Have you ever had a terrible boss? \ stacker news ~AskSN

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1040 sats \ 28 comments \ @stack_harder 29 Oct AskSN

Recently, my cousin was off work with 'stress', basically a mental health break because of some issues with a female boss at work.

It got me thinking about how bad could a (presumably) Karen-type boss really be? I mean, if I were being treated with disrespect etc, i'd tell them to fuck off and walk, because really, as a man, I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror if I allowed a situation like that to go on, or at least immediately start looking for a new job.

I mean, what's the worst a middle-aged woman is going to do to me?

Nonetheless, I have been fortunate to have never had a really terrible boss, but the closest I came to one was when i was working in broadcast media.

There was a horrible piece of shit woman producer who was getting paid over 5Gs a month to basically do nothing apart from criticize people doing the actual work (and this was 5gs in Moscow, in 2014, absolutely huge money for the time ). She'd be in the office, maybe a few times a week max.

One of the shows she oversaw was this book review type thing with interviews with authors, and the guy actually writing the show and doing the interviews was a mild-mannered, soft-spoken guy, the kindest soul you could imagine, and she would just fucking ream his ass in the office in front of everyone.

Call his work shit, berate him, and specifically, I remember she called him a stupid bearded bastard once, right there in the open-plan office (he had a goatee).

I had limited interactions with her since I was technically part of the London side of things, but she would sometimes listen to other reports and packages people submitted, and every now and then she'd find something to nitpick, like a mic pop or something.

Sometimes listening to her talk down to other people would make me so angry that I almost wanted her to say something so I could pop off.

Despite not having anything to do with her professionally, I was told that she had gone to the head of the station and specifically tried to get me fired, boasting 'Stack_Harder's job is hanging by a thread'. Of course, my actual boss had my back, but it was a lesson in the kind of nasty pieces of shit that float around out there.

How about you stackers? What kind of lunatics have you dealt with?

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192 sats \ 0 replies \ @freetx 29 Oct

Funny enough, my worst boss was female hardass....and my best boss was a male hardass.

They were both very similar in the sense that they expected long hours and high productivity. However there were some crucial differences.

Female Boss: Indecisive. Would flip-flop between decisions or simply not respond, any decision I made absent her input was then criticized - I should chosen the "other" solution. Her worst quality was that she made criticisms personal "you always do this...", "for as smart as you are you are sometimes really stupid...." etc. I have pretty thick skin so I wasn't too offended by that talk, however it makes you mentally click-off and you stop putting in the extra effort once you realize its a lose-lose game.
Male Boss: Had very high expectations and was very vocal in feedback. However, things were never personal, it was always "we shouldn't do that..." or "thats not the best idea for us in this case....". Lastly he was very decisive he made decisions and if they didn't work out he was upfront that it was a mistake and asked us how could we fix it. That transparency and willingness to take ownership of problems made everyone who worked for him willing to go extra mile to fix problems.

53 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 29 Oct

When I was a teenager I had a job at a retail store and my boss stole thousands of dollars and disappeared. He was never terrible to me though.

32 sats \ 1 reply \ @Hypno 8h

I had three terrible bosses at the same time, all partners in the company.

One guy? I had to spend hours wording messages so he couldn’t twist them against me. He’d dodge every question and then sabotage my team behind our backs.

Another one would just straight up lie. Not little white lies—big, obvious lies. When I’d call him on it, he'd threaten to fire me.

And the third? Thought we were friends. Turns out, he was trashing me to other people while acting all cool to my face. Found out through a mutual friend. Also, zero passion for the company, just there to collect a check and look important.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 6h

sounds extremely toxic, how long did you last there?

22 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 29 Oct

what's the worst a middle-aged woman is going to do to me?

I think I tend to have the same sort of mindset around work.

To some degree, you can only really have a horrible boss if you let them get to you. If you can be ok with the worst case scenario, then you don't have to be strongly emotionally impacted by whatever your boss says or does.

That said, I've never had a terrible boss. I've had incompetent bosses and bosses who didn't like me, but none who were just openly abusive or hostile.

53 sats \ 2 replies \ @TNStacker 29 Oct

I competed with a boss ( I was the interim director). He got the job. Then I trained him for a year. He would not learn major portions of his job description. One day, in a staff meeting I asked when he though he might assume the rest of his job description duties. He told me it was easier to ask me. I said, 'What a minute, you've been here a year and I'm doing 40% of your job description and you're not learning because it is easier to ask me!" He said, I didn't mean it like that. I asked how he meant it and he ended the meeting.

I was "laid off" 6 weeks later.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 21h

That sucks

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TNStacker 16h

It did.

53 sats \ 2 replies \ @plebpoet 29 Oct

A married couple were my horrible bosses. The wife said to my manager about me, "you can't be autistic and a bitch." Lol. You can. but I'm not.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 21h

Hey! I'm not autistic.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 23h

Autism is primarily male. Female autism is rare unless you are a transgender lunatic

14 sats \ 1 reply \ @BlokchainB 21h

5Gs a month to basically do nothing apart from criticize people doing the actual work (and this was 5gs in Moscow, in 2014,

LOL! Cost of living is cheap in Moscow?

I have had a lazy boss but never a bad one

159 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 10h

i think if you can deliver good results and be lazy, that's ok in a way, most of office life is optics anyway and how busy people seem

32 sats \ 2 replies \ @flat24 15h

Yes, I've had terrible bosses. And thanks to that, at a certain point in my life, more than ten years ago, I decided I wouldn't work for anyone, no matter what. The worst boss I ever had was an alcoholic. We never had any issues related to disrespect or insults, but there were problems with my pay, due to his endless parties and drinking. It happened twice, and the third time I couldn't take it anymore and I left. It turns out that because of his multiple families (he had two wives, and he also drank alcohol every weekend), he twice withheld my pay for the weekend, claiming "technical problems" (so to speak), until I realized the root of the problem was what I'd mentioned before. So, when it happened the third time, I said enough was enough! I waited for him to pay me and never went back.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @stack_harder OP 10h

amazing that such a wreck could manage to score one wife, let alone two!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @flat24 7h

It seems unbelievable, but I've honestly seen worse cases. And often, they managed to get good women. (Around here, they call them "women who don't appreciate quality.")

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 29 Oct

One of my first jobs was at a state agency in Massachusetts, being young I didn't realize how insane the director was until years after.

As you might expect I didn't last very long there.

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 29 Oct

I worked as a movie theater usher/concessions guy in high school. One of the assistant managers would occasionally steal from my till. The general manager, simpleminded but experimenting with metaphors, perhaps trying to get his point through to this cerebral kid, implied I was somehow a flesh eating bacteria that he'd chop off if he needed to.

After high school, I was a clerk at a grocery store chain that had a union. The threat of the union protected us from most top-down nonsense.

The only post-grad job I had was super hands off. I had great bosses/mentors there. One was an ex-bittorrent 10x eng kind of guy. The other was a math phd that modeled/invented their congestion control algorithms. I was left to myself after a year or so and reported to the cto/cofounder directly once every 6 months or so.

14 sats \ 1 reply \ @deluluwithjuju_ 19h

of course.

the belittling and backhanded like attitudes came from not only the boss, but from fellow coworkers who didn't even bother to be helpful the first week was humiliating. the supervisor above my boss (about the seasonal workers, which was me and a few others) even said, "can't wait to let these newbies go soon."

it was at this time going forward in my working life that no one can be your friend or be trusted in the workplace. even if they seem genuinely nice. people will do anything to get an upper hand, promotion, or more pay. they will chew you up and spit you out hoping you move on.

thankfully and gratefully, i'm in a much better and happier position now. but my god i probably would've been every day torture had i stayed in the day job world.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 10h

yeah, sometimes the cesspit of backbiting and boot licking is worse than a bad boss itself

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Signal312 2h

I came into a company to work on a project that my boss had done a lot of work on, previously. The work he had done was trash.

I thought and strategized with co-workers a LOT to try to figure out how to position my proposed changes. I was (I thought) so careful, so respectful, so understanding of how work done under time constraints is going to have some flaws, etc, etc.

All to no avail. The dude was a complete and utter a**hole, I got put on a PIP (performance improvement plan) after I proposed some changes. I ended up just leaving the company.

Leaving worked out well for me, thank goodness. But next time around, I will understand how (some) people react, even when you're specifically brought in to fix things.

84 sats \ 6 replies \ @SimpleStacker 29 Oct

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94 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 29 Oct

That sucks. I had a colleague scream at me in public once, to the point where one of my employees thought he was going to have to intervene physically.

The resolution process sucked and left me feeling pretty unvalued by the department. There were tons of witnesses and absolutely no question as to which of us was at fault, but they didn't take any action on my behalf. I left that job pretty soon after.

42 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker 29 Oct

was it an academic setting?

41 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 29 Oct

Yes. It was in front of other colleagues, students, and student workers who worked for me.

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 29 Oct

Was it a more senior faculty?

That's crazy though. I can't imagine getting that worked up over anything that happens inside an academic department.

41 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 29 Oct

It was someone older than me who had been there longer, but they were only an adjunct faculty member.

42 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 10h

yeah that sucks, if something does happen, you would at least expect to have your back covered during the resolution process, probably made the right call leaving