Bosses can absolutely suck, and these 16 stories prove that sometimes they just need to keep their mouths shut.
Get ready to shake your head because these stories are nuts.
1. When you don’t have an actual soul…
My coworker lost his dog and came into work teary-eyed.
Our manager looked at him, asked him what was wrong and then proceeded to go on a 30-minute rant about him needing to toughen up. “It’s just a stupid animal. Go buy another dumb dog.”
Needless to say, our boss no longer works for the company.
2. A pay slice…
I worked at a pizza place a few years ago.
The pay was incredible for the job: six an hour flat rate, tips, and 52 cents a mile. I was making like $600 a week after taxes just to deliver pizza. Everyone loved the job. The owner decided to decrease to pay to $7.25 while in the store, $2.13 on the road, and $1 dollar per run.
This resulted in about a $200 decrease every check.
Half the drivers left.
3. You’ve got mail…
The boss accidentally forwarded an email to the entire team of a conversation talking smack about some team members.
That was harsh.
4. Prison phones
Company policy was that personal phones were to be kept in the back of the company vehicle except for lunch.
For years, no one cared as long as you weren’t on your phone playing games or texting instead of working.
All of a sudden, they went crazy about this policy and started checking us when we left and returned to the shop. They also started coming out randomly to do “safety inspections.” They have been writing people up just for having their phones in their pockets.
It literally feels like a prison.
5. That’s not how word of mouth works!
She takes other employees’ words on who is a good or bad worker—but the ones who come running to her are natural complainers. She just believes them anyway.
The wrong people have been fired because of this.
6. Look busy! He’s here!
My boss just entering the building kills employee morale. He doesn’t seem to get that when working at a store, sometimes it gets slow and there is nothing to do.
Like, I’m a cashier and I’m not allowed to leave my cash register. All there is to do is check out customers and clean my general area. When both things are done, I have nothing to do. If he catches us just not doing anything he makes comments about how we are slacking off.
So when he walks in, everyone has to start cleaning the already clean workspace for like an hour until he leaves.
7. Cheap Over Chips
When I first got hired in a supermarket, the manager, who owned the store, told me in very bold terms not to steal candy and other things.
After a year or so, we went to a social event with our colleagues. The boss then collected all the used chips and tortilla chip bags. I later found out he sent them back to the supplier on the grounds that the bags had broken, so he could get new bags for free.
Jesus.
8. Expertise, or not…
I told the hiring manager that I was disappointed in one of his hires because he knew literally nothing about our job. I asked him, “Doesn’t that cheapen my knowledge and expertise?”
His response was, “Well, let’s be honest, your job doesn’t really need all that, does it?”
There were four other people my level with varying fields of expertise at that meeting and it got real quiet after that.
9. Going distraction-free
They banned phones, electronics, puzzles, books, etc. from being used at employees’ desks.
I work at a call center. We were expected to just sit and wait for the next call to come in “distraction-free,” even if it was a super slow day.
10. So clubby…
I worked at a club in Miami and the owner was out of his mind. When the housing market crashed, obviously people were spending far less going out, but he insisted we were all stealing. We had meetings once a week with all kinds of threats. Finally, he put in an automatic pouring system for $50,000.
It basically looks like you’re pouring drinks from a soda gun, super boring. The fun vibe and flair we had was totally gone, which made sales drop even more. He ripped the system out two weeks later.
11. No talking in the pub!
She actively tried to ban friendships. If co-workers became friendly, she would schedule them so they would never see each other. “You’re here to work! Not to socialize!”
She also banned everyone from coming into the workplace when they were not working.
It was a pub. She banned socializing in a pub.
12. The new vacation
They held a super positive, pep-rally-style meeting about how they were going to start combining our sick days with our vacation days. This was presented to us as a great thing since we could all now use our paid time off days fully as vacation days if we wanted to.
Once the system was implemented, everyone realized that instead of getting 10 vacation days and 10 sick days per year, we now all had 15 paid time off days.
Everyone was angry.
13. Fam restaurant
He had a big fight with his wife in front of everybody.
I don’t think you should run a restaurant with your family members unless you’re really solid with each other.
14. Clean the meat!
They got rid of their night cleaning crew the week after I started, so we had to learn how to clean the whole department on our own before closing shop. I work in a meat department, so this meant taking apart and cleaning two meat grinders plus a band saw that was covered with meat goop. Almost the whole department quit because of this, but I stuck around and got the hang of it.
After about three months though, they hired the cleaning crew back.
Now closing is a breeze.
15. Early Maternity Leave
They fired the girl who was in her third trimester of pregnancy three days before her maternity leave was going to start.
Yikes.
16. Two-By-Two
They started firing people by lining two employees up at a time and seeing which one they preferred to keep on. It didn’t matter if a person was there for twenty years or two. Also, the new managers who were in charge of the cuts had no knowledge of anything that the company did in terms of ethics, procedures, or employee status.
They turned the “clique” type environment into every person for themselves.
Very toxic.
I don’t know about you, but I would have quite immediately in a lot of these situations.
Ugh!