In their own words, Stanleybing.com readers talk about the bullies, narcissists and other crazy bosses they spend their working days with.
A reader from New Jersey writes:
Back in 1996 my former employer went out of business and my wife and I had our first child. I took the first decent Accounting job offered, which was an Asst. Controller’s position with Handler Textile in Moonachie NJ. Thankfully they too are out of business.
I would be lying if I said that I don’t read the obituaries hoping to find my bosses name. She was the essence of pure evil. She was a brilliant tax accountant but a complete horse’s ass as far as dealing with others.
On my very first day working for HTC, she told me, and I quote EXACTLY AS IT HAPPENED, “…I’m an honest person and I feel it’s only right to tell you that you weren’t my first choice for this position….but let’s see if we can work together anyhow.”
Great start. That was the high point.
My office was diagnally across the hall from hers. During lunch I would close my door because I didn’t want the rest of the office to walk by and see me stuffing my face. She would walk over and open it, telling me that “she didn’t want this door closed.” I kept closing it, just to make her mad.
I only worked for her for 3 months until she went back to her old CPA firm in NYC, but it was 3 months of hell. Every day she would crap all over me. I complained to the “head” of personnel, and he told me that “…oh…that’s just Virginia being Virginia…”
I finally had enough of her insults and just lost it one day when she threw a spreadsheet back at me across her desk (yes, threw it) and demanded that I redo it, telling me to “…pretend that I’m stupid.” I replied, “I don’t have to pretend.”
That was it. Sticks were tossed aside and the gloves were dropped. I was at a point where I really didn’t care anymore. The F-bomb was being thrown around like popcorn at the circus, mostly by me. The CFO (another person setting the standard of being clueless with a big salary) had to physically break it up. I have never been so close to taking a swing at a woman in my life.
She finally decided that she had enough and tendered her resignation, but not before deciding on 2 consecutive Fridays that she didn’t want to leave the company in the dark at year-end, and she would stay to do some more fiscal closing work. You can imagine my expression when I heard on those Fridays that she would be back on Monday. Talk about taking the wind out of someone’s sails.
You cannot imagine the joy I felt when I came back on Monday and saw her office empty. I had won the World Series and the Super Bowl all at once. But my joy was to be short-lived because I was about to learn that the stupidity effecting the Controller’s office was magnified by the ineptitude of the CFO. In this case he was the Clueless Financial Officer.
To say that he was a slob was akin to saying that the ocean is salty. I lived in a fraternity house and we would have thrown this guy out for being a pig. Dried coffee dumped all over the desk, cigarettes on the floor, oh I could go on forever. I still have no idea what he did to earn his $120,000 per year and get his company Jaguar. He was the type of person who would take 3 hours to decide if they wanted Fried Rice or White Rice with their Chow Mein.
And that’s the short version of my hitch in hell.
What do you think? Is this boss crazy?