QOTD: Evil Boss?

[atlasien]

Who's the worst boss you ever had?

[cattygurl]

I had a boss (guy) beat up my other boss (woman) and took off with most of the money from the company account + the company car. He took most of the money and hence 3 out of 5 employees lost their job (the accountant and sales mgr were the only 2 jobs that survived).

He left the country, apparently, leaving his wife and his 2 year old baby behind.

[atlasien]

Whoah, that beats anything I had. It sounds like you guys were lucky he didn't just kill you. :eek:

[cattygurl]

you know, he used to get into couple of the employee's faces and yell.

I didn't have to deal with him much as I was always out of the office with the purchase manager and @ the warehouse moreso than the office.

None of us though- excepted him to go ballistic on Jackie (our other boss), beat her up and take everything, AND leave his family behind to avoid prosecution. The guess is that he went south of the border. He took a total of over 1/2 a mil in money plus the car. At least 1/2 of the money was going to be used to buy the products that clients had already paid for, so yeah, she was beside herself.

[vsoy]

So they never caught the crook? Damn.

When I did office temp work for a few months, I had a supervisor who could only be described as crazy. She was head admin for the NY office of a telecom and she hired temps to do all her work. The things that she hammered over were really stupid things that didn't make a difference and a lot of the time consuming tasks she had us do was pointless (like scanning and reorganizing business cards). She also demanded long hours which I really didn't think was necessary. Since it was a temp job, I needed the hours and money but it was a tiresome job. If she didn't like you, nothing you did was good and badmouth you behind your back but if she liked you, she'd lighten up.

When I was moving to San Diego, I referred a friend to take over my temp job, warning her of some of crazy boss's pet peeves. My friend was kind of flaky like my boss and didn't want to start work on Friday the 13th. For some reason, things didn't work out and my friend never started work there.

[Vahz]

After reading these stories, I guess I can't complain about mine having bad BO.

[JadeDragon]

I've had two bad bosses before, and not surprisingly, they were at banks.

One was an assistant manager whom everyone in the branch where I worked at (this was a local bank) hated, and she would not hesitate to scream, yell and belittle the tellers and the sales supervisors. In fact, she was so verbally abusive that she made people cry at work, and the bank manager didn't like her either, but could not do anything about the situation because of office politics. She was transferred to the credit-card department a month or so after I resigned, where the boss over there is reputed to be worse (slave-driver who would force employees under her to stay until 10pm or 11pm, despite having worked since 8.30am).

(There are no legally-supported unions in the country I work in, so there is no such thing as workers' rights.)

The other boss was from the international bank I worked at, and he wasn't my immediate supervisor but he was in charge of the department I worked in. He wasn't outwardly abusive, but he would constantly make you feel bad for not achieving the million-dollar targets (which are ridiculous, considering the country I live in and its spending culture), and he would turn colleagues against each other by encouraging them to form cliques in the name of "friendly competition". I managed to work there longer than I did at the local bank, because the training was invaluable, and I do enjoy learning about finance. But I resigned when it became unbearable, and the funny thing was that I wasn't the only one. Others were resigning around the same time I did too, because the corporate culture there was totally the opposite from what they espouse in their training materials. The bank had to scramble to find replacements for people who had been working there for 15+ years!

Now I work in an industry which I did study for, and I've never been happier about going to work. *fingers crossed*

[atlasien]

My worst boss was at an Italian ice shop when I was in college. I needed a part-time, low intensity job close to where I lived for the summer, so I signed on there. It was a franchise run by a couple who had just moved from Philadelphia. The wife was incredibly nice and sweet and the husband was kind of hairy and weird.

While working on shifts with the husband, I began to notice odd behavior. I thought he was maybe smoking pot or drinking in the back of the store. He would stagger out after a session and scare the customers. He started getting worse and worse. He asked me once if I wanted to make some babies with him. I told him to go back to his cot and lie down for a while before he passed out. One day I noticed a paper bag under the register containing a pistol and a couple dirty needles. Yikes! He was a bad junkie. His wife had moved trying to get them a fresh start but he'd fallen back on old ways. I stayed on a few days after that but quit the job early so I wouldn't have to be alone with him on another shift.

[DONKEY]

boss of a pizza shop paid me $4/hr and whenever it got slow he sent everybody else home and made me basically run the place by myself while he watched soccer games. one day he told me i was costing him too much so i said "you want me to leave?" and he said no, he just wasnt going to be able to pay me for the next few weeks so i walked out.
the boss before him at the same shop would encourage employees to shoplift supplies from the grocery store across the street but that didnt seem as bad at the time.