Some managers in the workforce are natural leaders. They encourage camaraderie, are able to delegate, and stay calm under pressure. But then there are the others… You know the type: those who somehow ended up in charge despite having zero people skills and always blame everyone but themselves. These are the bosses who think the term “work-life balance” is a swear word yet also make you wonder if they’ve actually done anything besides drinking coffee and hanging out in the lounge room. So, when Reddit user Se7en_speed asked disillusioned employees on the platform to share the most out-of-touch things their superiors said or did, there was no shortage of ridiculous stories!
#1
Found out that my infant daughter was rushed to the hospital. In tears, went to my boss to tell him that I had to leave. That wasn’t a problem, however, the boss decides it was necessary to lecture me on how “unprofessional” it was for me to be showing so much emotion in the office, before he would let me head out.
Image source: Lokabf3, Kaboompics
#2
I worked at a high-end handbag store. During the holiday season, it gets really busy especially since we have to gift wrap EVERY F*****G ITEM with f*****g tissue wrap, ribbons, boxes, bags, and one f*****g sticker. My Co-Workers and I are all rushing to ring up and gift wrap the items when suddenly my boss (just slightly smarter than a bag of t**s), he calls me to the gift wrapping station and takes a whole HOUR to explain the importance of “sticker placement.” I S**T YOU NOT. He later got angry that I couldn’t complete my sales quota on a three-hour shift, no s**t! I only had two! I quit the next day and stole the f*****g stickers.
Image source: anon
#3
When I got a ~2/3% pay rise that was equivalent to some $2000 extra salary pre tax, and my boss congratulated me and eagerly suggested I treat myself to a few items from Chanel to celebrate.
The increase didn’t even match inflation.
Image source: waterproof6598, Laura Chouette
#4
Had a boss who liked to work early, so he routinely called 6.30am meetings, often sending out the notice at 11pm the night before, even though our contracts clearly stated work was to start at 9am (we could get in earlier if we wanted to, but they could not require us to).
Image source: revmatty, Ron Lach
#5
“I had trouble working from home because my cleaner and gardener make so much noise.”.
Image source: Toasted_Barracuda
#6
CEO was out and he was giving the organisation an update (mostly distribution centre employees, forklift drivers, pick/pack etc etc) to the team that there would be no annual pay review that year, he finished with “this impacts me too guys, I don’t get a pay rise this year either”.
Image source: adz1179
#7
I was working as a temp in a small office, and started to organize potlucks so we could have a nice lunch together once in a while.
Management heard and thought that was a great idea! So they took it over. Suddenly potlucks needed approval from management, despite it being solely organized by employees off-the-clock and taking place during our lunch time. There was also going to be a “winner” and we would vote for who made the best dish. I won most of the time, and actually felt awkward about it. One time the head of the company actually came in during the potluck, and started giving us a schedule for the meal and how and when voting was going to occur. We’re just trying to have lunch here, calm down!
All I wanted was to do something nice for and with my coworkers. I didn’t plan for it to be a management tool or a competition. :(.
Image source: anon
#8
My old boss, in a construction company, thought that if I ate my lunch while driving the company truck from one site to another that I had to knock the half-hour off my time card for lunch. I explained to him, just because I am eating while working doesn’t mean I’m not working but for him, it’s the other way around. He thinks the fact that I am eating means I should be working for free.
My current newspaper editor is hysterical. She demands the highest possible ethical standards but insists I only write news articles about businesses that buy ads and I am not allowed to give coverage to any business owner that doesn’t buy ads. I think I may quit soon.
Image source: Journalisto, drazenphoto
#9
I was working at an icecream place and someone got explosive diarrhea. There was s**t on the wall behind the toilet, on top of seat, and overflowing down the side of the toilet onto the floor around it because the toilet was really backed up. He expected me to clean it (fine) without gloves or a bodily fluids kit…. just with our thin paper towels, soap, and water. I asked him why *he* wouldn’t do it if it “wasn’t so awful” (which he claimed), and he said “Well it’s f*****g disgusting and unsanitary to clean it that way.”
I replied “Exactly.” and quit.
Image source: anon
#10
AOL bought Netscape a while back. AOL is a Virginia company that doesn’t understand tech culture that well (which is one reason why it sank).
So, in the early 2000s, this executive comes in from the East Coast to Mountain View, and because everyone East goes to work early, and there is a 3 hour time difference, comes in at 7:30AM. And he’s shocked no one is in the office – so he demands that people show up at 7:30AM.
Now this is a culture of people who get up late, code late, hate meetings, and hate being forced to go anywhere. Naturally, a lot of people quit. A good chunk were already rich, and the others moved to other Mountain View companies. You know, like a small startup named Google and the like.
Image source: ass_munch_reborn, cottonbro studio
#11
Got back from a conference in Vegas at about 3pm. Boss called from Cancun to be sure everyone went back to the office for the last two hours of the work day.
Image source: anon, Redd Francisco
#12
While interviewing people to be our new receptionist…
Boss: “Why would anyone take this job? You can’t possibly live on that salary.”
Me: “Umm, you pay me less than that, and I have a master’s in engineering.”.
Image source: Pizzadude
#13
HR executive tried to pull me up for using the word “feminism”‘ in my (the office coordinator at the time) International Women’s Day email to our local team because it “promoted a different set of values that didn’t align with our company.”
I had copied the text from the HR team’s IWD pack.
Image source: Sea-Engineering-5563
#14
Complain about the traffic on their Friday “commute” to Bankstown airport to get into the private helicopter they own and fly to their weekend house / horse stud.
Image source: Elegant-Nature-6220, Paulie Ivicic
#15
“Did you enjoy your vacation?” (to a mother returning from parental leave).
Image source: RedPanda-Memoranda, Alexander Mass
#16
Hahaha i have a good one. a few years ago i was working at the corporate office for a rather large company that was about to do a big layoff due to financial problems that had been going on for the last few years. i was sitting in a conference room with about 30-50 other employees who were all getting laid off waiting for the vp to arrive and give the official announcement and pass out the paperwork etc. everyone else was there, the hr people and unemployment rep etc, but we all had to wait 20 mins for this guy to show up before we could officially proceed. it was beyond tense and awkward. so the guy shows up and apologizes to the other suits up front about how his plane was a little late arriving from his COMPANY PAID VACATION IN THE FLORIDA KEYS and proceeded to talk and joke with them about how much fun he had on his trip for about 10 minutes. then it was like he suddenly remembered what he was there for and was all, “ok so lets get this thing over with” and turns back to the rest of us to start his schpiel about how this whole situation was so unfortunate and though the company valued all it’s employees equally this was unavoidable and how they were so soooo sorry blah bah blah. i like to think he was facing a whole room full of these: ಠ_ಠ but maybe it was just me. I’m still pretty pissed about that experience. jokes on them though, they just recently announced that they are liquidating the company after several rounds of trying to save it through bankruptcy proceedings and buyouts! suckers.
Image source: spankenstein
#17
I work at a small company of less than ten people. We were all told by the CEO that we wouldn’t receive any raises that year because money was tight. A couple days later we were all at a meeting with another company for contract negotiations. Numbers were thrown around for price negotiation, and our CEO says, “$10,000? That’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” That being the price we would pay them.
Image source: throwawayasdfqwerty1, RDNE Stock project
#18
Worked for a family owned company, the family was rich, like millionaire rich, mom, dad, and grown son. There were only about five of us that worked there for minimum wage.
Grown son boss (who has a Stephen Harper calendar and had previously told me that he didn’t believe in student loans because that is his tax dollars helping others) has been asking me to stay late to close up. I mark the extra fifteen minutes or half hour on my time sheet.
One day I have to go to his desk to answer his phone (I regularly did his job in addition to my own for the last half of the day because neither one was hard) and I notice a small calendar with my name written beside the month and in each small square things like “3m” or “4m”.
There was one day marked “15m” that I specifically remembered being a day where my car broke down over my lunch break and I had called to say I’d be late. I went and got my time sheet and my pay stub to do some math and saw that not only was he meticulously clocking minutes I had been late returning from lunch (all under five) but the a*****e had also not been paying me for the time I stayed late (all over fifteen). For a summer job. Where the government paid a large portion of my wage. This man was a millionaire, I made minimum wage.
Although it was my second summer there and I liked the job otherwise for its setting and how it let me save money by staying at home I applied for and got I got a job offer in my university city and quit shorty after this to go back for the second half of the summer. F*****g p***k.
EDIT: to the people saying I should be fired for being late back from lunch: 2 or 3 minutes speckled throughout a couple months, I’ve probably come back from lunch 2 or 3 minutes early a hundred more times. I’m a decent employee.
Image source: preguica88
#19
Working at a country club for a year, one of the meetings our manager spent some time telling us that the best kind of workers are the ones never have to be told what to do. A few days later we were working a wedding reception, during the ceremonial speech we decided that we had some time to start polishing the silverwear, after about 20 minutes the manager barges in and scolds us for doing something we weren’t told to do.
I put my two week notice in a few days later.
Image source: Numble
#20
My company was run by s**theads and this was a prime example.
Company was failing and the board fired the exec team (founders) and hired a new crew to come in and clean up. New CEO leaves within 2 months, so the COO gets bumped up. Now he and those brought in with him are from an internet services company that had layoffs, and we are a gaming company. He brings in more execs, with zero experience in this field, at 6 figure salaries (all people from his old company) while firing hundreds and shutting down offices world wide. So: not a good time.
We have a Holiday Party at a bar shortly into his and his cronies tenure. This f*****g guy stops the music and declares that it’s time to reward some of the people for their hard work. Fair enough, some of these people have watched good friends get laid of and many had been there for 5, 7, 12 years.
Each award he announces is to one of his cronies and it’s basically some dumb certificate of excellence. Nice slap in the face to everyone there.
**TL;DR:** most incompetent man I’ve seen run a company. F**k that guy.
Image source: I_Said
#21
I had a boss that was completely oblivious to social cues. One day a female co-worker gets down on her knees to get something from the bottom shelf. My boss sees this and decides to make a joke and says “You don’t have to get on your knees to keep this job”. My co-workers and I just stare at each other thinking, did he REALLY just say that?! A couple seconds later he realized what he said and says “To pray. You don’t have to get on your knees to pray to keep this job”.
And before anyone asks, no she didn’t file any sexual harassment complaint, she was just as surprised as everyone, and she knew how awkward this guy could be and it was obvious he was trying to make a joke.
Image source: Naldort, RDNE Stock project
#22
In the kitchen at McDonalds there is usually 2 or 3 people working on the line making sandwiches: One who looks at the orders and toasts the buns, one who puts all the condiments and cheese on the sandwiches, and one who puts the meat on the sandwich and sends them to the cashiers. For the most part everyone followed this procedure but often people would work together to do something because its more efficient. One manager disagreed with this and drew a line that I absolutely couldn’t cross when I was working beside him. He then left the kitchen to take a call on his cell phone. So naturally I just let all the food pile up on the other side of the line he drew so he came back to 15+ sandwiches to make while I stood there.
TL;DR – Manager draws line in kitchen that I can’t cross and then tried to dock my pay when I don’t cross it.
Image source: CHsteel, Visual Karsa
#23
My old boss would get incredibly angry when customers would complain about prices. Almost every time this happened, he would raise the price of that item, and justified it by saying “The less volume I sell, the more I have to get for each item to break even. Customers shouldn’t be so stingy”.
Image source: anon, Nicola Barts
#24
D**n this is normal stuff at my work.
1. Schedule 7:00 meeting about pending reorganization. 30 minutes later reschedule for 6:30. Cancel morning of.
2. Schedule client call for 5:30 AM. Don’t let team know until night before. Client cancels 30 minutes prior because one person can’t attend.
I’m sure I could think of others. One of my favorite past times is complaining about work.
Image source: BallsonoldWirestraws, Christina Morillo
#25
I once had a former boss who told me, “You should be more of a team player and stop relying on others for help.” So… working for a team means not bothering other team members or relying on them for support? “No, it’s like a team of horses. They don’t rely on each other to pull the load.” Yes they do, that’s why you have more than one. It’s working together, in the same direction, that increases their net gain. “Yes, but horses don’t talk to one another, do they??” So you’re saying I should not talk to my fellow coworkers? “That’s what I mean!” How will I learn anything? “The same way they did; by asking!” Asking whom? “This is what I mean, you’re not a team player. You’re always asking difficult questions!”
I quit that job.
I have had more than one boss consider “training” to be “the Internet.” That’s fine, as long as I have some dedicated alone time to study and read. “Do that on your own time, you have work to do!”
I worked with one manager (not mine, thank goodness) say, essentially, he doesn’t like training people because then they get cocky and leave, or demand more pay, and when he won’t give it, they leave. I asked him, “so you’d rather have an untrained person stay rather than risk training a person so they leave?” He said “yes…” with a smile and tapped his head like he was pointing to his brain. “So then why to so many people quit under you?” His answer was, “because the world is full of morons!” What a coincidence.
Image source: punkwalrus
#26
Director of IT asked me how to ping. He was dead serious.
He hadn’t done any actual work in years and forgot how to do the simple things.
Image source: spicymelons, hitesh choudhary
#27
My old boss (who we all hated) once walked into the office laughing and shouting that she’d ‘just screwed her husband out of $40,000.’ She was in the process of divorcing him at the time.
We were all like, f**k – imagin what she’d do to US given half a chance.
Very unsettling.
Image source: mellowtunes
#28
Boss’ 20 year old daughter (who is actual very nice) came this summer to work with us and get experience in her family’s business. We were told she’d just be another employee up until she actually got here when our boss announced that she’d be his right hand person and report directly to our main office. Our assistant manager had known for a long time that she was leaving to go to school so they trained up the next person in line to take over. Come time for the first assistant manager to leave, we are informed that the boss’ daughter will be acting as assistant manager for her last three weeks with us. This girl once asked me why so many of us have college degrees when she has a degree in cosmetology and still works in this field. I couldn’t bring myself to say “nepotism.”.
Image source: Centaurea
#29
Much of my job is repetitive from week to week. Every week I compile a report, send it to my boss for review and then upload it to a server upon aproval. Deadline for sending to boss for review is before lunch on Wednesday. Deadline for uploading to the server is 1:00 on Thursday. I sent the file to my boss as per usual. This morning (Friday), I was asked why it hadn’t been uploaded to the server yet. Well, I hadn’t been given the greenlight to do so. Now I have a checklist for my duties that I have to complete by Thursday each week and basically it includes reminding my boss that the file needs to be reviewed and approved so that I can upload it. Yep, my boss drops the ball and I am given more work to compensate. Every. F*****g. Time.
Image source: wardogsrule
#30
This topic makes me feel better about my old boss. The worst I have is him telling us that money is tight so try not to bother our sysadmin (who works for us part-time/hourly) with stuff we can take care ourselves. Fair enough, but the next time the sysadmin was in the boss had him spend about two hours moving his iTunes library from his desktop to his laptop.
Image source: lysosome
#31
During covid some people in our business thought it would be fun to make some “cribs” style videos and post on the intranet showing their work from home space.
Most of them were charming enough, people showing how they had set up work from home spaces in their kids rooms, or maybe someone living in a share house had to set up a desk in their kitchen.
Anyway, a GM who was clearly loaded and whose husband was a finance executive thought she would jump in and proceeded to film a walk through of her darling point mansion, which was basically a brag session of how rich she is and how nice her house is… she even made a comment on the fact her kids had to come home from boarding school so the house was crowded.
It wasn’t all bad because it provided us all with a massive amount of gossip for a couple weeks… every teams call started with “can you believe she did that”.
Image source: Wetrapordie
#32
I used to work at an investment bank where we all had these super-comfortable £300 chairs. These m***********s were shipped in from some chair boutique in Sweden, and were designed using the latest research in chair ergonomics and posture. I spent a couple of weeks customising mine by lovingly twisting and pulling the numerous levers peppered on the underside of the base, until it felt like the chair was crafted for my bottom. It cocooned me like a warm, soft hand and I looked forward to going to work just so I could sit in my chair; rest my forearms on the soft, cushioned armrests and hook my feet around the polished chrome legs. I even named her. She was my Susan.
Then my world crashed around me, flames licking at my feet. I was ill with the flu one day, and didn’t go into work for two days. When I returned to the office, Susan was gone. I blinked furiously, hoping she would magically appear. I asked my colleague Rupert where she was, and he told me that he last saw her being wheeled away by the VP of the trading desk: my boss. I asked him if he’d seen my chair and he told me that he’d borrowed it briefly for a work-experience student but had returned it to my desk. Clearly, *clearly* – the m**********r had done no such thing. He had pulled Susan away from the only life she knew, and left her in some cold and godforsaken part of the office.
Problem was: I worked on a trading floor with around 120 traders, the vast majority of whom had the exact same chairs. My Susan looked just like nearly every other chair on the floor… finding her again would be impossible. I began the task of sitting on every chair, meticulously fondling and prodding the fabric, hoping to feel the soft cushioning of Susan’s foam, but I was doomed from the begininning – my crippling doubt meant that I would always second-guess and question myself… *was this really Susan?* “The arm-rests don’t quite feel right.” “I’m sure there wasn’t a scuff on the chrome leg”.
My boss, the heartless b*****d he is, stole the one true love of my life. I know you’re out there Susan, and I know you’re probably scared and afraid, but I will find you. We *will* be reunited, in this life or the next.
Image source: ariiiiigold
#33
This is my moment to shine!! I worked in an organic food warehouse for a very small company. My boss’s boss leaves the company, and we get some executive type from a big company. The old boss was there 60-70 hours a week working on paperwork and running the warehouse & production. The new boss shows up, and spends most of his time locked in his office on the Internet & dosed up on pain pills.
One of his first acts was to completely redo the production process, taking a very efficient model (most employees work 40-50 hours per week with little stress) and flipping it on its a*s tripling the amount of work to be done. To process a single standard order you had to email back and forth 5 times. If the order had issues or was complicated, this could escalate to 10-20 emails for a single order. I went from 30-50 emails a day to 300-500.
Production was the most efficient department before he showed up, and became the worst. We used to produce 20k-30k lbs a day, after his intervention we were lucky to get 10k. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the production team was required to sit in on all meetings, so my boss spent 6-7 hours a day at meetings, on top of his normal 40 hour week. Yes, he was there for 12 hours everyday & 16-20 hours each weekend. His boss was there around 30.
He moved the meeting schedule from 1:30 to 11:30, when most people were on lunch. He tried to make them “lunch meetings”, where you don’t get paid and have to bring your own lunch to the meeting room, but that got shot down. So everyone’s lunch schedule got shuffled around.
He’d routinely scream into his phone about someones incompetence, and this was in a very small thin walled office. If you messed up, everyone could hear every word.
After 6 months of work in the warehouse, he still did not know how to use the inventory system or the accounting system. He was the manager of production and the warehouse.
He hired a consultant to teach us more about the inventory system. Some old dude showed up (he forgot to tell us because he only hired him to win a fight with another department) so I was taken from my extremely demanding job and got to sit in a room with this old guy for 6 hours. I literally taught him how to use the system, and he was taking notes on how we used it. His flight & hotel plus wages were paid for by my company so that I could do his job while not doing mine. Immediately after the consultant left, he jumped up and went home. It was around 3pm.
He made some of his employees babysit his children when he was on business trips for no pay.
He hired his wife, then she was allowed to work from home, and then they got divorced. We all know this because we could hear their fights from his office. Not sure if she’s still employed.
I have way more stories, but I think that’s enough for now.
Edit: one more! He made the decision to fudge some paperwork and hide things that were salmonella or e-coli positive. One of our customers tested their product, found salmonella, the FDA came to our plant and spent a month there, and now when you google the company the second page is about the FDA investigation. I won’t provide proof though because it was a small company and they’d immediately know who I am.
Image source: Miss_rampage
#34
I started my shift one day at 2:30pm. My coworker started his shift at 1:30pm and was going to be late so he asked if we could switch. I say of course and arrive at work at 1:30. As i get to the main office my boss steps out of his office with a grin on his face and say, “well! your in early today!” I explain that our coworker was running late and asked if we could switch. instantly, the color and happiness drains from my boss’s face and he steps back into his office without saying a word. At 2:30, after my coworker arrives, he is asked to step into my boss’s office. 15 min late they both come out. My boss gathers his things and leaves without a word. My coworker turns to me and just grumbles “what a f*****g p***k”. As it turns out, my boss had expected to leave when I got into work (originally planned for 2:30). When I arrived early, he got all happy thinking he got to leave an hour early. Having learned that that was not the case, my boss decided to write up my coworker and threaten to fire him for not telling him that he switch shifts that day. Holy Jeebus that was a dumb day!
TL;DR My boss gets mad and threatens to fire my coworker because he didn’t get to leave early that day.
Edit: For clarity, my boss worked with his employees, as in, alongside them. He did pretty much the same work as us but for higher pay and with the title ‘manager’.
Edit numbah 2!: For some extra clarity (because after reading through comments and then my own post I realize that not knowing what job this is makes the situation a tad bit confusing), I worked at a chevron car wash. It was necessary to have two people on at all times because our chevron sold propane (which the car wash employees filled). If we had cars and propane at the same time, one person would wash cars and the other propane. Therefore, if my boss had left at 1:30 I would have been stuck doing the job of two people.
Image source: gman524
#35
Worked at a preschool, the site supervisor walked through the room I was supervising children in and began to berate me about a tiny dirt pile in the corner of the room that needed sweeping….
In front of the children,
while I was helping an upset child with a cut on their leg.
1st rule of being a teacher: Children come first.
I put her in her place though, she brought up the incident again infront of the other teachers during our meeting time in an effort to assert her authority. I interrupted her, explained the situation from my POV and our behavioral consultant backed me up and lectured her about how to act as an adult in a classroom infront of all the teachers. It was glorious.
The consultant reported the incident to administration and they decided that our site supervisor wasn’t allowed to sit in our teacher meetings because it was counter productive AND she wasn’t allowed to make any comments or decisions about the day to day operation of the school, because thats the master teacher’s job.
That site supervisor was a real idiot. She didnt know anything about running a school, she just came from a privileged background and treated the preschool like it was her own little private gigantic dollhouse for her to decorate. She would blow our entire budget on furniture that often times the children wouldnt even be allowed to use, it was just so the school would “prettier”. She constantly interrupted children while they were working on something so that she could pretend to be marry poppins or some s**t and try connect with them. Problem was all the children hated her because she was a mega b***h 95% of the time and children know whats up, they arent dumb.
The most annoying thing she did was always bring up the fact that she has a master’s degree. She would always be super vague about it though and eventually I learned that her master’s degree was in theology and she got it from a f*****g online school. I hated that b***h with a passion.
TL;DR – Worked as a preschool teacher, idiot boss tried to school me. I turned the tables on her and put her in her place.
Image source: Igotlost
#36
Not really out of touch, just stupid, but my old boss at a restaurant ran a generator in the basement when the power was out. Luckily a candle caught some papers on fire and the fire department was called. They found the generator. Could have been really bad.
Image source: benk4
#37
My supervisor waited 11 months to tell me that I needed to enter information on a particular screen in our system, in connection with one particular legal action. I’ve been with my employer for 3 years in November, and under this particular supervisor for 15 months now. Previous chain of command had not mentioned this, ever, and she waited 11 MONTHS to bring it up.
Image source: green072410
#38
My boss when I was working for a theatre company was a big idea guy. I was the little details person. I, for example, had to explain why having the actors hold flaming torches while their hands were chained behind their back would not be a good idea. Those were some interesting summers.
Image source: anon
#39
COVID lockdowns. Everyone trapped in their bumfuck studios and apartments. Finance industry, all team call, MD pipes up:
“Yeah I’ve decamped to my field-to-fork regenerative lamb farm in the Southern Highlands until this blows over”.
Image source: Iabyrinthias
#40
CEO said bonuses and pay rises were only for those who achieved band 5 in their performance reviews (which was technically impossible). Days later got his brand new Audi S5 delivered to the office and wanted everyone to come look at it…
Image source: LD60
#41
They were asked how they manage their work life balance and responded they take their wife along with them on international business trips.
Image source: Every-Citron1998
#42
“why would anyone even bother to own a car, and not just get ubers and taxis everywhere they need to go? So much easier”
That dude owned and drove a BMW so I’m not sure wtf he was on about anyway.
Image source: Slappyxo
#43
Not quite executive but a girl at work chipped her front tooth, about 4 months later one of the managers ($150-180k, D**k) says dammit Jessie ($47k, single mother) when are you going to get that d**n tooth fixed?
Image source: psrpianrckelsss
#44
Our head of HR after announcing that a ton of people who had been assured that their role would remain fully WFH/flexible needed to RTO three days a week – “I understand that you may have family obligations to manage, but you can just get your husband, family or a nanny to pick up your kids”.
This is directly after nodding sympathetically for the first half of the meeting as we discussed the effects of cost of living pressures and inflation on team members and the fact that many were single parents, carers or had no support.
Image source: Few_Solid_8951
#45
Remember when we had that nutter who went around mowing people down with a car in Melbourne? One of our team was across the road, watched him k**l a person with a vehicle. Next day he was off sick because he was understandably shocked. His manager made a joke about it to the rest of the executive leadership team implying he was having a bit of a sook over nothing. Was appalling, especially because aside from a few stares nobody told her to pull her head in.
Image source: FinCrimeGuy
#46
Old boss (exec) agonising about a very very modest pay rise I had requested and pushing back hard. Later that day casually talking to the team about buying a $70k diamond (more than my entire salary at the time).
Image source: chimp-pistol
#47
Had an MD complain that I always get the last green apple from the staff kitchen when I was in a grad role earning less than what target paid me.
She had the audacity to suggest I should give them to her – keeping in mind she was in Brisbane’s most expensive suburb and driving a 100k car. I think she can go buy her own d**n apples instead of pecking away at the complimentary staff fruit if she really wants green apples that badly.
Also keeping in mind the start time was 9am and she always rocked at 9:15. If she just showed up on time she’d actually get the green apples.
And tldr there was like always 20 red apples and like 4 green apples.
Image source: anon
#48
“You’ve asked us to reduce overlap in roles and we have listened”
ELT member explaining why 30% of the people in the townhall meeting would lose their jobs.
Image source: IrregularExpression_
#49
Got made redundant. Executive asks “So what are you going to do now? Me “Find another f*****g job.” Awkward silence ensues. Happily employed elsewhere after a two week break and a nice boost to the bank account.
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#50
When asked his favourite cheap eats, he laughed and said “I make enough money i don’t eat at cheap places”
D****e.
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#51
CEO spoke about how he visited a Chinese factory and was so impressed how the workers live on site and how committed they were to their employer. Yep, seriously.
Another time he told me he preferred to hire migrant workers because they didn’t have their hands out for more money like Aussies and were simply grateful to their employer “for putting food on their table.”
Unsurprisingly, this CEO didn’t pay his staff their superannuation and was engaging in serious illegal wage theft.
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#52
Exec: “I would like to see improvements in our new website. Something similar to what the BBC offer”
Me: “A website of that size isn’t a simple undertaking”
Exec: “Can we get someone in once a week to build it?”
Still no idea why they wanted a corporate website that was a replica of the BBC 🤷♂️.
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#53
(I live in an inland city) *You really like surfing, why havent you bought a holiday house at the beach*
Followed by a series of emails with recommended holiday houses (*you really need one that has an ocean view*). From memory the cheapest one was around $1.6m (which didnt have a water view) and some close to $3m.
He was trying to be helpful but…
This was not my work so second hand (but I believe the person who told me) – the exec was annoyed that the in house automatic coffee machine was set to 19 seconds per shot (it was one of those machines that had a little ‘shot clock’ display). He said it meant people stood around waiting for their turn and demand it be reduced to 8 seconds a shot to increase efficiency.
Of course (a) people started going out to a cafe instead and (b) even the other execs started complaining about how terrible the coffee was.
Only lasted a few days but still pretty ridiculous.
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#54
Announced a restructure closing a whole division (500 people), then spent the next 20 mins telling us how she had already secured a new role in the company and how excited she was to be starting her new role.
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#55
He would always tell my team (where the average salary was well under $100k) what he bought that weekend. A new spa, a new Ducati, a $1000 Mont Blanc pen, a Mercedes, etc.
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#56
Many years ago a manager came in to the break room where 20 or so staff were quietly eating our lunches. He said loudly “HELLO PEASANTS” made his coffee and walked out.
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#57
I’m sorry I couldn’t make the meeting ( the meeting he called) because the truck to tow my boat arrived late and I’m still at the dock.
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#58
Ours was a fast growing engineering company. I joined in the mid-90’s. I was one of the first 3 engineers / technicians to have Internet access at our company. (Dial up. I used an analog line that bypassed our company digital phone switch.)
We had a bare-bones computer network, and I started researching company datasheets for the products I was working on, and then dumping those datasheets onto our network in a shared folder.
This didn’t go over well with management, who said that engineers shouldn’t be on the Internet, ever. The engineers saw the easy access to datasheets and revolted, resulting in giving EVERYONE in engineering access to the Internet.
The company STILL didn’t think the Internet was in any way useful, and refused engineering advice to purchase their own domain name. So one of our engineers purchased the domain name. He kept it for 3 years until the company asked him for it. They asked him nicely, so instead of gouging them for a couple of million dollars, he sold it to them for the price of a new car.
Finally, the company hired an IT guy to manage the network and the Internet. In Engineering, it was common for an engineer to have his or her PC sort of gutted so that we could use the older versions of In Circuit Emulator while interfaced to a product motherboard.
The IT manager implemented a draconian Internet policy that blocked the YAHOO search engine (which was popular at the time) and he told the Engineers that anyone who got around the firewall, or anyone who didn’t use a cookie-cutter, underpowered computer, would be subject to being fired.
This was in the middle of the Dot Com boom. Every single engineer was getting multiple head-hunter calls from people begging for employees.
They laughed so hard at the IT guy that I thought he would cry. I told him that firing an engineer meant that engineer would probably get a pay raise at a new company.
It was war between the IT manager and engineers for the next couple of years. Several engineers would refuse to even notice when the IT manager tried to call or talk or email them. The war only ended when a more savvy higher-up created an IT department with it’s own Vice President, and set the IT manager as one of several “company IT service reps”.
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#59
Head of department, whilst presenting the plans for a restructure that sees a number of people being made redundant, refers not once, but twice to the “cossy livs”. Glad they are taking it seriously…
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