Every day, multiple people leave their jobs for better opportunities. There is a saying that people don't leave bad jobs; they leave bad bosses. We've all encountered our fair share of mean and unpleasant bosses.
A few Redditors have shared their terrible boss stories, and we have selected a bunch of the worst ones to share with you. Be warned; these stories are pretty frustrating!
I had a friend who worked for a well-known communications company. One day, the CEO came to their office, he went into their break room, and began counting the supplies. Once he was done inspecting it, he told the staff that he could tell from the proportion of coffee to sweetener that the employees were taking the sweetener home.
Just then, he ordered the discontinuation of coffee service for all company offices.
I was doing volunteer work when my boss accused me of "time clock thievery." It wasn't a major organization, it was a simple volunteer gig, and no one was really keeping track of time. My volunteer work wasn't court-mandated. While cleaning up at the end of the event, my phone rang, and I decided to answer it.
Seeing this, my supervisor got really angry, saying, "Get off the phone! That's time clock thievery!"
My first job was with the state, and it was terrible. My supervisor was horrible. One day, I was called into a meeting with our bureau chief. He began asking us about office matters, and my supervisor just began lying about me. These lies went completely against my character.
I got angry and blew up at her. I told the bureau chief that I wasn't interested in playing childish games, and then I left the meeting. I ended up getting the last laugh. They gave me a promotion that paid twice as much as that terrible supervisor.
A few years ago, they found this girl in the bathroom at my work, huffing hairspray. They watched the tape and ended up calling me in, accusing me of selling her the hairspray, knowing what she would do with it. I didn't know how to react, so I told them that I wasn't going to card people buying hairspray.
It was ridiculous.
I worked at Subway for five years, and for three of those years, I was a manager. One day, they called me in and accused me of turning off the cameras in the store and smoking in the cooler. This was completely untrue, and I quit just a few days later.
A while later, I learned the truth. The owner hated me for no reason, and they were trying to set me up to fire me.
The last place I worked at probably fired me about 30 - 40 times. I left each time, knowing they would call me back the next morning, my boss begging me to join him for breakfast. Usually, he would pay me $100 just to accept my job back.
Other times he would offer me a raise or a paid day off, which are both unheard of in my industry. Despite this, my boss never learned to mind his temper.
One day, I was within earshot of a manager when I used the phrase "more than one way to skin a cat," and she'd never heard the phrase before. Later that day, she called me into her office and asked me why I would say such disgusting things, she then accused me of being a sicko who harmed animals.
She threatened to fire me if I ever said something like that again.
Last night, my manager called me stupid and uneducated for the most mind-blowing reason. It was because I didn't cheat a customer out of 15 dollars due to a computer error.
She thought that it was obvious that I had to take the opportunity and lie about the error just so that she could have 15 extra dollars in her account. Today they want to have a meeting with me and I'm on the verge of tears just thinking about it.
A while back, I worked at a Sears, and one day I gave someone 0% financing for six months on their Sears card on a purchase. I was under the impression that we were running a promotion at the time, but we weren't.
Later, they threatened to fire me for stealing, saying I had taken the money they might have made on the interest if the person had not made payments.
My former boss kept odd working hours, popped a lot of sleeping pills, would work for two days straight, and then not show up for a day. Stuff like that. A real piece of work, and definitely manic. We would have the same meetings and go over the same items multiple times. I don’t know what demons caused all this behavior, they seemed to be manifestations of something larger. Anyway, the dude was also a horrible driver and had outstanding tickets out the wazoo. But he was never late for a scheduled meeting, no matter what mental state he was in.
Until one day it all changed. A meeting comes up and he is nowhere to be found. We all find this strange and I make the comment to a couple of co-workers, “I bet he is behind bars”. No sooner had these words left my lips then the phone rings on the desk of one the co-workers. His practice is to never take a call from an unknown number, but he takes a look at the caller ID and the abbreviated text alludes to the local county lock-up. I say, “Told you so, he is making his one phone call!” 10 seconds later, the other co-worker’s phone rings, he picks it up. The man was picked up sleep-driving and eating a bag of cheese puffs wearing nothing but a bathrobe.
I worked in a restaurant for a couple of years as a day supervisor. One of my duties was doing the twice-weekly ordering. When the deliveries came in, I would have to verify that we actually got everything on the invoice and reconcile it with the driver if there were any problems. One day there’s a case of shrimp missing. I note this with the driver, he marks it on the invoice, removes it, and updates the total. About a month or two later the same situation happens again, with the same result. As a quick aside, I had almost no power to do anything as a “supervisor”. I didn’t make hiring decisions, I couldn’t fire anybody, and nobody would really listen to me since my other coworkers were all in their 40s or older and I was some 19-year-old kid in college with a better position than they had. Despite all that, I still had a good relationship with everyone. So anyway, one of the cleaning people would drink during their shift CONSTANTLY.
I complained to the head chef, I complained to the general manager, and nobody cared. Finally, one day, it became a big deal because she no-call/no-showed or something like that. That’s when I found out what a snake she was. She accused me of stealing stuff to get some heat off of her. Shortly after this, I’m approached by the HR/finance lady about these missing cases of shrimp that we didn’t pay for and never got. She comes out acting very suspicious of me, saying, “Somebody sure likes shrimp!” suggesting that I was in cahoots with the delivery driver to take shrimp. I HATE seafood, so naturally, I laughed at first, but got really angry when I found out she was serious. After that, it was tense between everybody I used to have good relationships with because they thought I sold this other person up the river to save my own shrimp-stealing butt. I quit shortly after. Still one of the most ridiculous sagas of my life.
I got accused of pilfering a salad when I worked as a cashier at a grocery store while in high school. Because they had scheduled me for 6.5 hours, I only qualified for a 15-minute break, not a 30-minute. So I spend the first eight or so minutes of my break on the phone with a mechanic working out issues with my car. I then run back to the little cafe near the back of the store. It has a salad bar and I make a quick salad, which you weigh and price there. By this time, I had about five minutes left on break, and the manager was very strict about not going over your 15 minutes. So I stand at the cafe register for a good minute, and no one is to be found. I quickly eat my salad, and then take the sticker up to the front registers to pay for the $1.99 salad. I go back on the clock, and about 20 minutes later I am called into the office. Their words are super ominous. They say a “situation” has occurred, but don’t tell me what.
They said they are sending me home for the day. So I come back in the next day for my shift, and they call me into the office again. In the office is the store manager, the assistant manager, the office manager, the cafe manager, and my shift supervisor. Mind you, I am a 16-year-old kid at their first job who had never been in any sort of trouble. This is when they accuse me of stealing the salad because, “Despite purchasing the salad, as our records do indicate, you consumed the salad before the purchase”. WHAT. I explained to them how the cashier at the cafe was nowhere to be found at the time. I said how if I wanted to eat during my break at that point, I would have had to eat it back in the cafe and then pay for it upfront. They tell me to go home, and that they will contact me tomorrow regarding if I keep my job or not. I left in tears, but then got really angry at the severe overreaction, so I came back in an hour later and told them I quit. Still glad I did.
I was working retail at Best Buy at the time, and they had me working in MP3 players and cell phones department, despite the fact that DVDs/video games were really more my wheelhouse. But I worked where they told me and I did my job well. During Christmas season, it got really busy so everyone was running around helping every department. I was hanging out in my own section when a woman comes over, asks about some headphones, and I help her. She then asks me if the Dance Revolution mat she bought for her daughter is any good. I ask if she has any of the games (she didn’t) and showed her a slightly more expensive (but better) copy of a Konami mat with a game. She thanked me since she didn’t even know it needed a game to go with it and went off.
I thought I’d done a good thing—but my boss’s response was ridiculous. My department manager comes up behind me, tells me to meet him in the breakroom in five minutes, and then rips into me for selling something related to video games. He says that the department with the best revenue gets bonuses (only true for him, not for the rest of us below him) and we shouldn’t be helping customers who are in other sections to get more expensive things. He says he’d be shocked if I made it past the winter. I just say “Yes, sir,” and go back to work. Come January, I get fired by “department manager recommendation”. So, when you go to Best Buy, know that all the departments have their own agendas with you.
When I worked at Circuit City, I had an 80 GB iPod that my dad had given me because he no longer needed it (it was practically brand new). When I first plugged it into my computer, it came up as “Richard’s iPod”. Well, one day it’s in my purse that I kept under my counter while I was working. It goes missing. I couldn’t understand how it had gotten taken.
It had been one of the slowest days ever. Nonetheless, I was pretty freaking bummed out about it. Additionally, this happened during a time when the case we kept iPods at work in was broken and it was terribly easy to take them, and many had gone missing. Fast-forward a few weeks later, my co-worker tells me my former department manager, who had recently left for another job, thought I was the one taking iPods. Apparently, he got into my purse when I wasn’t looking and took it to check the serial number, but never gave it back because I was flipping out and causing a bit of scene, walking around asking everyone if they’d seen anyone take it.
In one of my darker life periods, I was doing part-time tech support for a dinky computer shop here in town. The owner was a pill-popping nutjob that kept a loaded piece in a drawer in the front desk, and regularly cheated his customers. Anyway, I’m working one day, and one of the other techs who had been there forever and a half tells me to go install a modem in some guy’s computer. I’m shaking my head, because this is in 2009 and I can’t believe anyone would be requesting a modem. I ask him if he’s sure before I go out there. He said he was. So, I go out, and sure enough, he doesn’t need a modem at all. He needs a wireless card or adapter. I call, go back to the store, get the card, head back to the customer’s, install it, head back, and yell at the guy for being a jerk.
After all, common sense would tell anyone reasonably competent that he didn’t need a modem. This came back to bite me—hard. Next week the boss comes in and fires me because the other guy made up some absolute garbage about me drilling a hole in a motherboard to fix a PC, which made no sense whatsoever. On my way out, I rolled my eyes and said “Fine, whatever”. I grabbed my stuff and left. The owner freaks out and follows me into the parking lot, yelling and screaming and ranting and raving and trying to pick a fight. I just calmly walked to my car, went home, and had a drink. I found out later that shortly thereafter the other guy was busted for stealing and the owner went bankrupt. Which, I could have seen that coming.
Several years ago, I was working for a sporting goods store as the customer service desk guy. Mostly what I did was returns and some special stuff with Ticketmaster and hunting/fishing licenses. While it wasn’t a glamorous job, I liked it because I’m an outdoors guy, and so the clientele were fun to talk to. One day, we were informed we were getting a new general manager. The old one—who decent guy, but distant—was being transferred. The new manager was a raving harpy. She enjoyed making employees upset, didn’t care at all about our customers, did nothing to improve anything about the store, and kept the other managers in her office with endless meetings about “improving” the store. After a few months of this, and seeing some of the high school girls hired to work crying after her ranting at them, I had enough. I wrote a rather eloquent letter to corporate about her behavior and actions, and had several employees sign it. Two days later, several regional higher-ups arrived and proceeded to chew her out big time. She was suspended for two weeks and told that if the store didn’t improve within the next quarter, she’d be fired. But that’s just the beginning of the story. I thought I had won. But no, I had not. Apparently, she found out it was me who wrote the letter and wanted revenge. So she got into the computer system and started to fake records showing I had been selling gift cards to myself, pocketing the cash difference, and then buying merchandise with those cards. It was mostly candy/pop/small stuff, which she was probably pocketing since our counts weren’t ever off. She then called in loss prevention, who weren’t doing their jobs too well, because they didn’t look closely at the files because they believed it and called in the county sheriffs. Two deputies came and looked over the evidence.
To their credit, they asked “Are you sure?” and “Can you explain this?” several times, and I got the feeling they were unsure about the whole mess. Nice guys, too, they offered to take me out through the back instead of parading me past customers, and were generally courteous and respectful. Still, the hammer came down hard. They ended up arresting me on theft charges. Taken to the pokey, booked, the whole shebang. I was in tears for pretty much three days. But I knew this was garbage, so I got my parents to help hire a lawyer for me. I told him the whole story, and said under no circumstance were we pleading out to anything. He said ok and set up a meeting with the DA to talk about motions and such. When we arrived, the DA was all smiles and very polite. His response made me want to burst out laughing. He informed me that the paperwork wasn’t quite done yet, but that they were dropping all charges and filing False Report charges against my old manager. The investigators had looked over the evidence, and found that A) the files for almost three months’ worth of “thefts” had all been edited on two days, both of which I had not been present for, but that she had, B) they had all been edited from her computer, a computer I did not have access to, and C) several of the “thefts” occurred on days when I was in the system as being out of state on vacation. I felt a lot happier after that, and felt even better when my ex-boss was found to have fled the state. She had checked herself into a mental hospital for a “nervous breakdown”. She was eventually brought back, charged, and convicted. Last I saw she was an assistant manager at a gas station, while I’m now a federal firefighter and in school. It’s only after I saw her pumping gas that I could claim victory over her.
I worked in retail as a cashier at a pet store for a long time, and occasionally when there was nothing going on I would just grab a couple of tennis balls and juggle them to keep myself amused. I’m pretty good at it, can do three in all sorts of weird ways without looking at it or thinking about it, so I converse with customers perfectly normally when I need to. Most of them find it funny. If I didn’t think they would, I’d stop before they even made it close to conversation range, and I’d done it long enough that I was a pretty good judge of that kind of thing. Cue a day such as that, I’m bored and juggling while I watch the front door. A family comes in with little kids, and they laugh at the juggling and come talk to me for a little while. They talk about reptiles (and juggling) while I try to teach one of their sons (five or six years old) how to juggle because he asked me to. Good times were had by all. They walk off and do their shopping with their little son trying to juggle the mini tennis balls I gave him.
Immediately I get called into the back by the assistant manager who decides he’s going to rip me a new one. Apparently, I was being disrespectful to the customers by juggling and not giving them my full attention. I respectfully (perhaps sarcastically, no promises) disagree, and when he looks to the other manager in the room to back him up, you could just tell the guy was completely uninterested in getting involved, and he basically had nothing bad to say. The assistant manager continues to lay into me a bit more, says he’s going to work with me on not being disrespectful like that and if it continued we’d have to have a talk about my employment. I leave. A month later, a new store manager gets hired, walks to the front with the assistant manager, and sees me juggling. The assistant manager gets the look like he’s about to rip me a new one. But the store manager laughs, compliments me on my juggling, goes and grabs his own tennis balls, and starts juggling too. Ah man, the look on the assistant manager’s face…priceless.
A year after I started working for a company as a designer, my wife got pregnant with our first child. This was an office filled mostly with middle-aged women (I was in my mid-late 20s) and they were all excited. They even threw us a baby shower. All goes well and my son is born. I take two weeks’ vacation time to be with my wife and child. It was two weeks that I had saved up. I come back to a nightmare. First, my boss is suddenly very aloof and non-communicative with me where previously she and I were pretty close.
This goes on for several months…until I learn budget cuts have eliminated my position effective in six months from the time I found out. Except…that wasn’t the real reason. Through my co-workers, I found out that my boss was angry that I had a baby and that I “wasn’t dedicated to the cause”. She was also at the budget meeting and initially, there were no cuts to our division, but she threw me under the bus saying my work was non-essential. So here I am with a young family and staring down the barrel of unemployment. Turns out, though, that another company had been following my work and were eager to sign me on. Needless to say, I didn’t do anything for the next six months and am now happy at my current position and making more moolah to boot. Their company is now failing and I poached one of their biggest clients on the way out.
I’m on a diet that requires me to drink a metric ton of water, so I carry around a 1 liter Nalgene bottle at all times. I’m a mid-level manager at a 60-person company. At the end of the work day, on my way out I pass the water cooler and fill my bottle up for the commute home. I thought this was no big deal—I was extremely mistaken about that. Yesterday I was doing just that when our office manager walked up and said the following: “You’re leaving for the day, water is for employees to drink when they are working in the office only”. I laughed it off, finished filling my bottle, and headed home. I thought she was kidding, or at the very worst having a bad day and lashing out.
Well, she wasn’t. Today I get into the office with an email from her to myself, my boss (our CEO/founder), and our HR person saying that I am stealing from the company, that I didn’t stop filling my water bottle and immediately apologize when confronted, and that she is officially reporting this behavior and asking to have it documented. Needless to say, we all had a pretty good laugh about it, my boss/CEO called me in an absolute fit of laughter—he could barely form a sentence he was laughing so hard. Someone else wrote “Is proper hydration good for the company?” on my water bottle. Our office manager, however, is just walking by my office and glaring at me this morning.
I worked in a souvenir shop at an amusement park. It was the fourth of July, AKA one of the busiest days because of the park’s fireworks show. We were also understaffed. The shop was just inside the gate, so it would get swamped just before closing, as people bought the stuff they didn’t want to walk around with all day. I was left alone in the shop just before closing time, running the cash register as people flowed in. It was utter chaos. While closing out the register that night, someone noticed that a large stuffed animal had been stolen.
My trouble started here. The manager simply could not fathom that one person manning a swamped store can’t prevent theft because not all the displays are within sight of the register. I think it must have been a team effort, with one or two people getting my attention in one area while the other walked off with the toy, but I didn’t say that because I really didn’t know when or how it happened. But my boss then accused me of being in on it and looking the other way while a friend took it so we could profit later. I didn’t even know what to say. I was 17, it was my first job, and I cried for days under the assumption that every job I’d ever hold would be like that one.
My friend works at a very large pharmaceutical company at the San Diego office. Now, in San Diego it hardly ever rains, so very few people have umbrellas. Well, on the day of the company Christmas party, it happened to be raining. In the lobby at the security desk they have a pool of umbrellas to loan out to people that don’t have umbrellas. Great! So my friend borrowed one, went to his car, and drove off to the Christmas party. A good time was had by all. At about 10 pm, after leaving the Christmas party, he gets a phone call from his department manager. “Did you take an umbrella?” “Huh?” “Did you take an umbrella from the lobby today?” “Oh…yeah.” “Dude, return the umbrella.” “Yeah, I will bring it back tomorrow.” He couldn’t believe his boss’s next reply.
“No…I need you to go bring it back. Right. Now. You can’t imagine the trouble this has caused.” Well, it turns out that the understanding on the umbrellas is, you return them on the same day. Like, you are supposed to take the umbrella, go to your car, then come back to the front and run in to return the umbrella. Someone who I can only imagine is both a huge witch was having a bad day, needed an umbrella, and went to get on from the front desk to find there were none there. She asked where they all were and the security guard, who I imagine was also having a bad day and is a huge jerk, told her “Well, this guy borrowed one hours ago and never brought it back”. This woman then went on a rampage, calling HR and the manager of the entire site, and my friend’s boss, and everyone else she could think of to complain about the sanctity of the shared umbrellas being ruined. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed and nothing came of it, but for a few hours, the fact my friend borrowed an umbrella was treated by many people at the pharma company as if he had pilfered the recipe for the cure for cancer.
I used to work for a Kroger in Little Rock, Arkansas as a cake decorator part-time. I was never actually trained for the job except how to properly put frosting on the cake or how to make a shell border. Everything else was pretty much self-taught. I used what artist skills I have to not only do a shell border, but also add art nouveau style borders with it, as well as create custom character cakes for birthdays if our store didn’t have the cake kit to make it with. I had created cakes that were unique. I created a “premium” chocolate cake by using chocolate frosting, then using malt balls to create grape vines all over it.
It sold 15 minutes after I put it on the cooler, so I had to make another. Also, you know those little “cupcake cakes” where they take a bunch of cupcakes and make a character? Yeah, I did Goombas and Mario mushrooms from those. After working there for about three months, the bakery manager called me over to the side and told me that the “head cake designer” complained that I was too slow at making the cakes, and because of that, I was now required to stand up for seven hours straight making sandwiches until they feel I can become fast enough to make cakes again. I later found out from other employees that it wasn’t that I was slow…it was because no one was buying the cakes she was making.
In high school, I got into a fist fight at a party, and my opponent popped me in the nose. There was no bruising to my face, so there were no obvious signs of the altercation. I worked at a grocery store, and the next day I was helping my manager pull cases of toilet paper off a high-stock room shelf. I was up on the rack, tossing the cases down to him. While doing this, my nose started bleeding again and dripped blood on his pristine white shirt. He got incredibly angry, pulled me into his office, and accused me of doing substances on the job. He suspended me right then and there.
Also, I was in a “work program” with my high school, and it nearly caused me to fail that portion of the class. But I had a plan to get him back. Fortunately, I was in a union, and filed a grievance. I got paid for the time lost, and had my grade for the work program class restored. But none of this was easy, and I was being accused of being an addict the entire time. I experienced several nail-biting weeks where I wondered if I was going to be able to graduate, all because this guy made a huge assumption.
I was living in Boston at the time, and the city got hit with an epic snowstorm/Nor’easter. Like the good little worker bee I am, though, I shovel out and brave the “state of emergency” to limp up the highway to work. “State of Emergency” means that many businesses (and sometimes the highways) are shut down. An Adult Snow Day, if you will. When I get there, I just get to work, but my manager feels the need to castigate me for being 20 minutes late. I give him a “you’re an interesting specimen” look and get back to work. That night, I had a previous engagement planned. I had already cleared leaving early with my manager, and by the way, I’m a salaried employee. When the end of the day neared, I packed up to go home. It was a whopping 30 minutes early.
I wanted to leave early, knowing that I would probably be a bit late due to the snow—but also knowing that the company is very sensitive about “clocking out early”. So I walk out and am trudging to my car, when, you guessed it, my manager comes running out again. He asks me why I am leaving early. I gently remind him about my prior engagement, and the conversation we had about it. He says, “Yeah, but you came in LATE this morning. You have to make up that time or you are STEALING from the company”. I just looked at him. Then I turned around and left anyway. What a small person he is. Needless to say probably, I don’t work there anymore.
I worked at this expensive little supermarket in an uppity part of Connecticut. I got called to the service desk/floor management office and it turns out exactly $50 dollars was missing from my till. I didn’t take it and a low-level manager whom everyone disliked actually rationalized, in my defense, the loss by saying that it’s possible that some bills could have stuck together. That in itself is unlikely because bills over $20 go in the part of the tray with the checks. Anyway, flash forward a few weeks and I’m starting to know how things typically work in that supermarket. At closing, all our till trays go in a large safe and when the last tray is in it gets locked right after that. But that one generally disliked manager seemed to take her time at the end of the night when locking up the safe and closing the store down. Every time she would do this, within the next few days another person would get pulled aside for discrepancies. I get called in the office again because now $80 went missing, and I get a talking to and a warning. I quit sometime later, but the truth eventually came out.
It turns out this manager would dip into the tills at the end of the night and pinch a few bills. I don’t know if it was exactly what it appeared she was doing, but I know she did get caught taking money nonetheless, in the same manner. Apparently, this manager would also, every few weeks, shop at the place she worked at and barely pay a thing. She would hand in dozens of receipts for bottle returns each time and coupons. The coupons weren’t suspicious in itself. It was the bottle return receipts. Nearly every one of them were from different times of the day, different days of the week. I even recognized a few. She eventually got caught stealing by reusing bottle return receipts from the tills.
I had an employer of mine write me up for stealing trash. In reality, at the end of my shift, one of my duties was to gather all the trash. Oftentimes, I would pick through the trash and sort all the paper, pop cans, and water bottles into our company’s recycle bin. We had a special promotion with our trash company in which our company would get money based on the number of pounds we recycled. It ended up being $1,500 per month AND we didn’t pay our trash bill. So long story short, I got a final write-up for stealing company time for sorting our recyclables. But it gets worse. So I stopped, and the following month, our manager was angry that she had to pay a trash bill. She called the trash company and the company told her that the past two years she didn’t pay for trash because our company would recycle so much. Like, we would get a $1,500 check AND free trash service.
Apparently, my boss thought that the checks were a bonus for her. Anyhow, the district manager was reviewing the write-ups and saw I got written up for stealing trash, so he called me up and asked me what was going on. I told him the story about the trash company and their promotion. He congratulated me for a job well done. Then it got so, so good. The next day he flew in to talk to my manager. He asked my manager what happened to the $20,000 that she got from the trash company. Apparently, she tried to pin it back on me, and our district manager promptly fired her. After escorting her out, he called me into the office. He told me what happened in that meeting and offered me a promotion to Assistant Manager.
I was a chemist working for the government. To measure density, we used to use “pyncometers”, which were defined volume vessels with a hole for a thermometer. We would then perform our analysis on an old balance. In short, it was a total mess and very hard to work with. We had extra money in the budget, so I bought an electronic density apparatus for a new balance. Anyway, my team leader, who was in his 70s, had no idea how it worked—so he forbid me from using it.
But he didn’t stop there. He then ends up telling the lab director that I was “making up science with the balances”. Concerned, the lab director walked me into the wet lab and I showed him how this new piece of equipment would save us hours of work. I did not get the response I wanted. He just laughed and said this is the government, what’s the hurry? Pretty sad.
I work as an editor in television. Once, I did a series for a production company and was told many times by the big bosses how wonderful my storytelling was. After the show ended, they asked me to stay and help edit some shows they had been doing for years. Day one of the new gig, the show’s producer asks me what I think about the new show. “Honest opinion?” I ask. “Of course” she says. “It’s too slow, every episode feels the same and I learn nothing about the subject matter.
With a little massaging we could make it a much more interesting show”, I reply. I was fired two weeks later because my “editorial pacing” is off. I can’t prove it, but I know that witch producer whined about me bagging on her precious show. One of the heads of the company actually had tears in her eyes when she let me go because I was giving her a “what the heck” look the whole time. Silver lining: My next gig doubled my salary and got me an Emmy for editing! Suck it!
I worked as a shift supervisor for a sandwich shop. We had a girl come in and order a number of sandwiches. It was obvious that they weren’t all for her, because she wasn’t sure what the rest of the people wanted. Well, she ordered a sandwich with Dijon mustard on it. She only specified “mustard” but I’d been working here for a few years and knew the routine. I asked her repeatedly if DIJON MUSTARD would be ok, she said that it would be fine. This turned out to be a horrible mistake. About 20 minutes later, one of my employees says to me that there is a customer on the phone who would like to speak with a manager. The minute I pick up the phone I hear somebody shout, literally at full volume, “WHY IS THERE DIJON MUSTARD ON MY SANDWICH?” I asked him what he had ordered. His answer was ” I DON’T KNOW MY DAUGHTER ORDERED IT FOR ME”. I remember the young girl who was in the store earlier and say, “Oh, that’s because she ordered the #8 for you, it comes with Dijon mustard”. He began screaming again “I DIDN’T WANT DIJON MUSTARD, WHAT THE HECK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO ABOUT DINNER?” I kind of stammer now, because after all, a grown man is asking me what he should do for dinner. Once I began to talk, he exclaims, “WHAT ABOUT MY DINNER?” and every time I try to speak he begins yelling. I knew just what to do.
I sit in silence. About 30 seconds of silence goes by and then he asks condescendingly, “Oh, nothing to say, huh?” To this I reply, “Sir, if you are going to cut me off and yell at me I cannot help you”. Well, he hung up. I thought it was all over…until he calls back even madder. “LET ME SPEAK TO THE MANAGER” “Sir, I am the manager” “NO YOU’RE NOT YOU’RE A KID” “I don’t believe my age has any relevance to my ability to run a sandwich shop” “WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO ABOUT MY DINNER, IT’S RUINED!?” “Sir, that is the sandwich your daughter ordered, I will gladly give you a new sandwich if you return the defective one” “OK I WANT IT DELIVERED” “Sure thing, where do you live?” Whatever he said was WAYYY out of our delivery range. “Sir, I cannot have our driver go that far, but if you would come back, I would gladly make you a new sandwich”. Incoherent screaming from that point on. I called the store owners and warned them that a corporate complaint was about to be lodged against me. I told them the story. They laughed, and said “good job”. The rest of the night I thought at any moment there would be a very angry man who hates Dijon bust through the door and fight me. I felt really bad for his daughter, too. In order to protect the privacy of those depicted, some names, locations, and identifying characteristics have been changed and are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead are entirely coincidental