People Share The Most Unprofessional Thing Their Boss Ever Said To Them

They Still Can’t Believe What This Boss Had To Say

“At a previous job at a bank, a teller made an input error when entering in a customer’s deposit amount and called the manager to the front to get her to override it to change it.

While making the change, the manager, totally seriously, said to the customer (and everyone else within hearing distance in the crowded branch): ‘Can you believe she wanted to be a doctor? Good thing she couldn’t even finish her bachelor’s degree.’

The teller quit about a month after to go back to school and is now in her second year of nursing school.

The manager is no longer a manager. Let’s just say that.”

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This Is What We Call Textbook Harassment

“A female co-worker was late for a meeting. She walked in the door and my manager looked at her and said: ‘I bet that’s not the first time you’ve came late.’ She was visibly red and uncomfortable for the rest of the meeting.

It’s not the first time he’s made comments like that. In fact, he’s been doing this kind of stuff for years but none of my female co-workers want to do anything about it because they don’t want to lose their jobs. I’ve gone to HR on him a few times for other things and tried to get them to do the same, but they won’t say anything at all.”

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It Was All In A Name For This Guy

“A colleague at the same level as me – a senior manager no less – was for the first time in his career involved in recruiting for his team.

Having seen various candidates come and go with him being wildly unimpressed, he one afternoon openly exclaimed that he thought he’d ‘found a good one.’ The candidate hadn’t actually been in to meet him yet and he’d seen no more than their resume, so a junior member of the team asked what made this one stand out. The guy turned around, looked him straight in the eye, lifted the resume, pointed to the top, and said ‘normal name.’ It was an open plan office and a very diverse workforce. Nobody said anything to him and some people were actually attempting to downplay it after the fact due to the immensely mitigating circumstances of him having had a few drinks at lunch, on a Tuesday, while working at a professional services firm that was charging him out at several hundred dollars per hour.

Causal racism aside, that was actually a really fun place to work, primarily because it was such an absolute circus of disorganization and low standards. I got paid very handsomely for doing next to nothing, and we all laughed a lot.”

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I Bet Those Words Still Sting After All These Years

“I started in December, and my birthday was in March. The office was nice enough to give me a small cake and a few people were in the break room singing happy birthday songs.

A few months later, my boss asked me to get a cake for someone. I came back with the same size cake that my coworkers bought for me. She looked at it and asked, ‘What’s this?’

I told her I got whatever size cake they had bought for my birthday, to which she said: ‘Well, we got you a small one because no one cared that it was your birthday. People actually like this guy.’

Ouch.”

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“There Was No Way He Would Have Just Said What I Thought He Said”

“While doing a multi-year post-graduate training program, one of my bosses (the director) had two peers coming in from out of town for a meeting. Something went down (don’t remember what), and all of the directors had to go to an emergency meeting with our CEO. He asked me to call the guys coming into town when their planes landed, tell them to get a cab, and that he would pay for it. I told him I would go pick them up because that’s what good hosts do.

I got to the airport as it is getting dark (5 pm), but both planes were delayed because of a snowstorm. There was no definitive time when they were supposed to arrive, so I just waited at the airport for at least two hours. After waiting for hours, the guy who was supposed to be on the later flight got to the airport first. We had a drink or two at the bar and waited for the other guy to land. I paid for the drinks even though this guy made four times what I made. This guy was easy to talk to and was nice, so we had a good conversation. At least an hour later, the second guy landed and I drove them back to my office.

When we got there, my boss was waiting on us. He apologized to them and offered to take them out for a drink. The first guy to land invited me along. We had a quick drink or two then the two out-of-towners wanted to get some dinner. The four of us head to a restaurant and my boss and I ended up sitting on the same side of the booth. At one point, I was not really paying close attention to the conversation but enough to keep up. I thought I heard my boss say something crazy. I asked him what he said. He responded with, ‘You heard me.’

I told him that I must have misheard him because there was no way he would have just said what I thought he said. He just got this stupid grin on his face and kind of laughed a little. He had said (in public, in front of people from out town, after I did him a favor) that if he wanted to, he could force me to suck him off – meaning through his position as director, not physically forcing me. Not that it matters, but I’m male and not gay.

Needless to say, he couldn’t and I didn’t.

Our working relationship deteriorated after that, and I basically didn’t do a single thing he asked me to do for the next year and a half. For instance, he’d ask me to schedule a performance review meeting with him and I wouldn’t. He’d call me out in a large meeting (40 people) about it and I would tell him that I had a lot on my plate and that I had to prioritize and that the evaluation with him was a very low priority. He’d tell me to prioritize it and I would say that the other items were more pressing. After a few of these meetings with him telling me to schedule the meeting and me telling him I didn’t think it was worthwhile or that I had the time for it, he reamed my immediate supervisor (who I like) so I finally scheduled it. He gave me a terrible evaluation even though before this scenario he had tried to convince me to switch tracks (to his track rather than that of my immediate supervisor).

I finished the program and got a good job without a reference from him. As I was applying for jobs at the end of the program, my immediate supervisor said something about how it might look odd that I didn’t ask for a letter of reference from the director. I told him that, frankly, he was known for acting like a jerk and a letter of reference from him may have done just as much harm as good at some places. I also finally told him about what the director had said and why I stopped doing anything he asked for. I told him that if the guy had ever pushed anything with me, I’d have gone to HR and filed a harassment complaint, but that I didn’t want to get black-balled after putting in so many years. Since then, other people that I work with have told me that the director bad-mouths me to them but that they don’t see why. Then, if we are friendly, I tell them the story about why I don’t work well with him.

Last I heard, the director’s wife left him.”

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All Of This Over An Energy Drink?

“I used to work in high-pressure sales. Once a week, the director would come in, and to get everyone energized, they brought in Monster Energy drinks. She’d leave them in her office for the salespeople to have. Now I liked the director, she was nice and professional. My manager, on the other hand, was a piece of crap.

I got tired of drinking energy drinks, so I decided to not participate one week. My boss came to me and said: ‘You didn’t get a Monster. You know Wendy (let’s call her Wendy) bought these for the entire division?’

I said I was aware of that but I didn’t want one. He came up to me and said this: ‘Listen, go into that office and get one right now.’ I was so stunned that I didn’t know what to do. So I got up, grabbed a can, walked back to my desk and just left it sitting there.

He came back and asked why I didn’t drink it. I told him I didn’t want to have one because my body doesn’t do well with so much caffeine. He asked me to walk into his office.

Now I wasn’t the best at the job, in fact, I hated it. He stated to me that my lack of energy was extremely distracting to him (not to the team, him) and that it shows in my performance. He ended with ‘If you keep this up we may have to let you go.’

All I said to him was: ‘Ok, well that’s unfortunate – but I will not drink something that takes a toll on my body.’

Lo and behold, I ended up getting fired. I enjoyed two weeks of unemployment until I got a call back from the same company. They wanted to hire me for a different position, not sales. No interview and higher pay. I took it and I loved it.

My former boss ended up being terminated for substance abuse. He actually had the audacity to request me to be a friend on Facebook. I didn’t accept, but I heard from my prior sales coworkers that he was asking for money.”

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Is Anyone Really Better Off Here?

“I only found out about this from my coworkers well after the fact when we were talking crap about our former boss. She was a terrible boss, not good at her job, and an equally toxic person. She was a major brown-noser to the owners, and there wasn’t a person that worked there that liked her.

I was a delivery driver for a pizza chain. It was my day off, and I was enjoying it with a friend. I got a call from the manager at about 3 pm asking me to come in to cover for someone at 5 pm. I really didn’t want to, but I still said yes. An hour later, I got a call from another friend of mine telling me that our mutual friend had killed his ex-girlfriend and her mother before killing himself.

I was in shock to hear about this. I saw the guy two days prior. To learn that he didn’t just kill himself but killed his ex and her mom, it was all too much to handle at that point let alone go into work an hour later. I called work and made up a stupid lie about my brother coming in from out of town and we were supposed to meet up with him to get dinner. I don’t know why, but I thought it was better than admitting what had happened.

She groaned and I got off the phone and spent the rest of the day ‘unpacking’ the message about my friend. I went to work the next day and pulled up the news story about my friend and I showed it to my boss. I told her I knew him, that he was a friend, and I found out about what had happened 10 minutes before I called and gave her some story.

It wasn’t the easiest thing to share, but I was honest, even about the brother lie, and did my shift.

I found out a couple months later when the store was collectively ripping on the manager that she’d been telling all of my coworkers what a liar I am and how I lied about my friend dying.

I can only say I’m glad I didn’t hit her next I saw her.”

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You Would Think These Dinosaurs Would Die Out By Now

“I was outed to my homophobic boss by a coworker I thought I could trust.

Besides the fact that he started treating me the same way he treats the women in the office (not listening to/asking for any advice–demanding MUCH more than from men doing the same thing, etc), at one point, he pulled me into a room and told me if he wanted to fire me because I’m gay he could do it, because we’re in Texas. He could write ‘You’re gay and I hate gay guys’ on my pink slip and there was nothing I could do about it (sadly, he was right).

He told me when he thinks of gay people sleeping together, it’s like taking a drink of orange juice and right as it’s going down his throat, smelling a fart. Then he told me he wasn’t trying to be offensive, just honest.

I sat there for a minute, then I said: ‘Terry, I’m not the slightest bit offended. In fact, if you’re comparing having gay relations to smelling a fart, I’m almost flattered, because if I were going to compare getting it on with a woman to something, it would be a lot nastier than smelling a fart.’

I think it earned me a bit of respect. I told him if he didn’t talk about women, I wouldn’t talk about men and we could do our jobs and then go home and be with our partners in the privacy of our own homes.

There are places of business in Texas and Oklahoma that have ‘If you’re gay, you need not apply’ on the application. I was fired from my last job because my boss was a homophobic Army Veteran who overheard me tell my significant other ‘I love you’ on my cell, right after lunch. We’ve been together for four and a half years which is twice as long as either of that man’s messed up dysfunctional relationships, both of which I had to hear about on a daily basis.

Honestly, I only stick around Bush Country because all my friends and family are here, and I’m just not the type to move away from my support structure.”

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“Welcome To Hollywood, I Guess”

“There are several different ways that someone can be a ‘horrible boss.’

The most common complaint, of course, is that a given supervisor is both inept and unreasonably demanding, or that they’re not so much a ‘leader’ as they are a ‘petty imbecile with delusions of grandeur.’ However, there is a second kind of horrible boss: They’re friendly, they’re accommodating, they’re communicative, and they’re seemingly decent, but they’re also lying to your face, exploiting you, and waiting for the right moment to stab you in the back.

Some eight or nine years ago, I was put in touch with a production designer who needed an assistant. This is, for those who may not be aware, an individual who is often in charge of creating the overall atmosphere for a movie. They have a hand in everything from the set design to aspects of the cinematography, and working as the assistant to one seemed like it would be the perfect way for me to break into writing for cinema. My initial assignments were pretty simple – research this thing, find that other thing, create a series of some third thing, and so on – but they were nonetheless fairly involved endeavors. All told, I put about a hundred hours of work into the project, learning quite a bit as I went along.

I never saw a dime for it.

Still, that was completely okay! I was just a college student, after all, and it was the connections I was making that really mattered. In fact, those connections paid off almost immediately, as I was soon made aware that the same production designer would be filling a similar role in the production of a feature film. Once again, I was tapped to do quite a bit of work, and I threw myself into it with gusto. I wound up doing the entire script breakdown for the movie, a few revisions, and quite a bit of coordination between the various departments. It was, I foolishly thought at the time, my first step toward my ‘big break.’

I didn’t even get credit. My name currently appears as ‘Script Coordinator – Uncredited’ on IMDB.

It was about that time that I started to suspect that maybe my boss was passing off my work as his own. I even mentioned that concern to him (albeit in a much more tactful way), and he reassured me that he was just as irritated as I was about everything. The man was, as I said earlier, friendly and seemingly open… so I decided to keep trusting him.

Three more screenplays came and went with me doing the editing, the prop lists, the scene breakdowns, and even – on one memorable occasion – the documentation for the location scouts. Throughout all of this, I was doing as many ‘favors’ as people asked of me, perpetually hoping that one of them might offer me a paying job. I also adopted a slightly firmer stance (with ‘slightly’ being the operative word, if I’m honest) about demanding compensation for my work, and I came to be incredibly familiar with phrases like ‘As soon as…’ or ‘It shouldn’t be long now!’

Then, one day, something kind of bizarre happened.

Out of the blue, a lawyer contacted me about a lawsuit that had apparently arisen from one of the film projects on which I’d worked. The details were a little bit vague, but from what I’d been able to tell, it seemed like I hadn’t been the only person passed over for credit or payment… and a few folks were a little bit more upset about that than I had been. Nothing meaningful ever came of that brief letter, but it was certainly enlightening.

Now, I know that I was as much to blame as my ‘horrible boss’ was for how all of that occurred. After all, I’d been all too willing to accept promises of ‘deferred payment’ and ‘credit,’ and I wasn’t as proactive as I could have been about finding other points-of-contact on the projects. Even so… the man was either the most adept liar that I’ve ever encountered in my life, or else he was also being exploited by still another horrible boss.

Welcome to Hollywood, I guess.”

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Maybe He Should Change His Profession

“My boss likes to badmouth people for coming in late or for calling in all the time, but he hires a bunch of teenagers that are still in high school and is surprised that they can’t come into work when school is in progress.

The people that don’t come in are people he knows personally and enables/excuses their absence, thus making everyone pick up the slack and do double the work. Then he tells us we can’t eat, but he will be eating burgers off the grill and lock himself in the office. The office is all glass, so we can see him looking for houses in Florida for his retirement or other stupid nonwork-related nonsense.

He purposely keeps people from learning more or amounting to anything because he wants you in a spot he hired you to be, but then takes it as a personal offense when people quit and find somewhere else to work.

The worst part of all this is that he disappeared for a whole month with no notice when another manager took his month vacation leaving everything to his employees to figure it out. He managed to get his position back because he played the ‘I had a mental breakdown’ card, but the jerk acts like nothing happened and didn’t even address the issue to any of us when he came back.

I hate the dude, and he deserves no respect. I used to work at Walmart that place is nothing compared to this freaking nightmare.”

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“It Was Bizarre And Uncomfortable”

“I used to work at an ad agency where one of my clients was a small regional bank that was headquartered in Alabama.

On my only trip down to visit them for a meeting at their office in Montgomery, their marketing VP, who was leading the meeting between our team and their team, kicked off the meeting by asking everyone in the room to lower their heads to pray.

I had not, up to that point or ever since then, ever experienced a professional meeting in which prayer was incorporated.

It was bizarre and uncomfortable.”

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So This Is the Reason She Was Nice In The Future

“A few years ago, I was one of those annoying people you see at Costco giving out free samples of food.

My boss was an absolute witch who played favorites. I wasn’t one of them. The way it worked was, there were two shifts – A and B. The people on the A shift would pack up around 5 pm, go to the back, do our dishes, and then cover a person on the B shift for their break at 5:30.

One day, someone I worked with was late getting to the back, so she told us all to just go and cover who we were covering and she’d clean the sinks. As I was covering my co-workers break, I noticed my boss at the other end of the aisle, looking angry coming right towards me.

She proceeded to chew me out and swear at me IN FRONT OF CUSTOMERS. I guess my co-worker forgot to empty the sinks. I tried telling her it wasn’t me but she just walked away. I was upset and told her to forget it and walked out.

Apparently, a customer who overheard what she said to me went and reported her, because the next time I was in, my boss tried being overly nice to me after that.”

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Not The Wake Up Call One Expects

“I used to be an RA, and the director of the Physical Plant (aka the head groundskeeper) was downright cruel. He’d insult us. He’d ask us to do tedious tasks way outside the realm of our job duties. He would talk badly about us to our other superiors. But one night, he topped all of that with a 2 am phone call when I was on duty.

Him: ‘Where are you?’

Me: ‘My apartment, sleeping.’

Him: ‘No you’re not. I’m outside your apartment and your car isn’t here.’

Me: (checked my surroundings to make sure I was actually in my apartment) ‘Well, yeah I am. And yeah it is.’

Him: ‘You aren’t allowed to run off and sleep with your boyfriend when you’re on duty! Now get your butt down here and turn on the sprinklers!’

Yeah, he freaked out on me at 2 am because he felt the lawn needed to be watered. This wasn’t even a duty of the RA.

I’d like to say at that point I told him to get lost, but I just hung up the phone and went back to sleep. In the morning, I told the RD what had happened.

That guy is a janitor at one of the college bars now.”

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