FRIDAY

I once worked for a boss who went insane. He started out as a pretty normal person - actually, a little better than normal. He had a sense of humor, talked about funny things that he experienced in life, showed me how to do some useful computer stuff, and stayed out of the way of getting things done around the office. But then our company got bought out by another bigger company, and his work pressure increased (as did everyone's). He steadily transformed from normal to semi-weird.

Suddenly he started hiding out in his office with the door closed. When he emerged, he attempted to make conversation, but seemed really angry about something all the time and unable to talk about anything casual for longer than 20 seconds. He became obsessed with perfecting some stupid database thing that he created that, to my knowledge, no one had asked him to do. When new management came in and asked that he stop doing database work and get back to the business of accounting, he suddenly freaked out.

My once normal boss stopped eating, decided that sleep was optional, and apparently forgot how to change his clothes, comb his hair, tie his shoes, or how to talk. Conversations with him went, "Hey [his first name], I need to talk to you about such and such." And he'd reply with something that sounded like a grunt but with a look that implied, "If you're going to FORCE me into talking about this, then WHY DON'T YOU JUST DIE OR SOMETHING???"

He eventually put in his two-week resignation. And two days after he did, he got this hugely massive eye infection-thing. At the same time, wouldn't you know it, but he miraculously transformed himself back into the pretty normal boss he used to be. He even took pictures of his eye, passed them around the office, and made jokes about it.

I don't know whether to feel sorry for the guy or feel sorry for us for putting up with him.

Worked for a company for close to 15 years. During that time, I had 13 bosses, all hired from outside the firm. I had, and still have, a very seriously ill daughter. The day I met the 13th boss, he walked up to me and said, "I understand that you have a sick kid." I replied that I did. He then said, "Don't let it affect your work," and walked away. I was laid off 6 months later by my self-insured employer, and replaced by a younger guy, with a healthy family within a month.

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And Boss from Hell, except its not really a boss from Hell its more like a
drunk boss:
So drunk boss story:

Well back when I worked at this convenience store the manager there was a
total boozer, now when he was it work it didn't always show but you could
often see a sign or two. How do i know? Well lets just say a coworker was
cleaning out the staff bathroom and found a one of those flask bottle in the
tank of the toilet and it had booze it in obviously. Also when you called
him once he left work, especially at his home, he sounded so wasted its not
even funny. Sometimes we had problems with the machines or counting tills so
we would call to ask him a question and yeah he didn't sound like his work
self. He sounded different from when he came into work and was focused on
getting things done, instead he sounded really friendly and was slurring,
hmm nice, NOT. Often he came into work hung over because he always
complained of headaches and aches or stomache problems, well that often
comes when you drink alot and its in your system. Now don't get me wrong he
wasn't a bad person, he was quite nice and a good manager outside of the
drinking issue. I'm just surprised that no one oustide of the employess ever
mentioned it, like the bosses never said a word even though it was kind of
obvious.

-JH

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TWO BAD EMPLOYEE STORIES TOO!

Oh my God, I hired this person who was such an Hall-of-Famer bad
employee it was just ridiculous. I was working as an associate at this
big law firm that did mainly high-volume insurance defense work. I
shared an assistant with my friend S., and when our assistant went out
on maternity leave and never returned, we launched this huge search for
just the right person. We interviewed about a dozen people, and all
during the interviews we really laid it on thick about how our assistant
would have to know all the filing and service procedures, fees, etc.
etc. right off the bat because we didn't have time to teach it to them.
Truth was, we didn't know that stuff ourselves, and needed someone to do
it for us. Anyway, that's what assistants are for. We scared off a
good number of candidates just by being hardasses during the
interviews. We settled on this woman named K. who swore she knew
everything, plus she had worked at another local law firm which was
known for doing the same type of work as ours, so we thought she was a
safe bet as someone who could handle the work of being the sole
assistant to two very high-strung and stressed-out lawyers. As it
turned out, K. didn't even know how to turn on a computer, much less how
to file and serve legal papers. Ugh! She didn't know how to format a
business letter--how is that possible? I started formatting and
printing the letters onto letterhead by myself, and then she didn't know
what to do with them--apparently, putting a piece of paper into an
envelope, with an address and sufficient postage on it, is a skill she
hadn't been taught at her previous job. She also couldn't fill out a
subpoena. She couldn't fill out a FedEx label. Then she put the FedEx
packages in the mailbox and was just mystified when they got returned.
She didn't know how to answer the phone. After a few days of heavy
training, she managed to answer the phone, but cut off everyone she
tried to transfer. She couldn't get the filing right even though S. and
I both marked every piece of paper with the name of the file it was
supposed to go in. She couldn't work the copier or the fax machine. I
asked her to copy something out of a book and she actually broke the
glass on the copier by trying to close the lid while the book was on the
glass. (The broken copier glass episode was actually kind of impressive
in a demented way, since slamming a copier lid that hard actually takes
a lot of effort!) S. and I almost had nervous breakdowns in the first
week of trying to work with this woman. I figured that since I was the
dope who hired her, I would just have to suck it up and fire her, and so
I told my boss, the partner who was in charge of our office, that's what
I was going to do. He told me not to worry about it, he'd take care of
it. Cool! Actually, not: he reassigned K. to another associate he
didn't like, and gave that associate's assistant, who was perfectly good
and competent, to S. and me. You can imagine how well that went over.
K. only lasted another couple of weeks before she quit. My unpopularity
among associates at that firm lasted quite a bit longer . . . until I
quit a year and a half later, and took S. with me to another firm.

Whew! That was ages ago and I still get all wound up just thinking
about it. Thanks for letting me vent, and keep up the good work with
the site. Give Roscoe my love!

Carrie

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Hey Todd,
I once had a job at a small, privately owned, auto-parts shop; while there I was given the task of training a new cashier, simple enough I thought. The guy comes in and is like 15 years old, tops, I was like " What am I a babysitter?". Everything goes well the first day, but when the second day came around I found something out about this new trainee, he is like total piro! He was burning everything, right there on the front counter. He burnt pens and pencils, catalogs, and even hand sanitizer (which actually looked kind of cool when it burned). At first it was kind of funny, until he made a big mistake. He took this chemical tool cleaner, put a drop on the table, and lit it. It went up in a flash! The thing burnt for a good five minutes before we started getting worried. It was just sitting there, burning a whole in our counter, with a good 3-inch flame. So we tried to put it out, another mistake. We throw a big ol' thick catalog an top of kit, and it seemed to work, for like 10 seconds before the flame popped up right through the middle of the catalog. So we got water, another mistake, the water spread the chemical cleaner and now fire was everywhere, luckily one of the machine shop guys had noticed by then and had brought over some oil cleaning powder and dumped it all over the fire to put it out. The worst part about the story, the little shi tzu who I was training blamed the whole thing on me! Needless to say, I don’t have a job anymore =(.

Christian S.

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