To ask for your stories of when a horrible manager has actually come unstuck?

[FumingAintTheWord]

I have a truly horrible manager and the one above her is just as bad. They bully people, are always on a power trip and out to get the loveliest members of the team. I'm leaving this team in the autumn so I've sucked it up but this week has been really, really hard and I was hoping for your light hearted stories of a manager coming unstuck ( nothing too awful! I don't wish badly on people ) to cheer me up. I just want to know it's possible that people like this don't get away with it forever!

Immediate manager (apparently he had got the job by changing his email signature to 'senior' and no one said anything so it stood) and one of the company directors were both awful to everyone in unique ways.

Immediate manager was manipulative and a narc, would shit talk everyone behind their backs and seed discord. Me and a friend only twigged by comparing notes. He was doing the same to management so making himself look great compared to us. There was a great rumbling at one point where some of this information got out and it started a snowball effect with everyone reporting the lies up to the directors. They were massive cowards who were still charmed by the man so they only moved him sideways and out of my department thank good. He was on the road most of the time and not getting his narc supply though so he was grumpy about it and complained whenever he was in.

Director was an even bigger disaster. He was a slimy arsehole, afraid to compliment you incase you asked for a pay rise, made promotion and pay promises that he didn't keep, used any good performance to beat everyone else up with, any way. While I was there he was recently married to second wife after cheating on first wife (who had three young kids under 5 by him) so I was already wary of him. Second wife was nice enough and would get involved with company working sometimes.

Boss disappears for a few days, then comes in and moped around for WEEKs before we find out (via a shouted argument between boss and his co-director) that boss is moping because his new wife (the affair partner) was cheating on him and has run away to be with (hunky blond) him boss with their 9month old baby.

To make matters worse. They had been doing a tax reduction thing weren't they had put a large chunk of the company in second wife's name. In the weeks of moping, boss had been working up to telling his co-director that they would need to pay her off or sell the company. The shouting match was they say he finally admitted it.

Apparently other director, refused to take any of the financial burden of bosses decisions and as a result boss basically had to give new wife everything in the devorce to save the company. He lost 2 houses but was able to keep one car but not much else.

Narc boss (married to the nicest lady in the world)
He liked his staff young-the younger and prettier the better (I'm old and not pretty so my face didn't fit)
He would follow them around and make a pest of himself,would be a total wanker on a power trip with everyone and was just a downright nasty cunt
Loads of the girls complained to hr,but he'd then drag them into the office to give them a warning and nothing would be done about him
Loads of staff left but one day,he was standing next to me,not doing any work and making everyone's life hell by barking at them and making us all uncomfortable
He just suddenly walked out,sat in his car for an hour and drove off
Didn't come back to work for over a year and then put up a post on fb saying he'd given his notice to the bigger boss and would miss us all as we where 'his family'
Not one comment and when the leaving card came round,not one person signed it (I was on holiday that week but wouldn't have signed if I hadnt)
He pops in sometimes to see 'his family' and everyone scatters-not one of us speaks to him

Post uni, job that I thought would be my forever career. My lovely (but dippy and incompetent) boss was forced out by the director, who then brought in his friend (neither of whom had any experience in our type of work). Directors friend had me in his sights from the start, as I was about the only person competent and brave enough to challenge him when he was about to do something which would have been really inadvisable. Cue a campaign of bullying by him and director for months, culminating with me driving around the north circular one day and having to pull over because I was crying so hard I could not see the road. I resigned the next day. Our internal clients kicked up a massive storm, they had all seen what was happening and apparently had all been approached by manager and director who were looking for evidence against me (I had no idea that had happened). And clients had all said I was the only person who knew what I was doing in the team and they valued me highly. Anyway, about 6 months after I left, manager and director were fired, and what happened to me was cited as part of the reason.

5 years later I took on a consulting role with the company for 6 months between overseas postings. It was when bullying at work was beginning to be a recognized problem and I worked on the policy for this. Met the director at an event - he had gone on to be the head of our EAP company after being out of work for a long time, at a massive cut in salary. He had to acknowledge me, and we had a delightful conversation where I told him about the work we were doing on bullying, and he squirmed like a worm on a fishing hook. It was brilliant - over his shoulder I could see all the people who had been around at the time wetting themselves laughing.

Horrible bully of a big boss, who was also shagging my cold and unapproachable line manager - both treated the department like their personal fiefdom and were universally loathed.

One of the great days of my life was when the company director came into the office to explain, in hushed and ultra-serious tones, that the bully boss had been suspended and was being investigated for bullying. We all sat there stony-faced listening to his talk, at the end of which several of us RAN to the ladies and screamed with laughter until the tears ran down our faces.

He didn't come back, and his horrible side piece asked for a transfer too.

Ah, the satisfaction is coming back as I type. Justice is rare but so sweet.

I had a new-to-role line manager, who had 2 very different mentors - so you knew who she had been with by the way she treated you after. It was very disconcerting.

When she asked 'how i thought she was doing as a manager' I said to her 'that i was confused as sometimes I thought she was trying to be my best friend and at other times I felt she was micromanaging me'

She siad : ' I'm not your friend, and let me know when you think I am micromanaging you, and I will tell you why'

(totally outing to anyone who knows me, hence the name change)

Senior manager joined, the previous manager was amazing. Really made you feel valued and cared for and he was madly missed.

New manager was vile, bullied my lovely manager relentlessly until she left (having worked for the business for over 20 years by that point) and was just passing all her work to the remaining managers below her. She dealt with a customer who made a blatant lie about me (could be proven, essentially said I had done something naughty at a customers house, but I lived 300 miles away and was in the office when this allegation was made) and instead of calling out the liar she apologised for my behaviour and attempted to reprimand me. Horrible woman..

Anyway, was clear she had lied on her resume and simply couldn't do the job hence delegating it all to everyone else. She ended up being asked to leave after a month, and we all breathed a massive sigh of relief.

First ever job, entry level admin role for a small business. I was earning peanuts, but I was 19 and happy for a job after I'd quit university.

Director was vile to me. Once asked me if my RSI I was suffering in my wrists was from giving too many hand jobs, and made a number of suggestive comments at me that I could give him one. Gross. Anyway, after 18 months they took away my desk and my job role and I was left with little work to do and no desk to do it at. I just had to sit at a desk of whoever was on AL and find work to do. I raised this numerous times but fell on deaf ears.

After about 4 months of this, I (without witnesses or any warning) was given an action plan and told I was on a misconduct warning for lack of productivity. I asked for it in writing with details of the meeting and was told no, and if I pressed they would "make it official". We had no HR department and I was scared to push for more. The final straw was coming back to the office to get something I'd forgotten to find the other director wanking over porn at his desk.

When I handed in my notice, they both genuinely seemed shocked.

Anyway. Business went under 6 months after I left...I laughed manically. I just wish I'd had the confidence then that I do now to stand up for myself. The next company they set up also going bust helped though.

I had a boss who would scream at all his staff, and make the other women cry virtually daily.
On one such day when he decided to give me the hairdryer treatment. He didn't even care there was someone in reception, he just went for it 'you fucking this, you fucking that..' I just stood there. When he paused for breath I indicated to the woman in reception 'hi mum, meet my boss, dave'. My mum witnessed the whole thing as she had come to take me shopping after work.
He went bright red and started guffawing awkwardly and patting me on the back. Saying 'oh, haha, of course, I was only joking. Just having a laugh, eh, bobby?' me and mum just both looked at eachother, laughed and walked out. He didn't get his commuppence though. I did leave a few months later, just walked out. I guess that ruined his day a bit.

DH's boss used redundancies as a result of a restructure to basically get rid of people who had questioned her decisions over the years and give promotions to people who were her mates. She is currently a named person in at least 3 tribunal cases for unfair dismissal. The company took her word over everyone else on the panel too despite them all disagreeing with her so hopefully she will get her comeuppance, but so will they.

I once saw a manager, who was an absolute witch to most but had her favourites, get walloped in the face by a colleague. By all accounts the manager had just tried it on with the colleague, who was not interested in women.
The colleague remained with the company and is still there as far as I know. The manager left quietly.

I had a similar experience to DanceLikeFredAstaire’s above with a line manager who disliked me and I couldn’t understand why. She worked in the same room as me and wouldn’t talk to me. She was just a vile person and on one occasion she’s been screaming her head off at the other person she line managed in the corridor outside and vice versa. We all heard it. I only worked there for 4 months and had never felt so unwelcome.

All communication unless I went and spoke to her was by email. This proved to be how she came unstuck. She emailed me and asked me to look into options for off the shelf drug and alcohol testing of all things. I did this, sent back numerous examples of kits - costs, how they worked, how accurate they claimed they were etc. Thought nothing of it.

About a week later I was asked to go into her manager’s office and my manager was already sat there. The manager’s manager started laying into me, “this idea you’ve had about off the shelf drug testing,” and how terrible it was.
I had my phone with me and while she was rambling at me, clearly getting annoyed because I was using my phone as she ranted at me, I forwarded the email I’d had from my manager, which showed exactly whose idea it was.
I said, “go and check your inbox. I’ve just forwarded you the email so you can see for yourself who really deserves the credit and the rant about how stupid the idea is. It wasn’t mine.”

My manager was looking horrified at this point, realising what I’d done, and I just laughed. She lost her cool and said I was mocking her. I replied, “indeed, so what are you gonna do?“ With that she started stuttering and said, “I’ve got to go,” got up and walked out of the office. Her manager looked gobsmacked and started talking at me.
I said, “I’m not interested. You know fully well the sort of person she is and you’ve done nothing about it for years, so you’re an enabler. Wish the next person good luck from me because I’m going to leave now.” I went and collected my stuff and walked out.

Only job I’ve ever gone AWOL to this day. They’d struggled to recruit for the job for months before I’d accepted it and I was still seeing it being re-advertised 5 months after I left.

Not so much bad management but a bad person getting their comeuppance. My sisters ex who was abusive and violent to her, got a job at my company as my manager, I let my boss know the sort of person he was prior to hiring but they gave him a chance (I get that there’s two sides etc and on paper he was great at his job) I think it was about 3 months before they found he was stealing money from the till to fund his drug habit.

Well, I put in a grievance against mine for bullying and harassment which is currently being investigated. So we will see. But meanwhile I've left with a large payout and my manager must at a minimum be under some significant stress.

Mine didn't think women or people under 30 should be managers (I was 26).
He was vile. Bullying, racist, sexist, homophobic, hated the customers, showed clear favouritism in staff (only some were allowed to drink in the hotel bar, only the people he liked).
Anyways, he got fired because we caught him red handed pouring cheap wine in expensive wine bottles and selling them to a crowd of tourists. He also forgot to mute the phone when he was calling a customer "a daft fucking cunt". His last day was glorious. Not a single person gave a shit. No cards, no gifts, no after work drinks. Just completely glass eyed.

Whrn i was in my twenties, I told a bullying manager to shove it where the sun don't shine and walked out. This triggered an HR review of his high staff turnover and he was asked to leave about six months later.

A team manager was leaving to go to another part of our organisation. He was a horrible man, especially to women, a bully, a man with nothing nice to say about our work at all. He had delusions of superiority, such a vain person the likes I've never met before.

He did have allies, people who tolerated him or turned a blind eye to his viciousness. So when he organised a leaving drink at the local pub. He expected at least his allies to turn up, maybe our top boss, and said to everyone that they must come. He even let the staff paper know about the event. He talked it up like it was tea at Buckingham Palace.

Anyway, only five people turned up, one of them being Top Boss. Everyone else avoided it. There was a lot of food left over, apparently. Other managers asked us why we do make the effort to go and we said we didn't like him. They had no idea (because they chose to ignore what was going on under their very noses).

This was years ago, so I hope he's retired by now.

Not a direct manager, but one who was nevertheless big headed to say the least. When he went to prison for embezzlement I shed no tears.

I worked in a nursery school for an absolutely horrible bully of a woman who would literally throw laundry baskets at me, shut me in dark rooms and not even ask me if I was okay after I had a painful miscarriage (ambulance called to the nursery to take me to hospital mid shift as I was passing out with pain).

Her deputy was just as bad if not worse. The whole culture was rotten and sadly most of the staff were not fit to look after young children.

When I finally plucked up the courage to leave, I handed in my notice and she had the gall after a week beforehand promoting me to room leader to give my new employers a bad reference. Fortunately my new employers said that they could clearly see I was nothing like as described.

Anyway, I decided that the best revenge was success so I undertook my teacher training at the local university and plodded along with it for years.

I heard through a friend Who was close to the sister in law of the horrible manager that this manager had also started a degree at the same university a year after me but had been asked to leave after the first year because she wasn’t able to complete the assignments to a satisfactory level.

Now 10 years into teaching, earning way more than the paltry sum I was paid at this nursery, I still get a petty pleasure when I walk past the nursery on sunny days when I am enjoying my 8 week summer holiday while she and her bullying under managers are still stuck in the rooms of the hot sweaty nursery for 10 hours a day.

I had an awful manager who had a team of about eight under him. Of those, five developed stress-related sickness during the project he 'ran'. For the other three, two were contractors who refused to work more than their agreed hours, and I'd already had clinical depression, and developed techniques to deal with it all, so he didn't impact me so much. There's a lot of other stuff: lying, incompetence, etc but it would turn into an essay...
Anyway one day we were all 'invited' to a meeting with this guy's boss the next morning where we were informed that our manager had resigned with immediate effect. No discussion, no goodbyes. Gone. Later we found out that he'd resigned to avoid being fired. I just wish those further up the food chain had noticed how bad he was before he caused so much damage.

Another one.
i worked at Lidls and the manager wouldn’t ever take me off my till so I could leave on time so I was essentially on a lower hourly rate because once they take you off your till you have to go and count all the money.

One day, I had my driving instructor waiting for me in the car park so I was losing my lesson minutes which cost £30 per hour. I just walked out.

I was then suspended for 3 weeks on full pay while the matter was investigated and was then just allowed back with no further action.

When I eventually left, I was written to by Lidls and told they’d accidentally overpaid me by 2000 pounds and I was required to pay it back. I set up a direct debit for £1 per month for the proceeding 2000 months.

Pretty satisfying. 🙂

Have worked for many, many incompetent people. Most haven't had their comeuppance and float on (public sector - poor performance management) but one was reported to counter fraud for falsifying his qualifications - in an extreme way - and got a suspended jail sentence and lost his job. A couple felt sorry for him but most of us were cross that he had earned 150k of taxpayers money for years, and kept that (and his pension) despite being incompetent.

I might know who you mean!

You've described him perfectly.

Local government?

horrible boss who made life hell for everyone. Big cheese loved him though (big cheese was a complete wanker too - birds of a feather and all that).

Few things :
When I left, company paid me massive payouts avoid me taking them to tribunal. Sadly, he stayed in role but that would have been first really big x against his name. He also tried to force me not to tell anyone I was leaving, and I realised after it was so he could spin it as him "letting me go" to the business. My lawyer assured me I didn't have to agree to that and not only did I tell my internal clients, most of them were really upset I was leaving, turned up for my leaving drinks (and paid). Another black mark for him.

When the big cheese who loved him was forced out, he left too. He landed up eventually turning up in another country!!! Rumour has it by then his reputation was so bad, no one would hire him here!

The other country didn't last that long. He was unemployed for over a year and is now in a job with a fancy title but for a very small, second rate organisation.

Twat.

Not quite the same as not directly relating to employees.

But I once was on secondment to a factory. They had a truly awful procurement manager. Luckily she had no direct staff, and just used the admin pool as required. But she mercilessly "haggled" with suppliers to beat them down on pricing, always lying about potential future orders to make them give better deals, setting one supplier against another (sometimes truthfully, other times with made up suppliers, i.e. fabricating an offer letter or price list to get another supplier to compete against them). Then she'd constantly change the agreement, i.e. force them to reduce lead times, threaten all kinds of things if an order was late, or part of it was damaged, etc. Basically made the lives of the suppliers absolute hell. She'd have them dangling on a string, and randomly would just "cancel" them and suddenly not give them new orders, in the hope of them virtually begging for orders, offering lower prices, better lead times, etc. She'd boast to the other managers about how well she did, how much money she was saving the company, etc.

The company hit troubles. Cash flow became tight. Suppliers were being paid late, some started holding back deliveries. It was a time when the company should be calling in favours, but the procurement manager had built up no goodwill, and the suppliers wouldn't budge at all, which led to the company having to pay full whack with other suppliers to buy stuff (which they had no money for). It virtually ruined them After a while of the company being virtually paralysed and the rest of the management team wondering why no supplies were coming in and a stream of excuses/lies from the procurement manager, the MD started talking to the suppliers directly and got first hand from the horses mouth how they weren't happy the way they'd been treated by PM, weren't willing to do any favours, etc. Once the board realised what had been going on, they sacked the PM, and then things started moving again - relationships were repaired/renewed and the company started functioning again.

Just showed how important it is to treat people well, whether staff or suppliers, to build up goodwill which is necessary to smooth the rough when things go wrong and you need "friends".

Two bosses - one who was described as pure poison by the head of service. Used to pull the race and disability card so often it became meaningless 19 people had brought grievances against her. She went through 24 staff in two years, one of whom only lasted an hour before walking out shouting "go fuck yourself" to her. Not long after I left she was dismissed on the grounds of gross misconduct. Not sure of all the ins and outs, but part of it was her plagiarising a Local Government Association publication after being warned on several occasions. She had also printed copies of this publication (which retailed at £23 a copy) and distributed them to attendees at a conference.
Second boss only had 9 grievances against him when I took him to tribunal. He had stated to me that only weak people get ill (when I had been seriously ill and in hospital for two months). About a year after I left he had to have a quadruple bypass and was left too ill to work. Oh, and I won the tribunal, well, it was settled out of court for a substantial sum three days before tribunal (it was a game of nerves really - my solicitor and union had said my boss would be laughed out of court).
It really was a case of two vile people getting a dose of karma.

@sandrapinchedmysandwich That is such a vile thing for him to say. Such a lack of humanity. My vile boss made jokes about me committing suicide when I was seriously ill with depression - obviously cut from the same cloth.