The ***hole bosses/foremen/supervisors you have/had thread!

[retrorussell]

Hey folks.

What horrible experiences have you had or currently have with absolute jerks for bosses, foremen or supervisors at work?  Present or past jobs?

I've had enough of them in my lifetime.. The previous one wanted to hound me over my job (though I was probably his best worker) and showed suspicion whenever I'd take a break, even if I wouldn't take much longer than 15 minutes for break/30 for lunch, if not exact time.  And I'd seen him screw around more times than I could count-- he'd come up to my ward just to chat with all the nurses.  I called him out for being an @$$ once or twice because I got tired of his s***.  Now he's gone, and I'm still here. :)  Any time he'd try to rip me a new one, there were so many things he'd done that I could get him in big trouble for.  I'd just smile back at him or laugh and that made him more p***ed. :)  The current regime is so much cooler.

I know that's really small potatoes compared to what some people here have had to suffer through with jerk bosses, but that guy still annoyed me.

Vent here over ones you have or used to have that were d*cks!

[ER]

Most of my bosses have been decent enough but I did have major problems with one a couple years ago, and it got so bad he even stalked me in here. The little stercore got sent to Kenya soon after and as much as I wish I could claim the credit, I had nothing to do with it.  Good riddance.

I had another boss fire me for age discrimination. I was thirteen and she thought I was older than that.

Maybe the story that takes the cake is that one of my bosses was sleeping with my mom, which is kind of unusual. (Luckily he was my dad.)

[chefzombie]

the absolute worst? a restaurant owner who told me i was making MY OWN RECIPE wrong. my revenge? i took MY recipe and left HIS behind. that dish left the menu with a quickness, lol!

[indianasmith]

When I worked at a local museum, our director (a sweet, funny lady I loved working for) resigned and was replaced by . . . well, maybe not the bride of Satan, but at least one of his in-laws.  She made the job such a living hell for me that I left two months into her tenure. The board fired her after less than a year on the job - and the guy she hired to take my slot later stole $20,000 from the Museum and absconded with it!

[sprite75]

I remember the one restaurant where the general manager was a real a***ole and we had to tiptoe around on eggshells sometimes cause of the moods he would get in.  He loved mind games and would get so worked up about the secret shopper scores.  After a while I just said f**k it - if I got fired because the place only scored 90% on a secret shopper evaluation it was not the end of the world.  I think most of the people at the place got to that point too, at which point he totally lost interest in that mind game.  

After I left there it took a while for me to get to the point at my next job where I wouldn't flinch when the general manager came by.  

I was a supervisor a couple times myself.  Was I perfect?  f**k no.  But I tried not to be a tyrant and I made it clear I would never ask anything of anyone I wasn't willing to do myself.

[Alex]

I had a boss who when I was suffering from depression was determined to have me kicked out. I had to work damn hard to prove to my intermediatory bosses that I was worth keeping around, which wasn't easy when I had everything else going on. I played the game though and had a whole list of mistakes he'd made during the process, that at worst would have meant the whole process would have been started again, and at best would have had him in serious trouble for not following the rules. When we were all down in London for a works trip we got trapped in an elevator. He panicked, pushed everyone else out the way and climbed over a civilian to get out when I and another guy were holding the doors open (and in the process knocked us to the side which meant the doors closed on everyone else). Anyway, he is currently doing a two-year tour of the Falkland isles and I am still around.

[Trevor]

When I started working here - 31 years ago!  - I had a boss who was that weird combination: very good at his job but an Ahole otherwise, i.e. he couldn't really work with subordinates.

He was teaching us film projection and I miscued switching on the projector and he hissed "Must I put p***y hairs on there so you don't miss it?" to me. I told him that he couldn't talk to me like that either in front of colleagues or alone at work and made an issue ofr it, even reporting him to his bosses.

He had to apologize to me in front of everyone. 

[zombie no.one]

my first job in a chinese restaurant, my boss was a total git.

one shift I accidentally picked up a boiling hot pan of rice, and he went ape-crap - not because I was in agony with my burning hands, but because the gloves I was wearing had melted onto the pan.

he would also stand directly behind me and stare at the back of my head when I was washing up at the end of each shift, and when I'd finished I'd turn around and he'd snarl stuff like "You do that faster next time, huh?".

£2.30 an hour!

[claws]

I've worked in a food discount store warehouse for 12 1/2 years. The pay was great (the only reason I stayed that long), the job wasn't too bad but our boss made everyone's life a living hell.
When I finally quit (my doc gave me two options: quit or send me to a psychiatrist) I was suffering from psychogenic pain, anxiety attacks, depression (with one suicide attempt), high blood pressure caused by stress and a f**ked up stomach. Not too bad considering some of my colleagues started drinking or taking meds to get through the day.

[bob]

f**king hell -- the boss I had when I worked at the worlds worst restaurant was a real piece of s**t

I kept getting called in on the days I have off  after moving permanights for with no reason

he was douche who kept yelling at people to get into this office

hated him

[Leah]

Weird one but last year I vacuumed out an attic for a homeowner so he can lay down some insulation in there. I asked for $550 when I finished and the guy's wife said no, they can't pay that. Well after some back and forth I got paid the amount, but stopped going there.

[zombie no.one]

did you agree on an amount before starting? that's usually the way to avoid disagreements!

I used to mow the lawn for an elderly couple who lived nearby. It was a massive lawn with loads of fiddly/tricky sections and depending on weather conditions could take me up to 5 hours to do. I only charged them £20 per mow (some would charge that per hour), but the lady (who was lovely) would keep forgetting to give it to me, and I was always felt too awkward to flat out ask her for it, lol...

[ER]

When I was nineteen I had an immediate supervisor in Boston who told us the story of when he was in his twenties and on the ground, on a radio, when Che Guevara was killed, and heard the entire thing as it happened. He said no one there particularly wanted Che dead, he was useful as a captive, but the order came down to let the Bolivians do what they wanted, which was gleefully shoot him for all the atrocities he did in their country.

Strange as it sounds, I did not know who Che Guevara was before he told that story, and things he told me about Che have left me with no patience for anyone misguided enough to think he was a good man, as he seems to have somehow become in popular myth.

Anyway, to keep with the topic here, this man was a good boss except he did one thing that made us all insane, and that was he would make us go watch him play golf. He said it was getting us out in the fresh air once a week but all we did was walked with him and he still made it a working day, quizzing us and telling us what he wanted from us. He was winding down his career and could get away with almost anything, and no one ever complained or tried to get out of following him around on the course, but it was so boring and made us feel like such brown nosing sycophants that no one liked it, and I don't think he cared one iota that we didn't.

[Allhallowsday]

I think I've been lucky and worked for a few cool people.  But I had this one boss who did nothing but pile work onto my department, never required anything from me, and never did anything for me.  I knew him from the place I'd worked at before... he was a SALESMAN.  He was my friend.  Then the company I had been working for hired him for a prestigious job which meant he pushed a couple sales and did nothing.  I never saw evidence of any work, though I do know I had more than one sticky customer issue to deal with he'd created.  I remember walking over to his office once and I could see he was playing Solitaire on his computer in his lovely empty office... because it was reflected in the window behind him.  As soon as I appeared VOOP!  the screen went black...  
I did like that ruddy Australian, but he was essentially a self serving windbag who frequently made an ass of himself.