Worst boss ever, Exhibit J.

This’ll be in flashback format*. First, the exhibit: during exit interview, boss says “I have no feedback at this time,” when I ask for it. Has the nads to tell me he’d be a reference for me, though, as he shook my hand at the elevator door.

*So maybe I should back up a bit in my story. All that time I had for travelling and consulting? Not so much voluntarily. Here’s what happened.

I’m in technology. I run websites and software that support them and their contents (CMS, CRM, online marketing crud, servers. Shiz like that). I did this remotely for three years of the five I worked for my last company. I had a great boss. Really great. I should post a rave about him, in fact. Our company was acquired and out went the whole IT department, my boss included. The other guys got smart and jetted. I felt like a severence package would be fine with me, and inwardly cackled that they’d neeever figure out my system, customized to the hilts.

During my first meet-n-greet with the new IT director and my boss, (incidentally where he first shows his ineptitude for the position.) I let him know how I came to be a remote employee, etc etc. I also tell him that if the distance ever becomes an issue, I’d like for him to ask me to consider locating back. (No, you can’t re-re-locate. They cancel out. It’s math; trust me.) Anyway. He says he will.

Almost two years later, he’s got me in an office with the head of HR and they’re giving me COBRA information. *spin* The story is my position has been “eliminated.” The boss lets it slip that they no longer have a need for a “remote” person in my position. Aha. Any questions? Oh, where to begin. How about “so, when you said you’d let me make a decision on moving back, that was full of crap, right?” How about, “when you hired that consultant who did a job eerily similar to mine and you said she was temporary, you meant she was temporarily a consultant and would soon be a full time employee, or perhaps that any of our right to question her was temporary and would soon be revoked, right?” Or maybe, “exactly when do you not lie straight faced?”

Ok, deal with it, Rhapsody. You got your sev package. You got your UE for 6 months. What more do you want? Well, I wanted to know if I could have done my job any differently. As my most recent boss, does he have any feedback for me? “I have no feedback at this time.”

Blink. That’s it? You worked with me for over two years and you have nothing for me to take away? No shoulda-dones or you-did-this-rights? Nope. Oh, but somehow, without any feedback I’ll be happy to be a reference for you. Blink. Maybe that’s a canned line you say to someone as you shake their hand and confirm they leave the premises. Oh! Maybe he’s a robot! That would explain so much.

Prime directive: decimate department and lower morale. Mission accomplished!
Be compassionate with employees. Does not compute! Does not compute!

Dag. My robots are dumb.

Worst boss ever, Exhibit I

Wow!  Look what I found rotting in the drafts folder! Original date, Sept. 26, 2006.  Oh, little did I know what the future held..

Further to Exhibit H, when asked, my boss promises me that any meeting I should be in, I will be invited to. This after key information was not passed on to me.

1) He tells me I have too much work to do to sit in meetings, so he will go.

2) He does not tell me what happens in these meetings.

3) He swears I was in some of these meetings anyway (see exhibit H).

4) He includes his boss — our boss — to chastize me for asking about these meetings, both swearing I will know what I need to know, yet information still does not get passed down to me.

Crash and burn, boys. If I don’t have this information, we fail. It’s that simple.

Worst boss ever, Exhibit H

I can’t believe the exhibits keep coming.

Exhibit H: splutters and raves because he thinks you were in meetings that you were never invited to.

Brouhaha. I simply asked him which meetings these were, but he could give no detail. It got escalated to his boss, who told me that meetings in the past are in the past. Forget them. Meanwhile, I’m just trying to get minutes so I can 1) prove beyond a shadow of a doubt I wasn’t there and 2) find out WTF I missed, since clearly my boss thinks I hold key information that I do not.

If I get to exhibit, please shoot me.

Worst boss ever, Exhibit G

I’ve been really really good (or at least, trying to get better) at proactivity and constructive conversation. Really. I rant here, but in the real world I’m professional. Hence the ranting incognito.

But my boss, not so much. Since we’ve had some conversations about his emotion (yelling at me when there’s a problem) and our communication “challenges” (every avenue we’ve mutually agreed upon he soon abandons without word, and then says “well, if you’d only done X”, X being a wholly new communication strategy that must be clairvoyantly understood on my part), he’s taken this tactic: 1) asks for my help/advice on some project I tangentially know about, 2) hears my answer and does not agree with it but 3) says only “ok, thanks” and leaves.

That’s it. No questions about why his knowledge of the problem is different than mine, no suggestions of another solution. Just hears what he thinks is wrong and takes off. Suffice to say that I think I’m right. A lot. But I’m willing to ask why an answer isn’t what I expected and learn from it. Amazing.

Talk about communication dynamos. Sheesh. If I get halfway through the alphabet before the year ends, … I’ll make some ultimatum. Oh yeah. Strong words from rhapsody. I’m prepared to write more words! Worrrrrrds!!

Worst boss ever, Exhibit F

Infects other managers with his “I only manage” work credo.

Right. So just to clarify, this sucktastic boss is my departmental head. I have a “real” boss that I report to, and who reports to this crappy boss. K? So, my actual boss used to do real work. He worked and he managed. Amazing. I mean, there were really just a couple of us under him anyway. Oh but wait.

Crap boss does not hold with the idea that a manager does more than send emails and reports to higher bosses. Look, this might work — and in fact be the only way — in big companies. But we’re small. Our department is small, less than 10, and crappy boss manages us. He has 3 guys under him, and those guys have 0-3 people under them each. Before crappy came in, we didn’t even have that kind of layering. We just all did our thing and reported to the departmental boss, then a good guy who actually worked with us. We were still the same size then, too.

Anyway. To get to the point, crappy has told my boss to not work. Don’t help. Just manage. So now our sub-department of 3 becomes 2 only. We actually had to get a temp to do some work because we couldn’t keep the pace up. Nice, huh? So, my real boss now helps us, but on weekends. Weekends!! And all because his (our) crappy boss doesn’t want him to work-work. But he still wants “measurable” results.

Measure this, jackass.

Worst boss ever, Exhibit E

Has an annoying habit of rolling his eyes during conversations, most especially and surprisingly while he himself is speaking.

Aren’t annoying habits the hallmark of a bad boss, like Lundberg from Office Space: “mmmm yeahhhhh… I’mmm gonna have to ask youuuu to come in to work Saturdayyy, kayyyyy?”

I wish I could see that his eye-rolling was the tell for his lies, but he does it all the time. Rolls his eyes, I mean. Come to think of it, as far as I know he lies all the time, too. Maybe it is his tell!! Must think more on this. But not outside of work. Not. Worth. Time.

Worst boss ever, exhibit D

Refuses to do or learn about any of the rest of the department’s work. Texts underlings during big meetings to get better details.

As evidence of the first statement, the very day I met the guy, the VP of the department, he asked if I had any concerns about my boss leaving and him coming in new. (Right, like I’ll bite at that.) I told him the other guy had covered for me when I was out. He was my “backup”. “Noooooo,” says new guy. “You don’t want me touching your stuff. I’ll mess it up in a heartbeat. I don’t know anything about it.” The short of it is that we’d have my “team” back me up. But my team was all fired. What happens in the interim. “You don’t have a back up then.”

Uh. K. My stuff isn’t the kind of stuff that you can just leave alone if I’m gone for a day or fourteen. And God forbid I take a decent vacation.

Well, when push comes to shove, he doesn’t learn any of our jobs. He knows so little about the daily goings-on that during big meetings with his bosses, he has to text someone on my team to fill in details. Fill in normal but just-below-thumbnail-sketch details of how things work.

Whatever, man. At least pretend to try to learn. Pretend to have a passing interest. Pretend you consider me something more than just a person you “manage”.

Worst boss ever, Exhibit C

Reveals vast “secrets” and swears department to secrecy when in truth there is no secret at all.

This one really gets me. In order to endear himself to us, or perhaps to engender trust, the ol man will say something in a meeting, swearing it to secrecy withing this room only, and make us really feel like we’re learning the secrets of the universe.

Then, approximately 5 minutes after release from the bonded room, someone from ANY other department will mention the same thing, in passing, as if known to all. And.. in fact… it IS know to all, with no secrecy pacts, no blood rites, no swearing. Well, I of course swear at that point, but it’s the promise of a different sort of bloody secret.

This guy is the worst. THE WORST. Before I was saddled with him, we really did learn dire secrets that would rock the company if they were known. Did we blab? Of course not. I had trust in my boss and respect for his confidence. This guy… eff him. Ever heard how the untrustworthy are the last to give their trust? Bingo. He knows he’s a total scamp, and so consequently believes the same of us. 100% bastige.

We hates him, we do!!!

Worst boss ever, exhibit B

Lies about and uses cronies for cover on days off. Example:

Me: anyone see [the boss]?
Cronie: aw, i think he’s around here somewhere.
Me: oh, wait. didn’t he say he was going to be out today?
Cronie: aw! aw, yeah, he did.

Further, as I have witnessed myself, cronies will open boss’s office door and turn on light when they come to work, making it appear that boss is already there. I myself turned that light off and shut that door when I knew he was gone, and would find the door open or see a cronie opening it and turning on the light. Sometimes, only sometimes, would they do so under the guise of getting something from the office or otherwise appearing to be there on purpose.

Also, boss will not only leave light on and door open, but a spare jacket on the back of the chair, computer on, and radio on. It’s a little overkill, but at first glance you just think it’s someone there for the long haul. Someone workin’ hard and just stepped out for some much needed coffee, on account of their hard work. Right. Cronies also leave computers on and radios on. This is extremely annoying for those of us (me) who actually do stay late to finish work and have to listen to someone else’s music, even more than at work that day. The radios, however, are via the computers. The locked computers. So there’s no way to turn the volume down. Thinking about it, though, I believe one can power down a computer without having its password. A battle plan emerges!

I mean, come on guys. Even if you didn’t plain suck, you could at least think about conserving electricity. Jerks _and_ thoughtless. Nice combo.

Worst.. boss.. evar

Maybe, just maybe I’ve been lucky at all my previous jobs and had a whole slew of great bosses and only now am finding the more typical bosses. But, after having 4 different bosses in the same year, I’m seeing some serious evidence that this guy really stinks.

This could take a while, so I’ll break it down:

Exhibit A: fires over half the department and brings in his cronies. Some of the leaving employees were escorted out of the building. Like criminals. They got about 5 minutes’ notice to leave. In one case, we surviving few had gone out to lunch and were wondering who would be next. I pointed at the one who indeed would become the next victim. I wish so much I had been wrong, because his was the worst. It was another colleague’s last day, and the two had worked closely for many years. As she gave her goodbyes around 4pm, we could not find our other guy. We got herded into a meeting, sans the she-leaver, and were told the dude was gone effective 5 seconds ago. She-leaver didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to him, and the rest of us were left stunned and, now, in the same boat of non-closure.

Ok, maybe this is a more common scenario than I think. But further to Exhibit A, new boss lied about the cronies coming in. We were told they were contractors hired for specific tasks during the 2 weeks. Yeah, specifically to learn the jobs of the people they were replacing. Specifically to learn the quickest route to the elevators to take the victims outside and shoot them.

Doesn’t matter now, as I’m the final bowling pin. It had been a 7-10 split, but #7 left (on his own, luckily for him) after much friction with the new boss and new cronies. So, #10 here ain’t talking. Except here, of course.

Final addendum to exhibit A: cronies not only cannot do their own jobs, but have now brought in minions to do the jobs for them. So cronies and boss have the quintessential “management” jobs that require nothing more, in their eyes, than clicking the “forward” button and emailing an underling to “see below”. Worst, and what’s set me off today: I generated the required information for superboss and undermanagers 2 weeks ago. One of those undermanagers emailed me and asked for the same list. Fine. I forwarded him the sent mail, showing the original send date and his own name on the list. Oh wait. Can I send that to the person who’s asking undermanager for it? What?? You wasted the time for an email to me to ask me to forward this very message to someone else?

Dude, that email ain’t all you’re wasting.