Craziest things a boss has done

[GerbilsForever24]

Inspired by the "craziest reasons to sulk" thread, I thought it might be entertaining (and cathartic?) to do similar with bosses? The weird/crazy/irrational things a boss has done?

I'll start with a male boss with a team of 7 women. He would regularly send his PA or the most junior member of the team into the bathroom to "find" anyone who was in the toilet when he wanted to speak to them.

[no, as a rule, no one was spending hours in the toilet - we were hard working, conscientious, busy people. Also, it was a very busy office so it wasn't unusual to hold the need for a bathroom break to unacceptable levels.] He did this on more than one occasion to almost everyone in the office except me (most likely because he knew I'd have taken it straight to HR).

One of my colleagues was in an awful accident when a car knocked her over on a crossing and she had a number of fractures. Some time later, boss decided he was going to have a performance initiative and announced that everyone whose recorded hours were below a certain level would be called in for a meeting to discuss why, and what they were going to do to improve it. When the list of defaulters came round, we found that it was based on the last year's work and injured colleague's name was on it because, unsurprisingly, when you are off work for three months your recorded hours do go down. We all assumed it was just a mistake, but boss made her go through the charade of explaining why her hours were down and agreeing that yes, she would try to improve them by not getting knocked down again. Her expression when she came out of the meeting was quite something.

Started a new job as (I thought) as sales person for a small company, came in on my first day, sat on an empty chair while I waited to be shown around or have a little intro to the office and job or whatever, I hadn’t even taken my coat off when the phone started ringing and the boss looked at me and said “well, answer it” and then his wife decided she wanted part of my role to be emptying the sanitary disposal boxes in the ladies toilets, because they didn’t want to pay for a company to do it 🤢 and watering plants (lots of plants) in a very specific way. I told her I’d never managed to keep a plant alive in my life.

It turned out the job was for a receptionist, not sales, so I went home at lunch time and called them and said I’m not coming back if I have to empty bins and water plants and they relented but I spent all the rest of my time there looking for another job.

I’ve just remembered another one, I had to resign twice because the first time my boss didn’t accept it. I said “I’m handing my notice in, my last day will be two weeks from now” and he said “well, I’ll have to think about that…… I don’t think so” and I was so stunned I just said “Ok”, I had to go back the next day and say “Well I’ve thought about it and I’m definitely leaving” - he didn’t respond to my new jobs request for a reference, I managed to convince them he was scatty and that was why but that’s the reasons I won’t work for a small company again.

I had one only a couple of years ago who "didn't believe in GDPR". I had previously worked in a regulated industry and done training on it.
A client asked me if something was GDPR compliant and as they were an Accountant it was very important it was. I knew it wasn't so reported back to my boss who told me to lie, when I refused I wasn't a team player apparently.
I left after having an argument over whether I would give the entire company my Linked in log ins so everyone could pretend to be me to send messages etc on LI. My Linked In was not related to the company as it was my own that I had used for many years pre working for them and they just wanted my connections.
Not wanting to do this made me very unreasonable and not a team player (again)

I'll start with a male boss with a team of 7 women. He would regularly send his PA or the most junior member of the team into the bathroom to "find" anyone who was in the toilet when he wanted to speak to them

The male LM where I temped timed women in the toilets until HR told him to stop. As in - actually stood outside the door of the toilets checking his watch.

Many moons ago when I was young and gorgeous I worked in sales, a much, much older client was trying to take me out to dinner after a meeting, I declined and made some excuse that I was driving home immediately afterwards. This continued every time I went to see this very senior chap in his organisation and he became more & more insistent, to the point of it feeling really creepy.
I eventually told my immediate boss who removed me from the account. The customer threatened to remove his business if I wasn't reinstated and the account was worth over a million pounds. My boss's boss who had been told about the situation said that I should deal with it and take one for the team!
I didn't and I was very quickly made redundant.

I worked for a large ‘green’ energy company. The CEO and his wife used to sign in and out of the visitor book at stupid times ie sign in 00.20 sign out 01.30. We went in one morning and every desk drawer had been gone through and anything he didn’t approve of being kept in desks was left on top of them. I had the audacity to have jelly belly beans, panty liners and tampax in my drawer which were left on top of my desk. Everyone had a WTF look on their faces that morning and the office was eerily quiet.

He also wouldn’t agree leaving dates for anyone handing their notice in, you couldn’t leave until he decided you could which was weird as we all had a one month notice period. He would fly into the most awful rages if you asked him for a reference too. I never gave him the opportunity, I found another job and emailed my resignation never to return - someone that left before me gave me a reference.

What he didn’t know was the IT guy had set up a chat thing where some of us that weren’t running back to the CEO with stories were on. I’ve never been so glad to leave a work place.

I had a boss about 20 years ago who came into the office in front of the whole team and asked me if I was on my period as he could smell me. I was obviously horrified. He laughed and admitted that the day before he had overheard me saying to a friend that I was struggling with period pains and he wanted to wind me up. I was only 23 so didn't know how to tackle it. I work in HR now so would handle it very very differently. I still get mad about it.

Wow, some of these are astonishing. @MrsDanversGlidesAgain I think my old boss would have done the timing thing... if he didnt think he was too important to ever leave his office....

Same boss, in my performance review, told me asking colleagues how they were on a Monday morning was taking an unnecessary amount of time and we should be straight into work after the weekend away. Again, to be clear, these were usually 2 minute conversations while taking off coats and logging onto computers - we didn't have the kind of relationship where we rehashed the weekend on a blow by blow basis (which I would have agreed was an issue), plus the nature of our role required quite a lot of first-thing-in-the-morning activity on a Monday so by unspoken agreement any real chat, even for the younger team members who were more friends, was left until late morning on a coffee break or at lunch.

@DecoratingDiva I am no longer working in the City in crazy environments but recently took on a client in this space. I was reminded how ridiculous it was when I dialled into a briefing call that had been scheduled a week ahead, and I'd been copied on an email with reasons for the call and an agenda, including what was needed from the people on the call. As far as I was aware, prior to me being involved, there had also been internal discussion about the need for this project.....

.... only to have the person on the call interrupt me within 1 minute when I was asking my first question saying he didn't have time for lots of chat and he doesn't understand what this call is about at which point he started quizzing the internal team about why we were doing this. It was so rude and so unpleasant and reminded me why I am so glad I don't work in that environment anymore.

I'm a geologist and work in oil, gas, telecom cables and wind farms, we do surveys to find the best place to lay a cable, pipeline, install a rig etc. We had a pipleine route survey, which was split into 25 blocks or so, contiguous to each other. Normal practice is to work on one or two blocks until completed.

We have to identify rock outcrops, soil depth, debris and boulders. You don't normally produce position lists etc until a block is finished. Anyway the dickhead party chief kept deciding to piss off 100 miles away and do bits at random, whilst demanding position lists and maps.

The entire survey crew had tried to explain it to him, but he wouldn't have it. All he did was play Solitaire all day and try to get other people to do his work for him. After 4 weeks, he asked me to help - ie do his entire report, as it turned out! I tried a bit, but when I realised that he hadn't even kept a daily diary - they're kept as daily progress reports of completed work, equipment breakdowns, weather downtime etc - I refused.

He kept ranting on at me, going on about how he'd blacken my name and see to it I'd never work in the North Sea again. I rang my agent and explained it and said I was going to walk off, when we hit port in a couple of days. It turned out that other crew had also complained about him. She convinced me to stay onboard.

The next day, he stormed into my work area, shouting and bawling, calling me a grass and a liar. I walked out and he grabbed me and shouted, "How dare you walk away when I'm talking to you?!" Calmly, I said, "You're not talking to me, you're screaming at me. And you've just assaulted me in front of witnesses."

The last couple of weeks were very tense and every time he came near me, I got up and walked away. He never worked for the same company again.

Horrible cunt of a manager in the 90s when I was working in telesales in the late 90s.

She made us stand up until we'd made a sale so we'd be on the phone hunched over typing desperate to sit properly at our desks.Im 5ft 10 so was especially uncomfortable.Horrible bully .

When my colleague's mum died in traumatic circumstances, boss read the sickness interview script and said 'how can we support you to stop this happening again?'

Once worked in a bar where the owner used to drink in the bar on his nights off (he lived above the bar and always locked up even if he wasn’t working as nobody else was trusted with keys) I have hundreds of stories about him.
I never experienced it myself as I tended to work weekends but know if he got drunk through the week he’d regularly come on to female bar staff after the bar was shut.
He never paid for a drink and used to give away drinks to paying customers (usually female but not always) so they’d sit and drink with him. As a result people used to latch onto him so they could drink for free all night.
Sometimes he’d drink so much he’d pass out on the bar and we’d have to shake him awake to lock up. If we couldn’t wake him we’d just leave him and pull the door closed behind us (effectively leaving the bar unlocked money still in the till as only he had the key to the safe). On one occasion I left him at the end of the night “finishing” drinks with a regular customers gf only to find her belt and knickers behind the bar when I came to work the dayshift the next day. This was the start of an affair and for months after we’d regularly go out to empty the bottle bin during the weekend and hear them having loud sex upstairs. Also once came down one morning and had to wake him up to let me in for my shift- he later ushered 3 girls out and boasted to have slept with them all (1 wasn’t even 18!!).
Needless to say he drank all his profits away and the business folded. Believe he was nearly knee capped as towards the end he borrowed money from the wrong person to try to keep it open, he also owed his own friends thousands!

I worked for a woman who call my office phone, and if I didn't answer, my office mobile and them move onto my personal mobile and then call my house phone.
All in the space of 3 minutes
I'd miss a call due to being on another call or having a pee. Regardless she'd do this regularly and be really pissed off with me.
She was another one who blamed the menopause for being a nightmare.

The tippex thing reminds me of a guy I knew. He worked for a local estate agents and there was a stain on the ceiling from a leak. His boss made him paint over it in tippex as it was cheaper than buying a tin of paint 🤣

My first boss was on his lunch break and saw me go to the toilet and timed how long I was then got an official warning because I took a whopping 3 minutes. Tbh I should have contested it but I was 17 and it was my first job so I was scared

Many moons ago I worked for a very small independent production company. The boss used to get so worked up and irate he'd have terrible temper outbursts and one day stood in the door to my office and was so het up that he actually bit the side of the door. As in actually chewed down on it.

I left (walked out actually the only time in my long working life I ever did that) when I was frantically typing up scripts for one series, with film cans (those were the days) under my desk for me to walk round to Soho with, answering phones, and he asked if I could run up to Selfridges and exchange his wife's evening dress as she didn't like it. I said, 'but I'm a bit busy here'. And he hit the roof, I wasn't a team player, why had he ever hired me, on and on. So I picked up my bag, threw the office keys on my desk and walked out.

@GirlOfThe70s ooh, that reminds me. Same boss I posted about originally... his PA was off or he was between PAs, I can't remember. Either way, we had a temp in. Super efficient, very pleasant, very young woman - couldn't have been older than 23. He had a meeting externally which she'd put in his diary, including the address and she'd added a link to a map as well (proactively - this was before calendars automatically offered this option).

He rang into the office in a complete state because he didn't know where he was supposed to be/couldn't find the place. He was screaming so loud that the people sitting next to her could hear both sides of the conversation. The rest of us just heard her say politely, "the address is 3 Oak Road - it's off Maple street... I can't direct you because I don't know where you are. Can you see the map?..... You need to click on the link and it will take you to google maps......" etc. Anyway, apparently he was swearing at her and telling her this was not fucking acceptable etc. We were all agog when she said, "Please don't speak to me like that" then a pause while he yelled some more then "I won't be spoken to like that" and she put the phone down.

Anyway, she then called the agency that placed her with us, told them she wouldn't be staying ... and calmly walked out after politely saying goodbye to the rest of us and assuring us that her agency would not be sending anyone else to work for him. Which they didn't!!!! They had to use an entirely different temp agency to get someone new in. How we all cheered!

Not that serious compared to many of these but drove me crazy... a boss when I worked in a PR agency. I was an account manager and for various reasons, was on more accounts than anyone else in the office. I worked with one account director on all of his accounts - three (I had 8 clients in total). It drove him absolutely batshit crazy that I used ONE notebook for all my accounts, rather than a separate note book for each account. He would show me his three notebooks lined up and tell me how much easier it was. I would point out that 8 notebooks on my desk would take up a lot of space and that I was often running between meetings. He did not care.

On plus side, while working on one of his accounts, he wondered off to let me do all the actual implementation (he prided himself on being the strategy guy), and I edventually sent over a bunch of stuff to the client at about 11pm. There were a few minor mistakes. The client was really annoyed... not with me, but with him. He tried to make it my problem. The client then called the MD and complained and said she was annoyed about the mnistake that was obviously happening because I was being worked too hard and then she was even MORE annoyed because he tried to make it my problem. hahahahaha. I also got fewer clients after that.

In the days when cellphones were new I sat next to the PA of my head of department. He’d just got a cellphone. One day when I was speaking to her, her phone went. She answered it, hung up and said to me ‘That was John. He left work eight minutes ago and that’s the fourth time he’s called me.’

Had a colleague drive him round some dodgy areas of LA in the middle of the night to score some Coke.

Oh my gosh, I remember the fish philosophy from when I worked in a call centre straight after Uni. They had us throwing the stupid fish round the office and playing these ridiculous games. It was so cringe 😬.

I had to promise that I wouldn't fall down some stairs again and need another month off work 😡

Tried to have a conversation with me about the fact that she felt I'd been unprofessional about something... in the toilets.

Boss who I know now was a narcissist/sociopath but was young and naive so didn’t realise had one of those family photo sessions done and brought the large one he was going to hang in his lounge to work and told all his direct reports to come and view it. He’d gone off me as I’d angered him by telling my team something he’d wanted to tell them (something absolutely irrelevant) so had gone to sit with his new favourite person by then. He kept ringing me all day (different floors) and bollocking me for not coming to look at this family photo. Bonkers.