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Original poster

What has your boss said or done that has made you want to quit your job

189 replies

Lorddenning1 · 04/01/2022 23:20

Just been reading an article about this and it inspired me to start a a thread. What has your boss said or done that has made you want to quit on the spot.

Mine was to a colleague of mine, his apartment complex was on fire and it was spreading along to his row, he was evacuated and came into work to grab some things, we all knew what had happened and was all sad for him as he had children, my manager asked him to sort out her computer as he was our IT guy, he basically told her not right now he had bigger things to worry about and she stormed back into our office threw a stop, saying can you believe him, he is too busy to help and I bet he says it's because his flat is on fire. We all sat there like Confused
Safe to say we didn't expect any compassion from her in regards to our personal life.

OP posts:
lostinthoughts · 04/01/2022 23:29

My boss during the first wave of covid told me that PPE was just a 'belt and braces' idea and that we didn't really need it. We were frontline NHS while she worked from home

Idontbelieveit14 · 04/01/2022 23:32

Made a colleague bring their child into work with a temperature (nursery) to cover her so she could finish work early.

Detest · 04/01/2022 23:37

Expected me to cover her job for 6 months while she was on the sick, without extra pay, involving extra work, extra hours and supervision work. Then promoted one of the blokes I'd been supervising, and had disciplined for tardiness, over me.
Handed my notice in the next day. She called me several times at my new job asking for help and advice on the systems she wasn't used to operating....

StormBaby · 04/01/2022 23:38

Not my job now, but when my mum passed away in the very early hours I sent my boss a text at about 7.30am to let her know(my mum had been terminal for a couple of weeks). Her response was “so are you coming in today or what?”
I just couldn’t work for her after that and I left a month or so later.

TrashyPanda · 04/01/2022 23:40

Told him I was considering voluntary early exit scheme.
His response: it’s people of your age and experience we are looking to get rid of.

I was 49.

I put in my application that day.

Pippa12 · 04/01/2022 23:41

@lostinthoughts similar story. Working on icu completely overwhelmed with really poorly patients and a very poor skill mix reduced me to tears, extremely rare event for me. I went to ask for help, my (male!) boss laughed and asked me if I was hormonal.

He never once spent more than 10 minutes in a covid bay and then he went off sick for 6 months with PTSD.

Willow1981 · 04/01/2022 23:43

The weekend I was moving out of ex's house and into my own place I popped onto the office to print some paperwork I needed. Had been off the Friday beforehand.

Checked my work email and discovered they had employed someone to be my department supervisor. A department that was just me and a role I didn't know existed.

Safe to say, if I hadn't just got a mortgage on my own, I would have told them to stuff the job there and then.

3 years later and supervisor is long gone and not replaced! As is the manager who appointed them!

Caplin · 04/01/2022 23:51

I’ve had some brilliant bosses, but also some seriously crap ones.

One was a nightmare. She once picked a young colleagues ready meal carton out of the bin to tell her the fat and calorie content, she was always saying I was blonde and thick (I wasn’t), urgh, so any drunk inappropriate moments. We all left within a few months after a complaint we put in was ignored.

I’ve had bosses who screamed, one who thought working for home was Ok for the team I managed, it not for me as I needed to be available or them (him), at my desk, 9-5.30. I left. And got a flexible job that paid more.

One pair bosses (owners) kept sayin shit like ‘fail fast’, ‘work at pace’ etc. But it was a highly regulated industry and they were failing at basic compliance. They cocked up basic HR so I quit with a package to not sue. The company collapsed a year later, for reasons I warned them about.

Kickers567 · 04/01/2022 23:51

This is pretty outing but:

I work with disabled (& behaviour) teenagers. One of them broke my wrist, (the scaphoid which takes 12 weeks to heal due to only having deoxygenated blood supply). So I was off work for 12 weeks, and only got paid SSP. Lost out on around £2000 of wages. When I came back to work I obviously spoke to my colleagues about it. A few days later my (usually very good) manager pulled me into her office and told me off for "scare mongering". Excuse me? Did I say anything that wasn't true?

WhatsTheEffingPoint · 05/01/2022 00:15

Getting his wife to msg her brother to score coke for him whilst sat at the dinner table on our Christmas meal.
Did an overnight trip to visit clients the next day, but didn't go as he was too hungover/drugged from meeting up with his mate the night before.
I already had a new job but had to wait to hand my notice in!

MrsMoastyToasty · 05/01/2022 00:28

I was booking annual leave in order to move house, which was part and parcel of me relocating to my employers head office from the satellite office (my job no longer existed at the satellite office). To be told I couldn't take the leave by my supervisor. I was actually entitled to extra leave under the terms of the relocation package!

419HLR · 05/01/2022 00:28

Worked in a nursery, Manager brought me the office phone when my brother called extremely upset to let me know my mum had just been in a bad accident and was on her way to hospital. Once I'd got off the phone, obviously visibly upset, manager proceeded to tell me I'd have to wait until I finished my shift to leave as they had nobody to cover me, all while she was sat on her arse in the office.
Told her absolutely not and got my coat and left, then when I returned the following week she tried to give me a disciplinary for leaving before my shift ended.

Sparklesocks · 05/01/2022 00:38

Years back I had a boss who was very insistent you ring into work that day if you were going to be off sick - no emails or texts were accepted. And you had to speak to her directly - not just leave a message with a colleague. Fine, it’s the policy in some workplaces. But she seemed to do it to ‘test’ you were really ill as she would ask about symptoms etc and what you’d done to feel better. She seemed to quite enjoy the authoritarian aspect of being a line manager. There were rumours that she used to be a call centre manager and was famous in her company for timing people’s loo breaks and chastising them if they were away from their phones for too long.

I once woke up with a terrible flu/sore throat type thing and had lost my voice as part of it and could barely manage a breathy whisper. I texted her to explain I wouldn’t be in and apologised that I know I was was meant to call in but I couldn’t speak so thought it best to explain my symptoms in text form due to the circumstances.

She texted straight back that I would have to call in later when she was in the office as per the policy. So I had to wait until 9am to ring her direct line. She didn’t even pick up at first so I had to try and strain to whisper to my colleague that I was trying to get hold of her and he could barely understand me. My partner had left for work at this point so I couldn’t ask him to speak for me.

Finally when I got through to her I was in a lot of pain due to straining my voice and she asked me to repeat what was wrong with me despite my text laying it out, then kept saying she couldn’t hear me (no shit!) before before begrudgingly accepting I was actually ill. It was very stressful when I was already feeling so poorly.

Looking back I would never put up with that now and it wasn’t reasonable of her, but I was young, junior in my career and nervous about being sacked etc. Since then I’ve worked for decent managers who accept a text and trust me when I say I’m unwell, they’d rather I send an email and go back to sleep to get better rather than conduct an interview to be sure. In my view an adult should be able to decide if they’re well enough to work or not.

The upside was we had a big restructure and she was officially let go because her job was no longer required but rumours suggested her management style had received a lot of complaints. She apparently struggled to find a new role for quite a bit of time after that which I feel no sympathy for.

Buytoomuchonebay · 05/01/2022 01:26

Not me but a lovely young lady I worked with
Her mum was dying and as it happened she lived with the bosses son in a house share
She tried to take time off to nurse her mum as her sister had six kids and she was forced to take on the bulk of the care
They told her they didn’t give a shit and she had to come in
She did while trying to look after her mum who had weeks left
It got too much for her and she decided to move in with her mum who lived a few miles away and quit her job as it was too far for her to get to us
The boss went ape
Called her into the office to scream at her with the door open so we could all hear him
Screaming at her that she was leaving his son in the shit and who cared about her mum as she was one of the strongest in our team and they needed her
She walked out,mid shift and left never to return
Last I heard was he was trying to sue her for lost rent,her mum died and then he came into work one day not long after,sat in the office for about an hour and suddenly got up and left (unheard of-he was always at least two hours early and never left on time)
The official reason is he’s recovering from an operation but it’s bollocks
I think he’s been suspended until further notice as I know she (and others) have put endless complaints in about him and his pervy ways

I really hope he’s lost his job

Atmywitsend29 · 05/01/2022 01:32

Not so much something she said but ...
Last week I was really unwell, body aches, headache, felt sick, chest really hurt to breath, couldn't take a full breath, palpitations, lost my taste (I had covid already and taste and breathing has never been the same and gets really bad if I get a cold). Rang her at the start of the working week, explained my symptoms, she told me to come in because my covid swabs were negative. Worked 2 13 hour shifts, felt like I was dying. The chest pains were horrific. Rang in sick for the 3rd shift, she told me I had to come in because they couldn't cover me. So I went. Worst shift I've ever worked. Spent half of it taking codeine. Wrote my notice that night, now she's begging me not to leave Hmm

GAW19 · 05/01/2022 01:33

I told my Manager I was pregnant, her reaction was "for fuck sake 'GAW' again!?"
Baring in mind it was only my second baby, i actually went though a long infertility struggle with DD1, DD2 was a very much wanted surprise. There's nearly 2 years between them too Grin

PlanktonsComputerWife · 05/01/2022 01:58

My old supervisor (well... not really mine, as I was freelance, but anyway) wanted us to write the reasons why we were grateful to be working there. On the walls. Where the clients could see.

Daffodil21 · 05/01/2022 02:04

It was my fourth pregnancy after three miscarriages. My boss knew this and asked me to go on a building site every two weeks until maternity leave, during a pandemic + heavily pregnant for the first time ever for site inspections. I told him I want happy, he actively disagreed, so I resigned because my pregnancy was the most important thing.

PGSTesting123 · 05/01/2022 02:12

An ex work colleague was telling me in his last job his PA had lost her baby soon after giving birth and it took her a year to return to work. He said "the bitch took ages coming back to work, caused me stress".
He was not even young, I was twenties and he was fifties. I couldn't believe the immature response to a life changing event like baby loss. I didn't quit my job, he wasn't my boss but I quit talking to him and could not be bothered to tell him why.

He was and still is I believe unmarried, childless, career took a nose dive, debts despite earning loads (must have some sort of addiction) not happy about his situation. You reap what you sow and God is watching.

MissConductUS · 05/01/2022 02:13

My boss, who understands almost nothing about what I do, has a habit that drives me batty. He'll ask me a question and if it's not the answer he wants, he'll just keep asking it. Perhaps he thinks that the answer will magically change and the impossible will have become possible in a day.

PGSTesting123 · 05/01/2022 02:16

Another one I remembered.

A colleagues had a cancer scare, her boss couldn't give a shit and didn't want her to take time off to get the test done.

His wife was diagnosed with something devastating, I just couldn't give him the sympathy, wanted to, but couldn't.

Again not my boss no need for me to resign but I stopped being friendly etc.

mjf981 · 05/01/2022 02:36

@PlanktonsComputerWife

My old supervisor (well... not really mine, as I was freelance, but anyway) wanted us to write the reasons why we were grateful to be working there. On the walls. Where the clients could see.
Grin Thats mad. I'd quit over that too!
MmeD · 05/01/2022 02:53

One of the young secretaries fainted. The door had barely shut after her when the boss shouted gleefully “who wants to bet she’s pregnant?’

It wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever said but for some reason I found it really depressing, a 50 year old senior partner in a law firm dragging us all back to the dormitory.

Poor kid had POTS.

k1233 · 05/01/2022 03:57

New supervisor whose sole objective from the moment she started was to make me quit. She actually told me I should look for a new job.

So i left a job I liked and transferred internally. Jokes on her though. She now needs help from my team. Over my dead body will I ever go out of my way to help her. Fortunately, the team is flat out and I have helped a couple of my people get new internal roles, so I don't have any capacity to loan people to her. Drat.

HoseMeDownWithHolyWater · 05/01/2022 04:19

I was really struggling at work mentally. I tried to speak to my boss about it. "I'm far too busy, and I've far more important things to do than listen to you".

Eventually, I was signed off and he sent me an email saying "if you ever want to chat, please call me". Fuck off you cunt.