Bad bosses

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Trevor Morley's Tache

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Ever had one of those bosses that likes to micro-manage EVERYTHING?

My boss is one of those guys.

Tuesday night we had wind of some urgent tasking, so yesterday I came in early primed for the task, and I had nothing in my inbox. My boss is currently working remotely. It turns out he was dealing with the task but hadn't let anyone know. There were a few emails back and forth, and the information the our boss had given the customer was incomplete and partially incorrect.

Later on in the afternoon we had an email with the people who had tasked us asking if we could set up a video chat because they couldn't get hold of our boss. Unbeknown to us our boss had seen the message and decided to jump in without telling anyone whilst I was running around calling people in to come and deal with the problem and trying to set up a video call. We then managed to get hold of our boss who told us he'd been dealing with it whilst we were hanging around trying to sort it out from our end. I was in work just after 7am yesterday and it was well gone 6pm when I left.

Anyhow... this morning I open my email inbox to find a long winded ranty email from the boss breaking it down into fine detail explaining why none of this is his fault, and what we've done has made us all look bad including him. We've now got a 2 hour meeting where we have to justify our actions and come up with a remedial plan to ensure this never happens again.

He's in for a shock when he gets in because he's p*ssed a lot of people off.
 
I don't know what you do but there's plenty of opportunities out there. Life is too short to spend your week working for somebody who is incompetent and you might get a pay increase out of it too.

I had a narcissistic boss at my last place and moving roles has been the best move and has really improved my mood combined with a decent pay increase.

I genuinley don't understand how some people are offered these management positions. Probably through being boot lickers but Directors seem to be oblivious to their behaviour.
 
Since we started working from home 2 years ago due to lockdown I have been in office about 6 times. We have had to fill out a motivational chart every single day since then. What we did yesterday, what we plan to do today. Do we need any help with work. Then mark motivation out of 5. I have put 1 every single day because at beginning of covid we made 100s redundant, had change of structure within our team and dept. My immediate line manager left so I put 1 as I didn't know if my job was secure, didn't know what future held for me, my team, our dept or even life in general. I have continued to put 1 every single day and no one has ever queried it. One guy puts 5 every single day and gets praised in his motivation. Someone asked why he puts 5 and he says I just make it up.
 
It's easier to pick out my good bosses, of which there has been one genuinely good and another who wasn't a bad egg but was a bit useless overall.

It's the same anywhere but Galway is largely a "who you know" place and the upper working echelons seem to be made of people who went to school together 20/30 years ago and possibly found each other good craic in the classroom and liked each others schoolbag.

Last boss was a real shithouse who used to throw others under the bus to hide her own incompetence. Thick as pigshit.
 
ob said:
Since we started working from home 2 years ago due to lockdown I have been in office about 6 times. We have had to fill out a motivational chart every single day since then. What we did yesterday, what we plan to do today. Do we need any help with work. Then mark motivation out of 5. I have put 1 every single day because at beginning of covid we made 100s redundant, had change of structure within our team and dept. My immediate line manager left so I put 1 as I didn't know if my job was secure, didn't know what future held for me, my team, our dept or even life in general. I have continued to put 1 every single day and no one has ever queried it. One guy puts 5 every single day and gets praised in his motivation. Someone asked why he puts 5 and he says I just make it up.
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He sounds like a clown. Anyone that introduces a chart to measure motivation is not fit to manage people. Are you sure he isn't David Brent?
 
Nebuchadnezzar said:
It's easier to pick out my good bosses, of which there has been one genuinely good and another who wasn't a bad egg but was a bit useless overall.

It's the same anywhere but Galway is largely a "who you know" place and the upper working echelons seem to be made of people who went to school together 20/30 years ago and possibly found each other good craic in the classroom and liked each others schoolbag.

Last boss was a real shithouse who used to throw others under the bus to hide her own incompetence. Thick as pigshit.
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My boss in't incompetent, but he's very controlling and quick to apportion blame when their's a problem. He just fails to see his own shortcomings.
 
Saddleworth2 said:
He sounds like a clown. Anyone that introduces a chart to measure motivation is not fit to manage people. Are you sure he isn't David Brent?
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I manage day to day running of an IT helpdesk one of his ways to save money on licenses was to delete accounts of anyone not logged in for a month. This included women on maternity leave, anyone long term sick, some non office based staff such as retail, admissions, gardeners etc maybe only log in every couple months to book annual leave, maybe check a payslip online. I had to go above his head to get it stopped
 
My god, I could write a book about bad bosses. As a freelancer for 15 years I've had many managers but knew I could walk away at some point.

There was one who micromanaged everything. He demanded to see every email before I sent it and always changed something, even if the email was a 2-liner like "Thanks for your response. I'll have a look at it and get back to you." After 6 months of slow and painstaking work, where I had to get a common reporting framework from six different stakeholders, all of whom had different requirements, he basically ripped it up and said "That's not what I wanted."

The funny thing was that one of the stakeholders, who I knew thought highly of me and the work I'd done, was his wife! He was a really nice guy as well, just a total micro-manager.
 
My last senior manager was in charge of around eight departmental managers, and around 300 staff. I was one of four analysts in a department and we were applying for three positions in a reorganisation. I was by far the most experienced, and also the best paid due partly because of age and seniority.

I smashed the interviews, and scored at least 96% in the skills test. The others would have been at 60% maximum. They then told me I was unsuccessful in my job application and they found me a really mundane job to do.

I went through the usual post-process appraisal and they put forward some spurious reasons why I had been unsuccessful. I said I had evidence that I had been stitched up and the process was fixed - to no avail.

So I took my evidence to the HR manager. It was a departmental costing spreadsheet (Target Operating Model) prepared by KPMG in which all 300 staff salaries were listed (contravening Data Protection rules), and 50 staff were labeled "Staff reduction". All 50, including me were unsuccessful.

I gave them the weekend to explain themselves or I would take the list to the trades union. Needless to say, on Monday they had found a perfectly plausible explanation, and gave me an extremely cushy job until voluntary redundancy two years later.
 
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Paladin said:
My last senior manager was in charge of around eight departmental managers, and around 300 staff. I was one of four analysts in a department and we were applying for three positions in a reorganisation. I was by far the most experienced, and also the best paid sure partly because of age and seniority.

I smashed the interviews, and scored at least 96% in the skills test. The others would have been at 60% maximum. They then told me I was unsuccessful in my job application and they found me a really mundane job to do.

I went through the usual post-process appraisal and they put forward some spurious reasons why I had been unsuccessful. I said I had evidence that I had been stitched up and the process was fixed - to no avail.

So I took my evidence to the HR manager. It was a departmental costing spreadsheet (Target Operating Model) prepared by KPMG in which all 300 staff salaries were listed (contravening Data Protection rules), and 50 staff were labeled "Staff reduction". All 50, including me were unsuccessful.

I gave them the weekend to explain themselves or I would take the list to the trades union. Needless to say, on Monday they had found a perfectly plausible explanation, and gave me an extremely cushy job until voluntary redundancy two years later.
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So you were OK but the other 49 not?
 
BimboBob said:
So you were OK but the other 49 not?
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Not quite. I told a good number of the others that they too had been stitched up. Others were happy to go. Some others were genuinely poor at their jobs and would have been unsuccessful in the process even under normal conditions.

The company knew they had made a huge mistake, and nobody was unfavorably treated in the end. Even those that left were given good terms.
 
ob said:
I manage day to day running of an IT helpdesk one of his ways to save money on licenses was to delete accounts of anyone not logged in for a month. This included women on maternity leave, anyone long term sick, some non office based staff such as retail, admissions, gardeners etc maybe only log in every couple months to book annual leave, maybe check a payslip online. I had to go above his head to get it stopped
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Bad bosses are really shit as they drag everyone down. Maybe it is being noticed up the line and someone will do something about it. Does your organisation do 360 reviews? Those are sometimes useful for giving honest feedback and highlighting bad behaviour.
it’s not an easy problem to solve mate. All I can say is that the worse I have have had have ultimately been sacked, moved or fallen on their sword. good luck :-)
 
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I’ve been lucky in that I’ve had some great bosses really. One or two have tried to micromanage me but none have succeeded, I just tell them straight that it won’t work with me, but then again I change jobs every two years on average so am happy to just walk if needs be. I’ve just cancelled a contract because my ex manager left and his replacement wanted to do daily meetings. No way, Pedro!
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
My god, I could write a book about bad bosses. As a freelancer for 15 years I've had many managers but knew I could walk away at some point.

There was one who micromanaged everything. He demanded to see every email before I sent it and always changed something, even if the email was a 2-liner like "Thanks for your response. I'll have a look at it and get back to you." After 6 months of slow and painstaking work, where I had to get a common reporting framework from six different stakeholders, all of whom had different requirements, he basically ripped it up and said "That's not what I wanted."

The funny thing was that one of the stakeholders, who I knew thought highly of me and the work I'd done, was his wife! He was a really nice guy as well, just a total micro-manager.
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I'm this wasn't the case PB but I can't shift the thought of you going in on a six month contract, doing really badly at your job to the point that your manager has to keep a close eye on you and you somehow get away with it because you've been shagging his wife who keeps you in a job by putting in a good word for you.
 
Saddleworth2 said:
Bad bosses are really shit as they drag everyone down. Maybe it is being noticed up the line and someone will do something about it. Does your organisation do 360 reviews? Those are sometimes useful for giving honest feedback and highlighting bad behaviour.
it’s not an easy problem to solve mate. All I can say is that the worse I have have had have ultimately been sacked, moved or fallen on their sword. good luck :-)
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Just realised he's been here 4 years. Everyone says at start he's crap won't last 6 months, won't last year etc etc. One of web guys made redundant (finishes today) boss not been in touch once to say bye, wish him all the best, etc. Guy not even in my team but I've gone into office today to take him to pub for lunch, bought him leaving card. Helped him prepare for leaving meetings with HR, helped him apply for jobs and fix his CV. English not his first language so struggles at times no one else offering to help him.
 
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