I had a seriously whacked out boss when I worked at a little shop in Durango. Apparently this guy was a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. I always wondered, "If he's this bad sober, how bad was he on booze and blow?"

Anyway, I was warned by my co-workers about his moods and his insane expectations. He also was breaking several important labour rights (right to work state DOESN'T mean no rights).

I remember right before the tourist season hit, he ordered around 50 huge boxes of tourist crap. This store was a quagmire of disorganization and too much crap. My co-workers and I were shocked when UPS started piling all the boxes in the store. There was NO room for the inventory we already had on handNext, the boss called and demanded we have everything priced, stocked, and put away by the time he arrived in town (2 days). I was completely flummoxed at this request. The store was already a distaster for finding and stocking inventory, and this was going to add to the nightmare.


Miguel, the awesome artist, who was the sort-of-kind-of manager (the boss never really had anyone in charge and he was gone 80% of the time.) reassured me that he would handle any issues with the boss. The other slaves and I were scrambling around, trying to keep the store clean and put things away. The boss arrived when the store was still a mess and started screaming at Miguel who ripped him a new one and retorted, "What the hell do you expect?!? You ordered ALL this crap and we have no where to put it!"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2011 04:37PM by Itzpapalotl.

Yes, i worked at a retail store one summer in the pricing department. The supervisor was in charge and her word was law- especially to us summer folks. We didn't start work until she said we could (we'd stand around and wait for her to show up). if something 'odd-shaped' needed to be priced, you did NOT price it yourself. You went to her and asked HER where to price it. It was like working in a prison camp.

Being only 19 or so, i thot this was protocal at all the stores of the same name. I got a job pricing at the same store in my university town. The supervisor there must have thot i was slow or something because i would go to her to tell me where to price the odd shaped stuff. It took me only a little while to realize that it was NAZI lady who was odd, not the whole franchise! I could use my brain at this store. She was a great supervisor.

forward: expensive and emotional experience. My boss bullied me (please read The Sociopath Next Door) mentioned on the previous thread.) I proved that the computer system being implemented could enable Medicare fraud and that my supervisor was guilty of intentional infliction of emotional abuse. Kind of a whistleblower thing. We settled, but I did not win much and the bully is still there and making a huge salary.

Next boss was a recovering alcohol/drug abuser whose rages made us feel like we were walking on eggshells. The therapist explained that allowing those outbursts enable the boss and can send me down a road of substance abuse. Now, I'll take a job at entry level, despite two higher degrees to never deal with these people again. Survival is MENTAL, not just food on the table.

I worked at a McDonald's in my junior year of high school. When the decent boss left, we had a jckass named Jerry Carroll. I can clearly remember at one crew meeting in the basement, he slapped his hand on his thigh and said he didn't like working at the store! Later he was fired for having an affair with a subordinate.

I worked at the VI in Provo for a few years. For some reason, one of the managers took an instant dislike towards me. We'll call her "E."

While I had previous waiting experience before this job, I never worked a busy breakfast shift by myself nor at store as big as that one. My first day on the floor, I was having a hard time keeping up, but didn't think E really cared to help me. At the end of my shift, she and cook sat down with me to ask me what was my problem?!?

E, in a nasty tone, informs me, "We've had a lot of complaints (probably 2 or 3) about you. What is the issue?" I explained the situation described above and she looked at me like I was nuts. E replied, "Well, you can always ask me for help or the cook if you get caught behind." (yeah like that wouldn't count against me either). I was then written up FOR NOT ASKING FOR HELP. On my first day, by myself. It didn't end there.

I was on a few psych meds at the time, and if I didn't take them by 6 PM the previous night, I was nearly falling asleep on my feet for the first hour or so after waking. Unfortunately, this was happening at the starting shift one morning, but I vosed to work through it and just drink gallons of coffee. E gets pissed and asks me if i'm on drugs. Again, I give her the explanation and assured her, "Just give me a little more time and coffee, I'll be ok." It wasn't busy, so *I* wasn't worried, but she sent me home. Months later, after she walked out on the job, I found out she was telling all the other servers and cooks I was high on pot at work and "she could smell it on me."

When a coworker relayed this to me, I started busted up and retorted, "She's a f- idiot. If she knew anything at all about drugs, she would think I was strung out on smack, not pot." My coworkers all laughed at this and said, "Why are we not suprised to hear this come out of your mouth?" :)

We were a tiny startup and I was employee #5, the office manager. It became clear that it was not only managing the office, but cleaning up after the disasters the insouciant wealthy elite boss created.

My first assignment was to negotiate a reduction in price on a plumbing bill -- the bill to take out the shower that he installed in the men's room and telling the Spanish speaking workers that the circle in the floor was a drain (when in fact it was an electrical fixture). Naturally, the men drained the shower through the fixture and flooded the ceiling for the floor below us. Shall we say the landlord was upset? I got a reduced rate by telling the plumber that the boss had mental issues and the language problem resulted in a misunderstanding.

Then I was put in charge of the "Three Rooms." The other employees told me the names of these three locked rooms were "sex, drugs and rock and roll." These were the uses of the rooms. One had a futon mattress and a stack of porn. The next had grass and god-knows-what-else in little bottles. The last one had speakers, musical equipment, amps, guitars, turntables, records, stereos, earphones.
My task was to make sure that the boss's wife never knew what was in the rooms. She dropped by occasionally.

One day the landlord said he wanted to inspect ALL the rooms and everything had to be available for inspection. The other two employees and I stuffed all the contraband into a stall in the ladies room, which I promptly occupied. I am a tall, silvery dignified-looking older woman and I found myself consumed by giggles there in a stall with tits and leather staring up at me as I sat fully dressed on a toilet seat with bags of marijuana on my lap.

The boss put wood paneling on the lineoleum in the hall and ordered a 50 foot Persian-type carpet. It looked splended all right, but made the gray and white metal desks look pathetic, like they came from a government warehouse--so....the boss said we should expand into another room (which he hadn't rented yet). He insisted the temp part-time guy we hired pull down the ceiling, which he immediately began doing. Insulation rained everywhere and dust filled the air--off went my coworker to buy protective clothing and a face mask for the worker who was coughing non-stop. Like other manic people, the teardown had to be finished yesterday, so you can imagine the mess on the carpet (the boss was so impulsive there was no time to cover the carpet and besides, he was going to install new carpeting anyway so why bother). This was a Thursday.

The next morning, unannounced, the landlord arrived and introduced me to the "prospective renters" for the other rooms on the floor. Oh. My. God. The landlord went around with us and I waxed loquacious on each and every room, pointing out the view, extolling the virtues, dragging it on and on, the land lord smiling all the while, until the visitor said he had an appointment and had to run. I lead them quickly down the Persian-carpeted hall sailing right past the Nightmare Room (which was huge, like 50 x 70) and looked like an explosive had gone off. Behind that door were my coworkers, who had barricaded the door. We were to pretend it was jammed and could not be opened (because the landlord had the key).

From my experience, I would conclude that the 1% might truly have extra-terrestrial genes. I do know that they do not live in the same world I do.

Anagrammy

PS. For knowing about the Three Rooms and for various other pieces of information, I received a very generous severance package after having been overheard telling someone the truth.

My worst boss was at the same job I currently have. Just a different supervisor. This woman was very full of herself, proud of the fact that she was a supervisor and thought that made her better than everyone else. Let's just call her "R".

One day she heard me on the phone and just stopped to listen. I was speaking to a customer, so didn't think much about it, as I was busy. I was speaking French, because the customer was in Montreal, and her English was weak, while my French is quite good. This one was of my regular customers, and my speaking French to her was always the way we operated.

On this day, though, R paid attention to what I was doing. After a few minutes of listening to me, she grabbed the phone out of my hand and hung up on my customer. Naturally, I turned to her and asked what she was doing. In full view and earshot of everyone else in the department, she said, "I will not have you playing around like that! This is company time, and I demand that you devote your time to work!"

I explained that I had been speaking to a customer.

She responded, telling me that I had not been dealing with a customer, but had simply been on the phone babbling and playing around.

"I was speaking to a customer," I said. "She's more comfortable speaking French, so I use French when she calls."

"You do not speak French," R said.

I gaped at her. "Yes, I do. I speak fluent French. That's why she's my customer."

"No, you do NOT speak French. I do not speak French, and I am your manager. Since I don't speak French, it's not possible for you to know it."

I was mad. I said, "Then please explain the eight years I studied French in school, the year and a half I spent living in French Canada, and the summer I lived in Paris. I really do speak French."

"You do not! And I will not have that sort of insubordination." She called up her supervisor to begin the process of having me fired. Her face started showing absolute terror, and then she got up, walked out, got in her car and drove off.

About an hour and a half later I got a call from G, R's supervisor. G was the one who had originally hired me, and one of the things she had hired me for was to handle our Canadian customers. She had demanded that R come talk to her in person once she had heard what had happened. G was laughing her butt off that anyone could be that stupid. She had sent R home for the day and told her to familiarize herself with the people who worked under her, since she clearly had no clue what people could do.

R was fired a month later. Not for the French incident, but for refusing to send billing reports to the accounting department. Her defense was that she didn't know where the report came from, so it clearly didn't mean anything.