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Original poster

Worst thing a manager has ever said

150 replies

Cosmos123 · 25/09/2021 20:40

A senior partner of one of one of the big 4 on a social evening last week.
He mentions to the new graduate recruits that he spend 3 years in Sweden.

When asked why he was there

He responded 'I wanted to live somewhere where I could blend in'.

Bearing in mind he said this to a young black recruit.
How shocking is that!

OP posts:

BoredZelda · 25/09/2021 22:35

The guy interviewing me (also one of the company owners) asked if I was single/married and/or planning to have children anytime soon.

I was asked that in an interview. I told the guy he couldn’t ask me that. The other director in the interview laughed and said “she’s the first one ever to call you out on that” I was offered the job and actually had a decent relationship with that director, me being able to call him out when he overstepped. Interestingly, my relationship with the other director, the one who laughed, was not so good.

DragonflyFairy · 25/09/2021 22:44

At 25, in a stressful job with a very difficult female manager. I was in a failing relationship and found out I was 8 weeks pregnant. Was told I was just on the cusp to have an abortion using pessaries and was given the dates. Asked to book an emergency holiday day and in my stressed state, told manager why. She made a sort of sympathetic face and then asked if I could wait a few weeks as that day wasn't the most convenient. As a compromise she swapped her day off with me so I could have the abortion but I had to work the day after it and the following days to make up for it...

I also tried to book a weekend off for a close family wedding a year in advance and she said she'd let me know nearer the time but couldn't guarantee it! At that point I told her, give me the weekend off or don't, but I'll be going to the wedding whatever!

FancySomeChips · 25/09/2021 22:46

It’s a shame you are single parent, I thought you were a nice girl.

We don’t believe your morning sickness is that bad to mean you are running out of class like you did this morning. If you have to throw up again while at work, you are to report to your line manager first who will accompany you to the bathrooms.

This is why babies shouldn’t have babies.
(I was 23 and the dad had walked out on us)

….all different middle managers in a well respected school.

Libraryghost · 25/09/2021 22:47

i raised a legitimate concern about the extra work that kept coming my way when I was already working ridiculous overtime. ‘It’s your hormones talking ’’ says the bastard. This is because he overheard me talking about hot flushes. I now now expect everything I say or do that’s not to his liking to be blamed on my hormones.

MyPatronusIsACat · 25/09/2021 22:48

A young woman worked in the office I worked in. (I will call her Jane.) She had been adopted by her grandparents when she was 2 because her birth mum couldn't look after her. She rarely saw her birth mum, and when she was 15, the birth mum left the country with her new man for 10 years. She came back, but Jane only saw her once at a family wedding. There was no relationship. She had never met her birth dad. Didn't know who he was, and the family never spoke of him.

When she was 33, Jane's grandparents (both 70 by then) who had been her PARENTS for her whole life, and thought the world of her, died in a car accident. She was devastated. She was entitled to the 3 days compassionate leave, but the (male) manager said she couldn't have it as he didn't class them as her parents. She said 'they adopted me when I was 2. They're my parents.' He said 'well what about your real mom? And your real dad? Are you gonna want time off for them too when they die?'

Utter UTTER cunt. I wanted to cry for her. The whole office was disgusted with him.

She went off that afternoon, and went off sick with depression for 3 months. Good for her. I bet if cunto manager hadn't been such a cunt, she would have been back the following week. As it was, he had to hire a temp for those 3 months, and Jane had to be paid in full too, and he had to explain himself to HR, as Jane's husband wrote the most rancid letter to them about her 'Manager.'

LookToTreblesGoingTreblesGone · 25/09/2021 22:50

Manager at interview - "do you have a boyfriend?"

Me - no

Manager - "ah good. We wouldn't want you getting married so soon and leaving to have a baby."

😯

MyPatronusIsACat · 25/09/2021 22:54

@LookToTreblesGoingTreblesGone

Manager at interview - "do you have a boyfriend?"

Me - no

Manager - "ah good. We wouldn't want you getting married so soon and leaving to have a baby."

😯

Not the first time I have heard this said. ^ Fucking awful.

BlueberrySugar · 25/09/2021 22:56

@LookToTreblesGoingTreblesGone

Manager at interview - "do you have a boyfriend?"

Me - no

Manager - "ah good. We wouldn't want you getting married so soon and leaving to have a baby."

😯

I'd have been tempted to say.

Aww. Don't be so naive. You don't have to be married to have a child sometimes these things just happen from one night stands.

PinkFootstool · 25/09/2021 22:57

On disclosing to my boss and HR that I was clinically depressed, had been prescribed antidepressants and I could do with just working day shifts for a few weeks (emergency services) and not being deployed single crewed for my own safety, I was told "you need to pull your socks up, your workload is no worse than anyone else's". HR referred me to Occupational Health who supported everything my GP had said, and got me a whole two weeks to try to put myself back together.

I didn't take a single day off sick for fear of repercussions. I struggled into work every day, totally suicidal and desperate to please everyone. I REALLY should have been signed off sick for a few months.

Loveletters123 · 25/09/2021 22:59

I rang manager to say I had to go to hospital for a D&C after miscarriage and wouldn’t be in work and he gave me a really hard time for ‘putting them in a difficult position’. What a lovely human

ThinWomansBrain · 25/09/2021 23:04

Not really an interview question, more of a statement at final interview - I'd more or less been told I had the job, and meeting the chair was a formality.
"I just want someone that's not going to drive me mad and isn't going to go and get pregnant" slight pause "...and you're obviously too old for that"
& not that long ago

nothingcomestonothing · 25/09/2021 23:07

I was emailing with my manager to sort out a KIT day while on mat leave. She was trying to persuade me not to come in (still don't know why), and I was keen to as we'd previously agreed. One of her emails trying to put me off included the phrase 'I hope you learn to enjoy your children' - yep, coming into work for 4 hours during a years mat leave definitely means I don't know how to enjoy my children!

ReginaSpaghetti99 · 25/09/2021 23:11

My manager told me, ‘You’ve got fantastic breasts’. I complained to another manager - female - who said I was a young attractive girl and should expect some attention. This was in 1996 and I’m still shocked when I think about it.

Jablies · 25/09/2021 23:12

I had a manager who told me I looked like a “p*ki” when I came back from holiday with a sun tan. He was our areas diversity lead and we were meant to complain to him about instances of racism or sexism etc. As you can imagine 5at was pointless

Marvel23 · 25/09/2021 23:17

Returned to work after a miscarriage and my manager said "thank goodness you're not pregnant. You can't go anywhere until I retire"

Rosebel · 25/09/2021 23:18

Nothing as bad as most of these. New team leader who introduced himself by saying "I'm not here to work, I'm here to kick ass." He's been promoted to manager now so obviously having zero people skills is something head office are looking for.
Same person told me I was exaggerating about having blood clots on my lungs and also the same person who told me (after I had been sick) that I could go home but it might result in being given a warning and I should power through.

StuffLikeThat · 25/09/2021 23:18

The day after 9/11 happened and we were looking at the newspapers with the horrendous images. The MD of the company that I worked for at the time came out and said "makes you want to go p* bashing doesn't it?"

It was the fact that he felt so comfortable saying it, loudly, in an open plan office that, to this day, I just can't get over. Wish I'd spoken up at the time but I was 21 and it was a very toxic environment. Thankfully i left not long after.

WhateverHappenedToMe · 25/09/2021 23:19

On telling my manager that my husband (who worked for the same organisation) had inoperable cancer and less than six months to live, his response was "If you want something to take your mind off it you can have all the overtime you want".

MadisonAvenue · 25/09/2021 23:19

Going back 25 years I’d had two weeks off work following a miscarriage, I was a retail manager for a (now disappeared) high street store and had a real bitch of an area manager and I didn’t want her to know exactly why I’d been off work so my GP wrote ‘gynae’ on the doctors note.

When I returned to work I was still feeling really low and she called within an hour of me being back and went mad about me being off work for so long (up until then I’d only had two days off sick in 10 years). I burst into tears and told her what had happened.

She told me that I was making it up, I probably hadn’t been pregnant at all, in her opinion I just fancied some time off and did I realise how much trouble she’d had to go to in order to get a relief manager to cover for me. Later that day she arrived at my store and gave me a first and final warning for misconduct. She also stopped my wages for two weeks because I’d been paid sick pay while off and she decided I wasn’t entitled to it.

Cherrysoup · 25/09/2021 23:20

I phoned in sick for the first time, I’d hurt myself and couldn’t cope with the pain. We were working from home. My immediate boss told the big boss I was injured, not sick and should still be working, I was absolutely furious. I had to sit in meetings in huge discomfort all day. I spoke to the big boss later and he said it had been presented as me wanting to still work, so my immediate boss decided on my behalf that I wouldn’t be off. I was fuming. Big boss wasn’t pleased with immediate boss.

If ever I need a day off, I’m going to claim I have the plague or something really serious!

Rainbowqueeen · 25/09/2021 23:22

Working on a project with a technical lead who was hard to keep on task. So I instituted a daily meeting with him in his office at the same time each day. After a few weeks manager who had next door office calls out as I walk in ‘ Queen you’re over here so much now that we’re starting to get suspicious’
Dickhead

JustLyra · 25/09/2021 23:28

The worst thing I've heard a manager say wasn't actually to me.

The HT in a school told a teacher who had recently lost a child and whose partner had walked out on them - the poor woman was falling apart and shouldn't have been back yet at all - that she should obviously take as much time off as she needed, but she should also keep in mind that no-one is irreplacable and she now needed to finance herself so to be careful. The "obviously" was said in such a way that it was clear she didn't want the woman taking any time off at all. It was vile.

BillywigSting · 25/09/2021 23:38

Manager of the nursing home I have recently resigned from told us all in multiple meetings that we 'need to stop whistleblowing or we will give the home a bad name'.

It was chronically dangerously understaffed and on one shift we had no access to any of the correct continence aids. Personal care was often still being done well into the afternoon and the residents were often sleeping on duvet covers as there were no clean sheets.

Prior to the current manager starting it was a reasonably good nursing home.

I blew the whistle about a month ago and handed in my notice the next day.

Need to stop whistleblowing my foot. Stop giving us reasons to do it and we will!

Absolutely appalling human.

RobertaFirmino · 25/09/2021 23:38

'We've already given you three days leave when he first went to hospital, we can't let you take more time off'

Said by my team leader as my Dad lay unconscious in hospital with a DNR above his bed. He died a couple of hours later.

Frezia · 25/09/2021 23:42

My manager emailing me to double check a spreadsheet (which I'd already checked and signed off the week before) "just to be safe", three hours before I was scheduled for a major surgery.

My friend's manager asked her to drop off some (non urgent) paperwork to a client before going to her father's funeral, as it was on her way.

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