Some bad boss stories - Part 1

My Boss is an awful bully and human being
by Chase - (USA)

My boss is an awful human being. He only cares about himself, not his employees who make the money for him. For the *removed* Dept, he cut 25% of their salary off four years ago and hasn't given it back since. My side, the *removed* dept., we haven't had a raise in 6 years, no Union contract for 4 years and possibly paid off our Union rep not to come around anymore.

He is rude, pushy, verbally abusive, two-faced, very stressful, and constantly yells. I've had many confrontations with in 10 years I have been working there but it reached the boiling point...So this past Friday morning, I walked in calmly and politely and asked my boss to talk to him in private into his office. I kindly asked him to lay me off after 10 years.

The reason why is I am not well and unhappy. I am sick mentally and physically. After being ten years at my job, I had to deal with constant verbal abuse by the boss, by salesmen, art director and production manger. I am forced to do other work besides being a production artist which I was hired to do. I'm forced to be customer service for the salesmen, run around do errands, and get harassed by clients as well.

It's a toxic environment where everyone is miserable, mostly because the boss doesn't care about anyone but himself. It has taken a toll on me. I am stressed out, I constantly get sick, I have very high blood pressure, battling depression, and now I have pneumonia for 3 weeks now, going on 4.

I went back to work this past Thursday after being out two days for pneumonia where I should have stayed home for a week, instead I wanted to work. I had 13 jobs on my desk to do all day. So around 2pm came, I had 2 jobs left to do for the day, I was in the middle of my third. So I pop online to check my email real quick, it could have been 10 minutes tops. The boss, who's literally 5 steps away, send me an email telling me to slow down on the internet all day because we have a lot of work.

That's total *bleep* because there was only 7 jobs behind me on a table which can be split up between 4 other employees. I wrote back to him saying you should be happy I came in today in my sick condition.

That morning I gave him the doctor's note saying I have pneumonia, he's heard me constantly coughing and hacking up a lung. I even gave him the medication I'm taking. I told him I should be home for the week. He didn't want to hear it!

He accused me of not working, when he has said many times I'm his best go to guy. So I got my things and left for the day.

So back to Friday morning...I asked kindly to be laid off. He starts right out yelling at me like I'm trash, he says I made you sick... so I said you know what yeah, you and this company has after 10 years. I'm sick, depressed, stressed out, and I need to get better. I said this calmly.

He continued to yell at me saying what did I mean by that email... I said it's exactly what I said, you should be happy I came in while being seriously sick. I said how dare you accuse me of not working when all I do is work and get jobs done at least 5 days before the deadline!

Then he goes, you know what, I'm not laying you off, and yells at me, you're quitting!! I said I'm not quitting, I'm not a quitter. Then he yells at me, get the *bleep* out of my office. I stand up and say no. Then he proceeds to leave his office like a punk and yells at me get the *bleep* out of my office!

Then I started to get a little heated, and ask am I fired now?? am I fired now?? He continues to yell at me to get the *bleep* out of here, and I ask am I fired?? Then he's still yelling at the top of his lungs saying I'm a *bleep*, oh you saying no one does work around but you right?

Then I defended myself yelling back at him. Yes! Yes I do, I do most of the work around, I'm the one who makes you the money! You treat your best worker like this after 10 years right?? He charges at me yelling with his fist in front of him get the *bleep* out of my office! I asked again am I fired?? He says what the *bleep* are you deaf? SO I said you know what go *bleep* yourself you piece of *bleep*!

Then he calmed down started stepping back and said that's my boy as he crawled away into the department. Then I walked out. The whole office heard it, his best friend who works there saw the whole thing go down. I walked out and saw the production manager was chuckling, I didn't know what to make of that.

A couple of hours later a co-worker called me up saying he saw what happened and was proud of me. A lot of the guys heard what went down and was happy. So now I wait to go back to work Monday and to see what happens because I was never told I was fired or laid off and I never said I quit.

I feel like George Costanza now where in that episode he goes back to work on Monday after he berated his boss and quit. I started looking for a new job and tried to get in touch with my Union to seek help.

TO see what help Chase received click here - [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

So Bad, There Should Be An Award
By Anonymous

My boss is a tough guy to get to know. He never smiles much, always looks like he's going to kill or start screaming at someone, and comes up with creative names for everyone that include foul language.

A couple weeks ago, when all the summer help had officially started and my supervisor was on vacation, he called everyone into a meeting to welcome everyone and go over the ground rules. After spending no more than five minutes doing that, he officially started in on a 15-minute long insult fest. He made one guy walk up in front of everyone, pull up his pants, and bend over before he finally told the guy he didn't want to see his "a** crack" ever again and that he should get pants like the ones Urkel from Family Matters wears. Then he went around the rest of the table.

By the end, there was the guy who needed the Urkel pants, two un-peppy cheerleaders, a speechless old man, a "light pole f***er" (the guy had accidentally run into a light pole his first summer there), a "stupid, s***-headed lobster" (the kid had forgotten to put on sunscreen), and a bunch of "idiots who will never do anything right" by my boss's standards.

If this was an attempt to motivate us into doing our best work, this sure didn't motivate us.

Two days later, he felt the need to tell us we were working too hard and that he'd received some complaints about us working too hard. He even threatened to fire me if I didn't do exactly as he wanted and that he didn't care if any of us got hurt or killed on the job because our health and safety isn't important to him. All I could do was apologize for working too hard and promise not to work as hard. I went home speechless.

I never thought I'd see the day when doing your job and going above and beyond what's required would be worthy of getting yelled at by the boss and threatened with your job, but it apparently is that way with my boss.

My supervisor was back from vacation the following Monday and when I spoke to her about it, she was horrified. She promised she'd do something about it, since my boss's behavior violated some H.R. (Human Resources) rules. Since then, my boss has pretty much left myself and everyone else alone, except for when we have to be at a meeting with him. Hopefully, this will continue.