It only takes one co-worker to ruin a job, and if it's your boss, that's the worst-case scenario. The following employees had "Karens" as their superiors and they couldn't take it anymore. As much as they probably would have preferred to take the high road, they decided to get even instead. Read on for some juicy tales of office drama:
1. It Was Over The Top
Here's the backstory: My boss is a huge jerk. All he does during his shift is walk around and yell at everyone to tuck their shirts in. He's also just generally unpleasant to work with. So, I came into work on my birthday the other day, and my friend ran up to me and yelled, “Happy birthday!” right in front of my boss’s office.
My boss then looked at me. I thought he was going to wish me a happy birthday since he undoubtedly just heard my friend say it, but that's not what he did. “Yeah, go ahead and tuck your shirt in, 'kay?” he said to me. Then, he made a hand signal like he was tucking in an imaginary shirt. I said, “Okay, no prob. I just have to put my stuff down real quick and I’ll take care of it.”
So I walked over to my desk, which took approximately seven seconds, to put my stuff down. My boss immediately came up behind me and again barked, “I said to tuck in your shirt!” I quickly tucked it in. As he literally walked right by me, I answered, “Sorry, I just had to put my stuff down first,” but my boss just kept walking as though I’d never said a word. He was acting all high and mighty, but I shut him down real quick.
I immediately busted out my HR manual and checked the rule on tucked-in shirts. It turned out that employees must tuck in all types of shirts—EXCEPT for Hawaiian or guayabera shirts. So, I took my butt to Walmart, bought 10, and defiantly wore the most obnoxious-looking Hawaiian shirt the next day. Of course, the second I walked in, my boss looked me up and down and glared at me—but there was nothing he could do.
He turned around and walked away. Then, afterward, when everyone asked me why I was wearing such a ridiculous shirt, I gleefully told them about the loophole. Now half my office is wearing Hawaiian shirts, and it’s driving my boss crazy...But it’s all within the guidelines as outlined by company policy.
2. Fight You in the Unemployment Line
He grabbed the back of my neck and said, "If you ever say I'm wrong in front of a customer again I will beat your ass." I went to the GM and told him, and my supervisor was relieved of his duties about 5 minutes later.
3. The Relieving Of The Guard
I worked at a waterpark, and our supervisor was a witch who wouldn’t let the lead guards at the top of the tallest slide go to the bathroom. One day, one of the guards at the top began radioing that he needed to go #2 but she wouldn’t let him. Mind you, the boss would allow the lead guards to ride down the slide every once in a while to make sure that none of the tubes had gotten stuck.
Anyway, this poor lead guard was about to soil his pants in front of a ton of guests. So, with no other option, he came up with a shocking alternative—he went into the utility closet and did the deed in a bucket of cat litter we kept to clean up vomit. He then proceeded to ride down the slide to clean himself off and left the supervisor to clean up his bucket.
4. Cash for the Camera
I took a cell phone video of her taking money from the safe and putting it in her wallet. I knew she was doing it, and I also knew that the moment it came out that money was missing she'd blame it on me. She was so stupid that she didn't realize she should stop doing that while I was standing ten feet away with my phone out and facing her.
5. They Turned On A Dime
While I was in the Navy, a doctor recommended that I get extensive surgery on my ankle. In a weird twist of logic, my command said they would approve the procedure, but not the convalescent leave because they felt that I didn’t deserve a bunch of time off for surgery. Huh? They refused to sign ANY paperwork for it, but I quickly set out to challenge their decision.
They weren't ready for what I was about to hit them with. I first slapped them with the regulation stating that they were required to respond to all requests within a certain amount of time (three days, I think). They still responded with a “no,” so I proceeded to get some Naval lawyers to draw up some paperwork (in accordance with all regulations).
The legal notice stated that my command would be responsible for 100% of my medical care if they did not abide by the doctor’s orders. I also let them know that this would mean leaving ALL of my medical care for civilians to handle and that the command would then be responsible for paying the bill out of their budget. THAT got their attention: They approved my surgery, convalescent leave, and convalescent leave extension.
6. Should Have Focused on Your Own To-Do List
The CEO publicly praised me for completing a task that my boss had struggled with, so my boss retaliated by forwarding all of his tasks to me in an effort to overwhelm me with work. I actually found his job pretty manageable, which the CEO also noticed and fired him, giving me his job and office.
7. You Never Know Who’s Listening
I worked at a supermarket, and my manager Rob was as jerkish as it gets. He gave us bad employee evaluations so that we couldn’t get raises, and he’d leave the store for hours at a time, which sometimes even confused the other managers. He treated us all like garbage—he walked all over us, yet he was probably the least productive of us all.
Then one day, I got angry at him. On that day, some old woman in the parking lot fell RIGHT in front of me. I grabbed another customer, told him to stay with the woman, and then ran inside to grab the store manager, a pharmacist, and a bottle of my water from the break room. I then helped her in her car and had someone at the service desk call an ambulance.
Afterward, I received a customer compliment (which can be redeemed for a free sub if the manager deems it a formal compliment), but Rob refused to honor it. He said, “That’s not exceptional; it’s what we expect out of you.” Annoyed, I clocked out for a break and bought my own lunch. One of the cashiers mentioned something about the incident and said, “Rob the hero,” was now taking care of the situation.
So I said, “Right. More like Rob the giant jerk.” That was a big mistake—I didn’t notice who was checking out behind me, so I looked to see if anyone had heard what I had just said. To my horror, behind me was a customer who was known throughout the store for his autism and tendency to remember and repeat phrases. I immediately took off out the door, thinking I’d surely be fired when I came back.
Luckily, the customer said nothing, so I managed not to get in trouble at all. This is where it gets interesting: For a few months after that incident, every time the autistic customer would see Rob, he’d say “Rob the giant jerk” right in front of everyone. The first time I saw it happen, the look on Rob’s face was priceless. It was very deer-in-the-headlights.
Of course, I busted out laughing, and so did all of the other employees who heard it, so I blended right in. It was unintentional, but it was probably one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen…AND I got to see it happen myself three times.
8. Headcase at the Head of It
I was working maintenance at an ice rink. The rule for anyone who knows how an ice rink works is if the Zamboni doors open, you get the heck off the ice. Some jerk decided to ignore the fact that they were open, and that I was standing in the doorway, and decided to rip off one last slap-shot. The puck bounced off the glass and hit me in the head. I was okay, but reported it to my boss, because we have to fill out an incident report for things like that.
The boss asked, "Are you okay?" I said I feel okay, then he responded with "Well, we don't really have to report it then do we?" I reminded him of the protocol, but it was clear he didn't want to do it. Since he wouldn't do it, I sent a descriptive email of the incident up to the administration, because I felt there should be some sort of documentation/paper trail, in case, god-forbid, I ended up having a brain hemorrhage or something a few days later. The boss was fired by my next shift.
9. Music Is Food For The Soul
I worked in this one corporate kitchen where our GM didn’t like our music, so he would put on children’s music instead. When we all started singing along at the top of our lungs...Well, we quickly won that battle of attrition. But then, years later, we got surround sound in a different, closed kitchen. Once again, the uppity GM did not like our music and started passing draconian censorship rules about what we could play.
Little did he know that we had the perfect plan to really tick him off. We switched it back to children’s music for a week. The moral of the story: Never underestimate the power of a kitchen crew of misfits singing “Banana Phone” at the top of their lungs to fight fascism, jerk! Viva La Raffi! Viva La Raffi!
10. Abusing His Position
When I was being fired, I told management the manager had said he wanted to murder his ex-wife and her new boyfriend to orphan their child. He was fired shortly after and the police showed up to escort him out.
11. Knee-Jerk Reaction
I used to work at the Jaws ride at Universal Studios, Florida. Our uniform consisted of a blue T-shirt, jeans or jean shorts, white socks, and white shoes. However, the “unofficial” dress code had all of us girls wearing jean shorts and white knee socks. One summer, I ended up working the Jaws ride and the Jungle Cruise ride at Walt Disney World simultaneously. I love Disney and had always wanted to work there, but I ended up finding it stifling, with all sorts of silly and over-the-top rules.
While working at the Jungle Cruise ride, I had to wear a khaki shirt, khaki shorts or pants, white socks, and brown shoes. But one day, I didn’t have any normal-sized socks to wear to the Jungle Cruise ride, so I ended up wearing my white knee-highs from the Jaws ride, which looked RIDICULOUS with the Jungle costume.
When I got to work, one of my managers flipped his lid. He told me my socks weren’t in compliance with “The Disney Look” and he made me roll my socks down. It looked like I was wearing little white life preservers around my ankles, and they ended up looking even more out of place than they did originally.
I was annoyed, but I would end up having the last laugh. When I went home, I scoured my Disney Look booklet for the policies pertaining to socks. All I could find was that the socks had to be long enough to cover the ankle bone—there was no maximum height. Heck, I could have worn white tights under my khaki shorts if I really wanted to. So, the next day, I wore my knee-highs again as a small act of rebellion.
The same manager was there, and of course, he flipped out. He actually pulled me into the office to write me up, but before he could get me to sign the paperwork, I pulled out my copy of The Disney Look. I showed him that, while incredibly silly looking, my socks were perfectly acceptable, and I told him I would continue wearing them like that.
And so I did. I looked stupid, but I didn’t care. Working for Disney wasn’t a pleasant experience, in my opinion, and it was very liberating to know that I could at least wear my socks...however the heck I wanted to.
12. The Fall of a Drama Queen
A tenured faculty member was controlling of the personal lives of members on her "drama team," She made them simulate sex acts onstage and filmed it. I told the Dean. She was terminated. Saw her around town the other day and safe to say...11 years later...she still HATES me.
13. Condominium Scheme
In high school, I wore a FreeCondoms.com T-shirt to school. After three to four hours of wearing it, I got called down to the principal’s office and was told that I was promoting abhorrent behavior. I posited that I was, in fact, trying to prevent unwanted pregnancies, but I lost that fight and was informed that I had to leave if I did not have another shirt.
Rather than leaving, I opted for a rather devious loophole—I put a sticky note over the ‘M’ in condoms and spent the rest of the day harassing faculty about the fantastic lakeside condos that I was giving away for free.
14. Dishonorable Discharge
My (former) immediate supervisor in the Military was a racist, misogynistic jerk who just so happened to also enjoy occasionally sexually harassing me for fun. He would discreetly touch me in front of everyone to see if I dared say anything back, so he could then berate me for "giving him attitude.” The breaking point was when he grabbed my hand and forced me to touch him during a pat-down. Moved on to a new unit, reported him. Turns out there were 7 other women with similar experiences—as there always are. He gone.
15. The Bright Side Of Life
My brother-in-law worked for UPS for 17 years. He was a bit of a joker and was constantly getting in trouble for coming to work with crazy hair colors or cornrows (he was a big Italian guy and was told by his superiors that it wasn’t appropriate). It was always something. But then, later on, he learned that his bosses couldn’t say anything to him about wearing sunglasses. So, his little rebellion at work was to wear the most outrageous sunglasses he could find.
He had ones shaped like giant red lips; guitars with the stems sticking up; purple ones with rhinestone hearts on them…Anything for a laugh. After a while, people knew him by his glasses. If someone said they lived in a certain area, I would say, “Oh, my brother-in-law is your UPS man, the guy with the crazy glasses,” and their reply would almost always be something like, “Ohhh, John. Yeah, I love that guy. He’s hilarious.”
He passed four years ago after being hit by a tipsy driver while out walking one night. When we attended his funeral, we were shocked at how his co-workers honored him—all of his guys from work attended, dressed in their browns and wearing crazy sunglasses. His best friend gave his eulogy wearing a pair of neon green glasses three times the size of his face, and the pastor even borrowed John’s guitar glasses when he went up to speak.
We counted after his funeral, and he owned over 200 different pairs of crazy sunglasses. What started as him being a pain in the butt to his boss ended up as a tribute to his character in life: He always wanted to make someone else smile.
16. Not Moved by His Excuse
Our executive director was moving and took my practicum student and a low-level employee to his house to help him move furniture. I told him that was unacceptable, both from a respect and a liability perspective. His response to me was, “You know since I hired you, I can fire you, right?” I told him to go ahead and try it, then promptly called our board, who dismissed him that week.
17. Sorry, Not Sorry
I used to work at a TV station. This place had absolutely awful management and I complained about it to my friends all the time. Eventually, some people began asking me about my job on Facebook, and I would reply truthfully, knowing I could get fired for speaking ill of the company. So I started reading the HR handbook, and I found out that as long as I didn’t specifically name the company, I couldn’t get fired for talking about it.
Then about a month later, I realized I couldn’t take the misery of my job anymore. I did what I never thought I would never do—I posted on Facebook how terrible my job was, and even though I never mentioned the company by name, my bosses fired me the next day. I gladly walked out of that building and into a lawyer’s office. In the end, I got $17,800—my yearly salary (seriously). Felt good, man.
18. Bad Grief
I phoned him to tell him I won't be at work for the rest of the week as my mum is terminally ill in hospital. The next day (about an hour after she passed away), he phoned and asked why I wasn't at work. I just hung up on him so I wouldn't say anything that would get me in trouble. The next day I sent the area-manager a WhatsApp message explaining what he'd be done and attached a video of him breaking the freezer door while having a tantrum which cost the store nearly £5000 in lost stock and the repair costs (which he'd told the AM had broke on its own). He got fired that day and I got two weeks off with full pay.
19. A Moment Worth Dyeing For
Back in high school, I joined a small group of students and a few teachers on a rare trip out-of-state. I was at the top of my class, but I was also one of those ruffian or hoodlum types: big pants, dark blue hair, and white-out contacts. Anyway, we were supposed to look “presentable” because we were going someplace directly after our short flight.
I’d swapped out my usual white-out contacts for clear ones, and I was pretty much dressed like a Mormon; though I still had my dark blue hair. But when we arrived at the airport, shortly before the flight, one of the chaperones, a school counselor who was quite familiar with me, caught a glimpse of my attire. She suddenly turned to me and said: “Are you serious?”
I replied, “Not usually, but what are you talking about?” She then went on about how my “unnatural” hair color was a distraction that reflected poorly on the school As a side note, for several months leading up to this point, my hair had been a variety of colors, including some very bright, annoying concoctions, like magenta and turquoise.
Also, a hairdresser friend did my hair professionally with semi-permanent hair dye, so it wasn’t changing any time soon. Regardless, the counselor called the principal over and asked her to send me home to make my hair look more “natural.” The principal, who I considered a friend, just looked at me and asked me what I thought.
I responded that the counselor’s choice of hair color (orange blonde) was not natural either. I went on that trip, and the country folk loved this city boy’s funny hair.
20. Bad Teamwork Dies Hard…With a Vengeance
About 13-14 years ago, I was working as a web designer for a dot-com. In our immediate group were a creative director, a creative manager, and two of us who were designers. We were all part of the marketing department. The creative director was a joke. He was brought in by the previous VP of Marketing, who he was friends with.
He hardly did any work himself, and just played online poker waiting on us to send him things for approval. And he'd never stick around late when the rest of us needed to stay late to hit a deadline or deal with a crisis, etc. The creative manager, who'd been in charge for a couple of years before the creative director's hiring, still ran the day-to-day.
So, the creative manager gave his notice that he'd accepted a new job, and when I met with the current VP of marketing to discuss transition, I mentioned that the creative director would need to step up and pull his weight. I guess a similar message was expressed by a number of people, and less than a week after the creative manager's last day the creative director was fired!
This kind of sucked because we went down from 4 to 2 people in our group. I was appointed acting creative manager, and we eventually did hire one more designer. I left the company a couple of months later, too, after the latest VP of Marketing was let go and there was going to be a 10th different person overseeing marketing in my 5 years there. And the jerk creative director?
He'd reached out at some point (looking for files for his portfolio, I think?), and it happened to be in the two-week window where I'd accepted my next job but hadn't yet started so I mentioned my new position. Well, he fires off a copy of his resume to the company president and tried to poach my new job out from under me! On my first day at the new job, the president mentioned that somebody else from that same company also applied for the job and forwarded me the application email to see if I knew him... saw that the date was after he and I had last communicated!
21. Out To Lunch
In the McDonalds I used to work at in Pennsylvania, it was the norm for the managers to not clock out for their lunch breaks. This, unfortunately, meant that whenever there was a huge rush, you HAD to forfeit your break to get up and help. Well, according to the rules of the state, we were entitled to a lunch break off the clock, undisturbed. But one day, I just had enough—I clocked the heck out, then sat down and had some noms.
Then the owner walked in. He immediately wanted to know why I wasn’t helping because they were backed up. I put him on notice, and everyone left me alone afterward. In fact, they actually started doing it themselves.
22. Steal a Mile in My Shoes
I was fired because I "abandoned my job" while on short-term disability, even though I was on approved leave. They made a date for me to return, never informed me (by their own admission), and when I obviously didn't return to work...I was fired. The locker I had at work had my work boots in it that the company pays $90 a year towards.
However, there isn't a pair under $100 available. So, you always end up having some come out of your paycheck. At that point, they are yours regardless of the company line. They disagreed and said they were thrown out, I reported them stolen, and the HR director responsible for getting me fired was fired.
23. He Nailed It At The Eleventh Hour
Nobody ever received a positive comment in their evaluations at the place where I used to work. In fact, somebody once questioned in a meeting, “Do you think we could say something nice about somebody just once?” Coldly, the immediate response was, “That’s not what we’re here for!” I resisted all of this for five long years until, eventually, certain people who’d held years-long grudges against me personally rose up to the right positions and put together a case to get me railroaded out.
Fortunately, my co-worker filled me in on what was going down, so I was able to interview around and get another job before the hammer finally came down. They were gonna drag me in on a Tuesday at 11 o’clock, and I got the other job offer at nine. I preemptively turned in a resignation that said nothing more than, “I resign my position .” I also refused an exit interview and presented state and federal statutes that showed I was not required to give one.
Even though these people so badly wanted me gone, they were furious that I’d beaten them to the punch. The reality of their intentions was much darker than I had initially assumed—they wanted to put me on a set-up-to-fail PIP so they could exploit my expertise through the summer season. Instead, I handed them a post-dated resignation, knowing they would immediately throw me out of the building.
I also knew they would have to pay me through the effective date, which gave me my annual profit-sharing distribution. Now I’m in a job with far fewer hours while making more money, with co-workers that I actually like. Meanwhile, the old company laid off 10 percent of their employees and slashed the compensation of those who remained by thirty percent.
Good. Screw them.
24. Higher Learning for Somebody
About 15 years ago, I worked at a major university in the IT department. After I was hired, it took me a couple of months to realize my boss was a sociopath, as was his #2 guy. Once I realized what I was dealing with, I just tried to keep my head down because I didn't want to job hop so soon after leaving my last job. But they made that impossible.
We had a database administrator and I was interested in becoming a DBA so I talked to him a lot about what I should do to transition from a programmer to a DBA. The VP of IT, my boss’s boss, would stop by and talk to me and ask me about my aspirations, so I told her about wanting to be a DBA and that I was actually taking night classes so I could.
This was a woman who my boss referred to as "she who must be obeyed" in a totally disrespectful manner. As the months went on, I saw more and more egregious behavior by my boss and his #2 toady. We had a large corporation consulting on transition to their database. This included a young guy who was doing the database install including ordering the right equipment and migrating the data.
We also had student workers in our department. They were students who worked part-time hours. One of these was a young woman. The big corp young guy and the young woman started going to lunch together. Apparently, this was offensive to my boss, who threatened both of them with termination for "fraternization.” The university had no such rule, my boss was just making it up as he went.
About six months after I was hired, the DBA quit. I went into our weekly staff meeting and at the end, my boss announces that I'd been promoted to DBA. My spidey-senses were tingling because of his tone of voice and because this was the first, I was hearing about it. After the meeting, I went to his office to thank him and tell him I really appreciated the chance.
He was very angry. Apparently, his boss had made him promote me. I had no idea. The next thing I know, I'm being called into my boss's #2 guy's office. He tells me that performance reviews were coming up and I would have to be reviewed on job description of DBA rather than the job description of my old position. That is, unless I turned down the DBA position.
Yep, he was threatening me to get me to turn down the promotion. I asked him to see the written description of my old position as well as the one for DBA. He couldn't give them to me because they didn't exist. Now, I can be a pretty stubborn bitch, and this really pissed me off. I didn't do anything wrong and now my job was being threatened.
Part of my job duties during the six months of my employment involved working with the head of every department of the university, including the legal department. I had a good working relationship with every head of every department. So, I made an appointment with the university's head counsel. I explained the situation to him including my boss's boss making him promote me and my boss threatening me with my performance review.
I told him that, although I was studying to be a DBA, I was really not qualified to be one without some hard work and if the university didn't want me to take the position, I would absolutely turn it down. I also mentioned my boss's nickname for his boss, and the issue with the student worker and the big corp guy. Apparently, the student worker had already filed a harassment complaint, so the head counsel knew about it.
He told me I had been promoted by someone (boss's boss) who had every right to promote me and I should not worry about anything. He said if my boss gave me any more trouble that I should let him know. A week later, my boss and his #2 toady were fired. My boss ended up working at a small city college and is there to this day. I pity his employees. I left the university about two years later and had a successful career as a DBA.
25. Yay, Or Neigh?
Our old CEO was a jerk. He made a rule saying that no dogs or cats were allowed in the office (we were previously dog-friendly). Our department head was not having any of it. One day, he decided to bring in freaking a miniature horse. He was fired a week after for it, but it was hilarious. He got rehired after we got rid of the CEO. Our new CEO lets us race our dogs.
26. Not Tickled to Work With You
In college, I worked in a take-out restaurant just off campus, and we were all employed by the school. I was 17-18 years old (back in 2007/2008) and my boss, the manager, was a 40-something creeper. Hitting on me, touching me inappropriately (trying to massage my shoulders, tickling me, putting his hands on/around my waist) despite me asking him to stop.
Then he friended me on Facebook, I declined, and suddenly my work schedule was changed. I was on shift during hours when I had class, and when I explained that problem, I got taken off the schedule altogether. I told the assistant manager what was going on (which I was explicitly told by the manager not to talk to the assistant) and he reported what was going on to upper management—boom, the manager was fired. I worried for a while if he was going to come after me for that.
27. He Paid For It In The End
Back when I was working and attending classes, I would go straight from campus to work and would often arrive 10 to 20 minutes early before my shift. On occasion, my boss would ask me to help him out with something before I clocked on, like putting something away or answering the phone. But over the span of a couple of months, this evolved from “occasionally” to “every day."
After doing this for a couple of weeks (still clocking in at my usual 3 pm), I decided that if I was to work for a few extra minutes each day, I’d better get paid for it. One time, I tried to ask him to pay me, and I didn’t even make it an hour into my shift before my boss started screaming at me and throwing down the employee handbook, saying that I’m only allowed to clock in five minutes before and after my scheduled shift.
That's when I decided to fight back...in the most passive-aggressive way. From that moment forward, I made it a point not to check in until five minutes after my scheduled shift every day, no matter how early I was. Fast forward to three months later, and my boss got fired. He got what was coming to him.
28. Big Boss is Watching You…for Now
My manager wanted to prove I was slacking off so he could write me up. So, he watched CCTV footage then wrote, printed out, and SIGNED a detailed 17-page Word document what I did in the past two days. With timestamps (like, 07:59 arriving, 08:01 speaking with co-worker A and B, 08:07 sitting down to my desk, etc.). He told me that he's not happy with my work ethics, and if I won't improve my efficiency, I'm fired.
I took the papers and showed to his boss and told her that I'm not happy with my manager’s work ethics and his efficiency might be better if he wouldn't watch 17 hours of CCTV footage to spy on an employee. She was terrified (it would've been a rock-solid lawsuit for me, but I love my job) and we had to search for a new manager. Also, I got a raise.
29. It Suited Him Just Fine
My father was working in a post office in the early '80s. It was an unusually hot day with ~85°F inside. There were no fans available, so it was crazy. Men weren’t allowed to wear shorts, but my dad came to work wearing shorts that covered his knees and a part of his shin, figuring he was fine. Apparently, it wasn’t, and his boss sent him home to change.
His boss probably thought that was the end of that, but he had no clue what crafty plan my dad was cooking. He returned in his grandfather’s apparel from the late 19th century: top hat and all. The boss kept asking if it wasn’t a little hot in that suit, but my dad insisted he was fine.
30. A Matter of Life and Employment
I worked at a facility that manufactured medical devices, mainly catheters. One day, a work order came in and my manager came into the clean room to hand me the work order and to enter in the order specs (things like dip speed, dwell time, extraction speed and cure time) for the production run. Entering in the specs is literally the one thing I wasn't allowed to do.
That had to be done by a supervisor or the manager. After he leaves, just for the hell of it, I double check the specs before I start the test run. The specs were off. Like, WAY off. I call the manager who literally just entered them in and asked him if he knew something I didn't and if he wanted me to correct them. He vehemently told me to leave the specs as is and run the machine as per his specs.
I ask for his reasoning (something I don't normally do, but I had a funny feeling) and all he said was, "They won't know the difference." Now, considering these catheters go INSIDE of people and can cause serious injury if they are faulty, I call up the production manager and tell him what’s going down. He's on the phone for less than ten seconds, and all he tells me is to stop production and to hang out.
Cool, I hadn't even started so I left the clean room and took a break. Not even five minutes later I hear some yelling, a door slam, and the production manager goes into the clean room to enter the specs into the machine and has me verify the specs right in front of him. He turns to me and says, "If this ever happens again, with anyone, let me know. Personally."
They put him on suspension and sent him home. They started an investigation, (there's a ton of paperwork and lots of paper trails when it comes to medical devices) and it turns out he had been fudging the numbers for a solid month and not with just this customer. The company that had been ordering the products threw a fit, and said they would find another manufacturing company if you don't fire the guy (my boss) immediately.
It was a multimillion-dollar contract at risk, so he was gone after the week-long investigation. All I got was a measly handshake and thanks from the owner of the company. In short: the boss was knowingly fudging the specs on medical device manufacturing. I found out, told his boss, he got fired.
31. Good Thing She Maid It Out
As a nanny, it’s weird when your boss is a mom with no actual experience in being a boss. The worst boss I worked for wasn’t that bad when I first started working for her, but over the course of the year, she kept adding more and more things for me to do. Suddenly, I wasn’t just taking care of the baby; I became their maid too, with no pay increase. Eventually, it got to the point where I was basically her personal assistant.
She got a taste of power and completely abused it. As a young 19-year-old, it was hard for me to see how bad the situation really was because it wasn’t an overnight thing. I was eventually “fired.” Then, the day after she fired me, she pulled a major Uno reverse card—she weirdly called me asking where I was. By that time, the job was so bad...I did everything in that house, from taking care of the baby to hand washing the mom’s delicates.
She even got me a “uniform” and would reprimand me if it wasn’t kept well. It was the same with her hair and make-up requirements. Then, when the woman was a couple of weeks pregnant with baby #2, she suggested that I become a wet nurse for them. After I got fired, I never went back—and the lady flipped out and showed up at my house.
32. Freelancer’s Choice
I took a phone call on my cell when at my desk. Middle manager came up and screamed at me. Yelling about how I was not allowed to take calls for clients while at that office. I was a contractor and made it perfectly clear that I did work for multiple clients prior to doing work for this company. The CTO’s office was 10 feet from mine. He came out and stood in his doorway listening to the rant.
When the middle manager was done, I just looked over at the CTO and said: “it’s him or me and at the moment I don’t give a damn which you pick.” CTO walked the middle manager out right then. Funny thing: I didn’t hang up throughout the incident. And it was my wife on the other end. I was spending about 70 hours a week at their site digging their staff out of a hole they had dug themselves in.
33. "Missteaks" Were Made
My boss went away for about three to four weeks for a conference, and while he was away, a workmate and I had a brilliant idea for the office: a George Foreman grill. So, every day for over a month, we’d go to the deli and grab stuff for lunch (hamburgers, lamb chops, pork, steaks, etc.). But when the boss got back, he put a stop to it with the exact words: “I don’t want that thing inside the office.” We, therefore, decided to take the grill to the shared kitchen area on our floor (we rented a suite).
But our boss got angry at that too and exclaimed, “I DON’T WANT IT ON THIS FLOOR.” So we next took it down to the underground parking area and used the power outlet by his parking space while he was out for lunch. Unfortunately, one day, our plan was foiled BIG time—he caught us hunched over our tiny George Foreman grill cooking hamburger patties as he came back from lunch with a business partner (who, by the way, was in the car with him).
Just imagine catching three IT guys crouched on the ground like cavemen in a poorly lit underground parking lot, cooking hamburgers on the concrete floor. Yeah, it went over about as well as you would think. If he hadn’t specifically used the words, “Take that home, or I will break it and throw it in the trash,” our next step would’ve been to use the power in the church parking lot directly opposite the building (which faced his office).
34. In Bed with the Enemy
I’ve told this story a few times before, so I’ll keep it short. I didn’t get my boss fired, but she blames me. Boss and I didn’t get along, but she didn’t have the authority to fire me. But she promised her boyfriend my job. So, she hires her boyfriend in another position, with the plan they’ll drive me to quit, and then she can just promote him to my job. This lasted for about a month.
She fired him when they broke up. He confessed their scheme to me on his way out (we’d actually become friends at this point), and I tell him he should really tell HR. HR does their investigation, she’s fired because “sleep with me and I’ll give you a job” is textbook sexual harassment. And she tells anyone who’ll listen that it’s all my fault because I didn’t quit like I was supposed to.
35. Petty Officer
When I was in the army, I pulled my car up to an ATM on base. Four guys emerged behind me, and while I was getting my cash, someone remarked, “You actually drive that freaking piece of junk? I should call in for a tow truck.” Without bothering to turn around, I yelled back, “Screw you AND your tow truck.” I never did see who it was behind me, as he was gone by the time I got my money.
But the next day, my squad leader called me aside and asked me if I told SSG “P” to go screw himself yesterday, and I had to admit that yes, I probably had. So, I was in trouble; the three other witnesses were interviewed and signed sworn statements to the fact that I had told a staff sergeant to go screw himself and a towtruck.
I was allowed the opportunity to read the incriminating statements against me before I made my own; probably just to make sure I understood there was no point in lying. Fortunately, I found out a juicy detail that worked splendidly in my favor—only one of the witnesses knew who the guy was because SSG “P” was wearing civilian clothes…He wasn’t on duty.
So, my statement detailed an “aggressively profane and hostile person in civilian attire, identity unknown to me,” whom I found to be acting irrationally. I then said that I attempted to diffuse further confrontation by “responding jovially in kind fashion.” The beauty of it all was that I would’ve been unable to mesh my version of events so perfectly with the bland facts the others reported without reading the other statements.
You see, under the UCMJ (the army’s uniform code), there is no such thing as “disrespecting a non-commissioned officer.” There’s only “insubordination,” and it’s very clear that the officer needs to be in uniform. So at that point, everyone decided that the best thing to do was sweep it all under the rug, as SSG “P” had far more to lose than I did. Magically, everything went away.
“P” continued to be a jerk to me at every opportunity, so whenever I saw him out of uniform, I made a point of yelling, “Hey, ‘P!’ Screw you!” Eventually, my squad leader asked me to stop as a personal favor to him, so I did...but it was fun for a while.
36. Skimming Off the Top
Not me, but my GF at the time. We were both working at a small burrito chain, she was front of house manager and I was kitchen manager. Above us was one senior manager and then the owner. We did tip pooling based on hours, and the senior manager always told my GF not to count the tips every night, as he divided it up at the end of the week.
Well. Of course, she counted them every night. Turns out the senior manager was stealing almost $500 a week from employees in tips, and because his previous FOH manager never questioned him it had likely been going on for years. She told the owners and he was gone the next day. A week later his wife left him.
37. Sandal Scandal
The company I work for has a dress code that allows women to wear open-toed shoes, so long as they are leather; however, the dress code does not allow men to do the same. When I started wearing leather sandals a few years back during the warmer months, some managers mentioned to me that I was violating the dress code. I had a simple but highly effective response to this.
I pointed out that they would consider my shoes acceptable if I were a woman and that it was gender discrimination to deny me the ability to wear something considered okay on someone of the opposite gender. I haven’t heard any comments or problems since.
38. The Fall of an Empire
Public agency hires someone out of the private industry at the vice president level. She immediately begins hiring all her cronies and ass-kissers from her old job at very nice salaries for jobs that didn't previously exist. That's the sort of corruption we're used to in North Carolina, so no biggie so far. But she runs out of slots she can just create with a little paperwork so she starts to bully people in order to get them to quit so she can fill their jobs with her friends.
One job was that of an executive assistant, and she was pretty harsh on the woman who had that job. I witnessed some of this and told the assistant to take it to HR—which she did, and HR just told her to document everything. So, she did and one day the VP caught her recording a yell-fest on her phone. The VP wanted to know what was up, so the exec assistant told her that HR wanted documentation and that I had told her how to record conversations on a cell phone (which was legal, BTW, I checked).
So, she yells at the exec assistant, yells at me, and then gets on the phone to HR, yelling at them that they were a bunch of incompetent fools, and that she wanted to know what kinda Mickey Mouse outfit she was working for if she couldn't fire whoever the heck she wanted to fire. Sure enough, HR initiates an investigation that took 300 hours (!!) of interviews with everyone in the department and a board of inquiry headed up by a Senior VP.
She was called to the Senior VP’s office at 4:30 in the afternoon and when we came to work at 8 the next morning, her office was cleared out. Most of the cronies she hired were gone with a couple of months; no one wanted to work with them so with no projects on their docket, they knew the writing was on the wall. When the last of the cronies left, her job was eliminated, and her staff transferred elsewhere. It was like the evil VP and her mob never existed.
39. Found The Loophole
When I worked at Best Buy, the dress code was black shoes, pants, a belt, and a tucked-in blue shirt. Except I never wore a belt nor tucked my shirt in, because as a chubster, whenever I knelt to organize the DVDs on the bottom shelf, my shirt would come untucked, and the belt would cut into my belly. First-world problems, huh?
Anyway, my boss would constantly freak out on me for not having my shirt tucked in, and she eventually got on my case for not wearing a belt, too. So, I checked the dress code and found it read something like: “Wear a belt if there are belt loops on the pants.” What I did next is pretty genius, if I do say so myself—I found an Exacto knife and cut off all my belt loops.
When I came into work the next morning, my boss again noticed I wasn’t wearing a belt and exclaimed, “WHERE’S YOUR BELT?” I gave her the biggest smirk I could muster and replied, “WHERE’S MY BELT LOOPS?” It was one of my finest moments.
40. Don’t Wake Sleeping Beauty
It was the night shift, and for years this freaking guy had been either locking himself in the office and playing video games all night, or going home and freaking sleeping on the clock…and no, I'm not making that up. Finally, one night, the regional manager showed up for a surprise visit at like 3AM...it was a group effort, the night crew took great pleasure in telling the RM exactly where his night manager was.
41. It Shaved Him Some Time
When I worked at Big 5, there was a policy that the men either had to be clean-shaven or have a mustache: no beards, goatees, or star-burns. I could NOT wear a mustache without looking like a creep or an '80s-era “adult” star, but I hate shaving every day. My decision ended up ticking off my managers to their bones.
I grew out the biggest, creepiest Hulk Hogan mustache ever witnessed and wore it proudly for the entire time I worked there. Winning.
42. They Don’t Teach Manners in Management School
He'd show up every day and tell us a tale of his sexual exploits. Whether true or not, none of us wanted to hear it. If an attractive looking female came in, he drops what he's doing and stares at her, drooling like a dog in a dog treat factory. After she leaves, he had to say a comment about her appearance. After talking on the phone with a certain manager, he always comments on how nice her ass is.
He'd bully us employees and other managers. Called us bitches a lot despite us getting onto him for it. My female coworkers reported him. We all had a phone meeting with our district manager and HR. He was suspended until the investigation was over and they ruled to terminate him. Surprisingly HR worked for us that day.
43. She Got A Kick Out Of It
I work at Home Depot, and steel-toe footwear is mandatory. A typical pair of steel toes cost over $100 and the company doesn’t pay for them. I work minimum wage and I’m female, so finding an appropriate pair was very difficult. But I still took the opportunity to get my passive-aggressive revenge—because the company didn’t mandate any specific colors, I went out and bought bright white and green steel-toe shoes with matching laces.
They are the ugliest things ever and the first thing my co-workers notice.
44. PowerPoint or Power Don’t?
He was presenting a PowerPoint that I had put together to all the managers in the building. There was something he wanted to add at the last minute that he had never told me about, and when it wasn't there, he verbally abused me for like 5 minutes straight. Yelling, name-calling, telling me to prove to him that I had a college degree and wasn't just making it up.
I was a contractor, so I was afraid to complain to HR because I assumed, they'd just fire me, but a lot of other people in the room did. After the meeting, I went into the share drive folder to find the presentation notes where the extra information was supposedly located. I watched the last changed time change from a day ago to the current time, then he immediately called and said it was right there in the notes file. He was fired the next day for unprofessional behavior.
45. From Zero To Hero
At the store I worked at, they wanted a minimum of 70% of our transactions to be membership transactions. I found a foolproof loophole for this, and they hated me for it. I would deliberately get 100% by only ringing one customer through on my whole shift and I'd get them to either use or sign up for a membership. Then, on a random day, I’d ring someone though without using their membership card so that I would be at 0%.
Whenever management came to me to complain that my percentage was zero, I’d tell them that I’d been 100% all week and that I’d only had one transaction that day, and the customer didn’t want to sign up. They couldn’t get mad at me for 0% on one person (you can’t win ‘em all), and they couldn’t get mad at me for only ringing in one person every other day because my numbers were technically 100%.
It annoyed the heck out of them, but on paper, it looked great.
46. Falling Down the Ladder
Not fired but demoted. I got fired and explained in my exit interview how the reason I wasn’t making progress on my project is that I had no idea what I was doing. I was never trained, my work-from-home boss in another location took off for 4 hours a day to run errands and go to the gym, etc. etc. They checked my story out and ended up demoting my boss, taking her off the project, and taking away all her direct reports.
47. Shoe Boss
I used to work at a lingerie store as an assistant manager, so I had to dress nice and look professional. All the other girls wore huge heels, and they always ended up complaining about how sore their feet were at the end of their shift. I always wore flats to avoid having sore feet. They were still nice, stylish shoes, but they didn’t have towering heels on them.
My manager always used to get mad at me for not wearing heels and tried to claim they were part of the dress code. I looked up the dress code and showed her that it didn’t say anywhere that I had to wear heels; just that I had to wear acceptable work attire (or something along those lines). She then tried to tell me it was an out-of-date dress code. That's when I had the final straw.
I told my manager that she should get an updated dress code if that were the case. Eventually, she brought the head office into the argument, and the provincial manager ended up trying to convince me to wear heels to work. I replied that they would have to pay me much more than minimum wage to ruin my feet.
Needless to say, I did not get a raise, but no one ever told me to wear heels to work again.
48. Deep Fried and Fired
I had a very old, by-the-book manager when I worked fast food. She would always criticize people for not doing their jobs 100% correctly and she often insulted employees. One time while I was on fry duty, I purposefully pulled the fries out a few seconds early and made sure a second manager was watching. She came up to me and said: "I told you before, take the fries out AS SOON AS THEY ARE DONE!! Next time, I'll dip your head in the fryer." The other manager saw, and more people commented on her behavior and she was gone the next day.
49. Bet This Threw Her For A Loop
Five or so years ago, I worked at a Petsmart in the “Pet Hotel,” where we boarded the animals whose “Pet Parents” (owners) were on vacation. Everything I did was in the back, and no customers ever saw me—just the dogs and kitties. Still, my witch boss would always get on my case for forgetting my belt. One day, she got particularly mad at me for not having a belt despite the fact that I’d only just taken that shift last minute for someone who was sick.
My next move left her speechless—I picked up a dog leash, put it through my belt loops, and said, “Well, it appears I now have a belt.”
50. Not Too Old to Avoiding a Schooling
My wife and I worked at a level-four elderly facility on a part-time basis for four years. It was easy, we loved the clients, very low stress, etc. What we didn't know was the administrator was in a time card scam involving herself and several other people there. Other than some minor theft, she was a fantastic boss. They brought in this mousy little number cruncher as her replacement.
Soon after, the place went bad. The woman had no clue how to run a human services job and we all know we'd be out and fast. Soon enough, I got called in on a random day off to have a "meeting" and I knew I was going in to get canned. Taking the lead from a Dirty Harry movie, I stuffed a bunch of papers into a legal envelope and was on my way.
She's waiting for me with the town board behind her, all ready to send my puny ass home...but it didn't go that way. I told the board president that I had personally witnessed and documented enough misdoings at the place that her not being arrested for elder abuse would be a miracle. Not to mention she was having an affair with the cook. The woman turned the color of old parchment as I listed the places I was going with this information. I was let go, she was too, about a week later and the entire staff was replaced.
51. Taking A Breather
When I worked at OfficeMax about 10 years ago, I was the only employee who didn’t smoke. Naturally, this meant that everyone in the building got to take 15-minute smoke breaks two or three times per shift—and I got squat. But I would soon have my sweet, sweet justice. One day, I asked the manager if I could have a “clean air break.” Needless to say, he was confused.
I explained that if the smokers could take 15-minute breaks two or three times a shift, I should be able to step outside and do the same without having to smoke. It irked my manager, but he knew he ultimately had to let me do it to avoid any discrimination.
52. Not Here to Play Games
I used to work at a video game store (I'm sure you can figure out which one) as an assistant manager. A few months after I was hired, I was moved to a different location. The manager there was the laziest jerk I've ever met. When I got there, the store was a mess. The game cases were supposed to be displayed on the wall alphabetically—none were.
The accessories were supposed to be arranged according to system—everything was mixed together. It was nearly impossible to find anything in that store. And the store itself was tiny. Besides not cleaning and organizing, this guy just did nothing. He would spend his shift in the minuscule back room "organizing". He would take a 1-2 hour lunch break almost every day, then go in and change his time sheet to show that he was only gone for 30 minutes.
Granted, the store was slow as heck, but still. I got tired of his BS after a couple of weeks, so I went to the district manager with my concerns. He and the regional manager had me keep tabs on him for a while (noting when he'd leave for his break and when he'd come back). Then, when they had enough evidence, they fired him. I don't know if there were things going on behind the scenes that I wasn't privy to, but I would guess probably.
53. All Wired Up
I work in foodservice. My job created a rule one day that no employee's hair should touch his or her collar. I have rather long hair, but I always kept it in a braid, and we wear hats, anyway. I was informed of this new rule about two hours before the end of my shift and told that I HAD to comply IMMEDIATELY because I was breaking the health code.
I politely informed them that no, I was not. It was only a store policy, but I would be happy to come in with my hair up the next day. I didn’t think this was unreasonable—it would take me a while to put my hair up, not to mention all the pins, hair products, etc. that I would need to do it. Unfortunately, I got told, “Not good enough! NOW!!!” That lit a fire in me.
I punched out for a break and bought some rubber bands and floral wire. I then made eight braids with the wire woven inside and stuck them out in every direction. When my boss saw me, he began screaming. I calmly told him that my hair wasn’t touching my collar.
54. Who Protects Us from the Protectors?
So, this boss wasn't terrible until we found out what he was doing. I actually used to like him a lot more than my main boss. In high school, I worked as a martial arts instructor. A lot of my friends went to this martial arts school and not actually my high school, so I was very close to them. One of my friends happen to be 3 years older than me so when I was 16, she was 19.
One of our bosses (not the owner of the school but second in command) was an older man who was a retired law enforcement officer. Typically, my friend who was 19 would work the desk after teaching and close up the school at the end of the night (mop, vacuum, etc.) Typically that late, the only people there was our male boss and her.
Obviously, you can see where this is going...bottom line a few of us helped her get proof he was sexually harassing/assaulting her to get him fired because our main boss (older woman) didn't believe her and accused her of starting trouble. Well, it turns out he had actually done this to many other people who had never reported it and went off to college/quit, but he only ever did it to people who were legally of age (17+).
He was fired and banned from the property, but that was the extent of his punishment. He actually opened his own martial arts school a few years later, so I'm sure nothing has changed. Honestly, this whole situation made me really sad and kinda ruined my whole view of my school but unfortunately my area has a lot of small tight-knit communities, so I know many teachers (regular school) who did inappropriate things (slept with student, struck a child, etc.) never got in trouble and were just asked to resign quietly.
Not even fired. Most of these teachers went off to other larger schools in the area, got caught but this time got punished.
55. They Had A Right To "Bare" Arms
I’m a senior in high school, and one day, a bunch of senior guys decided to start up a “Tank Top Tuesday.” So every Tuesday, about half of the senior guys would come to school wearing tank tops. Our school had no rule about tank tops except that the straps needed to be at least two inches thick, so we didn’t anticipate any problems (especially considering that the girls at our school wore tank tops all the time).
But after the first day, the school announced that boys were no longer allowed to wear tank tops. When we questioned why that was, they claimed that visible armpit hair was a distraction that inhibited learning. Our solution made our teachers want to rip their hair out. the following Tuesday, we all went to school wearing tank tops and sported shaved armpits.
56. Keep the Mind Games to the Field
Not a boss, but someone I worked with was pretty terrible. At my job, we are not supposed to have relationships with the athletes we treat because of HIPAA, also because our bosses didn't want employees who were there to date athletes and get the cool free gear and travel with the team. We were there to be an athletic trainer, nothing else.
So, this employee was there for all the wrong reasons and decided that she despised me because my boss chose me to travel and not her. Her course of action was then to talk to athletes, ask them to spread rumors about me so it would get back to my bosses and get me fired. Unfortunately for her, most of the athletes respected me, told me what was happening, and I reported her to my boss. Since this wasn't the first time that she had singled someone out like this, she was fired.
57. He Sub-Dude His Boss
In the navy, you must always wear a white T-shirt under your uniform. I had a Senior Chief who would constantly check if our T-shirts were not visible, and he required that they be seen. I checked the uniform regs and found that we could wear a V-neck tee while in a working uniform. So I started wearing them, and sure enough, he took notice as soon as he saw me. That's when things got heated.
When I told him that the regs allowed it, he was taken aback. His only comment was, “One for the blue shirts,” before he walked away. Then, he hammered me for every regulation violation he could find. Smart alecks never win, at least not in today’s Navy.
58. Telephone Game
Paranoid, sociopath boss wiretapped all internal phone calls and made life miserable for all who worked in that department. After moving over 1200 miles to the job location, called wife frequently to discuss the job and family progress in moving there. During those calls, I spun a story about how all of his top managers were plotting against him, which enraged him, and he took out his anger on them. Eventually they went to the company owner and complained, and he was fired the next day.
59. This Principal Got Schooled
I went to a Pentecostal School even though my family and I aren’t Pentecostal. They made me get haircuts all the time, but I liked having long hair and sideburns. One day, the school gave me the most disturbing ultimatum: Either I had to shave my sideburns, or they would do it. So, I told the principal that I wanted a tattoo. She immediately told me that I could not because the school’s rules were biblically-based, and then she read Leviticus 19:28: “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.”
I then told her to please read the verse above, which read: “Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.” I got to keep my sideburns.
60. Out with the Old
My direct supervisor, Linda, was a cantankerous older woman with poor education and even worse people skills. About 3 months after I started, I got her so pissed off, just by doing my job, that she cursed me out, got up from her desk and quit. I don't even remember what I said that set her off. I probably asked her if she was done with her half of something that I needed in order to finish my half, and became exasperated when she wasn't, because she'd been farting around all morning.
It was a common occurrence. After Linda walked out, our boss refused to hire her back when she begged (even though she'd been there something like 15 years), because "her attitude was so terrible, and she'd become such a toxic, pathetic excuse for a human being." I got a pretty solid raise, most of Linda's tasks (our boss was not unkind and took over some things herself, while giving me more practical things that I enjoyed doing), and even though my car was fine, she'd always have me drive her car to go make coffee runs, deposit checks, run errands, etc.
It was a Toyota Solara convertible, and she'd tell me to take the top down and have fun. I liked that job, I learned quite a bit, and if I hadn't found something closer to home, for even more money, I probably would've been there quite a while.
61. There’s No Shaving Face Now, Stesha
I worked at a chain Americana restaurant and I had this one witch of a manager who would always send me home to shave if I came to work with a five o’clock shadow. I was a busboy and I never even talked to the customers, so I don’t know why she had it out for my facial hair (which I grew out like Wolverine), especially since we could technically either be clean-shaven or have a full-grown beard, mustache, or goatee. They couldn't stand what I did next.
I took a week off, grew an amazing beard, and came to work the next day to show it off. Suck it, Stesha.
62. Not Worth the Sum of His Car Parts
He was stealing $5,000 in parts for his personal cars. He also was turning customers into cash jobs for a discount and then pocketing about half the money. I went to HR asked the proper way to report theft. I followed what HR has said, and then we were both fired. The best thing that ever happened to me.
63. They Made No Concessions
I work at a movie theater, and because I’m a girl, I always have to work concession. One of our managers even calls us the “candy girls,” which is ridiculous. Anyway, we all have to wear these stupid visors, and THEY DO NOTHING. So, I always tried to get away with not wearing one until one day, the oldest manager working there got so furious with me that he threatened to write me up.
However, I noticed one very important detail that would end up giving me the upper hand—the boys never had to wear the visors whenever they came to help with the concession, with the justification being that they “don’t have as much hair as us girls do.” So, I got a pixie-style haircut, and now I laugh my butt off every time my old-timer manager tries to say something.
64. A Hard Lesson in Bad Leadership
My first-grade teacher slapped me across the face for not memorizing hot cross buns. The slap hurt for sure, but having it done in front of a full class hurt more. I told the principal. We had a sub the rest of the year.
65. She Earned Her Stripes
We had a dress code for our “casual” days where I worked: No jeans, no T-shirts, and no sneakers. Basically, casual days are days when “men don’t have to wear a tie,” but otherwise, they’re just like regular, business-formal days. So, I decided to make a point. One of the outfits I liked to bring out for our casual days went something like this: black-and-white zebra-striped pants, a black and white horizontally striped shirt, a black and white vertically striped jacket, a black and white scarf, and four-inch platform heels.
Then there was also my glorious, perfectly respectable blouse—in neon green, neon orange, and chartreuse—which looked absolutely delightful when combined with my modest turquoise skirt and rainbow-striped knee-high socks. Technically, I was completely in compliance with the dress code. The ladies from the admin section would stare at me by the elevator banks and whisper to each other in what they considered a secretive manner about my fashion faux-pas.
Their pitying expressions read, “Clearly, she doesn’t get it.” Heh, yeah. I’m pretty sure I’m not the one who “didn’t get it.”
66. I’m Not Lovin’ It
Worked at a McDonald's in high school at 17. I was being sexually harassed by a co-worker twice my age. He said some really awful stuff to me that made me afraid to come to work. They refused to switch my shifts. They also were working me too much for being under 18 and tried to get me to sign a consent form saying I knew I'd be working the hours I was, when I constantly asked for different hours.
I called the corporate offices and told them. My parents even got a lawyer involved. I quit and a few weeks later a co-worker I went to school with said two of the shift managers, the supervisor, and the store manager were all terminated and barred from working with the company again. They brought in a few temporary people who were high up and ended up sniffing out the other bad employees.
67. Vacation, Or Power Move?
I worked for an IT department that was just the pits. At the time, the company was in the process of merging with another organization, so the IT budget for my department got cut by over 50% and I had to lay off six employees. Unfortunately, the company still required that the workload of those six employees get completed; otherwise, I’d get written up. I worked 80-hour weeks for about three months before I finally had it.
I was ready to quit without another job lined up just because I felt my health had deteriorated and frankly because zero effs were given. But the day before I was going to give my notice, I re-read the employee manual and found the section on terminating employment. My eyes widened with intrigue. It stated that if an employee gave their notice, they would be entitled to take their vacation time immediately because the company would not pay out that time.
In the company’s eyes, this was their dumb way of saving money. So the next morning, I walked into my boss’s office, placed my laptop, blackberry, and keys on his desk, and said, “I am resigning; thanks for everything. Take care.” He looked at me, shocked at first, and then asked when my last day was. I replied, “Right now, I’m leaving in five minutes. In accordance with the HR manual, I am taking my 10 vacation days that are in my bank, which translates to two weeks.”
His jaw dropped. He was on the phone with HR before I even walked past his office door, and I went back to my desk to pack up. Needless to say, my boss was aggravated, but HR confirmed the policy. I left in the next five minutes, and I got paid my vacation time for the next two weeks. I heard the policy was changed right after I left.
68. Gaydar Has No Place in the Office
She asked me if I was gay, and had apparently started telling people I was. Then she asked why I didn’t hit on her or if I found her attractive. I really didn’t intend to get her fired. I just told her boss it kind of put me in a weird situation as I was new. I really think she just needed some education on that type of thing as it was at a hospital, and there wasn’t much training for management.
69. Stocking Fees
I work at a bank, and it’s in our dress code policy that women MUST wear nylons or socks with their shoes. I work behind the teller line, so no one sees our freaking legs. Also, does anyone really NEED to see the fact that I’m wearing underwear under a skirt?! They had no idea who they were messing with. Anyway, now I wear knee-high boots every time I wear a skirt or a dress to work.
Whenever someone asks, “Where are your nylons?” I stick my foot up on a chair, unzip my boots, and point: “Socks.”
70. The Ultimate Strike-Out
Our general manager just quit yesterday before getting fired. We had a bowling party on Sunday, and he came drunk as could be. I feel bad because he is going through a divorce, but he hit on so many of the female employees there. One was 19, and he offered to buy her a car if she went home with him.
71. Not Lovin’ It
Probably the worst boss I ever had was at a McDonald’s. We had a younger manager for the first 10 months that I worked there, then they decided to bring in a second manager from another store. For the first week or so, he was fine—but then one day, one of the 16-year-old girls that usually worked the drive-thru got put on the grill for no reason.
At some point, she accidentally got grease on her shirt, and the manager flipped the heck out. What she told her was disturbing: "You look like pig. Either clean it up or go home." She left crying. The next day, another underage kid asked to get a drink of water after a three-hour non-stop rush—the poor kid looked like he was about to pass out. The manager told him no, so the kid said he’d drink from the sink in the back.
The manager then told him that he would send him home if he did that. I lost my temper when I heard that. I basically told the guy to eff off and left. I never went back. I heard that a month later, that manager got fired.
72. Sick of the Staff
Me and a friend both worked at a small neighborhood liquor store. The store was always short-staffed. The manager would call me or my buddy and demand we come in for a shift on days we weren't scheduled. This happened very often. My buddy got diagnosed with leukemia and had to quit. Less than a week later they "forgot" to pay me. When the manager called me into work (a shift I wasn't scheduled for) I said I would only come in if they paid me what I was owed.
The manager said I was being "difficult" and "immature" and fired me over the phone. The owner got so mad at the manager for firing one of their only employees, he fired her. In the span of a week, they lost over half of their workforce. I went into the store the next week to pick up my final pay cheques, the owner (who was forced to work behind the till at this point) offered me my job back with a $0.25/hr raise. I said no.
73. Living Well Is The Best Revenge
I used to work at Comcast, and I 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 help my supervisor do her entire job. I ran her meetings, did scheduling, went through all her paperwork, etc.
I did all this while she sat at her desk playing Candy Crush on her iPad. This went on for months until, one day, I absolutely lost it. I ended up snapping at a customer in a totally unprofessional way. Now, I took full responsibility for what I did, but that wasn’t good enough for my boss. 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 a recording of my entire screw-up while pausing it every few minutes to say something like, “How could you?” I was in tears at the end, and she just used that to show how bad of an employee I was and how good a boss she was for “helping” me learn from my mistakes. She then pushed for me to receive a final notice.
Essentially, if I got out of line one more time over the next year, I’d lose my job. But my boss wasn’t going to fire me; I was going to do it for her. HR was predictably useless, as were my friends in management. Now that I had gone from being an up-and-coming star to a pariah, people didn’t care about me…except for my supervisor, who still expected me to do her freaking job for her.
My next few days were filled with a considerable amount of crying. What followed next was rage—endless, white-hot rage. I didn’t quit. I didn’t give up. Instead, I decided the best revenge was my own success. So, I went back to school to finish my degree. After a while, I got offered an internship, which I took.
While I was fighting an uphill battle at Comcast 40 hours a week, I also worked at an internship for 20 hours a week while still being a full-time student. I let my supervisor know it, too. “Sorry, Boss,” I’d say, “I can’t do this report for you. I have a final to study for.” And, “Want me to stay late? Sorry, no can do. My internship is working me hard, so I want to spend my night off at home doing nothing.”
I basically ignored her whenever possible. If she asked me or emailed me a question relating to my job, I’d respond, but if she sent out a group email about some incentive plan, I would send it to the trash. At one point, she pulled me into a “meeting,” which was actually just the two of us, where she basically just antagonized me.
She even repeatedly told me, “You don’t know me…” which was really awkward, by the way. This went on for the entire year I was on probation, and during that time, I always kept my sales numbers low. Not low enough to get fired, but just at the point where people could see I wasn’t trying. This affected my commission, but it was so worth it.
Why? Well, three months before my probation was over, I got the option to switch to another supervisor, which I did with gusto. I then upped my effort during those last three months, and my new supervisor saw my sales numbers skyrocket. You see, my old boss had totally overlooked my genius—I had intentionally undercut my commission before to make my old boss look bad.
Of course, the upper management quickly took notice of how my new supervisor succeeded in one month, whereas my older supervisor repeatedly failed in nine. It pleased me to no end that I’d humiliated her just like how she’d humiliated me. Finally, on the one-year anniversary of my probation, I put in my two-week notice.
In my exit interview, I let them know everything I’d done to improve my life (though I omitted the whole “undercutting of my sales” part). I also said that I’d spent the last year becoming a better person just to spite Comcast and that I’d waited until after my probation was over to officially quit.
74. There’s No Secret to Safety
I got handed a complete mess of paperwork that OSHA requires that hadn't been done in years and was told to forge whatever wasn't there. I sent that email to OSHA with a handful of stuff that was missing that they should ask for when they came. He only made it a couple of days after they came in to review the complaint.
75. They Needed To Pay Up
I once worked a job where the client let slip how much they were paying for me. It turned out that in one month, they paid more than my annual salary. So, I asked my boss for a pay raise, only to get told there was just no more money available. I said I’d give them six weeks to find the money, and she laughed at me because I wasn’t “the type to give ultimatums.” She would soon find out that she was very wrong for underestimating me.
When I handed my notice in (after securing a better offer from another company), my boss’s boss suddenly offered me a 50% raise to stay.
76. Exit, Pursued by a Boss
I left my last company due to a bully of a general manager. Many people were leaving over him causing problems, being sexist, racist, and doing things people could easily sue them for, claiming sexual harassment. The list goes on. Everyone informed HR during their exit interviews. Hell, he even tried to make my exit interview not happen. Though they still weren't doing anything.
I had been at my new job for a couple of months now and was STILL getting complaints from my old team almost daily. So, I made an email account. Sent an email to EVERYONE who had an email account within the company explaining what he did/still did with events spanning from his start to the day prior. They fired him within the week and my old crew thanked me.
77. Blue Collared Workers
The company I worked for was a large, nationally-known engineering, architectural, and surveying firm, and my position required me to work both in the office and on construction sites. Our office dress code required dress shoes, slacks, and a “collared shirt” at all times. We had to wear steel-toed boots, jeans, and long-sleeved work shirts on the construction sites.
Our former vice president, a small Jewish man in his 50s with a temper and a thick North-Jersey accent (that’s important for later), used to berate people for violating company dress codes whenever he visited the offices. Well, one day, I was required to visit a site to perform some inspections, and when I returned around midday, he was there, standing by my desk.
“Where’s your collared shirt?” he demanded. “Excuse me?” I said, confused, as I thought it was obvious to everyone that I had just come from a dirty, dusty construction site. “Where’s your collared shirt?” he repeated in his thick North-Jersey accent, louder than before, and coming closer to jab his finger right at my shirt. At that point, I got angry—and even.
I fired back with the first thing that came to mind: “Blue is a ‘collar,’ are you blind?!” I snapped, pointing to my blue T-shirt. He stood there, stunned, and for the first time, he had no comeback. After a moment, he gave me the biggest stink eye I’d ever seen and stormed off to throw a temper tantrum at someone else.
I was a legend for the longest time after that encounter, although to this day, I continue to wonder why I got passed over for every raise and promotion opportunity during my time there.
78. Didn’t Sign Up for Homework
My boss would show up at my house after work hours to discuss work stuff. When I asked him to stop, he tried to fire me. When at the HR meeting the following day, I explained my story and showed them the video from my door camera. They literally go "John (bosses name), we've talked about this" and asked me to leave. Two hours later he walks out and announces that he's leaving.
79. Lost Wages
I’m currently trying to leave my job. I’m salaried, and if I work any amount under 40 hours a week, my boss docks it. If I work over 40 hours a week, I get my salary pay. A few weeks ago, I only worked two days out of the week before discovering I had been around a COVID-positive person. Soon enough, I started developing symptoms.
So, work sent me home. I got a test, and my work told me to stay home until I got the results. Four days later, I got them: Negative. Still, I was in for a huge shock. Even though I’m salaried, my paycheck showed up HUNDREDS of dollars less than usual, and my boss didn’t bother to tell me that my paycheck would be significantly less.
Luckily I went to HR, and they told her she couldn’t do that. My boss later called me and apologized, saying she didn’t know she had to pay me. Uh-huh, sure. Things like this, along with the MANY other terrible things she does, is why I’m trying to get out of there.
80. My Boss is a Heartbreaker
I had a doctor that constantly ignored patients in serious pain. He thought all of them were faking it to get pain killers. After a senior director at Microsoft died from a heart attack in our ER that he refused to do an EKG on, I went to management and told them what I had seen.
81. They Made A Bad Call
After working for the same company for 17 years and always getting praised for my work, I finally got a position in the department I’d always wanted. My manager was excited to have me and continued to praise me. Then, one night, when I was on-call, an “urgent page” got sent to my phone...except my phone didn’t ring. So, my manager got called instead. She texted me a few times, but I didn’t have my text notifications set very loudly.
Suffice it to say my boss was kind of ticked off the next day. I apologized that my phone hadn’t worked properly for the call and explained that if she’d tried to call me instead of text, it probably would have been fine. Besides, my “backup” co-worker got the call and quickly fixed the problem. I mean, that’s what backups are for, right?
But my boss just wouldn’t have it. She kept telling me I’d screwed up and that it better not happen again. She even suggested I get another phone as my backup. What?! I apologized again and said, “Look, what happened to me could happen to anyone. Mistakes happen. My backup co-worker got the call and handled it anyway. Besides, it really wasn’t super urgent.”
Still, she would not let it go. The kicker was, she never even asked me WHY I’d missed the call. Her immediate response before we even sat down to talk about it was along the lines of “Maelstrom, you missed this important call, so your backup had to fix it, and he should not have had to. You’re in trouble.” Our relationship went downhill from there.
Mind you, I’d put 17+ years into this place. I was a great employee, and I had lots of respect from my peers AND HERS. I would get up early and work late to accommodate our customers’ schedules. I put in extra time on my days off for truly urgent issues and never got OT pay. But I didn’t mind. I liked the job, and I got paid well.
After a few months, though, she and I ended up sitting with an HR representative who tried to mediate a truce between us. However, there was a major problem with this—he was mostly on her side. He just kept bringing up the (very few) times I had NOT performed up to par, and he’d completely skip over the context of those incidences every time.
He’d be like, “Boss-Lady tells me there was this one email where you were a little rude to the customer. Is that true?” I’d say, “Well, let me explain the situation.” HR Rep: “No. Just answer the question. Were you rude?” Me: “Well, yes, a bit, I suppose.” Then without giving me a chance to explain, the HR rep would quickly move on to the next accusatory question.
After a bit of this, I looked across the table at my boss. I asked, “Boss, is any of this situation going to change with you?” She just looked at the HR rep. So, I said, “Okay, that’s what I thought.” I then stood up, threw my security badge on the table, grabbed my personal bag (which I had prepared for such an eventuality), and said, “I quit.”
I walked out. The funny thing about it was that the HR rep followed me out the door, calling after me, “Maelstrom! We don’t want this!” I turned around. “Neither did I.” I felt SO GOOD driving home. I’ve got a much better job where I’m much more appreciated now.
82. Screw Me Twice, Shame on You
Our desks were separated by a 5-foot cubicle wall. He was under the mistaken impression that it totally blocked sound. Thus, I got to hear all his loud phone conversations, primarily his booty calls including those with his boss's fiancé. I figured it was none of my business and tried to ignore it. Well, there was a position in another department that I was interested in and as per procedure, I handed in an application to my talkative boss.
I didn't hear anything further and followed up a couple of days later, only to be told that something must have happened to the application. I filled out another one and handed it in. As I return to my desk, I hear the boss on the phone with a friend laughing about how he had just trashed my application again and how he was never going to let go of me.
I go to my boss's boss and angrily offer my resignation, telling him what I had just overheard, explaining that I was constantly hearing his phone calls like his booty calls like with <woman's name> and <woman's name> and <boss's boss's fiance's name>. He got very quiet and told me to go back to my desk and he'll take care of everything. The next day I come in and boss is gone.
The day after, I have an interview with the other department (got the position). I tend to avoid office drama, but really, he should have stuck to screwing his boss's fiancé, and not tried to screw me as well.
83. Family Matters
I work in home care. In my case, my “bosses” are the members of the family that I work for, and it’s the families that are always the reason I end up leaving—it’s never my clients. Seriously, families are the worst. The one that sticks out the most in my mind was a mom who got angry at me because I once planned to take a week off.
I had worked for her for five years taking care of her very handicapped child. I don’t get paid if I take time off, so I’d planned my vacation accordingly. However, she told me that I’d need to make that time up and lamented that she had no idea what she would do with her child while I was gone. For context, I was one of three or four home aides; she had plenty of help.
I told her I did not need to make that time up because I don’t get paid for not being there. So, it wasn’t my problem, and I guessed she would have to take care of her own kid. Of course, she really didn’t like that answer. I went on my vacation anyway, and after deciding I’d had enough of her, I quit. I felt bad for the kid, though.
The kid wasn’t bad at all—spoiled rotten because of all the issues—but otherwise a decent kid. But I could not take that mom anymore. After a week or two, I got a new case and moved on with my life. But it’s ALWAYS the families that I hate, NEVER the clients. I have had some of the absolute best clients. It’s always just a matter of whether I’m willing to tolerate their family.
84. The Higher They Creep, The Harder They Fall
It was my supervisor. It got to the point that I had decided to quit. I had my resignation letter in my purse but decided to let his boss know why I was quitting. The supervisor would talk about all the people on our team constantly, but only behind their backs. I got so sick of telling him to cut it out. My husband and I happened to work at the same place (different departments) and my supervisor would make comments about threesomes (with him, ewww), what hotel we picked for our afternoon delight, stuff like that.
It was so bloody uncomfortable. Apart from this, he spent most of his supervising time outside smoking. The problem was that the supervisor was "one of the guys" and I was the only girl. Turns out his boss was disgusted, told his boss who lost his mind. They started an investigation which took three days. They interviewed staff—they corroborated what I said.
They checked the security cameras and saw he was spending most of his work day outside smoking. And was fired. When he was told he guessed (wasn't hard!) that I was the person who complained and tried to get to me to "apologize that I took it the wrong way.” The best feeling was my coworkers surrounding me as he was walked out. That was a lovely ending to it all.
85. From Three Days To Three Weeks
For three years, I used to run a restaurant during the weekend night shifts. They were not easy shifts and went from 5 pm to 3 am. Still, I was a night owl, and it was my pleasure. At one point, I took some time off and went to a hot spring with my now wife. Upon driving home, I felt something was very off—my leg hurt, and within two hours, I was in the hospital for an infection and on three different antibiotics at once.
So, I called in to work sick three days in advance. My AGM told me that it was cool; I should heal up, and they would cover my shift. But they did not. As a result, they put me on final warning for my very first infraction, which meant that I was suddenly only one step away from being fired—after all those years of work. So, I put in my three weeks notice the next day.
Screw you, Illegal Petes.
86. 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.
87. Management Was Super Tucked Off
When Circuit City was still in business, I worked in the warehouse. For whatever reason, they had a strict dress policy of khaki pants and this awful collar shirt that employees had to wear tucked in. This rule went for everyone—even the warehouse staff. But I discovered through an old warehouse employee guide that as long as the warehouse employees wore khaki-colored shorts without cargo pockets and a t-shirt with a Circuit City logo, there would be no problem.
Circuit City stopped making Circuit City T-shirts long before I started, but thanks to a local Salvation Army, I was able to pick up two Circuit City t-shirts. Also, after a quick trip to Target for some shorts, my new uniform was complete. When I went to work the next day, my managers' faces turned red. They were not happy about my appearance, claiming I looked sloppy and unkempt.
Even better, when the giant black dude (who hated his job and just slept in the back and talked on his cell phone all day) from the warehouse found out about this, he too got some old Circuit City T-shirts and joined in. Management hated us working together. I miss Circuit City.
88. 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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89. Food For Thought
This wasn’t really my boss, but my school principal, who was kind of like a boss to me as a kid. I was at an Opus Dei school, so the nuns were pretty freaking strict, and I hated the freaking salads they gave us. To avoid eating them, I found multiple ways to hide my food because, as they used to tell us: “You can’t throw away food when there are millions of people starving.”
Until one day, I had enough. Tired of hiding it, my nine-year-old self just went up with my tray still half-full of food to dump it all. Immediately, the nun went ballistic, but I just said, “I’m full; gluttony is a sin,” and threw it all away. That got me in trouble.
90. 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.
91. The Solution Was Hair Raising
At my old school, they had rules about hair length for the guys, and our teacher was super strict about it. The only actual rules were that they couldn’t pass our eyebrows or collar area. Being the witty guy that I am, I came up with a clever solution to this plight—I used a ton of gel to slick up my hair and do obnoxious things with it. Technically, it was all raised, so it never crossed my eyebrows or collar.
I got away with it for two months until the principal changed the rules! All just for me…
92. 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.
93. Found The Holes In Their Logic
Six or seven years ago, when the torn-up jeans look was in, my school passed a rule prohibiting jeans with large holes in them. Most of the teachers only really cared about the rule if a hole showed inappropriate amounts of skin, like near the butt or crotch, but one teacher took it to mean that ANY hole was forbidden.
She was a PE teacher, and if she saw you with a hole in your jeans, she would make you either change or send you to the vice principal’s office to get it sorted out. I had her in my second-period class, and one day, I wore an old pair of ridiculously comfortable jeans that, over time, had worn a relatively small hole just under one of the knees.
She flipped out and made me change into my smelly gym shorts, and I had to spend the rest of the day smelling like sweat. I tried to tell her how absurd it was that the amount of skin now showing after I’d changed into my shorts was way more than I was showing before in my worn jeans, but she just ignored it and continued to cite the “no holes” rule back at me. At that point, I had enough.
That night, I took an old ratty pair of jeans that barely fit anymore and took sandpaper to the knees so that each side had a decent-sized hole in it. The next day, I made a point to sit in the front of her class wearing my freshly holed jeans, knowing she would call me out on them. When she finally did, I calmly stood up, walked to my backpack, and pulled out a pair of scissors.
In front of her and the entire class, I proceeded to cut the jeans where the holes were and turned them into jean shorts (heck yeah, jorts!). I then sat back down silently. The teacher was furious, but she knew she couldn’t do anything about my no-hole jorts.
94. 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!
95. He Had Himself Covered
My boss told me, “You have to cover Jo this coming weekend, for both days, since everybody else said no.” I asked, “How do you know I’ll say yes?” He said, “You have to. There’s nobody left.” My response made his jaw drop. “You’re wrong; I’m left. But I quit. Now, there’s nobody left.” He was speechless, and his expression was priceless. I stood there for about 10 seconds before telling him, “I’m walking away now,” and then I just left.
Thank God this happened the day after I had secured a better job. It’s probably one of my fondest memories.
96. 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.
97. Their Boss Thought They Wouldn’t Notice
My best friend and I worked at the same small company under a horrific boss (think Miranda Priestley from The Devil Wears Prada, but with early-onset dementia). One day, my friend got a great new job and submitted her notice. In an effort to get my friend to stay, our boss did something that made my blood boil—she offered her my job. I don’t know why the heck she thought my friend would accept. She knew we were friends—we’d even booked off the same holiday week to travel together.
Of course, my friend said no, and then I handed in my notice the very next week—and I let my boss know why. I mean, there were a hundred reasons, but I told her that her little scheme was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She had no idea until then that I knew what she’d done, and the look on her face was priceless as she tried to figure out some way to deny it.
98. 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.
99. Good News And Bad News
I used to work for this small town, twice-weekly newspaper. While there, I learned that the editor, publisher, mayor, county commissioner, and a few other people were skimming tax dollars. But when I confronted my boss about it, he told me he’d blackball me if I said anything. Clearly, he had no idea who he was messing with.
I went to the local television station, tipped them off about the situation, and they uncovered the whole story. When those journalists subsequently won awards for breaking that story, my name also got added to the list of reporters. I still can’t get a job as a journalist, but dang, if it didn’t feel good.
100. 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.
101. Disappear This Miss, Please
I may or may not have carried a heavily intoxicated girlfriend and a large number of substances out of my boss's house (CEO of a very large company) while she was covered in her own filth so his wife wouldn't catch him as she arrived home from her sister's house a day early. How did this happen, you ask?
My old boss regularly cheated on his wife with any number of women. Well, he calls me one day, because we are friends away from work, and asks me to come to his apartment ASAP. I drive over there, and he's blitzed, and this chick is laying naked in her own filth mumbling about something. He says he has to shower and clean up because his wife is ten minutes away so please "Get that out of here."
I grab the girl and help her to her feet and cover her up with a t-shirt. As I'm walking her out, he yells for me to grab the party bag. The only bag is a Dopp kit. I grab it, jump in my car and drive off. This girl is blasted! She doesn't know where she lives and is sure she's having a heart attack. So, I calm her down somewhat and reach in her purse and find her ID.
Luckily, she has her current address on it, and I take her home. I drive back to my house and pull into the driveway and remember the Dopp kit. I open it up and there's a LOT of illegal substances in there. I got a steak dinner and a few beers later that week from the boss. Needless to say, I no longer work there.
102. Peer Pressure
During an exit interview with my last job, HR asked me where I was going to next. HR: So, what’s the name of the company you are moving to next? Me: I'm not really comfortable disclosing that. HR: Are you sure? It would really help us out. Me: I'd rather not say. HR: It’s company policy. You need to tell us. This is where I snapped.
Me: I said NO, and if you continue further you'll be hearing from my lawyer. I told my old boss this after I left and he was absolutely shocked. HR has no right to know anything about the next place you are moving to. It’s literally none of their business but they tried to press it out of me anyway, more than likely to call them up and talk bad about me.
103. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
I worked in the bakery at a Fred Meyers store for about six months when I was freshly 19. There was this 45-year-old guy in the meat and seafood section who was super creepy. All of the women in my department, including a previous employee who had moved because of him, warned me about this man from day one.
Any time I was on my break, he would "coincidentally" be on his break too. He'd follow me into the break room and try to flirt with me the entire time. If I had to walk to another part of the store to get anything, he would run to catch up to me and walk with me. He also followed me to my car a few times after I got off shift.
The scariest time was when I was closing by myself and he came into the back of the bakery, following me around the long table. He kept telling me how much he liked me and how badly he wanted to be with me. When he got too touchy, I told him no and to leave me alone. But that's not even the worst part—the managers who were there to witness the situation just shrugged and said "that's just how he is."
My boyfriend threatened him when he got off work one time. Heck, even my father came in and threatened him because NO ONE was doing ANYTHING. The final straw for me was one night when I was closing alone again. He came into the back area, followed me into the freezer, and tried to kiss me. He also grabbed my butt. I pushed him away and ran to the closing manager who also functioned as HR.
He said he'd "watch the store footage" and talk to me the next day. When I came to work the following morning, he pulled me into his office. He said that he saw the video and had already "talked" to him about his behavior. Apparently, the creepy co-worker responded that it was just a "misunderstanding," and that was good enough for HR.
I replied that this had been going on for months and that I wasn't going to take it anymore. He then had the NERVE to tell me that, "He just does this to all the new girls. As soon as another girl gets hired, he'll leave you alone." I quit on the spot—but I soon found out the disturbing truth. Turns out, the creep was the brother of the store’s owner.
This guy had been behind bars in the past for assault but was now "cleaning his life up."
104. The Letter Of The Law
I got fired for having depression and being forthcoming about it. The symptoms started after I started to get drowsy from a new medication I was put on. All I'd asked for was two days off in a year to just spend time at home while I was adjusting to the new meds. I got a letter on my desk from my boss after I came back. Its contents destroyed my life. It was titled "Termination of employment" and specifically asked me to come to a meeting two days later with HR.
I strode in and told them that if they were honestly firing me for having depression, that was fine; but they could not say it was for my performance, which I know for a darn fact has been fantastic. They doubled down and said that they were not able to accommodate someone with my "unique circumstances." Honestly, screw those people.
105. Candid Camera
We found a spy camera in our department office. It was shaped like a charging brick and had been recording video and audio all night. We copied the videos off the camera after the offender took them down and left them out on their desk. We then took the video file, which showed the person sneaking around an employee to remove the camera, and turned that in with the information of what happened.
That was almost a year ago now and nothing has been done. We are getting ready to turn it in ourselves to the FBI. No idea why the company hasn’t reported anything.
106. 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.
Sources: Reddit,
