Just letting off steam after a truly shit day at the office. Feel free to join in with your own 'atrocious line manager' moans.
I started a new job a few weeks ago and my line manager is appalling - truly THE worst manager I've ever had. In fact, now I think about it, I've only ever had one other 'poor' line manager, but she wasn't even in the ballpark of this one.
She's stressed (apparently) constantly - every minute of every day and absolutely EVERYTHING is a battle to be won or lost. You ask her a simple question and immediately she's seeking to suggest you should already know the answer or acts amazed that you're even asking the question in the first place. The idea that you might need a bit of context for why you're doing what you're doing is utterly alien to her. The way she speaks to my colleagues and I is dismissive, rude and belittling.
If an error is discovered, it's her clarion call to immediately seek to apportion blame onto anyone but herself. She loudly announces who carried out the task originally - or question who did - and uses it as her lever into the blame game. This also contributes to my belief that concepts of collaboration, teamwork and mutuality are, similarly, as alien to her as why her minions ask her questions. Every error is her chance to prove someone else did something wrong, and not an opportunity to learn from.
She's a truly awful trainer/teacher/instructor when showing you how to do tasks. She'll whizz through it, giving you no time whatsoever to make notes and then round on you when you ask her to go more slowly or explain something more fully - rolling her eyes and sighing and carrying on as though she's trying to explain things to someone with the IQ of a rolling pin.
She's an arselicker when it comes to dealing with anyone above her own pay grade. She NEVER offers anyone a cup of tea unless it's the CEO or other members of the Board visiting the office (and even then, rarely). She also moderates her behaviour in front of those above her and puts on the 'nice' act to my colleagues and I when they're around.
She'll delegate all her own fuck ups to those 'beneath' her to sort out - and there are PLENTY of them. Even if she knows full well the mistake was hers, she'll still start banging on about someone else not giving her the right information (she never asks enough questions to make sure she's doing things right to begin with). She regularly calls suppliers and customers 'stupid' for doing/not doing X, Y & Z - despite the fact they probably weren't asked for enough information originally.
When she works from home, she doesn't forward calls from her desk phone to her mobile. She's told everyone to call me or my colleagues if they have queries - she clearly doesn't want to answer any calls at all.
All her emails are one-liners with no niceties and the way she speaks to suppliers on the phone - on the off-chance they've actually managed to get through to her - is rude and, occasionally, downright obnoxious.
She has zero social skills, never asks anyone if they had a nice weekend, talks only about herself in conversation, cutting off others halfway through a sentence and talking loudly over them.
At Christmas, a gift that could have been split between the department arrived addressed to the department, not her alone. She took the whole thing home for herself and acted as though the gift was MEANT for her alone.
I've decided I'm going to leave within the next month or two and my exit interview will be extremely detailed.