.... and you hope they'll foul up one day an move out of your life.
Not an unreasonable hope.
Bad managers often get promoted sideways or up. They ought to go out the door but life isn't like that.

If his was a thread about good managers I could name only two.

I've had the tantrum throwers, liars, cheats, idiots, vendetta merchants, pretty well a good cross-section of bad managers. I doubt I have seen the extremes cited here, but close.
A boss that has a wobbly and throws things but later apologises? I'd says that is close to unique, they usually don't bother to apologise.
Most usually I see managers as people promoted well beyond their capabilities.
When it comes to stupid, bad bosses can be amazingly dumb and usually they find someone to blame for their mistakes.


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[TenPenny]

I have to ask, particularly moltenmetal and TenPenny: why did you stay and work for these people?

I stayed (for about 18 months) because my wife said to me, "Any time you come home and tell me you quit, I won't be surprised, and it won't bother me one tiny bit."

Knowing that you have such support at home helps a lot. Then one day, I got a phone call from a competitor who offered me a job. I was the 12th person, out of a staff of maybe 36, to leave within 12 months. We enjoyed our monthly 'farewell' dinners, and would take bets on who would leave next. The best part was, when I gave my notice, he was away, so I walked into HR, and told the woman I was going to ruin her day. She laughed, and said, 'Well, I know you're not going to quit, so what's up?' The old boss never spoke to me again while I was there. Not one word. And in fact, insisted that I stay and work out my notice period, working on bids that I would be competing against two weeks later.

 

[moltenmetal]

Why did I stay? I was green and optimistic and didn't know any better. 1st real job out of school. Bad economic times. And as I said before, there was fortunately a layer of management (somewhat) isolating me from the child who was actually running the show.

I'd actually worked there as a student, but during that time, there was another member of senior management who kept the 4 yr old tyrant in check. Unfortunately (for me), the other guy left...

I should have known better- I was given a warning during the hiring process-

I got a job offer from them and rejected it as too low to live on (it was well below going rate, but good experience and interesting work). They sweetened the offer by 4 percent, and I figured "at least they're trying"...so I said yes- to start in two months' time.

Three days later, honourable young dolt that I was, I turned down an offer 13 percent higher from another firm because "a deal's a deal".

Went off to Europe with my girlfriend, spent my money, moved to the new city, paid 1st and last month's rent on an apartment, and then went in to see my boss- a poor guy who reported directly to the 4 yr old.

He said, "Hi, and welcome to xxx- oh, and your pay's been cut by 5%"! When I replied with "WTF!", he said, "Well, I've taken 10%, so you can take 5!".

I had $32 in the bank, and was now making 1% less than an offer I'd REJECTED, and 18% less than an offer from another firm I'd turned down because I was a man of my word- and, as it turns out, a complete idiot. I was of course "free" to tell them to insert their dishonest revised offer in the most suitable orifice, but by this point of course the other position had long ago been filled.

Obviously, an offer of employment is NOT a contract- no "compensation" has changed hands for one thing. They could have simply revoked their offer without penalty! I chose to look at the positive, rather than (more accurately as it turns out) seeing this as a sign of things to come...

I worked there for two years. Looking back on it, it was GREAT experience in so many ways- not an experience I'd want to repeat, mind you! There was more than one class A @sshole working there, as you'd expect with such a "leader", but there were also at least five people who are permanent friends of mine so many years later- top-notch engineers and scientists (and people!). That place taught me so much, both technically AND on the business and management side- the latter mostly by flagrant examples of what NOT to do!

 

[SNORGY]

I worked in a place long ago where the company sent a guy away from his family - including a newborn - to the field in the Aleutians (Alaska) in the dismal dead of winter to manage a sewer installation project. Immediately upon his return following a stint that was almost a year long there, they shipped him off to a small town in the middle of the Prairies, again in the dead of winter, to be a construction manager for an irrigation canal.

While writing up a daily report in the field office at his second posting, he received an envelope from his employer. Sitting across the desk from him, I watched it as he opened it. Inside was an unsolicited letter of commendation from the City / Town Council of the Alaskan town where he had worked, addressed and written to the president of the company who employed him (us). The letter said that he had been the best project manager that they had ever experienced working with. Attached to that letter was a yellow "Post-It Note" from the company president, which thanked him for his efforts and stated, "...this is what separates the truly great project managers from the rest of the pack...".

Paper-clipped to the letter and the "Post-It Note" was his pink slip, indicating that he had been laid off.

Class.

Regards,

SNORGY.

 

[ornerynorsk]

Nice twist on the old "it's not you, it's me" theme, eh?!!!

 

[moltenmetal]

SNORGY- holy sh*t, that's a new low!

Your story solidly proves one of my favorite amongst the Dilbert guy's axioms: that any personal sacrifice that you make for work will be accepted. Not necessarily acknowledged, or rewarded, but surely accepted!

 

[kelowna]

I have had some terrible bosses, from the one who greeted me every morning calling me 'Spanish fascist bastard' (he found it amusing), to the one that kicked and broke the side panel of a colleage's desk during an argument, to the one that had me working 8 months on a very dangerous site in with people regularly got hurt without any insurance (I only found out later).

The best story though is when I worked for a boss completely underqualified for his work and dangerous to the job. Initially I did my work and most of his. Then he felt threatened and told me to stop interfering with whis work. I stopped and then he shouted at me for not doing his work. The situation deteriorated to a point in which he called me to his office and told me that 'he was not satisfied with my performance'. I told him that that was OK by me because I was not satisfied with his performance either. I left the company shortly afterwards.

 

[ctopher]

1994
Small family owned engineering company.
Boss was British, owner Irish, secretary Scottish; all strong accents. I'm half German, born in So Cal.
During working there, he would complain that I should not be in the restroom no longer than 1.5 minutes!
I finally had enough after several months and quit.
When leaving he asked what nationality my last name is, I said German.
He said if he knew that he would not have hired me!
I replied that if I knew he was British I would not have taken the job!

Chris
SolidWorks 09 SP4.1
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[patprimmer]

The worst boss I ever had was quite a few years ago now, but the damage still haunts me.

With a staff of 150 he turned over 200 employees in one year.

After 5 years the staff was down to about 50 and I think now runs at 12.

His style was to fire anyone who disagreed with him, no matter how respectfully or how accurate, necessary and relevant their statement was to continuing viability of the business.

He regularly instructed us to break laws, take actions that would alienate major long term loyal customers or were in direct contradiction of head office directives.

I was fortunate to be in a position where my boss in Arnhem regularly called his boss who then called him and told him to pull his head in. He hated me, which is a fact that I am still proud of.

He fired the Business Unit Manager and the NSW sales manager of his biggest BU then went to that units biggest customer and to quote him "to play hard ball". He managed to get escorted out of his biggest customers office by their security guards with a never come back instruction.

The guys he fired went to another major chemical company, set up in opposition to us and took the business. He was surprised and offended and said very abusive things about their lack of loyalty, I mean like he fired them and still expected their loyalty.

The viability of the entire business never recovered hence the numbers above.

The other large business we had was a joint venture to manufacture product x gasses. Being the only local manufacturer, we had the market by the proverbial short and curlies. That involved an extensive distribution network and something like 80% market share and 100% market knowledge. With product x becoming illegal for environmental reasons, he was unable to broker a deal to distribute new generation replacement products by once again firing key personnel who maintained the business at good profits for years and playing hard ball during negotiations. The net result was no deals and the plant was shut down and all staff retrenched. Several of the key people he fired went to opposition and set up agencies.

Now gone was a joint venture business that was 40% of the company total revenue and a business unit that was another 40% of the company revenue. A real bad case of testosterone in overdrive and brain in neutral.

Regards
Pat
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