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My worst boss was my first boss. I worked in the kitchen of a banquet hall as a dishwasher and the environment was awful, as you might suspect. It didn't make it any easier when your boss was a 300 lb woman with the temper of a bull and the sweat glands of a swine. The ironic part is, I think she liked me. The environment was very high stress and she was an extremely bossy and temperamental person.
My current boss is a nice guy, but his major downfall is that he ignores his subordinates. As I've posted on here before, I haven't had a performance review since I started a year and a half ago. This is extremely frustrating for someone looking to advance in their career. On the other hand, some older folks may really enjoy his hands-off management style, so I guess it's all relative.
I can tell you about one. She ran a daycare/school from her house. The house smelled like cigarette smoke because she and her daughter were both chain smokers.
Occasionally they'd freak out and clean with pure ammonia. I would go home with terrible headaches. I wondered if the kids did, too. They had 2 dogs roaming around (non-too clean dogs). The house was just old and creepy and dirty.
The woman dressed like a man/had short man hair. Couldn't string a coherent sentence together but she was wily like a fox and must have made some money as the 'director' of the school.
The daughter was a poor teacher w/no credentials. Her mom just gave her a job. They'd gossip for hours and the daughter got to teach the smartest/oldest kids in the school (apart from kindergarten).
The worst part, however, was the weekly begging for the paycheck. I'd start around noon and ask her where is my check and she'd say in a minute yet it would be nearly leaving time, 4 hours later before I got my check. Power thing.
The good part is mainly she left me alone and never hassled me about my teaching or class. I had 100% control (except for topic which we had to teach each week).
Maybe I will post about another boss who was a manic depressive and you never knew if the good Maria or the bad Maria was coming in that day.
My worst boss was a woman who I suspect was a narcissist. I worked in an legal department and I was her assistant for seven long years. This woman was a professional "mother" to everyone she came in contact with. Her children in their late twenties and thirties called into the main office line several times a week (when I gave notice she promptly instructed them to call her on her cellphone - why she didn't do this in the beginning, I suppose she liked the formality of being able to pick and choose whether she talked to them or not), plus other relatives.
She had a doll baby, breathless voice. No matter how many times I told her I did not want to talk about my personal life or health, she relentlessly asked me about my family and told me about my female health "and what was going to happen to me later in life." (No matter that my mother was still living and quite capable of telling me about her own personal female history.) My boss lived in a famous movie star enclave (because her father was a semi-famous lawyer and her mother was a d-list actress) and told everyone about it that she came in contact with.
She had no faith in me completing assignments and watched me like a hawk.
She carried a huge bag in addition to her own purse and had a variety of vitamins and supplements in it and was always suggesting to some unsuspecting person from another department that they needed this or that supplement in their diet. She worked out three times a week and had the energy of a teenager. She NEVER stopped moving or talking in the office.
The last few years were spent enduring her menopause and that of another woman in our department. Each one would come every morning and check with the other one to see whether each had gotten a full night's sleep. The hot flashes. The lack of memory (and then she accused me of starting to lose my memory). Everything that happened to her she began to project on to me. My mother said to me,"You tell her I've had a great night's sleep all the way through menopause." I could go on and on...
I went to see a psychologist through our Employee Assistance Program to find out if I was really so helpless, dumb, and incapable as she kept telling me I was...my self-esteem was in the toilet. When I gave my two-week notice to her she got instantly angry and said,"How could you do this to me?"
When I started my new job, I had such post-traumatic-stress-disorder from working with her and her weird quirky habits that it was three months before I finally relaxed and realized she couldn't get in the building beyond the security guards and come and take me back.
As my husband says...never trust a woman who carries one of those huge, over-sized purses.
I have had some GREAT bosses and some AWFUL bosses. I've learned a lot from both.
My WORST boss used intimidation and fear tactics to manage people. He was demeaning to everyone around him with the exception of a few pets. Originally there was a middle manager between that boss and my position. That middle manager was fantastic and made it one of the best jobs I had ever had. However, the mean head man eventually wore down the middle manager. Once she left, the new manager had a "every man for himself" style that left me exposed to the head exec. Almost overnight my best job ever went turned into a nightmare.
I did the best I could to adapt to the changing work environment. But eventually I came to the conclusion that no self respecting adult would allow themselves to be treated that way. I found another job and left.
The hard part was seeing people who had been there 10+ years be treated so poorly, knowing they had few other options. I had the freedom to leave because my husband was primary wage earner and had the insurance we needed for our family, making it ok for me to take a substantial pay cut. We talked it over and decided the stress of that job simply was not worth the extra income. For people who had to stick it out is was a miserable situation.
My worst boss was also my best boss, when things were going great.
Long story short, we were best friends while he was my boss. He'd come to me before making any management decisions and we hung out nearly 24/7 outside of work.
I learned not to EVER include your personal life in your professional life. Our friendship came back to bite me later...
I had a couple of "worst" bosses. They were the ones who didn't realize that they only succeeded because their teams were successful. As soon as they forgot that, their teams recognized it and underperformed accordingly.
I work in an office. Not surprisingly, most people get here between 8 and 9 AM, and leave between 5 and 6 PM.
This morning I arrived at 6:30 AM because I dropped a friend off at DFW airport at 5:45 and decided to go to the office rather than go home for a short period of time.
When I arrived, I sent my boss an e-mail and then did personal stuff until 8 AM. When she got in and saw the timestamp, she demanded to know why I had not being doing work for the last hour and a half.
Lesson of the day -- don't bother sending her an e-mail until the work day officially begins.
Every single day at this horrible job is another "lesson" on how I can't do anything right. Every single day I make notes on what she does, so that if the day comes that boss and I and HR have a meeting (if I don't resign first, but I need another job to do that), I will have plenty of documentation on her daily barrage of insults. She is a horrible manager and should be shown the door. A cat could do a better job of managing people than her.
I've been lucky to have had pretty good bosses with respect to work and management and all that. (Of course, I also tend to be fairly flexible and easygoing, so that tends to form my perspective.)
My worst boss was obviously sexist, agist, and lookist...possibly racist as well, although that one wasn't as noticeable.
But what I remember the most about this guy is that he was CONSTANTLY adjusting his nuts...no matter who was around or where he was. (And probably 90% of his staff was female, so it was inappropriate on SOOOO many levels.) The other thing he did was pick his nose...with his thumb and forefinger! He'd be heading up a staff meeting and be up there at the head of the room, adjusting his crotch and picking his nose while we women are sitting there trying to appear impassive, acting as if we didn't notice anything.
He seemed completely unaware of it. I'm sure it was just a nervous gesture or something. And he wasn't an "uncouth" guy -- evidence notwithstanding! He was a graduate of the US Naval Academy and a former naval aviator, and he came from a family of some means. So it's not like he "just didn't know better" or whatever. It wasn't quite "harrassment" -- not for me, anyway. It was just laughable and pathetic.
Location: The Chatterdome in La La Land, CaliFUNia
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I once had a manager who I did not report to directly but he was still in authority over me. He took a dislike to me and my hearing impairment (which never affected my job). Once I asked him to repeat something (he has a heavy accent) and he yelled at me to "fix my f***ing hearing!" He also gave me two weeks to "fix my hearing" or else he'd have to let me go. That was my first real job out of college and shook my confidence up greatly. When I left that small company for a major employer, I was tense and nervous my first few months but gradually regained my confidence as this job required heavy public contact. All of my jobs have had heavy public contact and I've been able to function just fine even with my mild hearing impairment.
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