Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
bad bosses
I was thinking in the shower this morning (or, as I like to call it, My Thinkin' Place) about my past jobs...it seems like I've had more than my fair share of bad bosses:
There was the owner/cook at the Italian cafe who (loudly) verbally abused his staff in front of customers.
The retail manager who was THE most petty person I have ever met - when I resigned, she became ridiculous for the last week I worked, giving me the crappy hours and crappiest tasks, and even changing the music in the store (I'd mentioned in passing one day that I liked a particular song on the store CD - after I resigned, whenever that song came on, she would literally run over to the CD player to skip it...so petty!).
The office manager who ran the company like a high school: if you were in her clique you were treated well, and if not she would make your life miserable. She once told me in an official performance review that since I didn't come into the office with stories about what I did on the weekend, I must not have a social life and therefore I needed to get a hobby because not having a social life is lame (she wasn't joking, either). Or the time she threatened to fire me because I didn't hang out with her socially, which meant that I "wasn't fitting into the company culture" (whatever - I still didn't hang out with her). Another time, she gave me a great performance review one week, then the next week she called me into her office and proceeded to blame me for everything (and I do mean everything) that was wrong with the company and threaten to fire me if I didn't improve all of those things...and all off the record so she could deny it later on (I quit shortly after this). She also once sent a coworker home in tears after yelling at them about how much she hated their shoes (there was nothing wrong or unprofessional about the shoes) and forced them to go home and change. You couldn't go to anyone higher up because they were mostly absentee directors and believed everything she said anyway. She was a peach...
Anyone else have any bad boss stories?
Re: bad bosses
My worst job (and probably only the "bad" boss I have encountered) was when I worked retail at Nord. That girl was about my age and really immature. She wanted us to all get along, but at the same time she would do anything and everything in her power to "one up" us. Including stealing sales from us, and then would berate us (and write us up) for not making sales quota for the day/week. No one ever wanted to be scheduled with her.
I once called in sick (left a message) and she called me back to ask me what my symptoms were (that in itself is intrusive and strange) but she boasted to other employees that she just wanted to see if I was lying - I wasn't.
She would withhold our gratis (gifts from the merchants for selling a certain amount or number of their product, etc) was and was known to "misplace" some - we all knew she stole them from us.
Immature/crazy things she did - she lied about her husband's profession, her education, and her experience. All things we could care less about (since most of us were not career retail workers).
She would also hide things from other departments in our stock room until she could buy them - she was a shopaholic, probably to the extent that it was a problem.
All of my bosses have been really nice and I've gotten along with them all so no real horror stories from me. Although, when I was living in Japan, our big boss at the board of education was known for being a sort of difficult person to please. I remember one day he called in one of the other employees and YELLED at him for being a crappy employee. His office is connected to the bigger room we all had desks in so everyone heard everything he said. It was soooo bad and I felt so awful for the guy. He was a nice guy but he was a bit absent-minded and also was the new hire who had really really big shoes to fill. The poor guy just couldn't get used to the position and was relocated to another town the next year.
John and I had a bad experience with someone in one of the volunteer groups we used to be in. There's soooo much crap that happened but to sum it all up, she's a total control freak who can't really handle any sort of opposing opinion or constructive criticism. She's also the type of person who will smile at you while twisting a knife into your back. Yeah, we don't like her one bit.
When I first moved back home, I just took the first job that I came across. I worked at this tiny local business in accounting which I had never done before, but it was easy enough. It was the owner...he micro-managed everything. When we moved into a new buiding he had cameras installed over each of our monitors so he could watch what we were doing online and what was on our desk. We could hear the cameras moving around & zooming all of the time...it was unbelievable. And the IT guys told us he was having them install software to record all of our keystrokes so he knew exactly what we were typing. What was even creepier, he would just sit home & look at all of us working from his cameras. I never planned on staying there long term, but all of that survelliance definitely motivated me to find a better job!