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In my time at work, I've had a fair number of jobs... (about 10 jobs in as many years.) As a result I've had my encounter with a few bad bosses... 

 

For example in 2007 I was working for this company and at the time I didn't have my full license. (Where I live you get your license, are classed new and have that for 2 years before you can get your full.) My employer told me them to meet them at a certain location at 4AM. I refused because, as part of the restrictions of being a new driver, I wasn't allowed to drive at that time. (This is a provincial law.) To that they responded that they didn't care, that they wanted me at the site then anyway. I told them that I was not risking my license (since being caught driving during that time is grounds for immediate termination of a license) for them and that I'd see them when I could drive. They didn't like this very much... And likely because of that I didn't get much work at all. (I was only scheduled twice before I quit. The two times I was scheduled were like 2 weeks apart at that.)

 

So then, how about you? What kind of bad bosses have you had? 

 

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"J" constantly misspelled our names.

 

"J" yelled on the phone at our vendors and sometimes degraded them, burning the professional working relationships we had built - including the discounts we received.

 

When two people left the company, she copy-pasted the same email response to their notice with changed names. One of them had a mispelled name.

 

"J" literally had meetings to talk about a meeting that would occur later.

 

Every Monday we were required to attend a meeting and all of us were encouraged to say something. If you didn't say enough, you lost brownie points. This was because we all managed ourselves and "J" wanted to feel included and needed and insist on her role as our boss.

 

"J" would require me to meet with her and ask me questions about what I was doing. She wasn't interested and daydreamed through most of it. Mostly, she was unimpressed with my performance. When I reminded her for the third time that I was doing the jobs of three people, she had the look of immense surprise, but quickly forgot.

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I've had some hum dingers. Shall I tell you about them? Let's start at the top of the order.

 

My first job was at that small neighborhood electronics store. You all know the one I mean, even if you don't think you do. (I will not invoke the beast by saying their name.) My first manager, she was pretty awesome, we got along well and she knew her shit... but then she got promoted. The guy who replaced her? Well, at one time he may have been a good manager, but I never met that version of him, I only knew the one who left at 2pm every day to make his commute home because he lived so far away... and expected us to lie to the district manager when he called looking for our store manager. That didn't work out so well, I sure as hell wasn't lying to cover for him never being around. He was eventually transferred to a store closer to home and I didn't have to deal with him anymore. His replacement? A guy not much older than me, seemed okay... but eventually I found out that he was doing monthly reviews on me and instead of showing them to me like he was supposed to? He was signing them for me and just filing them. Yeah... he eventually got fired for reasons I never got the full story on, because I was being laid off because my store "didn't have enough hours to support my position" (though they told unemployment that I was terminated for poor job performance, way to lie to me district manager!)

 

Next job was at one of the big office supply stores (not that one, one of the two that merged in the last couple years). I was hired by a manager who left the company less than a week later (I never did get that story, but what little I heard made it sound hella sketchy). The man they hired to replace her? Slimy from the get go... coming in and schmoozing everyone to the max, and basically coming off as the used car salesman stereotype dialed to eleven. x.x So he's gone for a month for the mothership to train him, he knows nothing about the company coming in because of course they hired from outside instead of promoting existing employees to management positions. Then he starts up on the games that will paint his whole time at the company: he starts lying, trying to play everyone off each other, messing with everyone's schedules. Everyone in the store other than him and his friend he brings in to be assistant manager are miserable. Every new person is his shining star until they make the smallest misstep, then their fall from grace is painful and he hires in a new person to replace them in the spotlight. He'd make promises he'd never keep, you'd ask for a day off and that was the only day that week he'd schedule you, and he'd spend his whole day in his office. And when he actually did come out of his office and interact with customers on the sales floor? You wished he'd go back into his office because it would usually lead to a string of returns and angry customers because he'd flat out lie to them to maximize his sale.

 

We were losing people left and right, I'm amazed that we ever had a full staff in the store because people were constantly finding new jobs, or quitting because they were lucky enough to be able to afford to. Those of us who needed the income and couldn't find a new job? We were all miserable, we never knew who we could trust because the environment lead to some people narking on us to him, and he'd retaliate when he didn't like something (cut your hours, give you a crappy shift, etc). And even though the retaliations were illegal, we couldn't afford the loss in pay and the time needed to fight it... so we just kept out heads down and did what we could to survive. About six months after I scored a better job, I got text messages from multiple former coworkers telling me that corporate had come in and forced him to resign: he'd made the mistake of targeting a new employee who had nothing to lose, so he'd quit after manager had harassed him and called HR. HR came in while manager was gone on vacation a week, interviewed the whole store, and was waiting for him the moment he returned from his vacation. A bunch of us past and present employees went out to dinner together to celebrate.

 

Current job was mostly okay. At first it was much better pay, much better schedule, a lot less stress. In recent years, I've gotten pretty frustrated though. A lot of my coworkers have changed in this time, and I didn't realize how much the work environment was due to having very very competent people to work with. I could go on, but this is about the bosses. So let's talk about my bosses. The two men who own the place I work now, they mean well. They give me full medical, they give me paid holidays, but no paid vacation I can take when I want to go somewhere, though I do get sickdays now that state of California mandated it a couple years ago. Not so bad, right? A lot of people aren't given that much. My problem is that when I approached my bosses about a coworker who was harassing me, what response did I get? Not 'we'll look into it' or 'we'll handle it', not even a 'can you gather more evidence'. No, I got told that I should be friends with my harasser, because that's clearly what he wanted (and the boss who said that balked when I called him out for throwing that sexist shit in my face), and the other boss? He proceeded to list my flaws back at me, and said that everyone has their flaws, as if this excused the behavior of the coworker. This coworker was blasting music that no one else in the shop liked, then leaving to make deliveries with it still playing at a high volume, he was coming over and getting in my personal space and trying to force me to have conversations with him when I'd ask him to leave me alone. There was one time he started stage whispering at me across the shop that I should kill myself, and when I told my boss, he straight up lied to the boss about it and boss accused me of just trying to get someone fired.

 

They ended up firing this guy for unrelated reasons a while after that. But the real kicker? Maybe a year after they fired this guy, the boss who'd listed my flaws back at me when I'd tried to have them deal with this guy? He said 'I wish I'd known about (coworker) sooner, so I could have handled it'. I had to storm out of the room before I literally ripped him a new one.

 

But right now, without a car and without a college degree, no matter how crappy this place is, it's currently my best option for employment. So I'm desperately saving up so I can get a car and start job hunting in earnest. I just hope I can get that figured out before I finally snap and tear the bosses a new one. It's getting harder and harder every day.

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Not my bosses but my spouse's bosses:

 

In this city of a half million, two brothers have single handedly destroyed the entire market for security guards. Basically, they go out and bid pennies more than minimum wage on security contracts, then pay their those security guards minimum wage. That's right. The people paid to protect your ass get paid less than you do, have to have special licenses and own their own expensive equipment, and put their life on the line. The pay for an armed guard, someone who has to pass more tests, a more expensive license, and handle a gun, is paid the exact same wage. Of course, the two brothers companies' have horrible practices, place the blame on any incidents on the guards and terminate them immediately, don't provide guards for the hours they say they will in their contracts, don't give the guards enough hours, don't provide insurance or benefits of any  kind, and nickel and dime their guards for mistakes, quietly pay less hours than the guard worked so they won't notice, lie about what the real wages are and promise bonuses the guards will never see.

 

In order to compete, the other security companies either move on to another city or have to have the same practices of not having guards for the hours they agreed to in their contracts.

 

The two brothers know what they are doing and aren't about to budge. All of the other companies have figured it out and are trying to convince the brothers to stop this and start bidding higher so they can pay guards a sustainable living wage and have a healthier competing market and the brothers laugh in their face.

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That security guard one is kinda terrifying. I mean to buy a handgun (in Canada anyway) is really expensive ($600 to $1000 before tax) and has loads of extra hoops to jump through. So trying to buy a gun for work on a minimum wage budget while trying to pay other bills too? Yeah not likely to happen. And even if it could, what kind of security would you really have? I mean is someone going to want to risk themselves for what? $9 an hour? Yeah, don't think so.

 

--------------

 

 

Later in 2007 I started at another location to be a nightly cleaner and this place was off to a bad start...

Two of us got hired exactly on the same day. On our first day of work we were given some light duties (sweep the floor, tidy up the washrooms, etc...) but then we found ourselves alone in the building.

The boss decided to abandon us after only two hours. That boss left us by ourselves with no knowledge of what we were doing, any of the safety info (like what chemicals we were allowed to use and where). We also weren't told whether they'd be back or anything. There was just no communication. To make matters worse I had no way to get ahold of that boss (they never gave us their cell number or home phone number).

 

So after we finished the few tasks we could, we sat in my car for probably another hour waiting to see if the boss was coming back. When it seemed like they weren't, and it was getting dark, I took my co-worker home and then went home myself.

To make things worse the building was entirely unlocked (I had no keys, no way to lock it up or to enable the security system).

 

The next day when I went in, I got chewed out for not doing enough and leaving the building open. I was not overly thrilled by that but I let it go. But then that boss ditched us again after an hour. Though this time I'd gotten their home number so I called them, but they refused to answer. I called 3 times in the span of an hour.  So again with no idea what we were doing and no training we left.

 

This happened repeatedly during our first week... the boss ditched us, despite they were supposed to stay with us, after an hour or so. I got the number of the owner of the company and phoned them (they weren't happy that I'd done it... but whatever) to complain about my boss's constant leaving. The owner said they'd talk to the boss, but nothing changed.

 

Finally the next week there was another person in and trained us better, staying around the whole time with us... Even though it wasn't their job. (They weren't overly happy with this boss either.) After this point though things improved a bit. I was trained so boss ditching wasn't an issue as much.

 

After a couple weeks my co-worker quit (turned out they were a major drug user and only worked enough to get money for a score then bailed) so it was down to me to do the job of two people until they could hire someone. They eventually hired someone thankfully but that time where it was just me sucked as that boss was supposed to help out... Naturally they didn't.

 

Eventually I put in my 2 weeks notice, thinking I was giving them a good amount of time to find replacements. (The law in this case said I was only required to give a week's notice, but I gave 2 to be fair.) After I left though I heard from people that still worked there that this boss never bothered to look for anyone else. So this fact, coupled with the constant complaints from myself and other workers lead to this boss getting fired. 

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, VirusZero said:

That security guard one is kinda terrifying. I mean to buy a handgun (in Canada anyway) is really expensive ($600 to $1000 before tax) and has loads of extra hoops to jump through. So trying to buy a gun for work on a minimum wage budget while trying to pay other bills too? Yeah not likely to happen. And even if it could, what kind of security would you really have? I mean is someone going to want to risk themselves for what? $9 an hour? Yeah, don't think so.

 

In the US, after using your gun in an incident, it gets confiscated as evidence and (quietly) never returned. So, if you are an armed guard and had to perform your job, you now have to buy a new gun and Qualify with it. Employers have regulations on what types of guns you can use so you can skate by with a cheaper model but still it isn't that cheap.

 

 

 

3 hours ago, VirusZero said:

To make things worse the building was entirely unlocked (I had no keys, no way to lock it up or to enable the security system).

 

Oh my gosh this is such a major liability. This company likely violated a contractual agreement right here. The building could have had things stolen, or their copper wiring stripped out, etc.

 

 

3 hours ago, VirusZero said:

 They eventually hired someone thankfully but that time where it was just me sucked as that boss was supposed to help out... Naturally they didn't.

 

... After I left though I heard from people that still worked there that this boss never bothered to look for anyone else.

 

I really hate it when companies take their workers for granted and have them work multiple people's job for the same wage. This stuff happens all the time, the worker gets burned out, and the company has just had a nice little padding to their bank-account in wages they didn't have to pay for free work. I feel for you, bro. : ' (

 

I'm sorry I couldn't resist replying to you several  more times : X

Edited by xexes
responded twice more sorry, couldn't help myself

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A relaxed, dark and gritty roleplay based on Disney's Zootopia. 

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