Saturday, March 21, 2009

SNARK THIS - BOSSES


It's time to let it all out! Let's face it, life can be grueling and we all need a place to vent. We will try to do this weekly, so if you have any topic suggestions please let us know. This week, the topic is "Bosses". Is yours driving you crazy? Well now is your chance to say what you mean without the risk of getting a pink slip.

19 comments:

Anya@IW said...

I really can't complain. I have a great boss - very supportive and respectful of who I am and my strengths.

It's funny because we have very different personalities. One of the things we have going for us is we have worked together for going on six years. We have had some bumps along the road, but have come out with an appreciation for each other's strengths and areas where one of us is stronger than the other. We really work well together as a team. I know I am very lucky!

Now, I have had some more challenging bosses in the past, including one who made me cry on a weekly basis. I'll share more about this 'jewel' later. I want to hear what others have to say.

Breedings said...

I am a stay at home mom now but in the past I've had some of the worst bosses. I had one boss tell me I wrote too big in the chart, and she was VERY micromanaging. Ridiculous. Some bosses do not trust that you are able to do a job that THEY hired you for so they feel like they must stand over you and direct every path. This boss sure did and the job was EASY...maternity care coordinator. I basically visited pregnant women and showed them birthing tapes and made sure they had all the supplies they needed or resources they needed. It was a no-brainer but she was/is crazy. Other bosses I've had have been pretty normal except for the few OCD bosses but what are ya gonna do :). My boss now is a 10 month little girl :)

EveryoneLovesErin said...

My director is a tool. He's inept at running a business. This trickles down to my supervisor (who is overloaded and forced to run 2 departments) and us.

I am being forced to do jobs that are not in my job description. Grrr!

I am fighting mad this weekend as a lot of crap came down on Friday. Supervisor was beside herself because he pulled her into his office. I don't know exactly what he said to her but it came back that we needed to keep busting our asses because our department is in jeopardy.

This is my second rant on this subject, LOL! It's really pissing me off. Someone said on the news that economists are reporting that the recession could be over by the end of the year. Anyone who knows anything about finances think that's true?

Nina Bell said...

Quite a few years ago, I had a boss who had a real bad "gas" problem. We shared a door between our offices but it was always closed. He was also older and starting to get a little senile.

Anyway, when he had parents or visitors in his office and had the urge he would open the door between us and come into my office to relieve himself of his problem. The first time he did this, I just about passed out from laughing so hard. I got use to it and just knew when I heard the door opening to get up and leave for a few minutes.

Anonymous said...

I love my boss, really, but he is the biggest chauvinist. He trusts me to run his company because I started at the bottom and have proven myself time and again--otherwise it would be a man. I think he's also a little uncomfortable about my age(I was promoted to this position when I was 25, of course, he didn't know that.) It's not always easy to get the men in this industry to take you seriously when they have children your age.


Anyway, part of my job is to find and solve potential problems before they start, which I'm fairly good at. Problem is, when I find and point out these issues, he completely ignores me until it becomes a major problem, and then says "We should have dealt with this a long time ago." Knowing damn good and well that I tried. I've had men that worked under me point things out to him and they were fixed immediately. GRRR! It really drives me crazy. Why give me the job when you won't let me do it?


Nina, I am lmao! I think that might be a deal breaker for me! Why didn't he just go in the bathroom? lol

Ann said...

Nina,
Oh, gross! Lol!

NMD,
I have my head in the sand about the financial state of this country. I have stopped watching the news because it leaves me with a sick feeling...and I hate the blame game. I noticed some commercials giving a nod to the lousy economy by mentioning it in their ads, and I DO NOT like it. You are the first person I have heard/read who shared that optimistic news: the recession will be over? Please let it be true!

Bosses:
I can't rant about my supervisor. She trusts her employees to do their work and asks for suggestions/feedback. She's respectful to everyone she meets no matter what his status. And she gets her own job done.

Eileen said...

I have no complaints either, and all my bosses were always women. I don't work anymore but when I worked in a school as a teacher's aide the principal and the teachers were all so wonderful, it was like a family and a second home for me. And years and years ago, my very first boss was great too. I graduated high school on a Friday and the following Monday morning I started a job at McCall's Magazine working in the Advertising Department and I loved it from the moment I started, I would process orders in the morning and in the afternoons I would go across the hall to assist the Form Designer with the layout. The office was small (just three women and one man) and everyone was so nice and I learned a lot (although with computers now all those jobs are obsolete!). There were a few men bosses in other departments and some salesmen that were not very nice to female office workers at all, they would call and ask my boss if I could go 'fetch coffee for their meetings' and my boss would say NO! Sometimes if their assistants were out I would have to fill in and then I really learned to appreciate my boss. Just little nonsense things would irk me, like them standing right next to a box but asking me to go fetch it for them and follow them into their office with it. Or calling me into their office to hand them something that was just out of their reach on their desk. I was not used to that at all, my boss was so good to me and treated me as an equal (and I was only eighteen at the time!).
So I've been very lucky in that way.

Nina Bell said...

Fanny,

Too far away, although the front door was not too far away. Some of it was laziness on his part and some of it was that he was old and just didn't care what people thought about him. We actually got a long well and he was very fair, so I just considered that a minor inconvenience.

Anonymous said...

I worked at a mental health clinic and I've had some bosses who were hard to distinguish from the clients.

*One supervisor who was such a hoarder that her car was brimming up to the interior ceiling with fast food bags and other trash . . . so much so that the only empty space was her driving seat.

*Another supervisor who threw stacks of paper at people when she'd get angry.

*Another supervisor who wore the same clothes for days in a row. We thought she slept in her office.

*Another supervisor who'd get angry and throw items in his office when he'd get into telephone arguments with his wife.

==================

On a lighter note, I had a boss who had his morning "constitutional" every day at 10:30 a.m. He'd grab his Wall Street Journal and stick it under his arm. Then he'd peak his head around the corner to announce, "Hold my calls for the next 20 minutes or so."

Why is it that a man can have a BM anywhere, announce it, and not feel the least bit of embarrassment?

marci said...

LOL!!!

Nina, that story is hilarious!

Linda, yours as well!!

Isn't it grand when we get to deal with male "internal issues" at work as well as at home??? :)


I've got nothing to bitch about on this subject. I'm my own boss. Needless to say, I'm glad I only have my own hormonal swings, emotional outbursts and bitchiness to deal with. ;)

Anonymous said...

Why is it that a man can have a BM anywhere, announce it, and not feel the least bit of embarrassment?


Same reason Nina's boss came to her office to, um, pass gas? They just don't care. That is a mental picture that I just do not need.
Can you imagine if women were to act that way? lol

EveryoneLovesErin said...

Linda,
OMG!! Remind me not to EVER work at that clinic.

Mental Health people can be SOOOO weird! I always tell people who are looking for a therapist to be careful! Some "therapists" should be barred from human contact, LOL!

Mom said...

Well, I'm not pissed at my boss, but I am pissed at the corporate office's head honchos who have decided to cut every employee (there are about 1000 across the country) salary. Mine is getting slashed almost 8%!

What kills me the most is that the company has a crapload of businesses that AREN'T making money and those that ARE MAKING LOTS of money for them have to pay the price.

I consider myself a bargain for them, too because I only work 30 hours a week (versus 40), am salaried (cannot get overtime) and do not use their benefits (on my husband's plan).

Rant done.

Samantha@IW said...

I used to have a boss with the emotional maturity of a 13 year old girl. She was nicee the to everyone's face and the minute they walked away she would turn to me and make some bitchy remark: always about something stupid, hair, clothing, the sound of their voice etc....

I worked tues-sat 11am-8pm, she worked m-f 8-5. She used to call me on Sunday nights at 10 pm to tell me to go in for her on monday bc she was "too tired". It got to the point that I had to flat refuse.

When I was dating my now husband, she used to beg me not to get engaged, marry him, and "run off and leave her"- seriously we had this discussion daily. Anyway, there came a point that I couldnt WAIT to "run off and leave her".

Anonymous said...

I hated being a "boss" 7 yrs ago and having to let someone go that worked hard (even if not too perfectly) because my manager just didn't like her. It has bugged me to this day.

Never want to be a boss again. Just like my freelancing writing and newsletter work. All my reporter friends and editors are being laid off.

One of the partners at my husband's firm brings client files to review in the bathroom. EWWWW!!!!

Kel said...

My current boss is pretty darn awesome compared to the guy who threw an impression material gun at me! (It looks like a small caulking gun)

Anya@IW said...

Wow. Some of these stories are just crazy. Mine are pretty pedestrian:

-I had a boss who tried to get me to help him hide work whenever backlog reports were due.

-I had a boss who used to get in screaming fights with his (then) spouse on the telephone when my desk was right outside his office. It never seemed to occur to him to close the door.

-I had a (former) boss who was going through a painful divorce. His current secretary and I became his defacto therapists. I found out later that he was considering me to be his future Mrs. Eewww.

-One of my co-workers who wasn't technically a boss, but was superior to me, used his limited knowledge of Human Resources (in the 3 or so years he had been in the job) to play all sorts of games. He was constantly going on leave for ridiculous reasons and filed a workers' comp. "stress" claim, which is about as lame as you can get, in my opinion.

-The worst boss I had only lasted 8 months. He antagonized everyone and caused the best employee in our department to quit. I almost didn't make it. He was a yeller and a blamer and as arrogant as they come. I am thankful to say I have never run into anyone as awful as him again.

Guinevere said...

I've had comparatively good luck with bosses, I think. No really evil ones. Most of my "boss stories" have to do with the personal drama in their lives that I was witness to:

Boss #1 and I kind of developed an unspoken contempt for each other over the years. She and I were very different and I think our differences probably just wore on us. This did not keep her from sharing every detail of her personal life with me. When she was going through her divorce with husband #2, I heard about it. When she got involved with a married man, I heard about it (actually, she took a while to tell me, and the thought bubble over my head could have read "no duh" when she finally did - she was not good at discretion). When her daughter had an abortion, I heard about it. When she tried to break up with married boyfriend and had a one-night stand with a blind date, I heard about it. When she got back together with married man and found out he was cheating on HER...well, you get the story (they later married, BTW).

Boss #2 seemed relatively drama-free for most of our time working together...at least until the end. Her behavior got really erratic, and I was about 99% sure that she had started using drugs again and was having an affair with a musician she'd met while her husband and son were away visiting family for the summer. Unlike boss #1, she never copped to anything, but there was enough evidence for me to be sure that SOMETHING was going on. I came into the office one day and the blinds were all shut; I'd left after dark the night before (and she'd still been there), and I could not imagine WHY she would've shut the blinds after dark...I tried not to think about THAT one too hard.

My last boss was also a good friend, though we tended to get along better as friends than as co-workers - she was incredibly neurotic about work and would get on my nerves SO MUCH when we had to work on a project together.

I don't think I could stand to work for an abusive boss. I would be a nervous wreck after a couple of days of getting yelled at.

Anonymous said...

The only complaints I have about my boss is that we are not allowed to sit or take a break during the day. I work from 9:30am-6:30pm (retail) and even at lunch, we have to stand up at the counter eating it (and keep working while doing so). My body aches so much every night, I can hardly bear it. Also, you never hear, "Good job", you only hear what's wrong, even though I think we all do a great job. She's a control and clean-obsessive freak, we have to be cleaning every second we aren't waiting on a customer.

Other than that............. (lol)