Stupidest bollockings you’ve had at work?

[TimeAtTheBar]

I got called into a meeting with my bosses boss yesterday to address a complaint from a member of my team that I had disappeared off for half an hour last weekend.

…I took just half an hour of my one hour paid break and left another manager in charge.

Apart from the fact I am SO DONE with this particular job, this could have easily been resolved without a face to face meeting which I found intimidating and overkill.

To make me feel better, tell me about your stupid or unfair bollockings please; because I am still raging about it a day later.

When I was 16 I was the Sunday tea girl in a care home. I got told off for chatting to the residents. I was often the first person they'd seen that morning and they were lovely. I was told to take the tea in, say good morning and leave 😥

I got told off for absence when I'd been hospitalised on oxygen with pneumonia. Someone else had pneumonia not long before me and they got send a card and flowers. I left not long after...

As a trainee working into the wee small hours, I was asked to move my supervising partner’s massive BMW to a closer car park because he was too busy and important. I couldn’t even afford a car at the time and had certainly never driven a shiny executive one. It made a terrible beeping noise the whole time I drove it. I mentioned it to dickhead partner and he yelled at me that it was the handbrake and he’d take the cost of a new one out of my wages. I was earning £15k pa at the time and he was an equity partner. He’s still a cunt, apparently.

well known household brand. They spend thousands and hundreds of hours on training for building rapport, basically if a customer likes you, identifies with you you can flog them all the extras.

I do not know what id don’t to piss off the training manager but after months of meeting targets they listen to 1 call and failed me on everything. Customer was retired, wanted to chat, wasn’t short of money but wanted to feel he got a bargain. I had been building rapport by keeping up a running gag where he complains he has a tough life and I was agreeing. So he’d say “my wife insists I eat organic vegetables and drink plenty of water” and I’d say “that’s terrible, I bet she makes you get some exercise , she must want you to live to a ripe old age or something”. It’s not Shakespeare but you get the idea. He gets round to his grandchildren (who he clearly adores). “I can’t have them missing out so if we go to Toys R Us to get the lasted plastic nonsense “ I said “honestly there’s children their age working full time jobs but your 2 are larking about with grandad”. He laughed, told me all about their lives, bought a couple of things, and said he had great service.

what did I get pulled for. I had given the impression that the company condoned child labour when in fact they were dead against it. I actually said nothing because I was waiting for the punch line. Considering 1/2 my colleagues talked about ‘fit birds’ and whatever football rivalries with customers I thought I was fair bland.

I was in the senior Comms role at a company run by a couple of batshit crazy women, CE & her sidekick Ops Dir, who were an absolute nightmare to work for. I booked our regular photographer to record the installation of a solar pv roof at our head office building, to be used to accompany an article in the in-house magazine. I was absolutely bollocked for having the photographer on site on a day when CE hadn’t had her hair done. She wasn’t in the photos, she was never meant to be in the photos, they were of the roof and exterior of the building. Apparently, according to Ops Dir, who hissed and growled at me, CE was too angry to talk to me about it; she was embarrassed that the photographer saw her in the car park without her hair done, and I needed to understand the gravity of the situation. Utterly batshit. Her hair was like a helmet and looked the same every day. I resigned shortly afterwards.

Yesterday while WFH my colleague sent me a chat asking "Can we talk?"
I was busy with something and didn't reply straightaway.
6 min later she sent "Huh?"
About 1 min later I call her, she doesn't reply and calls me back 10 min later to say "You ARE working today, aren't you? It's not your DAY OFF, isn't it? Oh, so you ARE working after all. I see".

Micromanaging at its best.

Forgot to mention that the same (older) colleague keeps pushing tasks of a younger colleague onto me because he doesn't want to do them ("What to do, I can ask 'younger colleague' to do X, but he's so slow and won't do it in time, so I'll have to ask for your help anyway. You are outstanding, your performance is brilliant, I believe in you! So yeah do X today or else").
Age is relevant here because at Japanese workplaces your position is determined by your age. I'm pretty sure she won't dare push tasks of a younger colleague on me if I was Japanese!

Got hauled into the office for taking a week sick leave. Apparently I'd let my students Down for being out. Not sure why a substitute teacher hadn't been appointed in my absence. I was out as I died on the operating table during emergency surgery and had to be resuscitated. I should have been out a month at least. Manager knew this.

In the early 90s I was a student nurse. The ward manager in the placement I was in was completely cracked. The ward had a payphone booth and the linen press was next to it. She took a dislike to one of the patients. This patient went into the booth to make a call. The ward manager shoved me into the linen press, told me to put my ear to the wall, listen to the conversation and shut the press doors. I was knly 18and terrified of her so I attempted to do as I was told. When I couldn't relay the full conversation she went mad and docked marks off my clinical placement assessment. She also said I was a good and efficient worker but she disliked my personality!

My first job, fresh out of uni, less than 3 months in and my line manager asked me to arrange a meeting with potential clients who had got in touch via email.

I emailed back cc’ing in my line manager and the deputy CEO, as was company policy confirming a date and time. Meeting went ahead. I took the minutes and sent them round the team.

A few minutes later I received an angry phone call from the deputy CEO who was on annual leave in France at the time. She was shouting down the phone at me, calling me all sorts and claiming to have no idea the meeting had been set up.

I was flabbergasted and decided to quit then and there. So glad I did. I literally did nothing wrong and didn’t deserve to be spoken to like that although it left me very shaken.

Receive a phone call from daughter's school saying she hasn't turned up and I/we haven't called to let the school know. Daughter left that morning to go to school and she wasn't one to skive off, so I phone her. She answers and says yes, she's in the classroom but no teach has turned up to take the roll.

I phone the school back, tell them the situation - then get told off for phoning daughter when she's in the classroom!

The photocopier developed a weird fault where it showed that copying 1 sheet was supposedly about 1000 sheets. Only on the 2 new teachers budgets. Got hauled in and given a thorough dressing down for copying something like 180000 sheets over a half term. We went away feeling a bit horrified, then did a couple of sums, went back to this dick of an HoD and said no way have we done that...they then realised the issue after talking to the IT team. No apology, nothing.

So many stupid ones from various stable yards I worked on...

Screamed at in front of yard clients, other yard staff and students because...

I was walking back from the barn with 3 full haynets, not four. We were supposed to collect nets, and then take them to the barn then bring them back four at a time, soaked (no more than 4 as that was too heavy, couldn't use a wheely for I forget why reasons!)...

I had done all mine and only had three left because one horse was away at the vet hospital.

Apparently I wasn't to talk back to her and she wasn't interested in excuses.

Different yard - day one 'fetch in the chestnut mare in the top field'... chestnut mare standing at the gate so duly fetched.

'Are you BLOODY STUPID, THIS IS THE WRONG MARE...'

How I am to know that there are two chestnut mares in the field, and one is hiding with her gelding buddy under the trees in a blind spot... I do not know! They were both 16hh ish TB chestnut mares too, same shade, same white sock (ish one was about an inch higher than the other), same SIRE so half sisters... so even if they'd been stood together I'd have not known which she meant.

Horrible yard where I stayed only a month, because it was run by a brother and sister who basically hated each other but couldn't afford their own seperate yard, and had to share the one mummy and daddy owned or get real jobs...

So he'd give you one instruction and she'd give you an opposite one, and if anyone were to be in the wrong it would be the lowliest staff member.

I had no idea because I was interviewed and taken on by the yard manager who seemed nice... but was rarely there because they were the travelling person so they were often away.

Spent a week feeding one horse a particular combination of feeds, then boss A goes off to somewhere to buy horses and boss B comes back and rips shreds off me for feeding that combination and suggest some other combination...

Pass on shoeing details to the farrier, given by B and then after the fact A rips shreds off me because she wanted something different doing...

I found out VERY quickly why they had such a high staff turn over!

Had a manager shout at me because he didn't agree with the route I took to a 999 call.
He told me I should have gone down "smith street" as it was shorter.....ah yes, that's the road with the 7' bridge....in my 10' high ambulance......🤣🤣🤣

Working in accounts for the head office of a franchise company, I didn't get a bollocking but I did get loads of rude/arsey behaviour and was shown the middle finger by the company director - for handing in my notice after he tried to force me to embezzle the franchisees money. He did this anyway despite me and the company folded 8 months later..

OP that is outrageous, I hope you told them where to go!

I had a bollocking for being routinely late to a creative agency I worked at. I did flexitime so started at 10am, which was allowed (any time between 8am and 10am was the window).

My boss said it "physically hurt his feelings" when I would start at 10 😵‍💫

Oh and they sent out a daily toilet times email out to the entire floor with a chart of who had the most time on the toilet.
They had medical papers showing I had Issues but that didn't stop the daily humiliation of being in the top 3 daily having taken 3.30 minutes toilet break. The stress really didn't help.
dicks!

Handed in notice to senior management who told me not to say anything to my team or to the manager of the department as he would do this directly. He didn't say anything and neither did I until it got so close to my leaving day that I had to say it to the department manager who then told me that she'd known all along and had been waiting for me to tell her. Told her senior management had told me they would tell her themselves. I don't think she ever believed me. That happened a long time ago and still annoys me when I think about it.

Worked in a large organisation one afternoon when it was snowing and public transport was running at a standstill. I was heavily pregnant and so was one of my colleagues. My colleague was told to go home early so she wouldn't be hours on public transport. I turned off my computer to leave too and was asked where I was going. I replied that I was going home too like my colleague and was told that I couldn't leave, that only pregnant colleague could. I don't think I've ever despised anyone as much as that little manager that day.

I’d arranged a whole day offsite for 40 of us for a few weeks back on the Tuesday it was predicted to reach 40 degrees (and it did)
All of slt bar one were on leave the Friday before so cc’ing in the one who was in having spoken to her on the phone moments before I contacted the venues to postpone etc. saving us thousands and sending suggested wording to the one working slt to let everyone know.
Crikey I’m bored writing this 😂
Working staff member didn’t notify staff but rearranged it all and was then frustrated on Monday when venues cancelled because of her wasted Friday afternoon.
I was later reprimanded for going over her head- making the right decision, saving thousands.

I was on a contract in the most unfriendly office .
I was bollocked for being too loud on my phone- I never once made a phone call, but the guy across from me (I am female, so v different voices) was on his mobile the whole time.
My leaving early was brought up constantly- my contract ended at 3pm!
no surprises that I chose not to renew.

And I was told off in my current job for putting in a whole word in an address from an application form when the person had only written Dr (instead of Drive). So from now on if someone spells Birmingham as Brimingham, that is what I write. Exactly as on the scanned forms. I have been told I am not paid to think.

Hope you’re in a different time zone and not awake worrying about work

In my very early 20's and went to work in the Sydney company office where my Dad drove a truck, long standing employee (may not have anything to do with it, but part of the conversation).

I was based in accounts and reception and learning the computer programming system, which I thoroughly enjoyed and all was going well.

As the location was remote, my immediate supervisor Jenny in accounts (also union delegate) and I went to the nearest town during our lunch break to pick up a pre-ordered chinese takeaway which we did every couple of weeks to take back to work.

I stayed in the car while she went in, she came back with the order but said the (married) general manager Claude was inside dining with the telephone cleaner (we had someone specify clean our telephones once a month or so and this is years ago).

I thought he was a slack pr...k but went about my work as per normal and kept my mouth shut about it.

Not long afterwards I had a couple of sick days off from work with the flu, and when I came back, my belongings from reception had been removed, and someone else's there.

I went upstairs to my desk in the accounts section, Claude went into the Accountants office (Keith) where they both kept looking back in my direction, and then I was called in and dismissed from my job.,,,

For being too loud.

As Jenny was my union delegate, I called her in. She pointed out I had never been disciplined for any reason and this was against union policy etc etc with no effect. She contacted her Union rep after I left the site and her contact called me after speaking with Claude and said it was all my fault... poor Jenny called me and said she was shocked that there was nothing she could do.

After that, my computer supervisor told Dad there was no reason for them to dismiss me and apparently she went in and took a piece out of Claude.

I told Dad about Claude having lunch with the cleaner, and he made sure that went back to the supervisor and his driving counterparts...

My printer needs to take me to a tribunal 😂😂😂😂😂

Indeed. I wasn't too keen on her tbh so let her ramble before telling her. I think she was really disappointed 😆

YES to the stories of having an affair purely because I've been chatting to someone.

As a young naive woman I was blindsided by my PA taking me aside one day to tell me 'everyone was talking about the affair I was having with Dave' Dave and I had apparently been seen kissing at the Christmas party which was news to me. We'd had a brilliant laugh as we got on really well but that was it.

Dave and I are both happily married to other people and I was having IVF at the time, he is a great person and still a friend, although he has been promoted and promoted whilst I was held back for promotion due to my time off for maternity.

I'm less naive now.