Boss From Hell

Well, so far all of the stories have been from girls/women/ladies/females. So clearly boys/men/gentlemen/males have the most amazing bosses! Of course, the bosses from the previous two stories have been male and female (nice to get a balance) but it seems that the ladies are far more forthcoming with stories of hell at work - which is odd. Being a male myself (yes, it's true!) the amount of whinging about work/life/relationships/blah/blah is always male dominated, so why so quiet boys?

Anyway, let's get on with it. This post is from Jayne and is girl on girl action...settle down, don't get too excited, it's a female employee with female boss. This has always been an interesting subject of conversation when it's come up as (it seems) girls have issus working for girls. Am I wrong?

Wrong or right, this story truly belongs on this blog - what starts off as "Sisters Doing It For Themselves" soon descends into a family feud.

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I got what I thought was a really great job as a Production Planning in the manufacturing industry. Really great position as it was only my second job after graduating.

At the interview I met Lauren. She came across as quite hard-nosed, but this was a very male dominated company and imagine she had to put up with a lot of crap. Especially as she’d worked her way up in the company. In a way I respected her and accepted her no-nonsense approach. After being intimidated within an inch of my life, yet fighting my corner, she gave me a big smile when I left and made a point of saying I’d done very well. I found out I got the job about a week later. I was chuffed and really looking forward to it.

For the twelve months or so Lauren was great. Really took me under her wing and I looked up to her. The way she ‘bloked’ around and gave as good as she got in an environment with more testosterone than LFC’s changing room! I did start to notice that as time went by, Lauren didn’t seem to have a good word to say about anyone. At first I thought it was funny - bitching about some of the idiots we had to work with was funny but then it just started to be constant. Even people who did nothing wrong got the treatment. Not usually to their face...well hardly ever to their face. It was vicious and suddenly I had a horrible thought that I was now her accomplice. That is, until, I was to fall foul of her.

My Auntie was really ill and was living with me whilst getting better. Unfortunately she took a turn for the worse and died. The next day, I called in work. I was in bits and needed some support. Did I get it? No way. “You can’t just call in sick for any old reason!” I explained the entire situation and she continued to go mad at me taking time off! I couldn’t believe it.

When I went back in to work, she was in a foul mood with me. She used to change moods like other people breath. She’d slam doors, slam papers down on my desk, bang drawers, tut and sigh every time I came into or left the room. I could do nothing right. In fact, I’d now been relegated to the rank of everyone else.

If you thought my Auntie incident was bad...one guy requested some time off because he needed to have some tests for possible cancer. Not only did she make him feel awful for taking the time off and make the actual process for doing so as difficult as possible, but when he finally got this approved and she signed off his holiday (yes he had to take it as holiday) sje turned to me and said she hoped that he actually had it! I was speechless! Wish she was.

She was malicious and poisonous within the team. She had one guy sacked, another demoted and blocked promotion for one guy three times! Bizarre considering everyone knew what she was like. She was awful with everyone without question, she really gave off the impression that she had never been a manager before and suddenly all the power she had (or thought she had) made her go mad!

Were their any reprisals for her behaviour? Well she had her car scratched on numerous occasions, malicious phone calls, nasty mail to her house and worst of all, mail to her future husband about her having an affair just before there wedding (none of this was done by me I might add!). But true justice did prevail when she was eventually asked to leave the company.

I heard recently that she had got another job elsewhere but had been sacked from that one as well. She is in the process of taking them to court for unfair dismissal, though knowing what she’s like, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was the one taken to the cleaners!

Awful woman!

Jayne, 29, Merseyside, UK

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Humanity abhors, above all things, a vacuum in itself, and your class will be cut off from humanity as the surgeon cuts the cancer and alien growth from the body.

Posted by: Surviving Cancer | 15 April 2013 at 03:04 PM