When bosses from hell attack

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Working for some bosses can feel like hell.
Photo: Victor Iglesias

When you’ve been in the workplace long enough, you will have most likely suffered through several bad bosses. Some are incompetent, some are nasty, and some are just completely off the wall. Here are some stories of bad bosses from hell that I have collected. In most cases, the people who told me these stories did not want their full names published in order to protect the innocent, while exposing the guilty.

Manic Workdays

Boy, did I have a bad boss! She was a manic depressive who had it in for me since I supposedly made her feel threatened (or so the rumor was). Aside from the usual nastiness of giving me projects that were supposed to be impossible, or nothing to do at all, she would regularly come into my cubicle—a small cubicle that really only holds one–and yell at me about anything she could think of. She did not hold back with name calling or insults. This was so extreme that it actually caused my coworkers distress. My boss even made one break down hysterically crying. The next day, she would appear again in my cube as sweet as pie, telling me I was the best worker she had ever dealt with.

She even recently sent me a LinkedIn invitation. I ignored it.

The bosses knew this was going on (she was the COO), but didn't want her wrath pointed at them so they ignored it. The company was sold out from under the employees one morning by the CEO, so I gladly left and found a better company. My own.
–Julie

Malignant Attitude

I worked in a very small local public relations firm—owned by a woman—when I found out I had a benign brain tumor. She had given me a nice raise ($20,000) before I found out about the tumor to make up for many years of no raises. When I learned I had the tumor, she took it back, saying the firm couldn’t afford it after all. In addition, she blamed me for our insurance rates going up because of my tumor, when insurance was going up throughout the country. She took it so personally that I resigned that she had to dig that in. When I found out I needed radiation a few years later, she told me I should go get my hair cut and she would pay for it. She was more concerned about my appearance than my health. When I finally resigned after being an excellent employee for eight years—and one of her top producers—she told me that my tumor had come at a bad time for the firm and she had supported me.
–Anonymous

Fatality Fetish

I have the story of all stories! I quit my job after a 12-week disability for PTSD. I was a photojournalist at a large newspaper and had several bad bosses. The worst was a supervisor who was once fired from a funeral home for “inappropriate behavior with corpses.” I always wondered why he wanted me to take photos of dead bodies for the newspaper since we didn’t (and couldn’t) run them in the paper. The other reporters told me he "had a body fetish" and used the photos for self-gratification. Ugh!

I didn't believe them until he blew up and yelled at me for not taking pictures of a car versus pedestrian accident. He kept asking me, “Was it a young girl? I heard it was a young girl.” It was too weird. He wasn't fired, but later quit over health issues.
–B.B.

Que Sera Sera

Many years ago, I worked in a factory for what I considered to be a bad boss. He had three sayings for everything: That's just the way it is, there's nothing I can do, and if you don't like it, find another place to work. He also used to hang up on you if you called in sick. In reality, my boss’s behavior changed my life because I quit relying on him to make me feel good and I decided to be respectful no matter what. It became a game for me. At one point, I even pointed out his disrespectful behavior in a very calm and respectful manner. I decided to see him differently. I decided to see him as a person who was just struggling with life and doing the best he knew how. Eventually, I turned the relationship around and my boss-employee experience became a sort of catalyst for the work I do now.
– Marlene Chism

Part Two: When bosses from hell attack (continued)

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