What's the most batshit...

[LittleRedRidingHoody]

On the back of the thread about executives not washing their mugs...

What is the craziest thing a superior has asked you to do at work? And did you do it?

I'll go first:

First retail job as a teen, got pulled aside by Store Manager and told HR were on-site to investigate bullying claims against him, and coached with what to say when they interviewed me 😂 He was definitely a bully, but I went along with it and hyped him up because I didn't want to lose my job!

Recently (last job, senior role) CFO - my boss - called en route to the office with the CEO, who was flying home that evening. CEO had asked CFO specifically to get him some Heinz ketchup to bring back with him, and he'd forgotten. Didn't trust the new EA to get it right 😂 Ended up ordering on Just Eat and expensing, most overpriced and insane purchase of my life. Tbh I didn't challenge because we had a good relationship, but it still seemed WILD.

Years ago a consultant took all the A4 lever arch files (ones where paper needs a 4 hole punch to put in folder).

They said the papers and dividers were not lined up properly. Keep in mind several people filed papers away over a long period of time - we all used folders/files on the IT system but we occasionally dragged out these old folders for reference.

Consultant put all the files on my colleague's desk and told them to redo it all neatly and lined up properly. They kindly said I would help and they'd check our work in 2 days time with their ruler.

Consultant was known to try and show their power and belittle people.

We were not admin staff and even if we were - what a bloody waste of resources.

So we tootled off to our director and said this is ridiculous And we were not going to do it.

Our director was brilliant. Consultant got a bollocking and 'let go' from the company very quickly afterwards. That sadly caused them some financial issues but hopefully a lesson in how to treat people.

I got asked to go and buy the boss some cigarettes when I was doing my work experience placement at school, I was 15.

Hahaha. I've worked with people like this - will find anything to prove power over you by giving you a meaningless task 😂
That's reminded me also (retail is a rich treasure trove for this!) of a new Store Manager I had (I was department manager then, different company) who ignored my department all day, did not come and introduce himself (he'd said he would and didn't want people piling up on him at once) ~ walked into my department, asked my name and if I was dept manager, then told me my bin was full (it was halfway!) and needed emptying, and stood over me whilst I did it! I think he lasted 2 weeks!

Learn Photoshop

Wash the tea towels

Do expense reports in Chinese (Yes. Written in Mandarin. I am not Chinese, do not speak Chinese and never will).

All for $20 an hour.

This is a very well known, world wide renowned university

Reader, I quit

This is WILD! Was it fairly recent?

Chinese?! That's insane 😂

Teacher vibes.

Chinese?! That's insane

^

It was fucking insane tbh

There was file folder full of paper receipts, written in Chinese

It was like something out of a month python sketch

Most random I saw was a boss get the three women on his team wrap his whole families Christmas presents 😂 no men invited for this task. It was only 15 years ago...

I got asked to clean up a poo on a seat in the men's changing room in the leisure centre I work in. I'm female and there were plenty of male staff around.

I cleaned it up but what I didn't realise was there was a shit on another seat and the manager actually cleaned that up (thinking I had ignored her instructions).

Got only knows who (must have been more than one person) decided it was a good idea to take a dump on a seat.

Ohhh that's gross 🤢 I lost so much faith in humanity because of stuff like this in customer facing roles.

I've done this for my previous boss! But because a) I had all the wrapping bits on my desk (was stashing gifts at work because I have a young inquisitive detective of a child), b) I enjoy wrapping and offered and c) he was going to bung his kids presents in a giant gift bag each! 😂

Not a boss but when I was a student nurse, a sister on the ward demanded I go to the hospital shop to buy her a bottle of Fanta. She didn’t offer me any money. I actually started walking to the shop then remembered a) I was a student nurse not her skivvy and b) I was paying over 9 grand a year for my training and I was there to learn. I turned around and went back to the ward. She asked me where her drink was and I said on the shelf in the shop waiting for you to go and fetch it

When I was a student at a hospital a staff member asked me to take photos of him in various sexy poses so he could send them to his girlfriend. I did it but it was very cringy

I was once just leaving the office on my lunch break, and my boss asked me to go and buy an anniversary card for his wife.
😂

I have genuinely had a boss that did the exact same thing with alignment of papers in the files, he had a favourite hole punch for the job, measured the difference and made you redo bundles if he thought they were a bit out. I’d say they’re the same person but your wording sounds like we’re in different industries. Honestly, getting it perfect was such a waste of time (and I had to time record, pretty hard justifying time measuring the straightness of paper!)

I was 26 and doing a 6 month attachment in psychiatry as part of my GP training. To put it kindly, I wasn't temperamentally suited to hospital psychiatry and it was fairly obvious. My consultant was in the process of disengaging himself to go on to a new career as a minister of religion and only appeared for ward rounds. We admitted a middle aged woman whose mental health issues I reckoned had a lot to do with her husband being a bully, and I ventured to suggest this (not as bluntly, of course). The woman said, "That's right, that's how it feels," and the husband was, as as might be expected, unimpressed and was overheard to express a desire to kick my head in.

The consultant agreed that this was clearly not a marriage conducive to good mental health for the female partner. He told me that I should give the couple some marriage guidance counselling. He must have known that as well as having only book-knowledge of psychiatry I had no training in counselling and was totally wet behind the ears about relationships.

Fortunately, the nursing staff on the ward were a sensible team and no inappropriate marriage guidance was committed on that occasion.

I was his PA
Print out all his emails for him to read and then file them in folders - this was less than 20 years ago when we had fully functional email of which he had access to.

Noooo 😂

Oh this is so cringy! Why on earth did he want to do that?!

😂 Good for you!

Also the washing cups thing- as a trainee solicitor I was on a rota with other support staff to wash the cups of the solicitors who just left theirs in the sink (no dishwasher in this office) when you qualify you get taken off the rota, but if you’re a legal sec/paralegal/trainee then you do the cleaning.

I’ve bought birthday and anniversary presents for my boss’ wife, made dinner reservations, picked up dry cleaning. I was a trainee in his department but he referred to me as his PA. I’m sure there were loads of random things that were done based on hierarchy but I’ve blocked them from my memory!

my colleague's desk and told them to redo it all neatly and lined up properly. They kindly said I would help and they'd check our work in 2 days time with their ruler

^

Once had a director who asked admin to re-print 1000 letters because there were two erroneous full stops at the end of one sentence.

Just takes my breath away

The things PA/EAs do to keep their bosses on track always astounds me. I once spent a week in the US with the EA team to plan an event and the stories I heard made my head spin. One poor guy was called to go drink with his lonely boss in a bar every night when he just wanted to go to bed 😂

When the company got takeover by a different company, they decided they didn't want to pay for someone to come out and empty the sanitary bins in the toilets anymore. So when they came out to take the bins away they hid one and the manager asked the staff to take turns to empty and clean out the bin. This was as a nursery nurse in a childrens' centre with about 25 staff, all women of menstruating age.