If there's one thing that can turn what you thought was your dream job into an utter nightmare, it's a bad boss. But these bosses were so terrible that they went beyond bad and into the realm of inhuman. From the cruel to the stupid, these stories of bad bosses made us want to snap.
1. Home Is Where The Manager Isn’t
My manager had never been that great, but she completely lost it as soon as our company shifted to mostly work from home. She didn’t want to pay us overtime and had the mindset that working from home would always be less productive than in the office. Her entire opinion was based on the fact that because she got a quarter of her own work done when she was at home, the rest of us would too.
Because she was so set on getting back into the office, she volunteered our department as the pilot project to go back in first, even when cases were at an all-time high. Oh, but it gets worse. Everyone goes in, except one person: Her. She's a no show. We couldn't believe it. After that, everyone started looking for other jobs.
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2. Up Close And Personal
I had a boss who would scream in my face so often, I started to strategize how I would handle it when she finally hauled off and hit me. She never did, but she did eventually lose her job after being accused of hurting children.
3. The New McManager
We had a younger manager at McDonald’s for my first 10 months. Then they decided to bring in a second manager from another store. The first week he was fine. Until one day, when one of the girls who usually worked drive-thru was put on the grill for no reason. She got grease on her shirt, and he told her that she looked like a pig.
Then he said to clean up or go home. She left crying. The next day another underage kid asked to just get a drink of water after a 3-hour non-stop rush. The kid looked like he was about to pass out. The manager told him no, so he said he'd drink from the sink in the back. He told him if he did that, he’d send him home.
I lost it when I heard that. I went off at him and then left. I never went back. I heard that he was fired a month later.
4. Nefarious Negativity
I hated my boss. Nobody ever received any positive comments in evaluations. One time in a meeting, someone asked, "Do you think we could hear something nice about somebody just once"? All my boss did was bark, "That's not what we're here for"! That's that kind of person I had to deal with for five long years. It was absolutely brutal.
People who held grudges against me personally rose up to the right positions to put together a case that would get me railroaded out. Fortunately, one of my co-workers clued me in about it, and I was able to interview and get another job before the hammer came down. They would have fired me at 11 in the morning. I got the other job offer at 9.
I pre-emptively turned in a resignation that said nothing more than, "I resign my position effective XX/XX/XXXX". I also refused the exit interview and presented state and federal statutes that showed I was not required to give one. Even though they so badly wanted me gone, they were mad that I got to leave on my own terms, instead of getting fired.
And I got them good. I handed them a post-dated resignation instead knowing they would immediately throw me out of the building, but also that they would have to pay me until the date on my letter. And the timing worked out perfectly. The dates worked out so that I received my annual bonus too. Now, I'm in a job with far fewer hours, making more money, and coworkers who I actually like.
Meanwhile, the old company where I worked laid off ten percent of their employees and slashed the compensation of those who remained by thirty percent. Good. They suck.
5. First Mistake Kit
I had been running the restaurant for weekend nights for three years. These were not easy shifts. They were from 5 PM–3 AM and the restaurant was always packed with drunk college kids. Still, I was a night owl, and it was my pleasure. Or it was, until I took a few days off and went to a hot spring with my wife. On our way back, I noticed that my leg hurt.
Within 2 hours, I was in the hospital for a severe infection. It needed three antibiotics at once to treat. I called in sick three days in advance. My AGM told me to heal up and that they would cover my shift. They did not. For my "first infraction" they gave me a final warning. I was one step from being fired, after all my years of hard work. I put in my notice the next day.
6. Questionable Communication
At my last job at a marketing company, our president and owner went off on an hour long rant to a client basically calling them "stupid ungrateful idiots" along with a bunch of swears. It started because the client, a dentist, presented my boss with some ideas that came from her receptionist. Just standard suggestions.
They were things like bench signs and radio ads that a layperson would know, but it was nothing so bad that someone should ridiculing them.
7. Proper Procedure
I had a boss who tried making every single interaction into an argument or confrontation. I would be at work, going about my business, and he would come around, and our interactions would go something like, “I want you to do it this way,” he’d tell me. I’d say, “that's how I'm doing it, that's how I've always done it”.
He’d answer, “don't argue with me, just do what I'm telling you to do”! If I protested, he’d interrupt me and yell, “if you can’t do it the right way, I’ll find somebody who can”! My only course of action around this guy was to act dumb and make him feel like he was a wise old sage because he had been there for longer.
Sometimes 30 years of experience just means that you've sucked at your job for 30 years. Oh, and during my last review with him, he wanted to know why we weren't better friends.
8. Too Close For Comfort
I was 19 and working my first job. My awful boss criticized my lipstick, saying that the color was ugly and recommending a bright red lipstick to match with my bright red uniform shirt. He also didn’t like my choice of all black shoes. And he didn’t like the way I mopped the floor. He would take the mop from me and show how to “properly” do it.
His condescension was insane. But the day he creepily told one of my coworkers that she couldn’t wear a sports bra under her uniform (because it "flattens" certain things), I knew I couldn't deal with him. I quit a few days later.
9. Set Up To Fail
My efficiency scores all quarter were on track to be amazing, but when the time came for raises, I received an impossible task. When I couldn’t complete it, it was used as the reason for not giving me a raise. This was complete BS. Our company was growing and becoming more and more profitable because we were accepting bigger jobs. But management never hired new workers.
A lot of us would stay late and work overtime, guaranteeing the company profits, but never meaning any of us would see a penny. Eventually, after we didn't get raises for two years, I changed careers.
10. Can’t Do This Anymore
I’m currently trying to leave my job. If I worked any amount under 40 hours, my boss would dock my pay. If I worked over 40, I’d get my salary pay. I worked until Tuesday and then discovered that I’d been around a COVID positive person and developed symptoms. Work sent me home. I got a test. Work kept me home until I got the results: negative.
My paycheck showed up with hundreds of dollars less than normal. Of course, my boss didn’t bother to tell me it would be like that. Luckily, I went to HR who told her she couldn’t do that. She later called to apologize, saying she "didn’t know she had to pay me". This, amongst many other things, is why I’m trying to get out of there.
11. Just Do It
I left Journeys because everyone got sick. I was a new hire, but instead of finding somebody to come work and train me or close the store, they just said I had to do it all alone, so I left. I’m all for being thrown to the wolves if I have the knowledge to handle it, but this was too far. I couldn't even process returns!
12. Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda
I had missed one day of work in a two-month time span to attend my aunt’s funeral. Then my manager called me into her office to be “coached”. The first thing the manager said was, “I'm so sorry for your loss. I would have done the same thing”. I thought she'd be cool about it, but nope. She proceeded to make me sign paperwork instructing me on how to avoid absenteeism. I guess just...never attend a beloved relative's funeral?
13. Mommy, May I
I work in home care. My “boss” is typically the family I work for. It’s always the families that are the reason I leave, never my clients. Families are the worst. One mom got so mad when I dared to take a week off. I had worked for her for five long years, taking care of her very handicapped child. I did not get paid if I took time off.
So, I planned accordingly. She told me that I needed to make that time up and that she had no idea what she was going to do with her child while I was gone. This was ridiculous. I was one of 3-4 home aides; she had enough help. I told her I did not need to make any time up. I didn’t get paid for not being there, so it wasn’t my problem.
I told her that she would have to take care of her own kid. She didn’t like that answer. I went on my vacation and decided I had had enough of her, so I quit. I felt bad for the kid who wasn’t a bad kid at all. But I could not take that mom anymore.
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14. Can’t Play Favorites
A now-former colleague and I both applied for a more senior position that had become vacant. I had vastly more experience and had held a similar role in the past. I was better qualified and, frankly, a better fit for the job. But none of that mattered. Even before my interview, senior management had already decided to give the job to my colleague.
Unfortunately, nepotism prevailed. My colleague was so smug about his promotion, which was already bad, but then he decided to treat me like an idiot child for the next year, rather than the experienced professional that I am. I chose to leave after like six months and secured a much better job with better pay and working conditions.
I gave my required 90 days’ notice. My new manager was so good at their job that they didn't even advertise my job until it suddenly occurred to them that I was due to leave in two weeks’ time. The manager tried to offload my duties to someone on my team. To my satisfaction, that worker promptly burnt out and resigned due to the impossible workload.
15. Just a Miscall
After working for the same company for 17 years and always getting praise for my work, I finally got a position in a department that I'd always wanted to work in. My manager was excited to have me and continued to praise me. Then one night, while I was on-call, we got an "urgent page," which was sent to my phone. My phone didn't ring.
They called my manager. She texted me a few times. Well, I didn't have my texting alerts set to be very loud, so I didn't hear anything. She was annoyed the next day. I apologized that my phone hadn't worked properly for the call. Besides, my “backup” co-worker got the call and fixed it quickly. But that didn't satisfy her. She would not have it and kept telling me I'd screwed up.
She told me that it better not happen again and suggested I get another phone. I apologized again but said, "Look, what happened could happen to anyone. Mistakes happen. [my backup] got the call and handled it anyways. Besides, it really wasn't that urgent". She wouldn’t let it go. Our relationship went downhill from there. Mind you, I’d been at this job for almost 20 years.
I would get up early and work late to accommodate our customers' schedules, put in time on my days off for big urgent issues, and never got paid overtime. I didn't mind. I liked the job and got paid well. But then, a few months after the text incident, I ended up sitting with an HR rep who tried to mediate a truce between me and my boss.
From the beginning, it was clear that he’d sided with her. They just kept bringing up the very few times I hadn’t performed up to par, missing the context every time. Like, "Boss-Lady says there was this one email where you were a little rude to the customer. Is that true"? I had tried explaining myself, but he’d interrupt me with, “No. Just answer the question. Were you rude"?
I said, "Well, yes, a bit I suppose". HR Rep then moved on to the next accusatory question. After a bit of this, I looked across the table at my boss and said, "Boss, are you willing to meet me halfway here"? She just looked at HR Rep. "Okay, that's what I thought". That was it. I stood up and threw my security badge down.
I grabbed my personal bag, which I had prepared for just such an eventuality, said, "I quit," and walked out. Then the HR Rep followed me out the door calling after me, "Don't quit! We don't want this"! I turned around and said, "Neither do I". I felt so good driving back home. I've got a much better job where I'm much more appreciated now.
16. Changing Ways
I worked in an agency environment with big clients and big expectations, but we had a small staff for all the projects we took. Late nights were expected, and some nights I barely had time to eat before I went to sleep, so I could wake up the next day and restart the cycle.
We tried to ask for structural change to have some breathing room between projects, but upper management and my boss always ignored us. I was tired, frustrated, and felt like I was just a tool for the man. We worked late and never got anything back from the company. So, I sent out applications and found a bigger company with a cool culture. They offered me a gigantic pay raise and offered better benefits.
I went to my boss to hand in my resignation. I gave him two weeks’ notice. This somehow became a thirty-minute conversation telling me how good I had it there and how miserable I'd be at this other company. I hadn't even mentioned the name of the new company, so I knew he was talking straight bull. I went back to work.
But my boss then pulled me back into his office and told me he was going to let me go that day. I did so and never looked back. My new job is great by the way. Better boss, better work, better life.
17. Working Together
The company where I worked rented out office space to self-employed people, entrepreneurs, etc. One of my clients approached me about starting a business together that actually piqued my interest. I didn’t know it was against any rules to work a side hustle, and I was very transparent about the whole thing. My co-workers and supervisors all knew about it.
My boss in particular always knew and never said anything negative about it. Six months later, there was a new sales manager hired for the company who was a bit of a jerk. Within two weeks of her starting, she became aware that I had a side hustle and reported me to HR. I went into work one Friday and saw I had an HR call scheduled.
I felt my stomach drop. That was never a good thing. So, my actual boss and I got on the call, and HR said I’d broken a huge rule. I explained that I did not know and thought it was okay since I had been telling my boss about it for nine months. And yet, HR still gave me the option to quit my side hustle and receive a final written warning from them.
This was despite me not having any other discipline in all of my time with the company. My other option was to quit the company. It made me so furious. But the worst part was that my boss never stepped up and defended me. She didn't even acknowledge that she also had not known about this rule. That's what made me thank them for their time and leave.
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18. Personal Efforts Rewarded
I used to work at Comcast and had aspirations to move up into management. I was pretty green to the corporate world, so I thought that helping my supervisor with her job would help move me up. And by help, I mean my supervisor made me do her whole job. I ran her meetings, did scheduling, and went through her paperwork.
I did all this while working on the phone as she sat at her desk playing Candy Crush on her iPad. I did this for months until I was so stressed that I snapped at a customer. Now, I took full responsibility for what I did, but that wasn't good enough for her. Nope, she had to sit me down and humiliate me in front of the upper management.
For an hour and a half, she made me listen to the recording while pausing it every few minutes to say something like, "How could you"? I was in tears at the end, and she used that to show how bad of an employee I was and how good a boss she was for "helping" me learn from my mistake. She then pushed for a Final Notice.
If I went out of line one more time within a year, I'd lose my job. She wasn’t going to fire me. I would have to do that for her. HR was predictably useless as were my friends in management. Now that I had become a pariah, people didn't care about me at all, except for my supervisor who, of course, still expected me to do her job.
My next few days were filled with a lot of crying. What followed was rage: Endless, white hot rage. I didn't quit. I didn't give up. Instead, I went back to school to finish my degree. After a while, I was offered an internship at 20 hours a week, which I took while fighting an uphill battle at Comcast 40 hours a week.
I was also a full-time student. And I let my supervisor know this. "Sorry, boss," I'd say, "I can't do this report for you. I have a final to study for," or, "Want me to stay late? No can do. My internship is working me hard, so I want to spend my night off at home doing nothing". I kept ignoring her whenever possible.
If she emailed me a question relating to my job, I'd respond, but if she sent out a group email about an incentive plan, I’d put it in the trash. At one point, she pulled me into a meeting, which was just me and her where she antagonized me and repeatedly told me, "You don't know me". The whole thing was really cringey and awkward.
This went on for the year that I was on probation. During that time, I always kept my sales numbers just high enough not to get fired, but good enough so it looked like I was still “trying”. This affected my commission, but it was so worth it. Before my probation was over, I had the option to switch to another supervisor, which I did.
I upped my effort those last few months, and my sales numbers skyrocketed. I had intentionally done this so my old boss would look bad. The upper management saw how my new supervisor succeeded in one month where my older supervisor failed in nine, and it pleased me to no end that I had played the long game and humiliated her like how she humiliated me.
On the one-year anniversary of my probation, I put in my two weeks’ notice. I let them know in my exit interview what I did with my life, omitting the undercutting part, and that had I had spent the last year becoming a better person just to spite Comcast. But even without spelling it out, that exit interview was one of the most satisfying moments of my life.
19. Bad Move
I worked at a small company with less than 40 employees. My boss encouraged us to get into fights with other departments. And when I refused to participate, my team ghosted me. I went to the CEO indirectly a few times, but nothing happened. Then I finally lost my patience, scheduled a 1-on-1 with the CEO, and told him that he was running a circus.
I said that if he didn’t take action fast, the company would fail, and I’d be gone long before. Three weeks later, they walked me out. But I got the last laugh. A year later, they walked the CEO out.
20. No, By The Way
They changed the commission structure mid-month and did not update sales staff on the new goals. I missed my commission of $3,800 by $4. I thought that I had been $500 over my goal, so I let junior sales reps take sales to get them over their goals too. That would qualify our group for the site-wide bonus, which I later learned did not exist anymore.
We lost four reps in a day over $6k in commissions. The company ended up sending most of the senior staff to the clink on tax evasion charges soon after we left.
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21. Half-Baked Training
I worked for a German bakery for a month. The staff was some of the nicest people I had ever met, the job paid better than most places, and it had pretty good benefits. But then there was the manager. She was rough. She was such a colossal monster that if she visited Japan, the emperor would call Godzilla to help protect the country.
On my trial shift, which she scheduled to start at 4:30 AM the night prior, she screamed at me within the first ten minutes because I didn't know exactly the places or names of all the pastries. She would make remarks about construction workers, saying they were always trouble when they came in, as if they’re subhuman.
She constantly screamed at me to do better, and twice, she had the nerve to call me a "dumb idiot" in front of customers. I quit the first chance I could and made sure to tell the regional director everything she did to me and the other staff. Apparently, I was the first person to bring up anything like this since they’d opened.
22. Getting Nothing
I’m a teacher. I worked at a school that was in a very tough neighborhood. We had to know which kids were in which gangs so we wouldn't make them sit near each other. Fights happened pretty regularly. Deals went down on school property. There were definitely some behavioral issues. But there were also a lot of really good kids just trying to go to school.
The principal, though, was bad news. She was on a power trip. She was cruel to kids, teachers, and parents. My first year there, there were four of us that taught fifth grade. By October, one of us was quietly dismissed for inappropriate contact with a student. By early December, another had her skull cracked open on a locker while trying to break up a fight.
That left me and one other teacher with a constant rotation of subs because the principal wouldn’t hire any replacements. The majority of the time, a sub wouldn’t show up, and the students would be split among myself and the other teacher. There were over forty days when I would have 45 plus kids in my classroom. I struggled with no help.
At my year-end evaluation, my principal said I struggled, but that I could have taken more professional development to help. Every faculty meeting was filled with everything we were doing wrong. Never anything positive. And the principal went even further than that. We used to have casual Fridays for both staff and students. The principal stopped that. She stopped pep rallies. She canceled all dances. Anything that was positive to encourage kids, she got rid of.
Eventually, three of my students wrote her a letter. In it, they asked why she took away the 8th-grade dance from everyone and why not just exclude the kids that caused the problems instead of punishing everyone. They asked me to give her the letter because they were afraid of her. She refused to take it from me and said that they, the students, needed to give it to her.
I stuck it out for three years, but by the end of my third year, I had decided that I was leaving. I miss the kids, but I don't miss that horrible principal.
23. Friendly Fire
My best friend and I worked at the same small company for a horrific boss with early-onset dementia. My friend got a new job and gave notice. In an effort to get her to stay, our boss offered her my job. I don't know why she thought my friend would accept. She knew we were friends; we had even booked time off together so we could go on trips with each other.
Of course, my friend said no, and I handed in my notice the very next week. And I let her know why. There were many reasons, but I told her that was the straw that broke the camel's back. She had no idea until then that I knew what she had done. I watched as she tried to figure out a way to deny it. The look on her face was priceless.
24. Bigger Issues
After two years of incredible personal stress with multiple losses, my marriage ending, a car accident, and two weeks after reeling from another unexpected passing of my brother, I was pulled into a meeting where my boss let me know that I was “too distracted at my desk and spending too much time on ‘non-work-related issues.’"
I tried to explain that I was the executor of my brother's estate, but they explained that away by saying that I shouldn't allow it to affect my work. I was also doing the majority of my work unassisted because asking for help usually fell on deaf ears or my boss would tell me, "Just put in more hours”. Those extra hours were unpaid, of course.
There were plenty of other issues, but this broke me. I had a different job in under a month that paid more. I'm still upset about how I was treated.
25. All Planned Out
Our division chief assumed that if he and the other managers weren’t micromanaging us, we wouldn’t do our work. He was very against working from home even though the job could be done 100% remotely. He only started giving us one day a week at home because his supervisor forced him.
We worked in an area with terrible traffic. It’s one of the worst in the nation, so most people usually understood if some employees were a couple minutes late. Not this guy. If we were even a minute late, we’d get a lecture that would frankly take more than the minute we had missed. The worst part was that if we were late or took a longer lunch, we had to put it in the calendars.
There were three different supervisor’s Outlook calendars and our own where we had to plan to make up that time, even if it was just five minutes. It was so patronizing. Once, I emailed all of my supervisors to ask permission to leave four hours early on a Friday because I was flying to a wedding. It was approved. I put it on all the Outlook calendars.
I planned how I was making that time up by coming in 30 minutes early and staying 30 minutes late for four days leading up to the trip. When I stepped on the plane, I got a frantic call from a co-worker saying that a supervisor was looking for me and “had no idea” where I was. I said she should check her dumb calendar. I had already put in my notice by then, so I didn’t care if they got mad.
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26. Dangerous Measures
I was told to take and hold a heavy piece of hand railing over the edge of a platform while my buddy underneath tried to bolt it. We were about 60 feet off the ground, and this thing weighed probably 100 lbs. If my hands slipped and I dropped it, that would be it for my friend and whoever was on the ground when that thing fell down.
Because of this, I said absolutely not and kept it on the crane. That's when my boss cuts in on the crane operator’s radio channel to cuss at me. At that moment, I snapped. I said that he could get his fat little self up here and do it himself. And I got fired for insubordination. If my wife wasn’t about 6 months pregnant, I would have beat him when I got down.
27. Instructions Unclear
I had not one boss but three. Each would tell me how they wanted something done, and each would tell me the others were wrong. I finally got sick of getting chewed out every day for doing what I was told. I found the three of them together talking with the owner, politely interrupted, and pointed out what was going on.
I dropped the mic: "You (1) tell me how to do something, you (2&3) two say it's wrong. You (2) tell me how to do something, you (1&3) two say it's wrong, you (3) tell me how to do something, you (1&2) two say it's wrong. Then all of you chew me out for it. Which of the three of you do I listen to”? They stood there looking at each other.
The owner was looking at the three of them. After waiting a whole minute, I took off my work gloves, handed them to the owner, thanked him for employing me, and quit. I heard from another employee that all three were later demoted, and the owner promoted other people to the positions with clearer defined control areas.
28. Taking Things Over
I was at my workplace for 27 years. In one year, they terminated all the legacy developers and had us hired to an offshore company. After a year, that company started paying us off and replacing us with offshore workers. I was slated to stay because I was a higher-level manager. But my team was shrinking, and so our productivity tanked.
I could not stomach the toxic environment and attitude. I left and now have less responsibility and more pay. Now the original employer wants me back. It's going to cost them if I even entertain the idea, which I don't plan on doing.
29. Career Recircuiting
My boss was a jerk on a massive power trip. He knew nothing about cars, despite managing a big fancy car dealership. I was a trainee mechanic/tech on apprenticeship wages. The worst task I had to do was replacing wiring. We had a Karen who was the boss’s friend harass us apprentices for a non-existent wiring issue. We were told to replace all the wiring! Twice! Free of charge for the customer. It was gruelling, awful work.
And this lady was crazy. She was impossible to deal with, and eventually she called the authorities on us because she convinved herself that we were "holding her car hostage". Even though she was the nut, my boss suspended all of the apprentices. We didn't take it lying down. Instead, we banded together and went to the local media and then HR. We got our jobs back, and the boss was sacked.
30. Fired Up And Ready To Go
I worked in a craft store. The boss went across the line of cashiers and smacked each of us in the back of the head saying, "one for you! And one for you! And one for you"! I assumed he was joking. I was so wrong. He never liked me very much, so as he approached me and said, "And one for you"! he smacked me so hard that my glasses flew off my face.
They were not loose, but they were after that day. I didn't get to quit, though. He fired me at the end of the shift.
31. What’s Mine Is Yours
I had a former boss from Europe who "delegated" most tasks to me and then took credit for them. In meetings, he would constantly interrupt people to note that I would do/fix/resolve/submit whatever. He denied me any interviews for a promotion because he needed me to do half of his job for him. If I applied for a promotion, he accused me of being disloyal.
When I gave notice, I rattled off a list of reasons why, and he just shrugged and said, "okay, if you're going to be that way about it". I wrote him instructions on how to perform certain tasks and run reports, and instead of reading it, he gave it to another employee and told them to call me if they had any questions.
A co-worker who also left was told, "I don't see you being happy or successful at your new job and that saddens me because we will fill your position and you won't be able to come back. But good luck anyway". And as though that's not bad enough, my idiot boss got promoted and sent to China. I swear, the company wants him to mess things up on every continent.
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32. All This For What
I had the pleasure of dealing with a boss who was both a micromanager and a complete idiot. We tried so hard to preempt all the ways he'd screw up the budget. To my surprise, we managed to go from the least productive team to the most productive. But when review time came, my raise was so tiny that our simultaneous change in health insurance benefits meant I actually got lower weekly paychecks for me. That was my last straw. I left.
33. Clean Up Your Act
I used to clean for a gym. One night, a bunch of patrons utterly destroyed the locker room and showers. There was literal poop smeared on the walls of the showers and messes everywhere. It was like an awful poop explosion blew throughout the place.
When we saw what we had to deal with, we immediately grabbed every free person we could to help us deal with the mess. With seven people, it took us three hours to get that locker room clean again. It smelled so strongly of Comet that two people almost passed out. All the while, the manager on duty was strolling around eating his ice cream and using his phone.
The whole crew worked crazy hard to finish as efficiently and thoroughly as we could. By the time we finished, it looked almost perfect as if whoever unleashed their bowels on our facilities had never set foot in the room. The lot of us were very satisfied even though it was an extremely hard night. When we finally finished, we all gathered at the front desk for the closing shift sign-out.
The manager previously mentioned called me and my partner over and began tearing into us saying that the locker room looked like an absolute disaster. He said that we were only getting out now was because it was two and a half hours past when we were supposed to be finished. Then he stood there insulting us for ten minutes holding up everyone from leaving for the night.
As soon as I got home, I typed up a resignation letter effective immediately. The next day, my actual manager called me and gave me attitude for giving one day's notice. I told him what had happened and ended the conversation there. Never went back.
34. Primed For Fighting
I was cleaning up behind the counter at McDonalds, and the manager was cleaning the ice cream machine. He sat the primer at the edge of the ice cream machine. When a customer walked in, I hurried to put the broom at the corner of the wall, so the customer couldn't see it. The broom fell, and it knocked over the primer.
I was the only one on front counter, so he had to grab the mop and bucket and clean it up. He then put another cup of ice cream primer in the same spot and said, "if you knock this over, I'm going to knock you out". I pulled him to the side after making sure there were no customers around to hear me tell him something.
I told him, "If you ever decide to put your hands on me, you can consider it my immediate notice. My mama did not raise me to take being hit or threatened by anyone. She won't even try to lay hands on me". That’s how I left my job at McDonalds after only three months.
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35. So Sick Of You
My evil boss Jerry wouldn't let me go to the emergency room after the heavy vaginal bleeding I had been experiencing suddenly got way worse. I went over his head and got permission. I called my mom and told her to meet me in the ER. The ER nurse said he'd never seen so much blood. I was admitted for badly needed blood transfusions.
My mom called Jerry who then told her that it's just stress and I had to get back to work. By then, I couldn't even lift my own head up, but sure, I can take a bus across town and go back to work. I ended up needing another hospital stay later. They found a large growth. Jerry kept insisting that it couldn't be cancer.
He said that if it was cancer then I would be exhausted and losing weight. I had lost eight pounds in one week and ran to bed the minute I was home. I was still recovering from the procedure when Jerry called me to let me know I was fired for taking too much time off. Then, five days later, I was diagnosed with cancer.
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36. Prepare According To Me
I had a boss who refused to let me take an "unplanned vacation" to see my very sick grandma. I quit on the spot. It was strange because she was usually really cool and laid back. I asked for the weekend off to visit my ailing grandmother, and she snapped and lectured me about how I needed to “plan my vacations” better.
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37. Down To The Last Second
I had a boss who absolutely hated me. After realizing she wasn't qualified for the position, I came to the conclusion that she was a joke and started to just dismiss her. I never paid much attention to her and when she'd randomly show up at my building, I kind of just ignored her. I was busy and didn't have time to play games.
She wrote me up for being late on three separate occasions when I was one minute late, three minutes late, and six minutes late. I lived an hour from work and had to deal with traffic. I left my house two hours early most days to account for this. But when there's a wreck, there's not much you can do as the freeway is backed up.
Each time I got stuck in traffic I would let her know. She still wrote me up in hopes to eventually fire me. So, I started leaving the house crazy early. I went in super early and left early. She hated it. Eventually, her behavior got her fired, and people still remember her and laugh at what a horrible person she was.
38. Cracking It Open
I used to work in high pressure sales. The director would come in once a week, and they brought Monster drinks in to get everyone energized. She'd have them in her office for the sales people to drink. Now I liked the director; she was nice and professional. My manager on the other hand was an absolute piece of garbage.
I got tired of energy drinks and didn’t drink one. My boss said, "you didn't get a Monster. You know Wendy bought these for the entire division"? I said I was aware but I didn't want one. He came up to me and said this, "listen, go into that office and get one right now". I was so stunned that I didn't know what to do.
So, I got up, took one, went to my desk, and just had it sitting there. He came back and asked why I didn't drink it. I told him I didn't drink one because my body didn't do well with so much caffeine. He asked me to walk into his office. Now, I wasn't the best at the job. In fact, I hated it. He had a problem with me.
He told me that “my lack of energy” extremely distracted him and that it showed in my performance. He ended with, "if you keep this up, we may have to let you go". All I said to him was, "okay, well that is unfortunate, but I won’t drink something that takes a toll on my body". Low and behold, I ended up getting fired.
I enjoyed two weeks of unemployment until I got a call back from the same company. They wanted to hire me for a different position not sales with no interview and higher pay. I took it, and I loved it. Now, my ex-boss ended up being terminated for drug use. He actually had the audacity to send me a request on Facebook.
39. Not My Responsibility
I once worked at a company where the CEO sideswiped a woman's car as she pulled into a parking space. The woman in the car got out and stood beside her car to see what damage was done. The CEO got out of her Mercedes and brushed right past without so much as speaking to her. She just completely ignored her and went in.
The woman went to the HR department, and the company cut her a check for damages. So, the actual business paid for it, not the CEO. She got away scot free without ever admitting anything or paying anything.
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40. Nothing Redeeming
My first job out of college was working as an Office Manager/Exec Admin position in a branch office a part of a financial services firm. The office had 6 financial advisers who came in and out throughout the day, two interns, and the branch manager who was my worst boss ever. Nothing was ever said to me in a normal tone.
If it wasn't sarcasm, it was condescending. Nothing I ever did was right; if a Fed-Ex envelope was sealed even the tiniest bit crooked, I got yelled at and scolded for being messy. If it was perfectly straight? I got asked, "Did you use a ruler to get that? What, can't you just close an envelope like a regular person"?
That was too far. Forget me having any conversation with the guy. If I agreed with him, he would sneer and say things like, "that's how you really feel? Yeah, right," or if I asked a question, I got, "figure it out yourself. You're so smart," drawing out the word smart in my face. That still haunts me. He regularly accused me of things.
He would remind at least once a week that he had cameras all over the office and was going to catch me some day. I was working with one of the interns on a project, and we had a column that wasn't reconciling. The manager blew up at me, not the intern, and said that I had to come in over the weekend until I’d fixed it.
And I was not going to be paid for that. I did not know at that time that I was required to be paid for time worked in a situation like that. I was in a bad living situation at that time, and I had grown up in a bad home, so I honestly thought that working unpaid was a punishment for an error was common. I could go on.
Once, he ordered me to pick up his dry cleaning, and I had a panic attack because it looked like his ugly suit was discolored until I ran into his girlfriend and made a subtle hint. She actually confirmed that it was supposed to look that way. I felt bad because I think he treated her poorly too based off her reaction.
She said, "yeah, it's a good thing you notice that sort of stuff. Thomas is really picky and intense. Sometimes too much so". The incident that made me decide to leave was right before Christmas when one of the advisers had given me a small handful of Christmas cards for his clients and asked me to put postage on them.
I asked if Thomas had given his approval, and the adviser said yes. Later that day, Thomas saw the stack of envelopes sitting on my desk and started screaming at me about taking postage again. I explained that those were not mine, they were for Jerry who told me he had Thomas's approval. Thomas stomped into his office fuming with rage.
He called me in half an hour later. He said he spoke to Jerry who denied ever giving me envelopes to stamp. I handed over the envelopes and said to please look at the addresses as these were Jerry's clients and no one I knew personally. It didn't matter. He was still yelling and raving at me for it. I was quite shaken.
I was just trying to not break down completely all the while denying that I never took from him, I never took postage, and if he was so concerned about my apparent habits, maybe he should check the cameras that he had all over the office. At that point, he picked up his metal wastebasket by his desk and threw it at me.
I ducked, and it hit the doorframe. Then he asked me, “did you like that, huh? Are you going to learn a lesson not to back talk”? I didn't say anything and went to my desk, finished out my day, and left my keys behind. I went home and told my boyfriend what happened who yelled at me for quitting without a job lined up.
Never mind that we had plenty of savings, and he had a really good job. I found a new job two weeks later, and until the day we broke up, I had to hear it that I was stupid and lazy and quit a job without finding a new one first.
41. In the Numbers
I was fired from my job as an assistant manager at a convenience store by the district manager who hated me. I was applying for unemployment insurance, and the company said I wasn't eligible because I'd been fired for cause. We showed up for a review, and I was prepared to explain what my direct boss had decided to do.
He put keys to the inner safe in the outer safe area overnight, which had resulted in more than $100 going missing, which was the reason they gave me for firing me. Mind you, this wasn't even my error, but I was the person on duty when it was discovered. Instead, the district manager had a chilling accusation: They tried to say I falsified paperwork.
I settled in to hear her tale of woe. Then she proceeded to show how I'd "padded paperwork" to hide missing money. I showed them that my manager had accidentally put $50 extra into the bank one day, so I made a note of that on the paperwork for the day she made the error and then on the day that showed the $50 missing.
The panel asked the district manager how I should have noted it, and she went off into some incomprehensible way of "subtracting" the amount from the numbers to under-report income. I got out, "but that" when a panel member cut me off and shushed me. They informed her that what she was trying to tell me to do was against the rules.
They told her that they would be informing the local tax office in case they wanted to perform an audit on the company, thanks to the dumb district manager. I was eligible for my unemployment money. Win, win, win! And the look on the district manager's face? Classic. I wish I had a photograph!
42. Color Me Angry
My first boss managed a gas station. He was good in most ways – efficient, fair, disciplined, ran a tight ship but had just one drawback. He was judgmental. I don't mean that he was insufficiently outraged by Dukes of Hazzard re-runs. I mean that he used taboo words and would loudly. He also resurrected other old terms.
The truck driver who delivered our tankers of fuel every week was a Black man, and they almost came to blows over this. His comeuppance finally came when the corporate office hired a new third level supervisor who was a young Black man out of business school. My boss just couldn’t handle taking orders from a Black man.
When he quit, he trashed the office and tore up every floppy disk in the office so we couldn't do our accounting for a few days.
43. In Your Head
The vice president told me I was being disrespectful during a conversation. I asked how, and she told me that I, "knew what I was doing". I asked again, stating that I had asked because I did not actually know how. She told me she didn't have time for me because I "knew what I was doing,” and again had no time for this. She was nuts.
44. Thrown To The Suits
I walked into an off-the-rack suit store, resume in hand, and talked to the store's assistant manager. The guy's a couple of years older than me and looked like the kind of guy that would sell you a time share in Florida with his fake tan and bad hair. He hired me on the spot, though, so he had become my new best friend.
Apparently, the manager of the store was on vacation in his native Jordan, but he'd be back at the end of the week. The job itself was very laid back. We spent a lot of time folding clothes and even more time slacking off behind the till waiting for people to come in and purchase cheap suits. I was great at doing both.
That first week was a breeze. The assistant manager had a camping trip on the weekend, but it'd be cool because the real manager was coming back the day before. Except Jordan revolted, and the first thing the revolutionaries did was take the airfields, so he was stuck. I tried to convince the assistant manager to stay.
I had less than a week of experience and no training. He chose to give me a key and go camping anyway. So, with less than a week of experience, I was now the de facto manager of the shop. On Saturday, the vice president of operations came in from across the country to see how the shop was doing. When he learned what had happened, he was ticked.
The assistant manager was fired. I was given his responsibilities and a very brief rundown of what my new job was while the VP stormed around the store trying to make it presentable barking orders and was very grumpy about stuff. My new day, I was to get in at seven thirty in the morning to prepare to be open by eight.
If we opened five minutes late, we got a $500 fine from the mall. I was the only person on staff able to come in that early. I was also the only person who could reliably close, so I started working 14-hour days, every day, for a little over a month doing a job for which I was unprepared, untrained and under-qualified.
To be fair, the guys at HQ were great. They offered a lot of support that actually took the store through the roughest patches, walking me through payroll management and scheduling, helping me do orders and calmly getting me through merchandising and display making. That month was one of the hardest I have ever worked.
It was not just the long hours but constantly trying to keep up with stuff I was not prepared to do, but the HQ guys made it as easy as they could on me. Then the manager got back from Jordan, and he was mad. Nothing was like how he left it. Displays were a disaster. His assistant manager had been fired in his absence.
The guys from HQ were giving him all sorts of trouble for letting his store get that out-of-whack in the first place. His job was much harder than it would have been if he'd come home on time, and he thought the best way to deal with that was to yell at me. He snapped, and he berated me in front of the other employees.
He made it very clear that the state of the store was my fault and that I had screwed everything up. He complained about me to the HQ guys. For a full week after he was back, I was working the same schedule I'd been working while he was in Jordan, and now, I was getting yelled at the entire time. So, I decided to quit.
The guys from HQ were not happy with that decision and forced the manager call me at home and ask me to come back. So, I went in to discuss the terms of my return, and it was pretty clear the manager wanted nothing to do with me offering exactly nothing above the same entry-level position I'd been hired for originally.
No pay raise. No promotion. No acknowledgement, even. The guy never even thanked me for keeping his store from collapsing. All he offered was just $10 an hour to continue being his monkey butler. I went to work at a comic shop after that.
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45. What’s Your Problem?
I work at a museum. The board president basically cussed me out on the phone before a big seasonal event, saying that she heard from other people that I was not giving 100% dedication to my job and that I needed to get my game up or face some serious consequences. Everyone was stressed due to the event, and I was upset.
I emailed her after that conversation because it had come completely out of left field. I had never had anyone complain about how I did my job – tourists, the executive director, or the president and the rest of the executive board. No one had complained before. So, I asked her to tell me who it was that had a problem.
Her response shocked me. Apparently, no one had said anything. She hadn't "heard" from anyone. She just listed a bunch of her own grievances about what I was doing, which were basically all trivial. I told her that she could just tell me that she was unhappy with things as they happened especially since I was never told not to do these things.
I lost a lot of respect for her that day, but I was still employed. So, I counted my blessings. Also, I found out that the executive director and the president were paying me $1.25 less than they originally agreed. When I first got the job two years prior, they gave me a job description that had the original pay on it.
Naively, I didn't make a copy. When I’d started, my paycheck was much less than I thought it would be, and I was given another job description with the lower pay on it. I didn't make a fuss because I was hard up for money, and I needed the job. Plus, the museum was kind of doing something shady. I also had no backbone.
My boss and the entire executive board stepped down from their positions, and I found my original job description with the original pay. I'm now getting paid what I was supposed to plus back pay. Working here used to be a nightmare. But the new executive board is pretty nice.
46. Profit First, Safety Second
I used to work for a smaller company with about 12 employees. The president/owner of the company was completely out of touch on how to appropriately run a business. All he cared for was just profit. He provided no health insurance and would purposefully keep his number of employees down so that he wouldn't have to pay.
Employees were only given 2 weeks for vacations and no personal or sick time. If you were sick, oh, well, use your vacation or just don't get paid at all. Raises? What is a raise?! Seriously, one employee had been working there for 10 years, he was still making $8 an hour and had never received a raise all those years.
He did not care for employee safety. Dust particulates and small objects flying around? You don't need a mask or safety glasses. Fiberglass particulates in the air from cutting? Nope, you don't need gloves or masks or really anything to protect you from that. Long sleeve shirts and hair not tied back is perfectly fine!
One employee got a hernia from heavy lifting. He asked for work comp for the surgery that he couldn't pay for without any insurance and wasn’t making enough because he hadn't had a raise in years despite performing above expectations. What did the owner do? He refused because, “he could have gotten the hernia at home".
This was despite multiple witnesses watching him double over in pain after lifting the component he was building. Almost a year and a half later, the guy still had a freaking hernia. This guy was just a total jerk. Every 2 months, he’d come in a new car and take employees off the production floor so he could flaunt it.
We’re talking like Porsche GT3's, 2 Tesla Model S Nissan GTR, Audi S8, and the list goes on. When I quit, I just gave him a 5 minute notice and walked out of the door. He tried accusing me of taking sensitive company information, which was untrue. I left everything given to me on my desk and told him to leave me alone.
I told him that if not, I would contact OSHA and tell them what's going on. He backed off, but since then, about four of their most experienced employees have left, and 3 more are still looking for jobs.
47. Overextended Injury
I once worked at a discount sportswear store, and my supervisor was a jerk. I was paid minimum wage with no overtime payment, and he wouldn't let me leave until two hours after my finishing time. His reason? It was because the coat hangers hadn’t been fully extended, which was pretty impossible when you're in the childrenswear department!
48. Man, You’re Mean
I worked at a grocery store for three years. At first, it was great! It was an easy job, lots of hours, and I made money, which was cool since I was living at home saving for a car. But then corporate changes happened and ruined everything. They fired my manager and brought in the GM as a new permanent manager. I would ask him things often.
I wanted to make sure I was doing it right so I wouldn't get in trouble later only for him to hassle me with, “it's common sense. You're not that bright, are you"? Rude, I was just asking for reassurance. So, I had a front end manager who was basically like my second mom. She had been working there for almost 10 years.
She taught me how to drive and brought me to the test and let me vent or cry in the back room about personal things. I love her, but the GM loved to be mean to her to the point where he’d make her cry. A lot. He would only treat the female employees badly because the men, "do it perfectly every time". There were three.
And that was including him. 90% of the store was run by women. So, not only did he berate her, but he yelled at me about how I didn't even deserve a job and I was stupid, incompetent, will be like my dad, etc. So, I cried each time I worked with him. When I quit, he gave me some bull about how he loved working with me.
49. One Problem Too Nanny
As a nanny, it’s weird when your boss is a mom with no actual experience being a boss. I worked for this mom who was my worst boss. She wasn’t that bad when I first started working for her. Over the course of the year, she kept adding more and more things for me to do. Eventually, I wasn’t just taking care of the baby. I became their maid.
If you think I got a pay increase, think again. And then, things got even worse. Eventually, I was basically this woman's personal assistant. She got a taste of power and took advantage of it. As a young 19-year-old, it was hard for me to see how bad it was. But I knew one thing: my boss was a nut job. One day, she got mad and fired me. The very next morning, she called me asking where I was. It was so confusing.
But I was broke and young, so I went back. At that point, I did everything from taking care of the baby to hand washing her delicates. She gave me a “uniform” and reprimanded me if it and my hair and makeup were not well kept. When she got pregnant with baby #2 and suggested I become a "wet nurse" I just flat out said no. So she fired me. Then, a few weeks later, she showed up at my house begging me to come back!
Saying "no way" and slamming the door in her face was so, so satisfying.
50. Deserving More Credit
The client let slip how much they were paying for me. I was stunned. In one month, they paid more than my annual salary. I asked my boss for a pay raise and was told there was just no money available. I said I'd give them six weeks to look for it, and she laughed at me as I wasn't, "the type to give ultimatums". That was the last straw.
I secured a better offer from another company and handed in my notice. That was when my boss's boss offered me a 50% raise to stay.
51. Following Up
My insufferable manager followed me after work to my second job because she didn't believe I had one and was just using it as an excuse to get out early. My manager at my second job said, "There's some crazy lady banging on the doors yelling your name". So, I grabbed my uniform from my bag, opened the door, threw it in her face, and told her to shove off.
52. The Magic Formula
I used to have to report website usage, ROI, and all sort of statistics for a bunch of different sites. I built a cool mother of a spreadsheet in which you only input a few numbers and it would calculate just about everything the company would need. It was a bit too complicated for my boss to understand, yet he would take it to clients and brag that he made it.
That ticked me off. Then, after a while, he realized that the spreadsheet was all he needed, and he could use my paycheck to buy a new house. He laid me off. I told him he might need help with the spreadsheet, but he said he was smart enough. So before I left, I made sure to make him eat his words—I changed a single formula in the spreadsheet and had a good laugh about the reports it spat out. They made no sense at all anymore.
Sources: Reddit,
