Bad Bosses

o lord i could run this thread

Diagnostic criteria

At least five of the following are necessary for a diagnosis (as with many DSM diagnoses, they must form a pervasive pattern; for example, a person who shows these criteria only in one or two relationships or situations would not properly be diagnosed with NPD):

1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by other special people
4. requires excessive admiration
5. strong sense of entitlement
6. takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7. lacks empathy
8. is often envious or believes others are envious of him or her
9. arrogant behavior

whoa wtf @ that bbc story

Office boss Tony Price said he watches 'a lot of television'

dude, dont be blaming television.

can't believe only four answers here. my boss is basically fine in that i never have to speak to her and i haven't been affected by her total lack of communication (well, not too much) but looking at it neutrally, she is a fucking disaster.

how do people get to be bosses when they

-can't talk to their employees, are too shy/reserved to do so, are practically scared of all their employees.
-can't reply to emails, from an employee having a concern about their job to an employee raising a really grave concern about the way we do what we do.
-have no leadership qualities whatsoever, no sense of fostering team spirit, no apparent joy in what they do, no charisma, in an industry and in an office full of happy/charismatic/enthusiastic and hard working people.
-don't appear to have strong opinions about how the office is run and the direction of the programme/business.

i know everyone complains about bosses, but it is mystifying to me how bad and unpopular mine is. personally I just get on with my work but the amount of negativity this bad boss creates is astonishing, I can think of 5 people working under her who'd all be better at the job.

share your bad boss experiences here, is it just that everyone whinges about bosses or are good managers just v rare?

Somebody who aspires to have authority over others is usually a flawed hollow individual.

Bad boss #1:
*took credit for other people's work,
*didn't know jack about the technical side of the job,
*made decisions that seriously compromised network security in an environment where we knew that people were tampering with systems,
*did stupid stupid things like playing videogames on the main fileserver
*picked an argument with a supplier (this was actually funny, as Bad Boss was having this argument in the lobby, while myself and Bad Boss's Boss were descending towards them in a lift going WTF?! at each other)

Bad Boss #2:

• sweated more than Meatloaf during the "Dead Ringer For Love" video
• managed to totally destroy the motivation and enthusiasm of a team of a dozen people over the course of a fortnight
• sabotaged any attempts to network with other businesses
• sat around playing video games all day
• physically violent towards another manager
• racist
• no backbone at all when dealing with difficult clients

Bad Boss #3:

• used the 'Klingon Blade' font for headings in business correspondence
• personality of Barbara Woodhouse
• took home several client files and then the next day phoned in to quit

Bad Boss #4:

• spent all day sitting in his office surfing for pr0n
• PA nonsense: he said to my face that I was doing a great job, then later got his secretary to give me a written warning letter re: some bogus problem with my "attitude" towards clients

You're writing a script, I hope.

i feel very lucky never to have had one

snoball that shit is crazy

Bad Boss #5:

• every day, would arrive at 10AM, leave for lunch at 12PM, then not come back...
• ...while demanding that people work 10+ hours unpaid overtime every week
• very probably *cough* 'diverted' a considerable sum of company money
• would promote people for bogus reasons, ie, alumni of same public school

xp shit gets crazier, believe me.

Bad Boss #6:

• tried to sack me for not following a job description that a) I hadn't seen, b) had only been written that morning
• you know that phrase 'looks like a bulldog chewing a wasp'? physical embodiment of that
• complete lack of interest in helping clients, only cared about billing them for as much money as possible and then strong-arming them into paying
• very likely to lack any sense of remorse or guilt
• one of the most physically/mentally/emotionally/psychologically repulsive people I've ever me
• LOL LOL LOL got fired after carrying out the CEO's instructions to "reduce headcount by 50%

this is incredible. what's your industry?

please don't say "nat'l security/intel outsourcing"

Bad Boss #7 (these are out of sequence actually):

• would get exasperated at me for not doing what he wanted, but would never actually say WTF he wanted
• said he 'knew psychology', clearly didn't

xp ha, no. IT support

Bad Boss #8:

• racist
• total blind spot re: his own racism - highlighted when he got his head kicked in after making a racist comment to someone
• hey Mr. Short Fuse Temper, it's not my fault that you can't get stuff to work if you don't RTFM, so there's no point in taking it out on me

My bad boss from 1998-2001 embezzled from the downtown merchants' assn., defrauded two banks and drained his own company dry, and then had the stones to reject a plea agreement that would have had him out of the pokey by 2003. As far as I know, he's still a guest of the state of California.

xpost -- Um...have you ever had a GOOD boss?

Bad Boss #9:

• Jabba the Hutt has a friendlier personality than this one
• openly hostile
• yes I'm sure that a technician hasn't got anything better to do than make you a cup of tea Mr. Boss sir!
• continually tried to pass off his screw ups as being my fault
• just always had to be in the right all the damn time
• inability to sense why or when people were really really pissed off with him (actually resulted in him being pushed through a restaurant window)

xp well that's from about 15 years. To be fair there have been some great bosses in amongst the bad ones.

But having said that, IT support being the business it is, we tend to remember the pricks more - both bosses and clients. And a 'Bad Client' thread would run far more than just 9 suspects for me, oh boy...

A thread which I hope you will start or revive at some point.

embezzled

Bad Boss #5 addendum:

• probably embezzled about a million from several share issues
• various share scams
• got employees to pay into a bogus pension scheme
• got employees to by shares at a 'preferential price' - knowing that the shares were going to lose value (they actually lost 75% of their value)
• totally shafted the vendor of the company's CRM system by paying for said system in company shares which then went on to be worth a fraction of what the system cost
• sold out the entire business to a competitor, making everyone redundant, in exchange for a seat on the competitor's board of directors

oh also, hang on...

• forced his long term business partner into leaving the business

Bad Boss #10 (IT again, B2B sales this time):

• frequently absent boss turns out to be small time cocaine dealer!

Am I a magnet for bad bosses or something? FFS...

Bad Boss #11 (IT support manager):

• when something goes wrong the first thing he says is that it's not his fault, quickly followed by a list of people who he 'thinks' are to blame.
• when someone asks him for something that's well within his remit, the first thing he says is that it can't be done, quickly followed by a list of other people who the requestee should go and ask instead.
• sent a work related e-mail to my home e-mail address. So apparently this IT manager doesn't know how to use e-mail.

• doesn't know how to use the job management system. Sent me to do a job that someone else had already done and signed off.

Today was a Triple Bad Boss Spectacular.
A few weeks ago, a new CIO was appointed. The current not-quite-CIO IT manager had a massive flameout and handed in their notice. Today, seemingly as a final act of spite, not-quite-and-now-never-will-be-CIO has fired my line manager (Bad Boss #11), who went home just after lunch. Although that's no loss as Bad Boss #11 was a frequently absent micro manager (paradoxically, but somehow he managed it) anyway.
Meanwhile, one of the directors has let slip about major lay-offs... to a journalist. First anyone here heard about it was through an article on a website.

Also, soon-to-be-gone-not-CIO held a full departmental stand-up meeting, acting as though nothing had happened and everything was normal, thereby proving himself to be waaaaaaaaay more capable of two faced bastardy than Bad Boss #11. Even had the nerve to ask where Bad Boss #11 was - ffs you already know, you shitcanned him not two hours before!