Writer's Block: Horrible bosses
Jul. 8th, 2011 10:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avanta7[Error: unknown template qotd]Anyone who has read my journal knows who my worst boss was. I never thought anyone would top the previous worst boss, but somehow she managed.
Anyway, I'm not going to go into the "worst boss" story in a public post, especially since it's a small world and I still work for the same agency (albeit on the other side of the country), so I will tell you instead about the second-worst boss.
Early 1990s. She was the director of one of the departments in a small Arkansas city. I was her secretary. She threw coffee cups and temper tantrums with regularity. Sometimes the coffee cups were aimed in my general direction. She procrastinated and missed deadlines and somehow it was my fault. She retyped and rewrote the minutes of meetings I had transcribed from the taped records because I wasn't thorough enough. (The concept of bullet point minutes escaped her. She thought we needed a transcript.) She disappeared for hours in the middle of the day. She often came in hours late because she overslept; however, she expressed concern at my devotion to my job because I had begun dating someone and thus made a point of leaving right at 5:00 every afternoon, and every now and then came in ten minutes late on a Monday morning. She criticized the way I kept the payroll records, the way I kept our files, the way I handled her mail...
After nearly two years of this, I put feelers out and one Friday was offered another job. I accepted with the caveat I would give two weeks notice the following week and then report.
That weekend I worried myself sick over giving notice and called in on Monday.
When I came in bright and early Tuesday morning, I found yet another one of her infamous nasty little notes on my desk, this one accusing me of cheating her out of her vacation time because I had coded her pay report with four hours of vacation on the previous Friday. I checked my calendar...yes, that was what she had told me she wanted. I called my new boss and asked her if I could start right away. She said, "Of course!"
I marched myself and the nasty little note upstairs to personnel. I sat down in front of the HR Director, handed her the note, and said: "I quit." She read the note, marched me and the note and herself down the hall to the City Manager's office. I sat down in front of his desk, she handed him the note, and I said: "I quit." I went back downstairs, wrote my resignation letter, put it on her desk, and walked out.
And that was that.
Some six months or so later, the City Manager fired her for insubordination, among other things.
Revenge is pointless, but karma is a bitch.
Anyway, I'm not going to go into the "worst boss" story in a public post, especially since it's a small world and I still work for the same agency (albeit on the other side of the country), so I will tell you instead about the second-worst boss.
Early 1990s. She was the director of one of the departments in a small Arkansas city. I was her secretary. She threw coffee cups and temper tantrums with regularity. Sometimes the coffee cups were aimed in my general direction. She procrastinated and missed deadlines and somehow it was my fault. She retyped and rewrote the minutes of meetings I had transcribed from the taped records because I wasn't thorough enough. (The concept of bullet point minutes escaped her. She thought we needed a transcript.) She disappeared for hours in the middle of the day. She often came in hours late because she overslept; however, she expressed concern at my devotion to my job because I had begun dating someone and thus made a point of leaving right at 5:00 every afternoon, and every now and then came in ten minutes late on a Monday morning. She criticized the way I kept the payroll records, the way I kept our files, the way I handled her mail...
After nearly two years of this, I put feelers out and one Friday was offered another job. I accepted with the caveat I would give two weeks notice the following week and then report.
That weekend I worried myself sick over giving notice and called in on Monday.
When I came in bright and early Tuesday morning, I found yet another one of her infamous nasty little notes on my desk, this one accusing me of cheating her out of her vacation time because I had coded her pay report with four hours of vacation on the previous Friday. I checked my calendar...yes, that was what she had told me she wanted. I called my new boss and asked her if I could start right away. She said, "Of course!"
I marched myself and the nasty little note upstairs to personnel. I sat down in front of the HR Director, handed her the note, and said: "I quit." She read the note, marched me and the note and herself down the hall to the City Manager's office. I sat down in front of his desk, she handed him the note, and I said: "I quit." I went back downstairs, wrote my resignation letter, put it on her desk, and walked out.
And that was that.
Some six months or so later, the City Manager fired her for insubordination, among other things.
Revenge is pointless, but karma is a bitch.
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no subject
Date: Jul. 9th, 2011 06:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jul. 9th, 2011 02:28 pm (UTC)She was fired when a new head of the agency was named, in part because of those issues (and in part, I think, because she had put in for that job and the new guy canned her and the other agency person who had put in for it). Frankly, I think she should have been given the opportunity to go back to being a staff attorney. She excelled at that. She just didn't know how to be a manager.
no subject
Date: Jul. 10th, 2011 04:07 pm (UTC)