The Worst Bosses In The World

By liza / Jan 10, 2023

There’s nothing worse than finding out your boss is a horrible person who will do anything to make you want to quit. Or worse, they fire you for something that wasn’t even your fault.

These poor people have been through hell and back since they discovered their new boss is a nightmare to deal with. Scroll down to read some of the most disturbing and strange stories that will make you ask yourself, “how is this even possible?”

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1. No, It’s Not Just Stress, Jerry

Jerry. Jerry wouldn’t let me go to the emergency room after the heavy vaginal bleeding I had been experiencing suddenly got way worse.

I went over his head and got permission to go. I called my mom and told her to meet me in the ER. The ER nurse said he’d never seen so much blood. An ER nurse said this.

It’s determined I need a couple of blood transfusions and will be admitted. My mom calls Jerry, who then proceeds to tell her that it’s just stress and that I NEED TO GET BACK TO WORK. At this point, I couldn’t even lift my own head up, but sure, I can take a bus across town and go back to work.

I ended up needing another hospital stay later for a D&C. They found a large growth that needed a biopsy.

Jerry kept insisting that it couldn’t be cancer because I’d be tired and losing weight. I had lost eight pounds in a week and went to bed the minute I got home.

I was still recovering from the procedure when Jerry called me to let me know I was fired for taking too much time off. Five days later, I was diagnosed with cancer. Fuck you, Jerry. Fuck you.

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2. A Priceless Moment

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.

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3. Don’t Rub It In My Face

I’m a personal assistant and have worked for some very wealthy and insane people . . . Wealth-management CEO & his Russian bride: He would tell me every day of the new jewelry and sports cars he was buying his wife.

Literally, every day she got a gift that cost over $50k! He spent more on her daily than I would make working for him in one year. Russian bride when I had to help her would never look at me, or even speak to me unless she had no choice.

She would just make hand gestures, or the maid would “translate” her glares to me.

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4. A Creep

My boss is an absolute HR nightmare. First of all, he’s the CEO of the company and thinks he can get away with anything because his brother is the company lawyer, and his other brother is the HR manager.

He is SUPER inappropriate. Like makes awful sexual comments to me all the time. In the beginning, he used to hug me ALL THE TIME. When I told him that I wasn’t much of a hugger, he said, “Well, we will have to change that.” Creepy. He also told me all about his first sexual experience (with a co-worker!) and said that women should be more sexually aggressive in the workplace. Putting in my two weeks on Monday.

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5. A Secret Camera

I worked for a small independent company, running the little office doing admin, accounting, etc. Hated the boss, as he was an egomaniac and probably psycho, but got on with the job.

However, unbeknownst to me, he’d decided to plant a hidden camera disguised as a movement sensor, perfectly placed to watch me. He told me off for doing a crossword while he was out of the office; I had a snoop around, found it, and quit.

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6. Oh, C’mon!

I once worked at a discount sportswear store, and my supervisor was an absolute tosser. I was on the minimum wage with no overtime payment, and he wouldn’t let me go home until two hours after my finishing time because the coathangers weren’t fully extended.

Pretty impossible when you’re working in the childrenswear department!

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7. Nice Try

My boss threatened to fire me after less than a month on the job because they found out I suffer from depression and anxiety, both of which I manage extremely well, I think.

I was an apprentice supposed to be being trained in admin but ended up just being a scape goat for their negligence. One story that sticks in my head was her telling me I’d messed up some prescriptions, and a couple of people with terminal illnesses had nearly died because of it.

I was an apprentice admin assistant, prescriptions weren’t even in my department. I quit after 2 months. Funny thing is, I’ve met people who previously worked for them, and turns out I’m not the only one they’ve taken advantage of, and the patients see it too.

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8. Not Cheerful Enough

I worked for this guy at an ice cream store. He kept cutting my hours for arbitrary reasons, so I got another job and put in my two weeks’ notice.

Halfway through my two weeks’ notice, I got the flu and tried to call in. He told me if I didn’t show up, I would be fired. So I showed up, and he told me I wasn’t being “cheerful enough” for the customers.

So I looked at him, said nothing, grabbed my bag, and walked out the door. At this point, he followed me and threatened to call my new job and tell them I was a terrible employee. I called his bluff, and then called my new job to give them a heads-up.

They said, “We don’t care, you’re already hired. Feel better, we’ll see you Monday.”

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9. Costly Mistakes

At my last job, I must have been fired 30-40 times. Each time I left, knowing that I would be called back the next morning with my boss begging to have me meet him for breakfast.

In most cases, I was paid $100 just to accept my old job back. Other times, I was given a raise or a paid day off, which are both unheard of in my industry. You’d think this crazy guy would just learn to mind his temper, but I guess he liked paying (literally) for each of his mistakes.

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10. The Final Straw

I started work at a company, and the first day the owner was hospitalized for a risky pregnancy for her final trimester. I had no real training, had NO idea what I was doing, and the final straw is when she had someone install 2 webcams with mics & speakers to my computer.

One facing me, one facing my screen. I found out during a phone call that it was an open line and she was watching me 8 hours/day to make sure I was… working? Doing well? 

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11. Micro Managers

The last job I started on the first shift. My supervisor was a chain smoker and called in sick 10+ days in my one year working there. She also got bronchitis but continued to smoke. Addiction is scary stuff.

I moved over to the second shift, and my new supervisor was 400+ pounds. He literally had drool hanging from his chin to his chest the first day I had a conversation with him.

Both were micro-managers. I could not, for the life of me, ever take them seriously or give them full respect.

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12. Cheap-Ass

A friend of mine used to work for a well-known communications company. One day, the CEO of the company visited the office. He went into the break room and counted the supplies.

He then announced that he could tell from the proportion of coffee to the sweetener that people were taking the sweetener and taking it home. He then ordered the discontinuation of coffee service for all company offices.

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13. A “Compliment”

At my old job, my manager managed to cut my hand while showing me how to “safely” open boxes. She then refused to let me fill out an accident report since it was “just a cut” and apparently only needed a band-aid.

I bled through six bandaids during my shift and still have a scar. (This was the same job [different manager] that told me that they couldn’t do anything about sexual harassment and that I should take it as a compliment. So glad that place closed down.)

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14. What’s The Hurry?

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.

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15. No Sweaters At This Company

I was yelled at, like a child, in front of my officemates, for like three minutes. And the reason why baffles me to this day. It was for wearing a sweater.

My boss accused me of using it to agitate my allergies and make me sneeze. I have no idea what me sneezing would accomplish to benefit me, but there you have it.

Mind you, this was in Hawaii, and AC in buildings has two settings: broken and walk-in freezer… guess what ours was set to?

She was demoted a month later and transferred, so the story has a happy ending.

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16. It’s Their Loss

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. On 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!

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17. He Does Nothing

We never get promotions or raises. Every person holds multiple positions. Nobody gets paid overtime. If we go over the 40 hours a week (and almost everyone does), we don’t get paid for the rest, yet we are expected to work overtime to finish the work.

If you don’t finish, the boss will belittle you. Boss constantly shortens people money, so you need to constantly have a record of your hours. Sometimes your paycheck will be several days late.

No calling in sick unless you can find a cover, but we don’t ever have coverage because everyone works too much. The restaurant might be out of a crucial ingredient. In that case, you will have to buy it yourself so that customers won’t complain. You will not be compensated.

Where is the boss through all of this? He’s going on vacations. He’s putting his children through private schools. He’s buying new cars. He’s virtually M.I.A. until he wants someone to cook him a meal.

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18. So Much Trust In That Kid

Had her 8-year-old daughter wander around the office and report who was not working. I was fired because said daughter either lied or had no sense of time and told mama that I had spent 30 minutes chatting with a friend.

I actually just paused by his desk to say “Hi” on my way to the bathroom. That was only one of many many many many horrible things.

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19. The Audacity

When I was 16, I worked at McDonald’s. I always volunteered for the early morning shift on the weekends because no one else wanted it. So, I would show up to work at 5:30 AM to open the store.

One morning, I got a phone call at 5:00 AM in the morning as I was getting ready for work. Turns out, the manager was reviewing my timecards.

Apparently, it looked like SIX MONTHS AGO, instead of taking a 30-minute lunch break, I took a 26-minute lunch break, which is against company policy.

I explained that it was because the store was really busy and my manager asked me to clock in early to help out during the lunch rush. The manager on the phone said, “Doesn’t matter.”

“You should have known the rules, and just because someone asks you to break a rule, you should know better than to listen. We cannot employ someone who knowingly breaks company rules”.

And I was fired with less than 30 minutes notice. The real reason was infuriating. Turns out, since I had worked at the store since I was 14, I was owed a significant pay bump once I hit my two-year mark, and they wanted to get rid of me before that happened.

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21. They Tried To Make Me Look Bad

I’ve worked as a city worker before. But I swear to God, it was one of the most annoying jobs ever. I was constantly told that I was working too hard and needed to be lazier.

See, these old guys don’t want to look bad as they sit around all day making lewd comments about girls that are too young for them, so they get mad at me for actually doing stuff.

I almost got fired a few times because of it. It just made the days take forever, and made me so angry.

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21. Treating Me Like A Child

One period during my job, my boss thought I was goofing off in the restroom for some reason. His solution? For a few months there, he wouldn’t let me flush the toilet until he came in and made sure I actually used it. Like I was a toddler.

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22. Enough Is Enough

We had a younger manager at McDonald’s for my first 10 months. Then they decided to bring in a second manager from another store. The first week he was fine.

Until one day when one of the girls who usually worked drive-thru was put on the grill for no reason. She got grease on her shirt, and he told her that she looked like a pig.

Then he said to clean up or go home. She left crying. The next day another underage kid asked to just get a drink of water after a 3-hour non-stop rush. The kid looked like he was about to pass out.

The manager told him no, so he said he’d drink from the sink in the back. He told him if he did that, he’d send him home.

I lost it when I heard that. I went off at him and then left. I never went back. I heard that he was fired a month later.

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23. A Psycho

I was filling out some daily reports for a lifeguarding job at a local pool. Just basic stuff like chemical levels and stuff. I was leaning over the counter to get a better angle to write, and all of a sudden I feel a sharp pain in my shoulder blade, and turn around to see my psychotic boss with an open stapler in hand, cackling like a lunatic. 

Took me about a minute to get it out, and I quit the next day, seriously considering suing. This chick worked with kids and was absolutely nuts.

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24. Not Worth It

I had been running the restaurant for weekend nights for three years. These were not easy shifts. They were from 5 PM–3 AM, and the restaurant was always packed with drunk college kids.

Still, I was a night owl, and it was my pleasure. Or it was until I took a few days off and went to a hot spring with my wife. On our way back, I noticed that my leg hurt.

Within 2 hours, I was in the hospital for a severe infection. It needed three antibiotics at once to treat. I called in sick three days in advance. My AGM told me to heal up and that they would cover my shift.

They did not. For my “first infraction,” they gave me a final warning. I was one step from being fired after all my years of hard work. I put in my notice the next day.

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25. A Power-Hungry Monster

She was a power-hungry monster. She hated the idea that staff have a second on shift without doing something, even if there is literally nothing to do. One day, after we had spent 2 hours cleaning the shelf (the last job), she came down and told us to clean it again.

Even though we protested that we had just done it she said we shouldn’t get paid if we weren’t doing anything. There was nothing to do! I had to re-clean a perfectly clean shelf.

At least I now get paid three times the amount she does in a far better job.

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26. I Couldn’t Take It Anymore

I was 19 and working my first job. My awful boss criticized my lipstick, saying that the color was ugly and recommending a bright red lipstick to match with my bright red uniform shirt.

He also didn’t like my choice of all black shoes. And he didn’t like the way I mopped the floor. He would take the mop from me and show how to “properly” do it.

His condescension was insane. But the day he creepily told one of my coworkers that she couldn’t wear a sports bra under her uniform (because it “flattens” certain things), I knew I couldn’t deal with him. I quit a few days later.

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27. A Terrible Experience

I worked at a pizza place for about two months before quitting. I was pretty bad at the job, but to top it off, the owners found the most random things to blame on me.

We write a “K” or “Q” for King- or Queen-sized pizzas on the order ticket. These customers wanted a King but the cooks made a Queen by accident. The owner told everyone it was my fault for “using the wrong pen” on the ticket.

I ended up quitting because the cooks moved a ticket to the “in the oven” spot before they made it. Honest mistake. However, my family was in the restaurant that day and overheard the owners telling the customers that it was my fault for putting the ticket in the wrong spot.

When I asked the owner if she said that, she said no. I quit right then. I made a lot of money, but it was a terrible experience.

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28. What An Asshole

I worked in retail under a really awful supervisor a few years back. Note that he was a supervisor and not anywhere close to being a manager or anyone important.

He would constantly hit on the young girls and treat the young guys like absolute crap when he saw them as a threat to his “game”.

I remember walking back to a project from the bathroom and intended to stop for not even 2 minutes to chat with a girl I was friends with. He happened to be there, having walked over from the same project to chat with her as well.

As soon as I walked up, he blurted out, “Is this the bathroom? No? I didn’t think so.” He proceeded to stare at me until I walked away.

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29. Karma’s A Witch

Back when I was in high school, I worked for my town’s parks department. One time, my boss—who was a total sleazeball and hated me mostly for not being female—calls me into his office.

While there, he accuses me of taking a $3 check and then says that I have to be let go. I tell him point-blank that if I was to take from the department, it would be something a lot more than a measly three-dollar check.

I mean, what the heck would I do with that anyway? Later on, I find out from a friend of mine that he found the check underneath his desk, and then a month later someone finally reported him for harassment, and he got fired too. Karma’s a witch.

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30. Thank God She Was Fired

I had a boss who would scream in my face so often, I started to strategize how I would handle it when she finally hauled off and hit me. She never did, but she did eventually lose her job after being accused of hurting children.

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31. Very Toxic

I had a boss who tried making every single interaction into an argument or confrontation. I would be at work, going about my business, and he would come around, and our interactions would go something like, “I want you to do it this way,” he’d tell me.

I’d say, “that’s how I’m doing it, that’s how I’ve always done it.” He’d answer, “don’t argue with me, just do what I’m telling you to do!” If I protested, he’d interrupt me and yell, “if you can’t do it the right way, I’ll find somebody who can!”

My only course of action around this guy was to act dumb and make him feel like he was a wise old sage because he had been there for longer.

Sometimes 30 years of experience just means that you’ve sucked at your job for 30 years. Oh, and during my last review with him, he wanted to know why we weren’t better friends.

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32. He Had No Backbone

Instead of talking to me, or any employee for that matter, he cut my hours from the 20s and 30s to 0. Then he avoided me for the next few weeks until I finally got fed up and just quit.

He had no backbone and just did a horrible job managing a crappy office supply store, he was let go shortly after I quit.

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33. No Raise, No Work

My efficiency scores all quarter were on track to be amazing, but when the time came for raises, I received an impossible task. When I couldn’t complete it, it was used as the reason for not giving me a raise.

This was complete BS. Our company was growing and becoming more and more profitable because we were accepting bigger jobs. But management never hired new workers.

A lot of us would stay late and work overtime, guaranteeing the company profits, but never meaning any of us would see a penny. Eventually, after we didn’t get raises for two years, I changed careers.

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34. This Is Not How You Treat People

I received a massive paycut when I announced that I was going to leave the company. I was courteous enough to give him a 2-month heads up so that we can hire someone and I could train him.

When I announced that I needed more money and that I would stay an extra 2 weeks, I received another substantial pay cut (I think he was hoping I would stay longer the more pay cuts I got). Nope, didn’t work this time. I decided to leave earlier now.

In total, the pay cut was approximately 600 dollars a month, which equates to nearly 10k-15k a year with taxes calculated in.

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35. The Worst Combo Ever

He was “that” guy, you know, the one-upper. “I just ate at a great Peruvian restaurant down the str…” “Oh that’s nothing, I lived in Peru for a week, and the food is much better.

No matter what you’re talking about, he will interrupt and manage to make it about him, plus he was a pathological liar.

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36. No, Just No

They changed the commission structure mid-month and did not update the sales staff on the new goals. I missed my commission of $3,800 by $4. I thought that I had been $500 over my goal, so I let junior sales reps take sales to get them over their goals too.

That would qualify our group for the site-wide bonus, which I later learned did not exist anymore. We lost four reps in a day over $6k in commissions. The company ended up sending most of the senior staff to the clink on tax evasion charges soon after we left.

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37. Not Healthy Environment

He was mad that the marketing director asked me to move a bunch of PC’s so she could do a photo shoot – I guess he felt I should have been doing more important things (this was after work hours, and I was doing it on my own time pretty much as a favor).

He punched the wall and yelled, “WTF is she doing having you do this sh*t” and stormed off. Not the most healthy environment to work in.

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38. I’m Never Coming Back

I was at my workplace for 27 years. In one year, they terminated all the legacy developers and had us hired to an offshore company. After a year, that company started paying us off and replacing us with offshore workers.

I was slated to stay because I was a higher-level manager. But my team was shrinking, and so our productivity tanked.

I could not stomach the toxic environment and attitude. I left and now have less responsibility and more pay. Now the original employer wants me back. It’s going to cost them if I even entertain the idea, which I don’t plan on doing.

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39. He Couldn’t Pay The Bills

He talked big, but had no business sense. He somehow managed to get a whole bunch of stuff on credit, which he never paid back, to the point that when the company went bankrupt, there was literally nothing to sell off in order to recoup lost wages.

One month of labour for me alone left him owing me a little over $2k I’ll never see. The company had product to sell, but was wasting money on useless expansions instead of actually selling the product.

Stuff like a fully sponsored Nascar racecar, a large trailer covered in full wrap advertising, a lawyer, multiple accountants, a personal assistant (who happened to be the lawyers daughter…), a new building for a branch of the company in Nova Scotia, which we were all pretty sure he did so he could have somewhere to hide.

Then the people in Nova Scotia thought he was hiding in our office when they couldn’t find him to pay their bills.

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40. What’s Your Problem?

I work at a museum. The board president basically cussed me out on the phone before a big seasonal event, saying that she heard from other people that I was not giving 100% dedication to my job and that I needed to get my game up or face some serious consequences. Everyone was stressed due to the event, and I was upset.

I emailed her after that conversation because it had come completely out of left field. I had never had anyone complain about how I did my job – tourists, the executive director, or the president and the rest of the executive board. No one had complained before. So, I asked her to tell me who it was that had a problem.

Her response shocked me. Apparently, no one had said anything. She hadn’t “heard” from anyone. She just listed a bunch of her own grievances about what I was doing, which were basically all trivial. I told her that she could just tell me that she was unhappy with things as they happened especially since I was never told not to do these things.

I lost a lot of respect for her that day, but I was still employed. So, I counted my blessings. Also, I found out that the executive director and the president were paying me $1.25 less than they originally agreed. When I first got the job two years prior, they gave me a job description that had the original pay on it.

Naively, I didn’t make a copy. When I’d started, my paycheck was much less than I thought it would be, and I was given another job description with the lower pay on it. I didn’t make a fuss because I was hard up for money, and I needed the job. Plus, the museum was kind of doing something shady. I also had no backbone.

My boss and the entire executive board stepped down from their positions, and I found my original job description with the original pay. I’m now getting paid what I was supposed to plus back pay. Working here used to be a nightmare. But the new executive board is pretty nice.

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41. Apparently, I Knew What I Was Doing

The vice president told me I was being disrespectful during a conversation. I asked how, and she told me that I, “knew what I was doing.” I asked again, stating that I had asked because I did not actually know how.

She told me she didn’t have time for me because I “knew what I was doing,” and again had no time for this. She was nuts.

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42. He Was Absolutely Crazy

You know those PA systems at car dealerships that you can hear several blocks away? The sales manager used to use them to yell at us, like even when we were inside the showroom.

I’ve never seen a grown man cry at work other than at this dealership, and it would happen fairly regularly. The worst is he would call his wife and scream the most awful obscenities at her in the middle of the showroom.

It’s hard to sell a Camry when there’s a man screaming, “fuck you, c*nt” 10 feet away.

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43. An Alcoholic Boss

He is an alcoholic who owns his own bar, which is a bad combination. He gets drunk nightly and then berrates the bartenders in front of customers. I loved the job except for dealing with him.

I was fired after working there for two years because I left chairs stacked and apparently didn’t fit in…at a bar I’ve worked at and been a patron of for 3 years. It’s a year later, and I still have old customers bump into me in public and know my name.

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44. No Shame

He called me at 8:45 am to come in on my day off at 9:30, I live an hour away from my work, which he knows. To put a cherry on top at the time I was at the hospital as my sister was having a baby.

I told him that I couldn’t make it, and he explained to me that he needs me to be ready to work 24/7 regardless of the circumstances, and he was extremely disappointed in my being so unprepared.

He has not said one word to me since, this happened 3 weeks ago.

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45. I Moved Across The Country For Nothing

I interviewed for a new job and moved across the country (coast to coast) under the impression that I would be working a high-level job in line with my degree and post-graduate training. A few days before I was supposed to start, I was to go out to dinner with my boss.

The boss called me and told me they had stepped down from their position (down within a month of hiring me).

The kicker: Upon starting, it was more of an entry level position than my last job, and not at all what I had interviewed for.

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46. Don’t Mess With Me

I was the manager of a nightclub. One morning I got a phone call from the assistant manager saying my services were no longer required, and he was taking over my position at the request of the owner. So, I rang repeatedly to ask why I’d lost my job, and I couldn’t get through.

The owner was always unavailable. I rang every hour for 2 days. So, in the end, after coming to the realization that I’d been fucked over, I rang the inland revenue and asked if I was due a rebate. They had no knowledge of me working in the place despite the owners telling me I was paying tax and national insurance that was taken from my wages each week.

I was also issued a wage slip each week. So I reported him. Told the inland revenue his name, how many bars he owned, including the names, what car he drove, how many staff he had working for him, and a description.

2 months later, he had to sell up and move on. A few of his other bars closed down not long after that.

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47. She Has Anger Issues

As part of a former job, we had to do file audits, and some of the files were pretty thick. (Worked in a prison, inmate files, auditing for release dates or security levels, some of these guys had been in longer than I’ve been alive)

My boss came across one I’d missed, and brought this file back to my office, and threw it at me. Luckily for her, it didn’t hit me, but it did pass about 4 inches in front of my face.

I went to HR, and reported it. I also told the HR rep that if she ever throws anything at me again, I will throw it back & my aim is better. Funny, tho-my response didn’t end up in anything submitted to corporate.

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48. Girls Only

Worked at a cafe, the boss was reluctant to hire males. Hired management from his other franchises who knew nothing about coffee and promoted the stupidest girls to shift managers.

One girl shut off our sandwich fridge one night and ruined over $350 dollars of merchandise, and was promoted to shift manager a week later cause the boss probably liked her tits. I dealt with my awful boss by finding a job somewhere else.

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49. I Shut Them Down

Mine was aware of some sexual harassment that had occurred with my then girlfriend/co-worker and another co-worker and refused to step up to the plate and do something about it. I got the boss demoted, and the store shut down.

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50. No Compassion

I had a boss who told me I had no choice and had to come into work despite the fact I was currently hospitalized and wheel-chair bound due to the mother of all seizures.

She was furious when I brought in a medical certificate saying I could not work, didn’t want to have to find somebody to cover me, etc.

To make matters worse, she was epileptic, too, and regularly took time off due to her condition.

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51. Fired For $13

I got robbed at an old job because a door in the basement of the building was left unlocked. Nobody had ever told me anything about it or even showed me around the building. My boss blamed the robbery on me.

I had been in a fairly brutal fight with the robber and was in no mood to take his guff over the $13 that the robber had managed to get, so I quit. When I came back to pick up my pay check, everyone had been told that I was fired.

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52. He Stole My Work

Took my name off the $10 million dollar grant proposal I wrote and replaced it with his name before it was submitted. The grant was funded. No one knows I wrote it except him and me.

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53. Time Clock Thievery

My boss once accused me of “time clock thievery” while I was doing volunteer work. It was a simple volunteer gig, like it wasn’t a major organization and nobody was keeping track of hours for anything.

My volunteer work was also not court-mandated. We were cleaning up at the end of the day and I answered a phone call. The supervisor got all angry at me, saying, “Get off the phone! That’s time clock thievery!”

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54. It Was A Set-Up

After working at Subway for five years, three of those being a manager, I was accused of turning off the cameras in the store and getting high in the cooler. It was absolutely untrue, and I quit shortly after.

But then I found out the chilling truth. In the end, it turned out the owner, who hated me for no reason, was just trying to set me up to fire me.

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55. She Needs A Chill Pill

I once used the phrase “more than one way to skin a cat” around a manager who had never heard the phrase.

She called me into her office later to ask why I was saying such disgusting things, accused me of being a sicko who kills animals, and then threatened to fire me if she heard anything like it ever again. She had never heard the phrase before.

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56. Not So “Obvious”

Last night, my manager called me stupid and uneducated. Her reasons were mind-blowing. It was for not cheating a customer out of 15 dollars due to a computer error. She thought it was obvious I should lie about the error and garner another whopping 15 dollars from the struggling hospitality industry.

Today I go in for a meeting to get scolded for not lying, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to burst into tears.

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57. An Interesting Accusation

I worked at Sears, and I gave someone 0% financing for six months on their Sears card on a purchase. I thought we were running a promotion at the time, though it turned out we were not.

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.

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58. A Male Version Of ‘Karen’

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.

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59.A Job For Female Workers Only

My slightly pudgy boss would always recruit another female coworker and me to put ointments on his constant stream of recent back tattoos. It was a music venue, so I’m sure weirder things have happened. But still. Creepy boss.

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60. He Hates Me

He hired me in March before I graduated from law school. Then, about 2 days before graduation, called me into his office and told me he never wanted me in the first place and that I had been forced on him by the shareholders, and that if it were up to him they’d let me go.

We basically had a conversation that boiled down to if I stepped even a little out of line, he was going to fire me.

Mind you, it was now too late for me to feasibly seek another top-notch firm because I had skipped the prime recruiting time, thinking I had a good job.

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61. Lies

Hired me as a Java Developer and then put me on a 6-month project working on proprietary mining maintenance software from the mid-80s that’s classed as a 4GL language, with which I had no experience and no interest.

Signed my 6-month lease the day before the job started and moved hundreds of kilometers away from my friends and GF at the time for this job based on a complete lie.

Straight up told me to my face I’d be doing Java dev work in the interview…The company didn’t use Java at ALL. Basically ruined my life for 6 months.

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62. No Proof But Still Got Accused

2 months long lifeguard apprenticeship (paid) in Europe. When I came into the office to pick up my paycheck after the apprenticeship was done, my boss informed me that I was accused of making a copy of a key to an employee’s common room and that I supposedly gave it to some thugs who broke in and stole a couple of things.

Obvious reaction – WFT? Any proof? – No, but I know it was you, so here is your paycheck minus the value of the stuff that was stolen (~$200). If I see you again around here, I will notify the police.

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63. Not One, But Three

Boss #1

Accused me of stealing $1,200 cash. Fired me. Found the money where he’d left it a couple of hours later.

Boss #2

Upon hearing the news that I’d been laid up for a week with a serious case of food poisoning, remarked that I should use this as a great way to start on some weight loss.

Boss #3 

Tried to make me sign a contract with an impossible, unreachable sales quota that stated I would agree to termination if I didn’t achieve it. I’d made goals every year with previous 80%, 47%, and 80% increases. This was yet another 80%. I knew just enough about contract law, signing under duress, and bilateral consideration to tell him to go screw himself with a big smile on my face.

Out of 20 reps, I was the only one who didn’t sign, and I suffered no consequences for it.

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64. Lesson learned

My boss asked me to take a 1/3 pay cut because he had cancer and had to go to Greece for treatment. I agreed. Two months of vacation pictures later I realized…No one goes to Greece for cancer treatment, he was on vacation, and I was an idiot.

I was young, but lesson learned. Don’t believe anything management says.

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65. The Trash Thief

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 for 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.

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66. It Wasn’t Even My Fault

I worked for an ambulance company and was almost suspended for allowing damage to come to my vehicle. Because some random kid shot at it, leaving two bullet holes, one damaged windshield, and two terrified EMT’s.

Yep…I was nearly suspended for 48 hours for being shot at. Luckily the union squashed it pretty swiftly, but the fact that my supervisor tried to do that set off a chain of events that led me to getting a much better job.

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67. Never Work For Free

Boss didn’t pay me, claiming to have no money. I agreed to wait and get it later. Found out he bought a new car that month… I never got my money.

Lesson learned: The second my wage is late more than 3 days, I go to a lawyer and stop working.

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68. I’m Glad I Reported Him

I was working at a small brewery/bar and caught the owner dipping into the tip jar at the end of big nights. It was a new place that just opened and was kind of struggling during the off-season.

We literally had a staff of two bartenders and the owners (husband and wife), so the bar staff would pool and split that day’s tips.

Come to find out that he was taking a cut of the tips because ‘he worked there too.’ When I confronted him, I explained that it was actually a violation of the F.L.S.A. In fact, it’s even an exact example listed as illegal things to do with tips.

He argued that it was his right as owner and fired me, so I reported him to the Department of Labor.

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69. Simply No Words

I worked as a bartender at a hibachi place, and the owner was dirt cheap. A rat in the attic kept chewing through the Coca-Cola syrup containers and ate the syrup until it felt full.

After throwing one box away—50 to 75 dollars in value—the owner decides that it was wasteful, and he taped it up and continued to serve the rat-infested Coke syrup. The very next day, I just walked out: no words, no goodbye, just quit.

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70. Sometimes Warranties Mean Nothing

I was a mechanic that found out that the company was not letting me fix customers’ cars that had oil leaks when the customers had paid for a 200k-mile warranty.

The manager would tell the service writer to say that the warranty company declined it and eventually started making me take a photo for him so that he could tell me that the leak wasn’t bad enough to fix.

The customer paid for a warranty, and the company wasn’t holding up their end of the deal because it was costing them money. They are one of the most profitable car dealerships in my town and now have 3 dealerships and are expanding.

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71. Justice Has Been Served

At the first company I worked for, the general manager had all his personal expenses paid by the company. His wife also had a company credit card and was paid a salary but she didn’t work.

The company paid for things like their groceries, house mortgage, car payments and family vacations. The kicker is he wasn’t the owner of the company.

He had a creative accountant that hid these expenses but the owners became suspicious and they hired an auditor. It took them about four years to figure it out. He was fired and his family fled the country so I am not sure what happened to him.

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72. A Sexist Idiot

I worked for IBM. I made 30k less than the opposite gender doing the same job. Additionally- My VP once yelled, like the screaming kind, at one of my co-supervisors in a meeting for hiring a pregnant woman once he found out.

Called him an idiot because “Now they had to pay for her to go on a 2-month free vacation,” and “it was a waste of everyone’s time to bother training her,” and “we shouldn’t even hire women if they plan on getting pregnant” and “how can we term her out before the baby is born without getting in trouble because we won’t be able to after it’s born.”

He was a joooy to work for. The real reason I left was because he was a lunatic and I couldn’t take it anymore.

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73. The Forgetful One

Working at a cafe, my boss would tell me he was running to the store and would come back an hour and a half later smelling like vodka and cigarettes.

Turns out he had been leaving me there to do the work of two people while he was at the bar for an hour. This was after he made the schedule on a day-by-day basis and ‘forgot’ to give us our tips.

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74. That Math Just Doesn’t Add Up

Worked in a restaurant that didn’t allow employees to work over 40 hours as they did not want to pay any overtime. Instead, if you wanted to work extra or if they asked you to work extra, they would delete hours off of your time card to keep it under 40.

They always asked you when they did that in a kind of hush-hushed way so it wasn’t exactly without permission, but I think it was bullsh*t all the same

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75. 400 Stolen Work Hours

Growing up, my father always told me to save my pay stubs and time receipts. I ended up working a job in my early 20s at an airport, moving cars. I get my paycheck one day, and I realize that it’s not right. So I do a little digging and a lot of math, and I figure out that the company was taking hours from me.

I ask around, and it turns out that they were taking hours from literally everyone at the job site. After doing more math, we figured out that over the six months, we all worked together, the company had stolen a combined 400 hours from eight people.

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76. A New Policy

Had a job out of college selling advertising for a yellow page company. A big part of the job was just renewing the old ads in the book, and we had to call each business to have them renew their ad.

But as the yellow pages book became more and more obsolete, more customers would cancel their ads. So the company changed the policy of having us call each business and instead put in a policy where any customer who didn’t specifically call to cancel would be auto-renewed.

Then they would purposefully send out the renewal notices late enough that the customers couldn’t cancel in time to avoid the following years’ charges. If one of us did actually get a call from a customer looking to cancel and with time to legitimately do so, and we actually cancelled them….fired.

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77. I’m Outta Here!

My boss screamed at me for over an hour on multiple occasions, most of which had absolutely nothing to do with me, and what did have anything to do with me could easily have been explained if he didn’t believe his assumptions were God’s honest truth.

He wanted me to gather information, some of which was only located online, but we had dial up and I wasn’t allowed to tie up the only phone line. Plus, I wasn’t allowed to work from home — where we had normal internet access — to do it, because employees can’t be trusted to work from home. Then he screamed at me for my incompetence because I was missing this crucial data.

My last day (though I didn’t know it when I walked in that day) I had a doctor’s appointment, which I had emailed him about but he claimed never to have gotten. Apparently he’d emailed me about having a meeting the same morning, which I never got (funny how he always got my timesheets, but never any other emails).

So when I got there after my appointment, I could tell he was royally pissed, which is usually a good sign to stay the hell out of his way. Finally, at the end of the day we had one last all-out argument when he apparently couldn’t contain himself any longer.

At the end of the argument he thought I quit and I thought he fired me. Either way, I will never work for him again, and I’ve never been happier than at my current job.

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78. No More Free Work

A theater I used to work for forced employees in the snack bar to work overtime until the cleaning was complete. They would then go back and retroactively change timecards so that everyone clocked out right at 11:15 for closing, as closing was only supposed to take 30 minutes after the last showtime starts at 10:45.

I was a weekend closer for a few years, and occasionally would be there until 1am+ on really busy nights when management wanted things detailed. All of those hours went into the nether.

They’d hide the fact that you weren’t getting overtime by lying on your pay stub. They also used to fudge lunch breaks, saying that it was ‘too busy’ to send employees on their lunch at a proper time, so you’d occasionally show up to work and go on lunch 15-30 minutes after arriving, or you’d go on ‘lunch’ after 7.5 hours in your shift and just end 30 minutes early, but with an expectation that you’d hang around for 30 minutes until you your shift was over.

I do my best to avoid their theaters, despite them being everywhere.

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79. The Worst Manager Ever

Reminds me of my first kitchen manager. She was so insane that she would make a list of little stupid stuff that wouldn’t be perfect when she walked in.

Common items would be: pen left on counter, microwave not set to zero — I never used it my whole shift (I’m a cook, cooks don’t make food with microwaves), it was the nurses [who used it] after hours — radio not set to her station, etc. You get the idea.

When I found out she was fired right before Christmas, that was music to my ears. It blows not having income around the biggest holiday. The maintenance man gave me a heads up that they were hiring at another location, so I applied and was hired immediately for that night.

It was so great to get away from her.

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80. Always Late

I was a practice manager at a doctor’s office. The owner was one of the doctors. She was a terrible person who thought she was a good person.

She would show up to work 30-45 mins after her first scheduled appointment, five days a week. I started moving appointments to allow for this and was admonished for doing so as she had to see so many patients a day and clinic hours didn’t allow us to schedule patients after 5 p.m. to make up for the change.

I pointed out how frustrating it can be for a patient who schedules for the first appointment so they can make it to work on time. Her answer was, “my time is more important than their time.”

She would send employees to a nearby McDonald’s daily to get her a big and tasty for lunch, regardless of their lunch plans. I watched her try to intimidate a young new doctor into writing narcotic prescriptions for her partner who was a long-term opioid user, and she was outraged when the young doctor demanded a patient visit with the partner before prescribing.

After threatening to quit, I got her to arrive close to on time or at least calling if she was going to be late, but it didn’t last. Finally one day, I had it. She showed up 30 minutes late, didn’t answer her phone when I called her after not showing up and had wet hair when she got there.

The first words out of her mouth were, “I’m only late because I had to wait for a train.” I asked her if it had splashed her as it passed by. I gave her my two weeks’ notice and have never looked back.

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81. A Very Toxic Woman

I’ve been working at this company for over two years. I should’ve quit two days after I started, but I’m too stubborn and have stuck it out thus far. Here are a few examples to explain how much of a mess this place is.

When I first started, I used to arrive 10 minutes before my shift so I could get ready, but my manager would loudly call me out for being late “yet again” in front of customers every single day.

It made me look like a terrible, lazy employee. I would then have to interact with customers which was mortifying to say the least. I now arrive a half hour before my shift, because I was so sick of her yelling at me that I’d rather hang around for 20 minutes and give her nothing to come back at me with.

I also wanted to impress her and show that I was a good worker. She interpreted this eagerness as a weakness and took any opportunity to take her anger out on me and make me cry.

Her mood swings are terrifying and if she got into any kind of personal or business problem, you bet I was on the receiving end. It got to a point where my anxiety was so bad that I dreaded coming into work because I didn’t know what I was walking into.

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82. Work Comes First

Last year, I started working for a company, and while I was on probation, I came down with a fever. It lasted for five days so I couldn’t work in the office. But I was still working from home while I had a fever. On the sixth day, I went to the hospital, and I had to go for a surgery ASAP.

I informed my manager, and he told me while I was waiting for my surgery, I could still work. My surgery was scheduled at 7 pm. The next morning I was still pretty groggy from the anesthesia. And at 8:30 am my manager kept calling me and asking why I was not on the zoom call yet.

I told her I was still groggy from my surgery. One of the days, while I was still recovering, my manager scolded me on the phone for still being away. So I went back. But halfway through, my wound started bleeding so I had to rush to the clinic and was scolded by the doctor for even attempting to go to work.

Anyways, unfortunately I had exams and I had applied for leaves and they rejected it. Then my manager called me and asked me to resign and do my exams or turn up to work. I sent him an email asking why my exam leaves were rejected. He said before I joined I did not inform them that I would be taking any types of leaves including hospitalization leaves.

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83. No Sense Of Professional Protocol

This begins with my boyfriend who worked at a Tim Hortons in the west end. One of the employers for these specific locations has no sense of professional protocol.

For example, you never text or email someone who has never had contact with you for confidential information like your social insurance number. His employer asked him to send his SIN via text message and when he asked for the employer that had given him the interview to verify this request, the employer responded with, “well, I guess you don’t want to be paid then.”

Then, he was transferred to another location that he wasn’t comfortable working at. He contacted his employer to see if he could stay at his original location, and then the unprofessional jargon began. A few words were exchanged and then he received a text saying, “he’s done. Hand in your uniform ASAP.”

When is it ever acceptable in any professional environment to be fired via text message? Telling someone they’re being let go over a text seems petty, especially if it has something to do with a simple request.

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84. Serve It Or You’re Fired

I was working as head cook at a seafood restaurant when I was younger. One time, we had about 35 people and they all wanted lobster and sides. We had to put the frozen lobster tails on a pan and put it through a broiler.

The guy who owned the place loved to come back into my kitchen and throw a wrench into my system that worked EVERYDAY that I was there. He knocked the entire pan of 35 COOKED tails all over the floor.

No matter how clean the floor was, you have to understand, food that hits the floor in my kitchen gets tossed. I yelled that now I have to start over and it takes over 15 minutes from start to finish and they had waited a while already. He told me, “PICK IT UP AND SERVE IT OR YOU ARE FIRED!”

So I looked him right in his beady little shark eyes and said, “Fine, I quit!” I was the only cook that day and had about 30 other customers too and he had to do it himself, but had no clue how to run the kitchen.

I took off my apron, walked out to the dining room and made the announcement I really enjoyed,

“Excuse me, ladies and gents, I need you to hear something. The owner of this restaurant just told me to pick food up off of the floor and serve it to you. I suggest you don’t eat ANYTHING that comes out of this kitchen from here on.” The place closed down a few months later.

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85. This Is Not Ok

I have been working this part-time job for almost two years now while I was in school. It’s a very small company with only about six people.

As time went on, I started to realize there are things that my boss does that are just immoral. She constantly lies to clients and then brags about how they believed her once they’ve left. She’s also faked illnesses in order to get out of paying suppliers.

She managed to convince all of us that we are contract workers even though we are definitely employees. She’s super shady and never pays us on time, and often we don’t get paid the correct amount. When we ask her about it, she makes up some other ridiculous excuse.

I will be quitting soon. I just need to find a different job first.

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86. Stealing From The Business

I was working at a farmer’s insurance company as a receptionist about three years ago. The boss was an older woman, maybe in her late 50s. She also had a daughter who was an absolute mess.

But besides her daughter, my manager was THE WORST. She was super rich and spent so much money on pointless things. She purchased insanely expensive TVs and projectors and set them up in our small office.

She also didn’t even know how to turn anything on. She had the sign in our office painted every three months. And she had the most elaborate office with paintings, statues, you name it.

It got weird when my manager was randomly audited and all of a sudden she needed me to help her organize all her receipts. I ended up doing everything for her accounts and found out that she was stealing from the company.

Not only that, but she wanted me to write off a ton of things as business expenses that were clearly her daughter’s trips to the doctor or whatever.

I quit after about three weeks of it.

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87. Doing All Of His Work For Him

My boss is a nice guy. He is an ex-marine that has the mindset of a hard worker. When I started my job, I was super dedicated and helped him out as much as possible. He got way too comfortable and now I do his job for him.

I’m an administrative assistant at an auto finance company. My office is directly connected to my boss’s office.

I process the funding on our contracts, take payments and answer the phones. My boss realized that I would take on as many tasks as needed so he started to give me the responsibility of the assistant manager since our branch does not have one.

Now, I do my administrative job as well as handling repos, all our legal accounts, all our bankruptcy accounts, and I am pushed to act like a personal assistant to my boss. I do 90 percent of his job for him at this point and he stays on my back constantly about doing things that are his job.

For example — an email needs to be sent to corporate about branch issues? I have to do it.

Dealer follow up? I have to do it. Attorney conference calls? I have to do it. Meanwhile, he takes credit for all the work when he talks to our supervisor.

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88. A Bunch Of Liars

The first 6 months were great then the company appointed a new chief of operations, and that’s when my nightmare began. She was 6 years older than me, had no formal education and bankrupted two of her own businesses.

She used to make comments about my expensive clothes and bags. She’d repeatedly point out that I was single during my employment and she picked on another employee’s choice not to have kids.

When the pandemic hit, the company received government assistance for our wages, and they cut our hours back to nothing. They asked us to work one day a week with no pay. When I said no, I got a written warning.

In that time, the company started layoffs and she was very vocal about firing half the company. I had quietly been working on getting my Masters’s degree, and heard of a job from one of my old clients and I decided to apply. Two weeks later, I received a letter of offer and a contract.

I signed my contract and handed in my notice. I was made to serve out my notice period, which was fine. They announced to the company, clients and suppliers that I was let go due to poor performance. Everyone knew this was BS.

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89. Pay Me More Then

I was working front desk at a small, family-owned chiropractic office. It was early in the morning, and patients hadn’t started coming in yet. I laid my phone on the desk and start scrolling. Boss walks in, pulls up a chair next to me, and says firmly, ‘Instagram doesn’t pay your bills. I pay your bills.’

I just sat there as he went on about no phones. I was making about $400 a week. That wasn’t enough to even cover rent so I had to DoorDash on my lunch break to make extra money.

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90. Doing The Job Of Three People

I worked for a small, understaffed eye clinic with only three staff members and the doctor. We worked our assess off and kept it running.

Six months in, the doctor finally gets around to doing my 90-day performance review. For 30 minutes, she proceeds to point out all of my flaws, how she doesn’t really like me, and thinks I’m not good at my job.

In reality, I was doing the job of two or three people and keeping up with it. My patients loved me, and I never had a single complaint from any patient or my coworkers.

I later interviewed for the same position at a different clinic and when I mentioned I quit due to only having a staff of three people, my interviewer literally blurted out, ‘How the hell does an office run like that?!’ 

Now I have 11 coworkers, and I do a third of the work I used to do for more money and get treated with respect. It’s amazing.

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91. Seriously?!

‘You need to schedule your medical emergencies.’ Mind you, I went to the ER to make sure I was not in diabetic ketoacidosis again. I was lucky enough to survive it last year, but I got written up for being admitted to the hospital.

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92. Beauty School Dropout

I used to have a terrible boss, and she said terrible things to everyone, but this was to a coworker. We worked at a restaurant, and my friend went to school two days a week. She decided to quit school for whatever reason, and the next time my boss saw her she said, ‘Hey, beauty school dropout!’

This absolutely crushed my friend. It happened years ago, and I still feel bad for her.

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93. So Cruel

In high school, I worked at a Subway. My boss asked that the team come in on a Sunday night after closing for a meeting. As soon as everyone was settled, my boss said, ‘We all know there is one person in this room who isn’t efficient like the rest of the team, and it’s becoming more obvious by the day.’

“She turned to me and asked me how it felt to hold others back because I wasn’t quick when it came to making sandwiches and cleaning up. My boss then asked three others to give examples of my ‘poor’ performance in front of everyone. 

I ended up crying out of sheer embarrassment and was asked to leave the meeting. It bothered me for days and kept me up at night for a few weeks. It’s still such a vivid memory. No one has ever made me feel so low before in my entire life.

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94. I’m So Happy He Fired Me

Eight years ago, in my early 20s, I was a receptionist at a hair salon, and the owner/main stylist was my boss. He would make fun of me every day. He even gave me a terrible haircut on my second week, and I was so broke and insecure that I pretended everything was fine.

I caught him laughing at me more than once. One day he looked at me, scoffed, and said, ‘My socks cost more than your shirt.’

He fired me exactly the day before my third month, and I cried I was so happy. I felt ashamed to quit as I was raised never to quit, but I have learned there’s no shame in knowing you deserve better.

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95. Sweet Bliss

I worked for a startup for three and a half years. Started as an intern and worked my way up to production manager. When it came time to decide my salary, I sat down with the then-COO to discuss pay.

When I asked for compensation that was fair and the average for my city, he said to me that it was too high for my role and that they could ‘find anyone fresh out of college or off the street’ to do my job. I was floored.

Fast-forward to months later, when the company started laying people off and folding, I resigned because I could no longer do my job as a manager since the companies I was managing haven’t been paid by us. 

They begged me to come and teach them all of the processes, forms, and documentation I had set up because they didn’t know how to do my job. I simply told them, ‘You don’t need me for that; you can find anyone right off the street to teach you.’ Ahh, sweet bliss.

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96. So Heartless

‘Geez, how many more aunts are left to go?’ His words to me when I told him I couldn’t come in for a full day due to a funeral. This was my third family member to pass away in less than a year, so that sh*t hurt to hear.

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97. I Make Too Much, Apparently

A guest described what they were looking for to me in vague terms. I managed to deduce what they wanted, led them directly to it, asked them if they had a size and color preference, fished that exactly out of the racks, handed it to them, and directed them back to the fitting rooms.

Then I was re-hanging clothing with my store’s assistant manager standing right next to me. The guest comes up and hands me what she didn’t want and asks the assistant manager if she’s the manager.

She says yes, obviously bracing for a complaint of some sort. Guest gushes about how I am friendly, knowledgeable, treated her wonderfully, found exactly what she needed, and that I deserve a raise. My manager said point-blank: ‘She makes too much already.

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98. She’s Not Worth My Time

I had a boss who absolutely hated me. After realizing she wasn’t qualified for the position and had already slept with two different guys at the company, I came to the conclusion she was a joke and needed to just be dismissed. I never paid much attention to her, and when she’d show up at my building once every blue moon, I kind of just ignored her.

I was busy and didn’t have time to play her games. She wrote me up for being late on three separate occasions. 1 min late, 3 mins late and 6 mins late. I lived an hour from work and had to deal with traffic; I left my house 2 hours early most days to account for this. But when there’s a wreck, there’s not much you can do as the freeway is backed up and side roads are clogged.

Each time I got stuck in traffic, I called to let her know. Still wrote me up in hopes to eventually fire me. So, I started leaving the house crazy early, I’d get in super early and leave early. She haaaated it. Eventually, her behavior got her fired and people till this day remember her and laugh at what a horrible person she was.

I also had that write-up removed from my file, as it was recognized that she was treating many of her employees unfairly.

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99. The Racist One

My first boss managed a gas station. He was good in most ways—efficient, fair, disciplined, ran a tight ship. Just one drawback. He was racist. I don’t mean that he was insufficiently outraged by Dukes of Hazard re-runs. I mean that he used the N-word often and loudly. He resurrected other racist words that would have sent Bull Connor running for a thesaurus.

The truck driver who delivered our tankers of fuel every week was a black man, and they almost came to blows over this. His comeuppance finally came when the corporate office hired a new third level supervisor who was a young black man out of business school. That boss just could not take orders from a black man.

When he quit, he trashed the office and tore up every floppy (it was the 80s) disk in the office so we couldn’t do our accounting for a few days.

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100. Flyers Aren’t Really A Thing Anymore

My supervisor at this nonprofit was maybe a couple of years older than me, and for the six months I worked there, never bothered to set me up with my own computer.

I’d work in the mornings and she tended to show up around lunch time, so she told me I could use hers, which was pretty annoying in and of itself. But that was far from the worst part.

More often than not, she’d come in about an hour before I was scheduled to leave, and stand over me, eating her lunch, as I worked at her desk. I’d say things like, “Oh I’ll go find somewhere else to work,” and she’d say no, no you’re fine. And continue to stand over me as I sat at her desk. It was completely unnerving.

She was also the Director of Marketing, and for about two weeks she had me walk around the city and put up flyers in various cafes/buildings for this class we were hosting. Two weeks later, she’s frustrated that no one’s signed up. As the Director of Marketing, you should have some sort of better strategy than putting up flyers in coffee shops…

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101. Have Fun Covering For Me

After my ex assaulted me on Christmas Eve, I called out of work on Christmas, explaining what had happened. I had gotten away at 5 am Christmas morning, and was obviously pretty shaken up.

My boss accused me of planning the whole thing to get out of working on Christmas, and tried to get me fired when I came in for my next shift.

I had to sit down with her and her boss and listen to her make up a bunch of lies about how I was always trying to get out of work (in fact I was one of the only people who would ever cover shifts for others), and being lazy and disrespectful (I was one of only a couple of employees who weren’t her personal friends, and was therefore one of few people who wasn’t constantly standing in the kitchen talking).

When her boss said she’d need to give me one more chance before firing me, she told me I should quit. So, I signed up to work a major event we were having, and then left my resignation on her desk that morning—meaning that she would have to cover for me instead of sitting in her office playing stupid games and browsing Facebook on her computer all day.

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102. It’s All On You

Took three months off for her wedding during TWO of our biggest cases. You know what? I can let that go, but then she came back and was HUGE jerk about having everyone catch her up on what happened.

“Why didn’t you do it this way! Where’s the documentation!” “We were understaffed, we did the best with what you left us! If you’d have been here, you’d know that!”

Plus, if you check my timesheet, I have hours on my wedding day because she HAD to talk to me about budget.

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103. She Was Only Good At Lying

She lied…like a lot. The company I was with was only focused on the current quarter. So, my boss just flat out lied and kept pushing problems to the next quarter and the next quarter.

She manipulated data and charts, so her superiors thought things were just fine. I was 23 and she told me, “If you don’t get [feature] working before Christmas, everyone in your group will lose their job.”

When I told her I took another job, she told me every job is hard and I’ll regret leaving. I left 6.5 years ago and have never regretted it.

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104. She Constantly Put Me Down

My last boss. She told me I only made good sales was because I was sexy (our customer base was middle-aged women), and then posted on Facebook about writing an essay on feminism.

She didn’t do all the work and I had to pick up her slack, resulting in her getting bonuses. She constantly touched me and called me her wife. And then put me down in front of customers.

When challenged about her behavior, she claimed she had undiagnosed autism and I was being unfair due to her disability. She compared a girl who worked there who grew up in foster care to her being an only child.

Even though she had been privately educated since nursery school and, at nearly 40, she still got an allowance from her parents.

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105. Elizabeth From Dairy Queen

Elizabeth at Dairy Queen when I was in grade 12. She was a horrible bully who treated me like a complete idiot. Just me, not any of the other teenagers working there. And none of the other supervisors treated me that way, just her. I still have no idea why she hated me so much.

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106. A “Busyboy”

I had a manager who was a huge busybody. Hovered constantly. She’d happily dump work on others’ desks that she was supposed to do, and then go to Costco for two hours.

She ragged on one guy daily, all day, for mistakes that weren’t actually mistakes, just things done different from her way—to the point that he left the office crying a few times.

This was funny to me, until the day he had enough and walked out on the spot. He snapped, and right after she left for the day, he left a note on his keyboard saying “I’m done.”

She also doesn’t hire young women because they get pregnant, and she doesn’t want to replace anyone going on maternity leave, it’s too much of an inconvenience to replace someone for a year.

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107. The Creepy Dude Who Always Checked On Us

I took an internship while I was in college for a guy who owned his own recruiting agency. The only people working there were myself, the owner, and another guy.

The owner was hands down the worst person I’ve ever worked for. He was creepy, a misogynist, and just a jerk for no reason. The office was very small. You could literally hear everything everyone did.

The owner would be in his office typing all day, it was like he was writing a book or something. Anytime I would go into his office to ask him a question, he would immediately close his browser and would get nervous.

We used to get all these spam emails all the time from these dating sites and about mail order brides…ugh. He would make these jokes that just made me uncomfortable.

Some days, he would act like he was leaving work early for the day and would come back into the office 20 minutes later to make sure myself and my coworker didn’t leave. Like dude, seriously?

He even reprimanded me for coming into work 5 minutes early one day. You would’ve thought I stole food out of his kids’ mouths. Like dude. It’s five minutes.

Don’t pay me for it then. It’s not that serious.

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108. She Was The Reason For My Panic Attacks

I excused myself out to the barns because I was starting to have a panic attack (because my manager shouted at me). I didn’t run or anything, just said I was taking my break.

She followed me in there, where I was crying but trying self-help stuff to calm myself, and started saying stuff like, “You’re a 30-year-old old woman, what are you crying for? You can’t cry every time someone criticizes you! Just stop crying now!”

This put me into a massive panic, as her tone of voice was aggressive (to me…I’m sensitive massively to tone of voice) and I had a panic attack, hyperventilating and having muscle spasms etc., so they called an ambulance. I think that scared her!

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109. They Couldn’t Survive Without Me

I worked for a small café, doing a manager’s amount of work while being paid minimum wage, and when I contracted pink eye from caring for my sister, my boss got mad at me.

After that I applied, and was hired, at Starbucks. His business fell apart without me there, and closed within 4 months of me leaving.

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110. He Deserved It

Small business. 20 employees +/-. Boss made a big speech about austerity measures and no raises this year. A week and a half later he drives up in a brand new Silverado with all the bells and whistles.

Expensed to the business of course. He would hate to have to pay taxes on those profits. One of the less subtle members of the staff took a literal dump in front of his office door.

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111. Always In The Middle Of Family Drama

I worked in a salon as a new stylist. She co-owned with her family, and always put us in the middle of family drama. Anytime we had work meetings, it was always to tear us down and complain, sometimes individually pointing out to each one of us what we did badly on. The only time she helped clean was when she was pissed at us.

She also told us it’s our job to clean even though we were only paid commission on the hair we actually did. Just to name a few things.

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112. They Didn’t Care, So Why Should I?

I worked in a jewelry store. I was the youngest employee by far, and for a period of about 3 months, the only one consistently meeting their sales targets. I overheard the assistant manager and another employee going through the records and commenting on that fact.

They were not happy. When the next roster was made, I had no shifts for 6 weeks.

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113. Bad Management All-Around

Long, long ago, I was fired from my job as an assistant manager at a convenience store by the district manager who hated me. I applied for unemployment insurance, and the company said I wasn’t eligible, because I’d been fired for cause. I wasn’t, but that was a matter the review board had to decide, and it was still upcoming.

We showed up for the review, and I was prepared to explain how my direct boss had decided to leave keys to the inner safe in the outer safe area overnight, which had resulted in more than $100 going missing, which was the reason they gave ME for firing me. Mind you, this wasn’t even my error, but I was the person on duty when it was discovered.

Instead, the district manager tried to say I falsified paperwork. Uh…okay. I settled in to hear her tale of woe. Then she proceeded to show how I’d “padded paperwork” to hide missing money.

Uh…no. I showed them that my manager had accidentally put $50 extra into the bank the week before the incident they fired me for, so I made a note of that on the paperwork for the day.

The panel of reviewers asked my district manager how I SHOULD have noted it, and she went off into some incomprehensible and highly illegal (did I mention one of my degrees is in Accounting?) way of “subtracting” the amount from the numbers in a way that would under-report income. I got as far as “But that–” when one of the panel members shushed me.

They informed her that what she was trying to tell me to do was illegal, and they would be informing the local tax office, in case they wanted to perform an audit on the company, thanks to idiot DM here.

Oh, and yes…I was eligible for my unemployment money. Win win win, and the look on the DM’s face? Classic. I wish I had a photograph!

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114. No Remorse

I once worked at a company where the CIO (Chief Information Officer) sideswiped a woman’s car as she pulled into a parking space. The woman who had the car that got hit got out and stood beside her car to see what damage was.

The CIO got out of her Mercedes and brushed right past the woman without so much as speaking to her.

Completely ignored her and walked away. Even with witnesses. The woman that had her car damaged had to go to the HR department and the company cut her a check for damages (the actual business paid for it—not the CIO, she got away scot-free without ever admitting anything or paying anything).

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115. A Greedy Jerk

We found out she fired all high school workers after 3 months because you are required by law to pay them minimum wage after that time period. You can pay them a bit less during the first 90 days. She was a jerk.

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116. That Wasn’t A “Vacation”

I had a boss who refused to let me take an “unplanned vacation” to see my grandma on her deathbed. I quit on the spot. It was strange because up until that incident, she was really cool and laid back.

But when I asked for the weekend off to go visit my dying grandmother, she snapped and lectured me about how I needed to “plan” my “vacation” better.

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117. Just My Luck

Several years back, I started a new job and was told the office would re-organize in the new year and my position would be shuffled to a new work group.

A month later, we’re busy running a major year-end event and things are going to trash. Everything requires total coordination across multiple divisions, and it came to a grinding halt with a lady in my office.

She hadn’t prepared adequately, and the entire process was hours behind schedule, causing huge problems. She proceeded to have a meltdown and walked around the office screaming at people. Guess who became my new supervisor?

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119. I’m Not An Idiot…

I had this horrible boss, the first thing he did was go through my PlayStation memory card when he thought I wasn’t looking. Then he taunts me about the games I played and pretended that he was “reading my mind” by knowing about them.

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120. Sweet But Psycho

My old boss was the sweetest woman but a horrible boss. It was an under-the-table agreement, which was fine by me (poor college student). She’d text me at 4 am asking if I could work at 9, and never had a schedule for more than two days. But she often bought me coffee and felt bad about it, so I put up with it for three years.

After two years of under-the-table work, I get an earnings statement in the mail from her. Turns out she had developed a conscience about how she ran her business and filed me as an independent contractor. This meant that she didn’t pay a cent of my medicare/social security and stuck me with a surprise $700 bill.

Thankfully, I was very friendly with her daughter, who straightened everything out with just days to spare.

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