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Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

(OP)
I've seen quite a few postings on this site lately offering some amusing anecdote's at the expense of co-workers, supervisors and bosses. I think the topic could make for a few good laughs and at the very least an interesting read.

I know there are plenty of annoying co-workers, bad supervisors and "quirky" employees out there. I think it will be interesting to hear what experiences others have had. If your office is anything like mine, becoming more and more like the movie "Office Space" with each day, the stories should be plentiful!

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

If I work in a place where everyone around me are great people, with good work habits, etc....can I make up a funny story?

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

I had an area manager for Dowell Schlumberger tell me, “You have not been working enough on your days off.”  After carefully considering what he had said for five seconds, I replied, “We have nothing further to talk about.”  My resignation was in his hands within an hour.  All this came about because I asked for help defining my work objective.   

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

(OP)
Either you're delusional or extremely lucky... :)

My cubicle neighbor spends about an hour a day on the phone with her mother babbling about her two cats. Of course it doesn't help that her voice vaugely resembles that of Fran Drescher. ugggh!

Thankfully we can use Walkmans at work!

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

I had a co-worker for 11 years and all she did everyday 8 out of 9 hrs a day, was talk on the phone, type email and had a laugh as tinytim22 described. She finally quit because her husband found another job elsewhere. I complained all the time to my boss, but no one cared. All I could do is have earplugs. I didn't go to her going away lunch with the dept or sign her card! Now ... I didn't know cubicles can be so quiet!

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP2.0 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site
FAQ371-376
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-1091
FAQ559-716

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

The lady on the other side of my cube wall (in Denver, Colorado, U.S.A) spend 2-3 hours a day on the phone to her mother--in Moscow, (the one in Russia) in Russian.  I couldn't even evesdrop!

It is really annoying to know that (a) she is doing that instead of her part of the project you're working on; (2) she is bullet proof by being a multi-lingual female; and (III) she is eventually going to be the boss (again, being a multi-lingual female engineer).  This went on for a year and a couple of us conspired to get he promoted out of our group - Dilbert really does rule.

David

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

I worked at one place where the boss was very quirky, and very intolerant of idle chatter and silliness in the office. The Chief Engineer had an "alert code" worked out with the secretary...the moment the boss entered the office, she would say "good morning Mr. K----e" in a very loud voice, to alert us. We called it the KEWS (K----e Early Warning System).
Whenever he went on an inspection, instead of a hardhat, he would wear a 5-star army general helmet (WW2 style),that he obtained as a gift.
Every Friday, we would not get paid until we did a handwritten "lettering test", in which we had to letter the alphabet and numbers exactly like Mr. K----e's own handwriting. If we did not write to his satifaction, we would have to re-do the test until OK. The idea was to insure uniform appearance of sketches and drawings (this was pre-AutoCAD).

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

  Once one of the sales managers was concerned with water drops under the paper towel dispensers in the restrooms and how that would appear to customers (this was a brand new facility).  He distributed a memo requesting that we get our paper towels BEFORE we wash our hands.  Doesn't that kinda defeat the purpose?

  At another company, an engineer wanted the designers to provide accurate hand drawn representations of modifications before they were allowed to proceed with their ideas on cad.  They had to go out and buy their own equipment to do this (templates, triangles, etc).  This was on a jet project which was supposed to be entirely digital.

  "Oh, by the way, have you read that memo yet?"

  "That was my stapler!"

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

I had a boss who would arbitrarily refuse to allow travel expenses for certain individuals in the department.  In one case, individuals A, B, C, and D traveled together to a meeting, ate at the same restaurants, stayed at the same hotel, and shared a vehicle.  When they returned, A, B, and C submitted their expenses with no problem.  The boss would not, however, sign off on D's expenses, and told him that he had chosen restaurants and a hotel which were too expensive for business travel, and that he could only be reimbursed for a fraction of the expenses.  When D pointed out that he had been to the same places as the other 3, and that he had actually spent significantly less than they had (D was used to this treatment at this point, had only gotten a $6 salad and water at dinner, and had used his personal cellphone to make business phone calls so that he wouldn't have to try to expense them), the boss became irate and told him that if his attitude didn't improve, he could find someplace else to work.  This was D's first job out of college, and he was on the verge of tears at that point (the boss obviously enjoyed it).  C had overheard the conversation and butted in to let the boss know that he was way out of line, and both C and D were transferred to another department the next week.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

ivymike, I had a job once ay a small company that was similar. But the employees C&D lashed back at him and D grabbed him by his tie over his desk! It was a Friday. The next day the boss was found at home dead of a heart-attack!

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP2.0 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site
FAQ371-376
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-1091
FAQ559-716

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

ctopher .... wow

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

This was at a Fortune 500 company.  The boss in question eventually signed his own walking papers by writing (something along the lines of) "performs very well, for an african american" on a subordinate's performance review.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

My brother saw the second plane go into the WTC, and he was visibly shaken. A Russian female co-worker broke out into hysterics. She was soundly reprimanded by the boss.

In another case, a Phd mech engr from Algeria called my boss to say "they did it!" with apparent glee. My boss advised him to buy the biggest Amer flag and fly it from his apartment. He called later to apologize.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

This is'nt a funny story but it is one that taught me to keep my temper in check. Like [b]ctopher's[/]b story about the guy dying of a heart attack, I seen similar where the guy died about 6 hours later after being grabbed and threatened. The guy that done the grabbing, was actually sentenced to six years for manslaughter after some whiz lawyer said that the confrontation contributed to the death. An appeal ended up with the guy getting two years.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

I guess I can tell my boss, "At least I haven't given anyone any heart attacks."

I do contribute to his anxiety disorder, though.

On a lighter note, one of my former co-workers once asked a girder fabricator with a straight face whether they had taken the curvature of the earth into account on a highway overpass.  We're all pretty convinced he was serious.

Hg

Eng-Tips guidelines:  FAQ731-376

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

I saw a guy walk into the men's room holding a cell phone to his ear. A couple minutes later in came out still holding it. I am trying to imagine the kind of gyrations he must have gone through.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

if he didn't wash his hands, it would have been fairly easy.
I always get a laugh out of the "no touch" crowd, who cross their arms over their chests while urinating and look up, to the side, or elsewhere...  

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

Gawd, and here's silly me thinking that I have suffered while working for some true WACKOs.  Thanks y'all for helping me realize it wasn't all that bad after all.

I do remember one episode.  My boss the Engineering Mgr had never had the opportunity of going to college and was very insecure about it.  It was at my first performance review at this particular company.  The first words out of his mouth was "Your memos are too concise."  I calmly informed him that my parents were award winning journalists, I had made A's in all of my English coursework, and asked if he would explain himself.  It was the last performance review I had in seven years at that company.

TygerDawg

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

I think it is pretty cool when people use the speaker phone for everything. You get to hear all about their personal and financial problems (which are sometimes worse than your own). Even a fight with ones wife gets broadcast all over the office.

I don't have to gossip as much as I used to.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

Back in the days before voice mail I had an answering machine hooked up to my extension. The night before a colleague had hung out at my place drinking beer and playing video games. The next morning I played my messages and there was one from his wife literally screaming at me and saying that if her husband and I wanted to be f****ts <bundle of sticks> then she'd pack up his stuff and bring it over so he could keep a drawer at my place.

I was thinking, "Uh, gee, I wonder why he doesn't want to go home..." I also felt badly for him that all my cube-neighbors heard because of course answering machines play out loud.

--------------------
Bring back the HP-15
www.hp15c.org
--------------------

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

Speaking of bathroom humor, I called my bosses boss on his cell phone to discuss some issues that he had aske me to look into. When I got off the phone I got up and went to the restroom. As I walked in there he was walking out of the stall. Pretty dedicated to answer your cell while sitting on the pot. Glad I did hear any background noises.......

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

My co-workers and I have nicknamed our boss the "wizard".  He has a tendency to over-simplify solutions to any problem he is presented with.  Last week he shared another one of his nuggets of wisdom: "there are two answers to every question".  Now there's a jewel I can use throughout my career...yikes.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

At my previous company I had a project manager who was a stickler for attendance.  Our work started at 7:00 am and if you were not sitting at your desk exactly at 7:00 am when he walked around, you were given a little talking to.

The fact that I was in early and was already up and about working, didn't matter.  So for the next week the first think I did every morning was walk to his office, poke my head in and say "Good Morning".  He must have gotten the message as the morning attendance checks stopped.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

AndrewTX-

Yes, I knew of a guy that did his walk around at 7 and 5. In between, you could go home. The amount of work done was not a consideration.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

Of course, there's the boss who went ballistic when white-out was being used (takes too long to dry, bad for productivity)...One time, he saw a paper clip in the trash (wasteful)...one of his pet peeves was engineers using a straight edge for drawing straight lines in design sketches and in calculations (unproductive). The chief engineer had a soution, because he just couldn't draw a freehand line at all: he would use a straightedge for a guide, but would put in "micro-squiggles" to make the line appear as freehand.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

The worst guy I've worked with is an eternal optimist. Even when the project was clearly about to blow up in our faces he'd keep harping on about how things are going just great and isn't this a great job to be working on. I'm sure if you chopped off his leg he'd be really pleased now he's lost a few extra pounds and doesn't need to spend as much time in the gym!

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

By contrast, the best boss I ever had took the time to QC my work. He made a nicely organized list of problems, had the receptionist hold all his phone calls, and calmly, politely went thru his list of critiques with me (without any derogatry remarks). I learned a lot that way, and it was apositve experience.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

I once had a boss who made a point of inviting his entire team into a weekly meeting to ream them out about what was going 'wrong' in their projects.  People in other departments sent sympathy emails regularly.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

At one of the testing labs that I have worked at over the years management decided to upgrade the fleet of pickup trucks that the techs drove.  At the time I lived very close to the lab so I drove my own truck to the lab and used an assigned company truck to get to jobs.  I was known for taking excellent care of my assigned equipment so I was assigned a new truck.  About one week after getting this new truck I happened to be at the lab at about lunch time so I drove the company truck to lunch.  I took the company truck because I was just going to a place right around the corner, my boots were dirty, it was hot out, and I had to go to another job later in the afternoon.  Upon returning, the lab manager berated me for misusing company equipment, blah, blah, blah.  Obviously he felt that I should have used my own truck to take lunch even though the round trip for lunch was less than 1 mile.  So he reassigned me to an older, beat-up truck and he took my new truck for himself.  You guessed it, the very next day he totaled the new truck while running a red light (creamed by a semi).  I nearly LMAO!  He was a jerk.

Techmaximus

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

I once had a boss who would out of the blue call employees (sales engineers) around the country and just blast them   Through the grapevine it became known as kamikazi calls.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

One colleague asked the new managing director in his opening address to us why we didn't get a decent wage. Wrong time wrong place to say it I guess, but his punishment was to have his desk removed from his office to the corridor so he could be watched at every moment of the day.  

corus

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

A place where I worked was a combined engineering/architectural services firm. Of course, there was a constant war between the "archies" and us engineers. The archies would have a weekly "creativity" meeting, where they would meet in the Chief Archie's room and lock the door. One of our AutoCAD techs pointed out that he could smell pot smoke wafting from under the door. Early morning, next week, the tech removed the door from the Chief Archie's room, and hid it within the building. The Chief Archie, who was a bit of an "ego", went totally ballistic, not knowing the culprit.
A junior archie treated his coffee cup like a cherished fetish. The same tech (who was a great practical joker, a fellow emigrated from Australia), hid the cup in the hanging fluorescent light fetish just above junior's drafting board. Junior was so upset he couldn't function at all, and the rest of the occupants of the bullpen could see the cup above the light fixture.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

In the place where I used to work, process engineers were almost exclusively quite young (25-30 yrs), while the department head was close to retirement and behaved like Principal Skinner. (hope you guys like the simpsons). We had safety meetings during which it was emphasized that putting your hard hat on top of the cupboard was unsafe practice since it could fall down (in case of unlucky combination of hurricane and open window, I presume) and hurt if not kill (you can never exclude) somebody. But keeping it on the floor would mean a stumbling hazard, while keeping it on the desk was not in line with good office hygiene practices. So we needed hooks on the wall. The investment never made it through the management team. This working atmosphere was a good laugh for a few months, but then I gave up.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

I'm curious what you guys make of this:

Our new HSE manager has a major problem with people hanging coats on the back of their chairs. Seems one of his former colleagues had pushed backward on his chair, got the coat entangled in the castors and tipped over with nasty consequences. Preventing this happening again is going to be one of his missions. Is this over-protective nannying as a result of a one-in-a-million event, or is it a real problem which is more common than might be thought? My initial reaction was "What??? Is he mad?" until I heard the fuller story, and now I'm not sure.

I personally don't like some of the culture developing in the UK where everything is someone else's fault. No-one accepts responsibility for their own actions any more, however stupid those actions are. It is leading to increasingly restrictive legislation and in some instances corporate and state 'nannying', and an ever-growing level of paperwork designed to keep the ambulance-chaser lawyers at bay. How is it in the rest of the world?

----------------------------------

If we learn from our mistakes,
I'm getting a great education!

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

Scotty,
The question in your second paragraph should have its own thread.

David

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

Scotty,
Sounds familiar. The whole world  is infested with absurd managers and greedy lawyers. Keeps me reading Dilbert, and surfing the Web for lawyer-bashing sites. Could lead to the downfall of the Western Civilization.
Seriously, I spend a lot of energy to avoid the ire of certain managers. But I am not worried about the energy waste, because my job is not at all bad, considering the abuse that many other workers in this world have to put up with.

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

Typical case of mis-management... easily identifiable short-term benefit (although almost neglegible) of reducing risk of accident from 1 in a billion to 1 in a billion+1 prevails (but should not) over less easily identifiable (at least for bad managers) long-term problem of unmotivated employees (are not even trusted with the simple decision of where to put their coats) and organisational sluggishness (impossible jungle of rules and procedures in the name of safety).

When will we ever get rid of this unproductive political correctness???

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

When will we ever get rid of this unproductive political correctness???

When it nolong shows a profit, that's when.

Techmaximus

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

There was the day when I made a decent living as a freelancer.  There were many small mom and pop radio stations who didn't need a full time engineer, and I was able to put my PE stamp to use from time to time on transmitter site construction projects, besides, there still is something relaxing about firing up an oscilloscope and troubleshooting audio or video equipment...plus, it's a living.

As the big groups started paying the moms and pops obscene amounts of money for their radio stations, I found my client base eroding to the point where I wasn’t living quite as comfortably as I had grown accustomed.  I began to look for “A real Job.”

I found one as director of Engineering for a small group of stations which owned the flagship for the statewide University sports network.  I made nearly as much as I had working for myself…more when you factored in the 401K retirement and paid health, dental and vision benefits.

Just one thing…I found myself across a cubical wall from one of the Sports Network Sales persons.  This lady would talk in great detail of her sexual conquests and the guys she dumped for one reason or another…some of the topics about the dumpees aren’t fit to print.  I came to find that this (and I use the term quite loosely) lady was a retired Master Chief Petty Officer.  She could swear strongly enough to cause a sailor to blush.  When ever she was in the office, I moved my lap-top to the tech shop where the conversations were more civil.

The best thing that happened was when the company was sold to a bigger broadcast group and I received a FAX telling me to clean out my desk.  I faxed back that the facsimile wasn’t a legal document and that I did not consider myself terminated until either someone came to do it in person or I received a letter which held a valid signature.  It took them three weeks for the lawyers to come up with a way to fire me.  By that time I had been in the 401K long enough to become vested in my account and keep everything the owners had matched and I had sent out resume’ after resume’ and had interviewed for and accepted a position at the University of Arizona.

I still like to mention in conversation that I was once fired by FAX.

I remain,

The Old Soldering Gunslinger

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

Quote:

...lady was a retired Master Chief Petty Officer.  She could swear strongly enough to cause a sailor to blush.

Actually, she *was* a sailor.

Hg

Eng-Tips guidelines:  FAQ731-376

RE: Bad Bosses & Co-Workers?

Technically yes, but when someone reaches the ranks or Master Chief Petty Officer (Navy), Chief Master Sergeant (AF), Sergeant Major (Army), and Master Gunnery Sergeant/Sergeant Major (Marines) you have reached a position that less then 1% of the entire enlisted ranks will ever hope to reach.  So these titles are given certain respects that come with the achievements.


Regards,

Sir Heckler

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