Welcome to Asshole Boss Digest, where we regale you Deadspin folk with stories of the meanest, cruelest, most batshit insane bosses, coaches, and teachers you ever had. Email me your asshole boss story here.
The Christian Bale of Accounting
Brett:
Not sure whether it works for you to post an audio clip, but this is a recording my girlfriend took of her boss yelling at her co-worker. It's so utterly over-the-top that everyone is initially skeptical of the authenticity, but I can say that I've met both the gentlemen in the clip and that this sort of tirade is a common occurrence. In a related story, my girlfriend is quitting very soon.
Here's the audio:
I'd quit too if my co-worker sounded like one of the Jerky Boys.
Does any administrative assistant job ever turn out well?
Anonymous:
It was 2000-something, my wife and I had just graduated, and the job market sucked. She finally took an administrative assistant position and immediately started coming home with stories about her boss.
The problem with writing about her boss is that there's too much material and I'm too personally involved. Here's a short list of some of her boss's more awful characteristics.
* She decorated her office with garish plastic fish, including some hanging like party decorations from the ceiling, but would occasionally force other people to remove personal items so that the office "looked professional."
* She shit in her office.
This woman went to Taco Bell, (hand to God) came back to her office, and shit her pants. Now shitting your pants does not make you special, especially if you've had Taco Bell after sneaking gin all morning. How you react to shitting your pants makes you special. She came out of her office and told my wife and her office mate, wailing that she hoped her shoes weren't ruined before wobbling off to clean herself up. My wife's office mate cleaned up the mess. As I implied, the boss liked to dump on my wife's office mate and, according to my wife, seemed to think that cleaning the boss's poopy chair was part of her job description. Her boss never even said "Thank you." She did continue to wear the shoes to work at least once a week.
My wife was fired after two glowing performance reviews, as a direct result of an argument over the placement of balloons. Most of the other peeps under the boss's direct authority quit within six months.
We eventually found out that the boss and her husband had been under investigation the entire time for a fraudulent mortgage refinancing scheme.
That boss' name? Lee Fucking Majors.
Dan:
We are at a pretty well-to-do house, trimming hedges and bushes that are 5-20 feet tall. Our boss (let's call him Dave) is up on a ladder trimming this fucking huge hedge with a 4 foot-reach gas powered trimmer. Upon reaching the limit of his reach, rather than climb down, move the ladder and climb back up like a normal fucking person, he decides to "hop" the ladder over. This may work well on a nice hard wood floor, but not so much outside on grass. He proceeds to immediately fall off the ladder, and the trimmer lands on him, severing all the tendons on the top of his hand.
"Why doesn't this score contain a spoiler alert?"
Randy:
I was new on the job, probably a month or so after being promoted from lead copy editor/page designer. The assistant managing editor had a reputation of riding people recently hired/promoted to management positions.
One day when the sports editor was off, I was called into the AME's office with some questions about the previous day's sports section. The biggest question of his was: "I don't understand the roundups."
I asked him what he didn't understand and he said he didn't understand how to read them. After about five seconds of thinking, "SAY WHAT????," I proceeded to explain that the scoreline gives the score of the game, followed by a paragraph or two about what happened in the game. That was followed by this question: "Why is the score at the beginning and not the end?"
This time it was a good 10-15 seconds before the shock wore off and I responded with something like, "The score is the most important thing. This is how every paper in America prints roundups. I'll get today's USA Today and show you." To which I was told, "I think we need to take a hard look at how we do our roundups." Yes, our assistant managing editor was confused by sports roundups. Is it any wonder newspapers are dying?
Target: Hidden scourge of the American worker
Ronald O.:
I had the unfortunate experience of working for five years at Target up until last week. I worked in the back, where we do a lot of heavy lifting and other typical warehouse work. Naturally, all of this physical labor leaves one feeling thirsty. I brought a bottle of water with me to drink during my shift last Wednesday, as I and everyone else did. Unbeknownst to me, management decided that having drinks in any part of the store would no longer be allowed as of that day. As the first person breaking the rule the store manager (a Colts fan, go figure) wanted to make an example out of me so I was fired on the spot. The official reason was "Gross insubordination." Now when I fill out a job application, my reason for leaving will be "I was fucking thirsty." Fuck you Target and fuck you store manager.
Your boss doesn't care about the Saints
AJ:
I live and work in New Orleans, and my boss didn't let us come in late today AND isn't letting us off for the Saints parade tomorrow.
Not an asshole boss, but I won't quibble with a good work story
Matt:
My first job, like many, was at a grocery store. After being there for a little over a year, I moved to the meat department in the back of the store, and boy, was I happy. No more carts and piss filled plastic grocery sack cleanup for me. My schedule worked out with school getting out around 3p, that I could make it to the store and start my shift at 4p. Well, after about 4:30p, nobody was there in the department, and my duties included cutting some of the leftover orders and sanitizing the room for the next day.
One day, while on break with a few other people, a guy that worked in the deli walked in to the breakroom, and asks the question "You think if I cut my finger off that I could get Workman's comp?". Nobody really liked this asshat, and asking 16 and 17 year olds or the stoner guys that still work night shifts at grocery stores in their mid-30s, of course we want gore, so we tell him yes. About 20 minutes later, the store manager comes back to the breakroom, and there are still a couple of us back there, and she asked "Did Joe come back here talking about cutting off his finger and Workman's comp?". Not thinking anything about it, we tell her yes.
She has the 2nd part of the story: This fucker cut his finger off in the ham slicer.
Not only did he hack off the top knuckle of his index finger (you know, cause he'd never need that again), but he did it in the meat department because the deli is out in the open. My boss looked at me, and without thinking more than a second told me that I needed to go clean the slicer and grab his mangled finger out, and get it quick so she could take it to the hospital. I walked back there and it looked like a homicide scene, and I didn't have any baggies to throw the digit in, so I packed it with a couple of those soak pads, and wrapped it in a 1lb hamburger tray with the wrapping machine.
I don't know if he got his finger back on (I didn't put it on ice), and I don't think he got his Worker's comp.