what's the most fucked up thing a boss ever told you?

-"stop talking to me like eddie haskell."

Hands down the strangest thing I ever heard from someone I worked for. :eyes:

and seeming busy with hazy productivity can ensure job security

My editor told me I was working too fast once. (Not because of errors or anything--just because I was getting too much done too quickly.)

One of my favorites: After allowed my asshat editor to kick me out of my associate editor job, the VP kept calling me a "very important point person" but he couldn't think of what my "new job" was going to be. When pressed to stop using the VPP "title" and explain my new purpose in a way that would make sense on a business card, he finally said, "I see you as being a...writer and editor...of some sort..."

I quit soon thereafter. :eyes:

The man is no longer in business, and he had a HUGE empire here in central Ohio....and nothing was more satisfying than to walk away from that asshole AND his asshole asst. manager...I won't bore you with what I said, but it definitely caught him off guard. He stalked me for a YEAR after until I got a lawyer and told him in legalese to stop.

made him think of bondage games.

I was making an official complaint about a coworker - eventually the coworker was removed and given a position where he worked in solitude because he was so intolerable - so my complaint was justified. My boss was a woman, which made her remark that much more insulting.

So I asked my manager to send me an email stating exactly that. She "didn't think that was necessary" so I told her if she wanted "fudged numbers" she should "fudge herself".

I worked in a warehouse when I was sixteen, and someone claimed to have gotten a case of crabs from the disgusting bathrooms at this warehouse. The foreman guy gathered all the workers in a line and said those unforgettable words "Alla you get them pantaloons down!" No one complied, and the crab mystery was never solved.

:rofl:


that is just so wrong. I can't believe it.

and were too embarrassed to ask.
:eyes:

years. That list would be much shorter.

One morning I was really hungover and went to work a couple of hours early on accident. I went into the office and went to sleep on my bosses desk. I pushed all the shit on his desk on the floor, climbed onto his desk and took a nap. I don't remember what he said exactly, I was groggy. Something like, "Hey dork, why the fuck are you sleeping on my desk?" This was at a movie theater. I was the Head Projectionist/Assistant Manager at the time. I was also good friends with his boss and it would have been impossible for him to fire me.

told me "There's more to working here than shelving the books quickly and always knowing where a particular book is." And then denied me a measly $0.35-cent-per-hour raise!

I would have thought those qualities were EXACTLY what would have been expected of a good bookstore employee. :eyes: Guess I was wrong.

I quit the very next day...over the phone. The boss sounded shocked for a minute (and he should have been; I was his best employee.) and then said "Good luck...um...I'm proud of you..."

Yeah? Too f*****g late, loser!

I can't count how many times I've been in a mall bookstore (stand-alones, like Borders, tend to be pretty good. They hire knowledgeable people. Malls hire people who will work for minimum wage) and the idiot behind the counter not only did not know where they book was, whether they could order it, but often had never even heard of it!

Uh.. no.

"we are only going to be able to offer $95,000 of life insurance."
"really, why? you had promised $100,000?"
"um, well, um, they drug test over $95,000, and I, um, won't pass"

this man owns a company and took home 1.6 million last year. Took home. (I keep the books) and he can't stop smoking weed for a month so I can get decent life insurance?

She then told me that she would be happy if all her employess would smoke crack or meth so they could work faster because it was the American way.

and I was happy to tell him the following week that I'd been accepted into a doctoral program and wanted to be a doctor, not a general. :evilgrin:

and also, he offered a toast at the company xmas party "to the partners!".

he's not aware of how he comes off.

That and "Bras aren't necessary to wear in the office."

This was a woman boss who owned a product placement agency for film and television. Noticed I said "owned." She no longer does. Gee. I wonder why.

And just to be clear, I always wore a bra and never slept with the prop masters... or the transportation coordinators.

I guess there's a reason it's the loneliest job on any set.

This is a Jewish mall and we don't need any Arabs around here.

And I stayed at that job another ten years. I should have sued.

:wtf: :mad:

A last minute defect meant that a product was not going to ship on time. Rather than risk losing shelf space, he thought we should just send the box empty and say it was a packaging error and send replacements when the problem was fixed. Thank God we didn't actually do it.

...but that's a rather think-outside-the-box solution. :D

what I really wanted to say was, how do you know she isn't? :eyes:

the same folks were later investigated for sexual harrassment. Talk about lack of insight.

i can barely concentrate as it is.

to show an interest in something - then get smacked down in the annual review for doing so...

His wife was gaining a bit of weight, and he was rather pleased with her increased bust size. I was utterly speechless. I still am, in fact.

I would have reached for my wallet and said, "yeah, you got this picture too??" :evilgrin:

Which is an insult when you also happen to be the lowest-paid.

I asked for a raise, and was told that they couldn't afford to increase my salary. Within a month, I had another offer and turned in my 2 weeks notice. Of course, I was offered more money to stay.... Asshat.

Quit because I had to make more money. Right before I left, like the day before, they asked me to stay and offered me more money. Talk about closing the barn door... Does this EVER work? I went through all the trouble to line up a new situation and I'm going to back out of the new job just because old job suddenly decides I'm worth more than they've been payinh me? This pissed me off more than enticing me. It was proof they were paying people as little as they thought they cpould get away with. Find another sucker.

wanted to take my two weeks of vacation.

I'm paraphrasing what I heard from co-workers, but I was on vacation while he laid me off, and apparently, didn't realize that I was on vacation in the first place.

my dad shot himself in the head and was in critical condition in the hospital....my pay was cut off when I left upon hearing the news - when I asked my boss about any kind of paid time off he told me, "HE'S NOT DEAD YET." He died six days later.

How did you react to that?
I can't believe someone could be that callous.

what do you say to that? I was stressed at the time and was too tired to fight back.

:hug:

that was back in the hard times of the early eighties and jobs were hard to come by - I worked nights and did not have to see this guy.

Did King Asshole ever apologize for being such a dickhead?

they guy was just....clueless

I've had moments like that...saying horribly rude and insensitive things to people without thinking...the good Lord did not give me a strong sense of tact.
:hug:

people either say nothing or say the wrong thing :(

:hug:

He must have been a Republican.

:hug:

I sure hope he got his karma. Sorry about your dad, Skittles, that's so sad. So many sad people in the world with no hope.

my mom's husband shot her best friend, my mom hysterical, her husband in jail and her best friend dead, needless to say, I called in sick.

my boss said "I better see it in the newspaper tomorrow or you're fired"

I kept my job

Sorry about your dad, that just sucks :hug:

:rofl:

I miss that guy :rofl:

She's a porn star (I discovered).
This happened on Capitol Hill.
And no, I really don't look like Jenna Jameson.

I lived in Baltimore as a student, right around the time they started calling it "Charm City".

Every morning, when I'd leave my apartmnt to head for class, this woman would be walking down the street with her dog and a large trash bag, growling, "Charm City! HMMmmph! How can it be Charm City with all this goddam trash lying around?!" And she picked up trash and the dog droppings that other people left after their pets had relieved themselves.

She always made me smile. She was the kind of woman that made Baltimore a great place...the salt of the earth. :hi:

She told me every detail of her personal life. Every. Dirty. Little. Detail.
Highlights include: "He made me wear a bag over my head so noone would recognize that it was me."
"Where are my crackers??? Did you hide my crackers? Who hid my CRACKERS?"
"I'm bi-polar."
"I was a virgin until I was 30."
"He made me wear a hairnet so his wife wouldn't recognize any blonde hairs on the bed."

And many, many, many more. Some I can't post in here, lest the thread be locked. :P

and when I failed to sweep up a ball of dust in the doctor's loumge was informed by the head of Housekeeping that I "was the main thing wrong with the hospital."
I think I said something insolent back but I was going to quit anyway. Those Servicemaster managers were/are all of bunch of Nazis anyway.

I had a run in with a particularly ill behaved client.
I thought it was over at last, but no.

We were in the process of hiring an assistant director for my office (I was director there), and the president wanted to micromanage that decision, like all others. The candidate did not have a bachelor's degree (had an AAS in Office Technology) but was more than qualified. She had worked in the admissions office there before and loved the school. I knew she would be good at the job, and she had glowing references. She was working on her bachelor's degree part-time AT THAT SCHOOL. The president, being the snob that she was, turned around at a meeting about the hiring process, and in front of all eight people there, she asked me in a very pissy tone of voice, "So you think hiring someone with a typing degree is OK?" I was flabbergasted, and I said, "Having a bachelor's degree doesn't make someone a good employee. She's working on one, and that's fine by me." She huffed and puffed, but I hired her, and it was the best move we ever made in that office. :)

My boss thought my breath smelled like alcohol and then got other coworkers to come talk to me to see if they smelled alcohol. I was so pissed.

:eyes:

And they had Masters' Degrees. I was "let go" about a month later.

We go into the room where my coworker is working. He motions for her to come over.
"So have either of you had the fish at (local restaurant)... Well I did and..." He talks about eating fish at various places in town while we all have important work to be doing.
Also "Could you please translate these instructions for me?" I looked at them and they were in Korean. I never claimed to read Korean nor do I look like I am ethnically Korean. He then says "I thought that you said that you could read Russian."

Immediately after the departure from the newsroom of an eighth-grade journalism student on Job Shadow Day.

I felt ill. I wanted to charge him with sexual harrassment right then and there.

:puke:
That's uber, uber gross x(

and was getting ready to go in for surgery, missed a lot of days due to hospital visits getting ready for surgery...Hysterectomy...

She was about 7 months pregnant...

She said...wait for it...

"It's not like you have problems like me".

Kid you not...I went straight to HR.....and got it documented.

She didn't last very long because under her leadership no one what the hell they were supposed to do.

This was my bosses' supervisor's response after she put me in for a time off award after finding millions of dollars in savings from an audit.

When she called me in to read his letter denying the award since I didn't go above and beyond by jumping out of a fricking airplane like another auditor did, I got all hot, my face turned red from being about ready to explode and then I said,

We'll he'd just SHIT if that other auditor had been killed doing so!

to me and the Shipping Manager: "That was perfect. Let's see if you can improve on that." :wtf:

Honey, there is no recession you are just doing a bad job.
Are you cold?? Your nipples are sticking out.
Who would you replace yourself with if I fired you? (boss asked this when she returned from a drunken lunch)

New boss. The general consensus was that he was a smarmy bastard you wouldn't trust as far as you could throw him.

On his first meeting with one of our long-time clients, he repeatedly mispronounced one of the product lines we carried. The first time he did it, I tried to interrupt to correct him, but he kept right on going. And going and going.

After the meeting, when I stopped him and told him how it should be pronounced, he looked like he was going to hit me.

My current boss is supposed to be involved in my career development, which is hilarious, for reasons too long to explain here...so anyway, I am supposed to be reading this book (which I have long since finished; read it twice, actually, and took over 20 pages of notes) and wanted to move on to the next book on the reading list. Little Miss Condescension told me she is "...restricting me from reading that book just yet, as the (Corp HQ Clique) has not read it yet, and I haven't read it yet, and haven't attended the training yet, so I wouldn't be able to assist you in your understanding of the material."

RESTRICTING!!!!

In the first place, restricting me from reading ANYTHING is guarandamnteed to make me read it all the sooner, so that backfired. Has the stupid bitch never heard of a LIBRARY??? :eyes: :eyes: 20 minutes after she made that stupid statement, I was on lunch break and...at the library.

Secondly, the books are the ones on the Gallup research on building on people's strengths, and she knows the #1 of my top 5 was LEARNER and she thinks it's appropriate to tell me I CAN'T GO AHEAD AND LEARN SOMETHING??

And while there is over a quarter-century solid research and sound methodology behind the books ("First, Break All the Rules" and "Now, Discover Your Strengths") it's not exactly rocket science...the statistical analysis behind it all may be, but the books themselves are very accessible, not dumbed-down but good reads and easy concept to grasp, holy shit...

Like I need some airhead twenty-something asskisser to "assist me in my understanding..."

UNDERSTAND THIS, BITCH! I could read at a 12th grade level by the time I was EIGHT....your 'assistance' is not required in any way, shape or form, thank you VERY much. :grr:

Also, "You have such crippling personality defects,that you can barely be quantified as human, but since we're good people, we're going to keep you on and see if we can reform your personality and character."

And this was before they found out I was going to the EEOC to file a complaint. I got hauled into the office and grilled for 3 hours about how I was such a troublemaker, a malcontent, and just a generally bad person out to ruin all their good work. Needless to say, this all got around to Corporate Legal (of a Fortune 50 company) and guess who found themselves on the grill.

But that wasn't the best part.

I finally got let go after a year of this abuse and found another job at another big company, where I was respected, appreciated and promoted rapidly to Director of Technology. When it came time to solict bids for some extensive work, my old company was in the bidding. Since we dealt with companies and governments who cared deeply about ISO 9001 compliance, and that had been my major job at the old company, I was the point person in negotiations.

The rest is history. My old company and my old boss nearly dropped his eyes and dentures when I came for my process analysis. And of course, I knew where to find all the defects, missing records, shoddy documentation that had been accumulating since I had left. Needless to aay, the team of auditors I led were less than impressed. Within 2 weeks, we signed a $23 million contract with a smaller company, who took record keeping, process documentation and compliance as seriously as we did. My old boss, once a rising star, was shipped off to the graveyard of careers, Special Projects, and fired a month later.

The best revenge IS living well!

Congratulations on "sticking it to the man!" :thumbsup:

you need to work 60." This was the VP addressing to us middle-managers (salaried, of course).

He did have some good business wisdom, but also came up with an occassional 'WTF?'.

"Oh. You brought Arby's for dinner. Their stock must've just gone up."

Or something to that effect.

Sounds like a compliment, until you consider I was born and raised here, and quite well-educated to boot. He, OTOH, was neither born here, nor was English his first language. I managed to conceal my true reaction.

He was a first-time manager in over his head. Way over his head. The department got taken apart in time.

...for a white boy!

She really did, and I didn't mind it a bit.... :D

you were pregnant.

This, from a WOMAN! What a moran.

:o

Followed closely by No. 2, "What're you gay?" when I disapproved of this boss (a different one) macing a customer.

A buddy of mine, his wife was going in for spinal surgery to remove a tumor.

He works in the IT dept.

As I was walking past him and my boss, he says to my boss, "I will be out tomorrow do to my wifes tumor surgery".

My bosses response, "are you going to be in thursday?"

Mind you the boss didn't know anything about the surgery until that very moment.

No compassion, no empathy, just concerned about how his life was going to be effected by how long my buddy was going to be out.

Sigh, I did I get here?

This took place about a week after I was hired, so I can't even claim that this was from someone I knew well: This guy, married, tells me about the girl he slept with the night before, bitches that she wasn't that good, and ended it with "the problem with this planet is that you can't find a mistress who knows how to give a good blowjob anymore."

What struck me so hard about this is that a.) a boss told this to a subordinate, b.) anyone would trust this sort of information with someone he had known a week. I've never cheated on anyone, but if I did I wouldn't tell anyone at all - especially not someone who I've known for a week and could call my wife if he ever gets mad at me.

I was working as a floor clerk, and I wanted to fill in as a cashier. The manager told me (his exact words), "No. We want young, attractive girls up front". And I had to take this crap for a minimum wage job.

We were under pressure to cut overtime. Every week I submitted OT requests for preventive maintenance that could only be done on the week-ends and was turned down. Comes the "annual" review (which was always sprung on us at random)and I was tagged for not completing Preventive Maintenance!

ISO-9000 - we were told not to print out the PM sheets ahead of time because they were part of the ISO9000 documents but rather hand them out on a weekly basis. This is what I did. The next supervisor in that department proceeded to buy an expensive document rack and print out a year's supply!

How about the previous superintendent in one department who filled out an ISO9000 chart every week. I got to the department and determined that the instrument he's been reading was not functioning. Period. It wasn't even connected! I worked on getting the instrument repaired but was docked for not completing the charts!

I was working (unpaid) OT one night and the department air compressor went down. Technically, the job belonged to the 2nd shift supervisor, but I stayed to assist. It's a good thing I did; his "repair" would have caused an explosion by day break! I found the part at a the supplier, got it installed, and left work 5 1/2 hours late on a Friday night. Guess who got laid off when business went bad?.

always be a prick....

It was the funniest thing I'd ever had happen to me. He was doing his rounds sayin' his goodbyes, Everyone in my dept was standing around when he said it. I'd made it a point to give him hell the whole time he was the GM because he didn't know dick about how to manage people. One week after he left I was awarded the sales position that I'd put in 8 weeks earlier. The new GM(old sales manager)said "I heard what Chris had to say, it would appear he may have been biased against you for whatever reason."

Yeah I had to put up with being called a prick everyday for months.

It was when I was a delinquency worker. I ignored him, but really couldn't believe he would joke about such a thing.

The parents get mad if their kids go home with dirty clothes.

Then he grabbed me in the laundry room when his wife wasn't looking.
That was my only one day job.

I didn't do it.
The next most fucked up thing he did was come running out of the warehouse bathroom with his pants down yelling "SNAKE, SNAKE" He stopped looked down and said "Opps sorry its only me."

He was a gospel-of-prosperity fundamentalist asshole.

Thru a want ad in the paper. I had experience. I did absolutely no selling. The boss stuck me in the back room and made me a diamond sorter. I had to take a bunch of diamonds, all the same size and quality, and weigh them individually on one of those expensive electronic scales, down to the one-hundredth of a carat, to sort them by weight.

Then, after two days of this, he fired me. I told him that he advertised for a salesperson, and if he wanted a diamond sorter, he should have advertised for one. I told him this three times.

He said, "I don't want to talk about it."

Had a copilot that got some hydraulic fluid dripped into his eye during a walkaround (very, very serious - hydraulic fluid is nasty stuff). Called the chief pilot while the EMTs were looking at him, and he (chief pilot) said, "this is unacceptable - this is a high emphasis flight that has to get out on time."

I thanked him for his concern for the copilot's well-being and hung up on him. I was so angry my hand almost crushed the phone handset!

Thankfully, the EMTs were able to flush out his eye and treat it with something to neutralize the fluid, and his eye was ok. Those guys did a great job.

As she said this, I was thinking "good luck with that, sister". A couple of months later, she resigned when another employee threatened some sort of law suit against her. :)

Why do so many disastrous people get put in management positions?

Of course, I was working for myself when I said it. Or should have said it. :banghead:

Is that you, sugah? :D

I worked in a coin/stamp shop. He had cut my hours in half after the silver boom in the '70s played out.
I was 20. He had to be close to 65. He was married, and he told me his wife wasn't interested in sex anymore. Prick.

I didn't quit, I just didn't show up again.

Needless to say, I ditched that job as soon as I could.

(she's from NJ and had gone to Clemson, SC with her boyfriend)

"How would I know, I haven't lived there in years. Ask your boyfriend, he's from there. Why do they call New Jersey the armpit of the USA?" (Tit for tat, not serious)

I came into work to tell them and to request a leave for the funeral. After I told her I had bad news and that my Grandmother died all she said was,"Well, how does that affect me?"

the F&B manager of the major hotel where I worked got pissed cuz I reported him to the Union for sexually harrassing my cocktail waitresses

he told me he'd catch me drinking on the job and fire my ass

:evilgrin:

I didn't quit drinking on the job, he never caught me, and when the chit hit the fan with the union, he got demoted and sent back to Texas from which he came.

what an ass :rofl:

You don't look busy enough. People are complaining." :wtf:

"I never see you running around here looking all frazzled, ripping your hair out like everybody else" What I said, "Well, I used to work retail and I got used to being calm under pressure." What I wanted to say, "Look, this shit isn't exactly brain surgery, and if it takes everybody else 8 hours to do what I can do in an hour, it's not my problem."

Not long after this the same person gave me a task to do on Thursday and said she wanted the info by the next Tuesday. I gave the stuff to her on Friday, in person, and told her that if she needed anything else to let me know. Never heard another word until... Tuesday afternoon she calls me in and accuses me of almost causing her to miss a deadline because I was supposed to give her the info on Tuesday, and me giving it to her was her reminder of the deadline. There was no diplomatic response to this, so I just walked out of the office.

I thought my boss at the time knew that I'm from Argentina and came over to me lamenting, seeming really concerned. I was confused :shrug: as to why and he said "I'm hoping your family in your country is ok at this really difficult time. I wanted to ask you if they were leaving or what is the case?" I had no idea what he was talking about but apparrently he thought the U.S. was invading Argentina, thinking it was located in that region of the world. Friggin' dummy

That was fun.

he was.