Adventures of a Shitty Boss - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

NatureBoy · 12-10-2003, 01:31 PM

My boss is a real piece of work. He can't give a straight answer. He doesn't know how to manage (much less interact with) other people. There's lots more than that, but I'm going to save that for the stories, which will be listed in this thread as time goes on.

I'll post one today, but I need to get some lunch right now.

NatureBoy · 12-10-2003, 02:33 PM

I was instructed by Mr. A (who was instructed by Shitty Boss) to complete Project X. I sent S.B. the demo and heard nothing from him. Today, I'm in S.B.'s office when he asks me about Project X. I tell him that I created it and sent it to him two weeks ago. He pulls it up and says it's all wrong. The only thing that varied from the specifications is the spacing. I leave S.B.'s office and confer with Mr. A who agrees that it was, indeed, what S.B. had asked for in the begining.

numist · 12-10-2003, 04:24 PM

Hehehehe... sometimes you gotta live with 'em...

file a complaint... best thing that you can hope for (probably) is getting fired

Bust_Action · 12-10-2003, 04:51 PM

My problems with shitty bosses have been what I like to call "selective observation". Or, more specifically, "being a giant shithead". When I worked retail I would be doing a job just as good as (many times better than) coworker X, but the bosses considered him to be a better worker than I was. Why? Say I did a task 100 times and did it wrong once out of those 100 times. Guess when the boss chooses to see what I'm doing? That one time I do it wrong. The other workers might do the task wrong 50 times out of 100, but the only time the boss would pay attention to what they were doing was one of the times they did it right. Needless to say when I quit the job and got to fill out a form on my opinion of the company, I wrote "teach the managers not to practice selective observation, it's a bad management technique." I bet they had no idea what I was talking about.

Malted · 12-10-2003, 06:50 PM

Ever seen the BBC show "The Office?" Well, whenever someone complains about their boss, I always think of the boss in that show. Funny show, too.

djtestudo · 12-10-2003, 09:41 PM

May I suggest you send a few to scottadams@aol.com? He loves those...

absorbentishe · 12-11-2003, 07:39 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by djtestudo
May I suggest you send a few to <I>e-mail removed</I>? He loves those...

Send what, to who? If that's not your e-mail, you might have some explaining to do.

djtestudo · 12-11-2003, 08:17 AM

Send some of those stories to Scott Adams, aka the creator of Dilbert, and who always asks for stories about stupid bosses.

If there is a problem with his address up there I'll gladly remove it; just making a suggestion.

Redlemon · 12-11-2003, 08:45 AM

That email address is publicly available at http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/html/mail.html

Quote:

This mail goes directly to my mailbox at scottadams@aol.com. I get hundreds of messages every day, and although I try to read them all, I can't answer every one. If you've got a comment or a suggestion for a strip topic, please send it my way. Thanks!

So, go ahead!

absorbentishe · 12-11-2003, 09:55 AM

Sorry, but too many stories about anonymous people sending e-mails to others, from boards. Just trying to CYA.

thingstodo · 12-11-2003, 07:13 PM

A shitty boss means it is time to leave. Statistically, most people leave companies due to a bad boss, not a bad job. YOu can't change a bad boss, and someone has given them credibility with the promotion.

The Peter Principle.... most people are promoted beyond their level of compentency. Most are promoted because they do a good job but are never trained on how to manage other people doing the old job they were good at.

djtestudo · 12-12-2003, 07:10 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by absorbentishe
Sorry, but too many stories about anonymous people sending e-mails to others, from boards. Just trying to CYA.

No problem. It's just that those who get his newsletter and such know he encoureges people to send him stories and ideas, so I figured this would be fine.

Mael · 12-12-2003, 07:50 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by thingstodo
The Peter Principle.... most people are promoted beyond their level of compentency. Most are promoted because they do a good job but are never trained on how to manage other people doing the old job they were good at.

is that an official term? either way, that's awesome. "I can't believe what a bunch of nerds we are! We're looking up money laundering in a dictionary!"

Paeder · 12-12-2003, 09:19 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Malted
Ever seen the BBC show "The Office?" Well, whenever someone complains about their boss, I always think of the boss in that show. Funny show, too.

i heard that that show was a lot like office space. if it is anything like office space then im sure its hilarious.
"peter, what's happening?"

NatureBoy · 12-12-2003, 11:15 AM

SB has no idea of anything that goes on where I work. I once asked him to cover my on-call shift for a few minutes while I grabbed some lunch, and he mumbled and blubbered some excuse about how he couldn't do it and how he'd just end up calling us if something went down. I had to miss out on lunch that day because of his ineptitude.

Whenever we ask what he's working on, he tells us he's doing 'work'. That's it. Nothing else. He's doing work. All we see is him sitting in his office all day long.

Bill O'Rights · 12-12-2003, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Mael
is that an official term? either way, that's awesome. "I can't believe what a bunch of nerds we are! We're looking up money laundering in a dictionary!"

Yes, The Peter Principle has been around since to 70's.

Quote:

The Peter Principle was first introduced by Dr. L. Peter in a humoristic book (of the same title) describing the pitfalls of bureaucratic organization. The original principle states that in a hierarchically structured administration, people tend to be promoted up to their "level of incompetence". The principle is based on the observation that in such an organization new employees typically start in the lower ranks, but when they prove to be competent in the task to which they are assigned, they get promoted to a higher rank. This process of climbing up the hierarchical ladder can go on indefinitely, until the employee reaches a position where he or she is no longer competent. At that moment the process typically stops, since the established rules of bureacracies make that it is very difficult to "demote" someone to a lower rank, even if that person would be much better fitted and more happy in that lower position. The net result is that most of the higher levels of a bureaucracy will be filled by incompetent people, who got there because they were quite good at doing a different (and usually, but not always, easier) task than the one they are expected to do.

Shades · 12-12-2003, 11:41 PM

Not to rub it in, but my boss is fucking awesome. He doesn't hassle me, he's definately smart enough to be where he is, and when I told him I needed a 4-processor computer that would cost about $13,000, he scheduled the meeting with the CEO and CTO and we got it approved.

Besides just being a jerk, my point is that, if you don't like your boss, there are good ones out there. Get out there and find one my son!

thingstodo · 12-13-2003, 08:01 AM

You hit the nail on the head. Leave. I, too, have agreat boss. There is mutual respect and we can discuss things that need to be discussed.

NatureBoy · 12-15-2003, 05:31 PM

For all of you who say 'leave', I say this.

I love my job.

Everything I could ever want in a job is here, save for SB. It's an industry that I've wanted to be in for a long time. It combines the two greatest passions of my life. Everyone (except for SB) is a decent human being.

Today, while viewing my time sheet, he sighed (crackerjack sigher ... he'll keep you waiting for hours whilst sighing and poring over a stupid little decision) and held me on the line while he looked it over. He made mention that there were lots of punches for a lot of odd hours. I politely reminded him that I was the one that got called in the middle of the night when something went wrong. I wanted to tag on "It's not you who gets called. Remember? You would only end up calling me if something went wrong".

denim · 12-16-2003, 08:12 AM

Why say more than "yes"?

If you give some people too many words, they get confused. Sometimes, they'll choose the ones they understand, even if the result doesn't make sense. See this link and search for the bit starting with "The BOFH explains his new 'Management Stack Theory'" for the details.

Rodney · 12-16-2003, 11:23 AM

Re: the Peter Principle and being promoted beyond your level of competence. That happened to me.

More or less against my will, I found myself promoted into charge of a group whose work I neither understood or was interested in. However, you can still be a less-than-shitty boss under those circumstances if you identify the top workers and don't get in the way of them working out the problems on their own. I made it my job to interface/run interference for the group with even more clueless upper management, negotiate for the resources that they told me they needed, and make sure they'd configured themselves to get all assigned tasks (all our tasks and projects were assigned from On High) in a timely manner. They did a great job, until half of us were laid off, including me.

NatureBoy · 12-16-2003, 02:11 PM

Some numbers weren't making sense to him, so today, he explained to me twice, taking no shorter than 7 minutes each time that the numbers need to reconcile and that right soon. He could have explained it once, in under two minutes, what needed to be done. Sometimes, I think he just likes to hear himself talk.

NatureBoy · 12-22-2003, 06:03 PM

After last weeks adventure with reconciling numbers, I sent SB a long, descriptive email of why the numbers weren't reconciled. The following is a paraphrase of the email he sent back to me.

[Paragraph 1 - Use a big word to simultaneously insult the work that I do, as well as make himself feel better all within one line of text]

[Paragraph 2 - Asking for the undertaking of vague conceptual projects. Side Note: Were I to undertake those projects with the amount of direction he gives, I would do it wrong by his standards and have to re-do it]

[Paragraph 3 - Request of status on an old, only-slightly related project. Uses his rapier-sharp managerial skills to suggest I combine the projects ... even though they cannot be combined and are almost nothing alike]

I have recently been reading Un-Jobbing: The Adult Liberation Handbook and I'm starting to see that I could live without this stress and without SB and be much, much happier.

thingstodo · 12-26-2003, 06:55 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Rodney
Re: the Peter Principle and being promoted beyond your level of competence. That happened to me.

More or less against my will, I found myself promoted into charge of a group whose work I neither understood or was interested in. However, you can still be a less-than-shitty boss under those circumstances if you identify the top workers and don't get in the way of them working out the problems on their own. I made it my job to interface/run interference for the group with even more clueless upper management, negotiate for the resources that they told me they needed, and make sure they'd configured themselves to get all assigned tasks (all our tasks and projects were assigned from On High) in a timely manner. They did a great job, until half of us were laid off, including me.

Dude, I hate to say this, but someone was smart enough to make you a manager, even though you don't think so. Look at how you did things and the results you accomplished through other people. That is management. If you find a good boss one day that want's to train you, you'll be even better.

Journeyman · 12-26-2003, 01:33 PM

You could always unjob yourself with this. Quarter of an acre for a family of four, I hear.

Jaseca · 12-26-2003, 09:40 PM

sounds like a reverse George ...

12-10-2003, 01:31 PM	#1 (permalink)
NatureBoy Crazy	Adventures of a Shitty Boss My boss is a real piece of work. He can't give a straight answer. He doesn't know how to manage (much less interact with) other people. There's lots more than that, but I'm going to save that for the stories, which will be listed in this thread as time goes on. I'll post one today, but I need to get some lunch right now.

12-10-2003, 02:33 PM	#2 (permalink)
NatureBoy Crazy	12-10-2003 I was instructed by Mr. A (who was instructed by Shitty Boss) to complete Project X. I sent S.B. the demo and heard nothing from him. Today, I'm in S.B.'s office when he asks me about Project X. I tell him that I created it and sent it to him two weeks ago. He pulls it up and says it's all wrong. The only thing that varied from the specifications is the spacing. I leave S.B.'s office and confer with Mr. A who agrees that it was, indeed, what S.B. had asked for in the begining. Last edited by NatureBoy; 12-10-2003 at 08:30 PM..

12-10-2003, 04:51 PM	#4 (permalink)
Bust_Action Upright Location: San Marcos, Tx	My problems with shitty bosses have been what I like to call "selective observation". Or, more specifically, "being a giant shithead". When I worked retail I would be doing a job just as good as (many times better than) coworker X, but the bosses considered him to be a better worker than I was. Why? Say I did a task 100 times and did it wrong once out of those 100 times. Guess when the boss chooses to see what I'm doing? That one time I do it wrong. The other workers might do the task wrong 50 times out of 100, but the only time the boss would pay attention to what they were doing was one of the times they did it right. Needless to say when I quit the job and got to fill out a form on my opinion of the company, I wrote "teach the managers not to practice selective observation, it's a bad management technique." I bet they had no idea what I was talking about. __________________ Your favorite band sucks.

12-10-2003, 09:41 PM	#6 (permalink)
djtestudo Baltimoron Location: Beeeeeautiful Bel Air, MD	May I suggest you send a few to scottadams@aol.com? He loves those... __________________ "Final thought: I just rented Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Frankly, it was the worst sports movie I've ever seen." --Peter Schmuck, The (Baltimore) Sun

12-11-2003, 08:17 AM	#8 (permalink)
djtestudo Baltimoron Location: Beeeeeautiful Bel Air, MD	Send some of those stories to Scott Adams, aka the creator of Dilbert, and who always asks for stories about stupid bosses. If there is a problem with his address up there I'll gladly remove it; just making a suggestion. __________________ "Final thought: I just rented Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Frankly, it was the worst sports movie I've ever seen." --Peter Schmuck, The (Baltimore) Sun

12-10-2003, 04:24 PM	#3 (permalink)
numist Banned Location: UCSD, 510.49 miles from my love	Hehehehe... sometimes you gotta live with 'em... file a complaint... best thing that you can hope for (probably) is getting fired

12-10-2003, 06:50 PM	#5 (permalink)
Malted Upright	Ever seen the BBC show "The Office?" Well, whenever someone complains about their boss, I always think of the boss in that show. Funny show, too.

12-11-2003, 09:55 AM	#10 (permalink)
absorbentishe Boy am I horny today Location: T O L E D O, Toledo!!	Sorry, but too many stories about anonymous people sending e-mails to others, from boards. Just trying to CYA.

12-11-2003, 07:13 PM	#11 (permalink)
thingstodo A Storm Is Coming Location: The Great White North	A shitty boss means it is time to leave. Statistically, most people leave companies due to a bad boss, not a bad job. YOu can't change a bad boss, and someone has given them credibility with the promotion. The Peter Principle.... most people are promoted beyond their level of compentency. Most are promoted because they do a good job but are never trained on how to manage other people doing the old job they were good at. __________________ If you're wringing your hands you can't roll up your shirt sleeves. Stangers have the best candy.

12-12-2003, 11:15 AM	#15 (permalink)
NatureBoy Crazy	Adventure 2 SB has no idea of anything that goes on where I work. I once asked him to cover my on-call shift for a few minutes while I grabbed some lunch, and he mumbled and blubbered some excuse about how he couldn't do it and how he'd just end up calling us if something went down. I had to miss out on lunch that day because of his ineptitude. Whenever we ask what he's working on, he tells us he's doing 'work'. That's it. Nothing else. He's doing work. All we see is him sitting in his office all day long.

12-12-2003, 11:41 PM	#17 (permalink)
Shades Insane	Not to rub it in, but my boss is fucking awesome. He doesn't hassle me, he's definately smart enough to be where he is, and when I told him I needed a 4-processor computer that would cost about $13,000, he scheduled the meeting with the CEO and CTO and we got it approved. Besides just being a jerk, my point is that, if you don't like your boss, there are good ones out there. Get out there and find one my son!

12-13-2003, 08:01 AM	#18 (permalink)
thingstodo A Storm Is Coming Location: The Great White North	You hit the nail on the head. Leave. I, too, have agreat boss. There is mutual respect and we can discuss things that need to be discussed. __________________ If you're wringing your hands you can't roll up your shirt sleeves. Stangers have the best candy.

12-15-2003, 05:31 PM	#19 (permalink)
NatureBoy Crazy	Adventure 3 For all of you who say 'leave', I say this. I love my job. Everything I could ever want in a job is here, save for SB. It's an industry that I've wanted to be in for a long time. It combines the two greatest passions of my life. Everyone (except for SB) is a decent human being. Today, while viewing my time sheet, he sighed (crackerjack sigher ... he'll keep you waiting for hours whilst sighing and poring over a stupid little decision) and held me on the line while he looked it over. He made mention that there were lots of punches for a lot of odd hours. I politely reminded him that I was the one that got called in the middle of the night when something went wrong. I wanted to tag on "It's not you who gets called. Remember? You would only end up calling me if something went wrong".

12-16-2003, 08:12 AM	#20 (permalink)
denim Banned Location: Massachusetts, USA	Why say more than "yes"? If you give some people too many words, they get confused. Sometimes, they'll choose the ones they understand, even if the result doesn't make sense. See this link and search for the bit starting with "The BOFH explains his new 'Management Stack Theory'" for the details. Last edited by denim; 12-16-2003 at 08:21 AM..

12-16-2003, 11:23 AM	#21 (permalink)
Rodney Observant Ruminant Location: Rich Wannabe Hippie Town	Re: the Peter Principle and being promoted beyond your level of competence. That happened to me. More or less against my will, I found myself promoted into charge of a group whose work I neither understood or was interested in. However, you can still be a less-than-shitty boss under those circumstances if you identify the top workers and don't get in the way of them working out the problems on their own. I made it my job to interface/run interference for the group with even more clueless upper management, negotiate for the resources that they told me they needed, and make sure they'd configured themselves to get all assigned tasks (all our tasks and projects were assigned from On High) in a timely manner. They did a great job, until half of us were laid off, including me.

12-16-2003, 02:11 PM	#22 (permalink)
NatureBoy Crazy	Adventure 4 Some numbers weren't making sense to him, so today, he explained to me twice, taking no shorter than 7 minutes each time that the numbers need to reconcile and that right soon. He could have explained it once, in under two minutes, what needed to be done. Sometimes, I think he just likes to hear himself talk.

12-22-2003, 06:03 PM	#23 (permalink)
NatureBoy Crazy	Adventure 5 After last weeks adventure with reconciling numbers, I sent SB a long, descriptive email of why the numbers weren't reconciled. The following is a paraphrase of the email he sent back to me. [Paragraph 1 - Use a big word to simultaneously insult the work that I do, as well as make himself feel better all within one line of text] [Paragraph 2 - Asking for the undertaking of vague conceptual projects. Side Note: Were I to undertake those projects with the amount of direction he gives, I would do it wrong by his standards and have to re-do it] [Paragraph 3 - Request of status on an old, only-slightly related project. Uses his rapier-sharp managerial skills to suggest I combine the projects ... even though they cannot be combined and are almost nothing alike] I have recently been reading Un-Jobbing: The Adult Liberation Handbook and I'm starting to see that I could live without this stress and without SB and be much, much happier.

12-26-2003, 01:33 PM	#25 (permalink)
Journeyman Like John Goodman, but not. Location: SFBA, California	You could always unjob yourself with this. Quarter of an acre for a family of four, I hear.

12-26-2003, 09:40 PM	#26 (permalink)
Jaseca Tilted	sounds like a reverse George ...