THE SCREAMER
I work in State Corrections. I broke my foot at work and had been begging the doctor to release me. Doc wouldn't budge. So I finally went to work – outfitted in a plaster cast and crutches - to break it to the boss that it would be another week before the doctor would fit me with a walking cast and release me to light duty. He didn't believe that the doctor wouldn't release me. The boss began screaming "colorful metaphors" at me and ended with "You can sit on your ass here as well as you can sit on your ass at home!" Of course, everyone within earshot heard this. His tirade lasted several minutes and was pretty typical of this boss' management style. Thankfully he moved on to another shift and retired a couple of years later.
YOU CAN BE REPLACED
In my first year at a new job, I cleaned up an accounting nightmare. I organized the bookkeeping, implemented a billing process, added more responsibilities to my job title, became the agency software guru, plus much more. At my first annual review, my boss said in closing, "Just think, if you were to leave, you have essentially made it a cake walk for the person replacing you."
THE TEN YEAR CURSE
I was the only woman on staff. Eventually, I asked my boss why he didn't include me in his management team briefings and why we seemed to have such a hard time communicating. He said, "When I picked my soldiers, you weren't one of them." This pigeon-holed me and set up an uncomfortable me-versus-them with my staff and boss for the next 10 years.
ABOUT YOUR BONUS...
My worst management story isn't about something that was SAID to me. In fact, he said nothing. He just slid my check containing that year's raise under the bathroom door and disappeared.
DID YOU SAY "ATTILA?"
The worst was working as "Director of Communications" for a non-profit. The real title should've been "secretary to the president" because at 5:05 every day - the administrative assistant booked at 4:55 so she could take the mail down - the president of the association would come into my office and make me type her correspondence, which she would write out longhand on legal pads. This is the same woman who used up most of our annual IT budget one year to buy herself a laptop that she couldn't even figure out how to turn on. She gave me terrible reviews because I would never stay past 5 p.m. (I was trying to earn a master's
degree, but ended up quitting half way through primarily because I was always late for class due to instances like above.) I would, however, come in at 6 a.m., but that didn't count because she didn't see me there. She made us give a rundown of our weekend at the Monday morning staff meeting so she could know us on a personal level. She would stop and buy stale, dried-out cruellers at PDQ and get offended when we didn't eat them. She made required staff to dress like we worked at a high-end law firm, but the only people who ever saw us was the maintenance staff in the building.
IT'S NOT ALL BAD NEWS
My company employs college students who work for us in the summer. My department has a mobile ice cream freezer. We order all kinds of ice cream. Then, each of us takes a turn with the cart and the bullhorn. We hand out free ice cream to the students and employees who work so hard all summer. This is a great thing that my company does. I am very proud to be a part of it. I also enjoy the free ice cream everyday!
On that sweet note, see you next time.
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