r/BadBosses

Over the last (almost) three years, I have worked for a boss who makes many of my days at work miserable. Before people comment to “find a new job” I am already looking and applying elsewhere. In the mean time I have no choice but to deal with his bullshit behavior, and poor communication style. He rarely shows any kind of appreciation for the work that I do. Instead, he is quick to find flaws and errors in everything. I do my best to submit a high quality work product, but I’m not perfect and bound to make mistakes on occasion. My only saving grace is that he lives far enough away that I don’t have to see him face to face. I want to report his behavior but I predict that his managers will just defend him because he’s a crazy workaholic with no boundaries who works late nights and some weekends. Please help with any advice on how to handle this until I can leave!
Thank you.

So basically i worked at a juice bar called Tree Of Life Juice, and my uncle had owned it previously almost about 2 years ago until he sold it to some 24 year old school drop out larping about going to school for psychology when the university didn’t even offer that while also being in crippling debt at such a young age already. But thats not the first thing he larped.

He posted pics of him driving a Porsche on insta and i instantly knew he was lying to other people because he specifically told me he goes to dealerships test driving cars. Like bro come on. He also spent money on views on instagram saying he just got a bunch of views, like i can clearly see the inconsistency between likes and comments bro I’m not a Neanderthal monkey ape brain to not understand your larping views.

He’s also a chat gpt fanatic who uses every second of his breathing body and living soul for his entirety and made his whole life revolve around it. He even showed me himself with an AI girl and i genuinely felt disgusted at what i saw.

When he left for Turkey for a vacation, he larped buying some $500 shoes, (when they were in fact reps and fact some temu BS), he larped girls of course saying he got with like 10 of them, spent all his money, again when he was already in debt while paying back my uncle at the same time, and came back overweight and covered in acne. Like im not even joking he was covered, like i saw it before he left but it was bad, his hygiene was disgusting. 🤢

After that he complained about being in a debt but was already thinking about selling his car and buying another one. I just didn’t know what to say to this impudent tribal squid brain anymore and just kept listening in on his larping nonsense without trying not to laugh.

But to be honest, he does pull girls, i really dont know how but he somehow does even when he’s clearly flirting and shows his true incubus lust power and its so vulgar. Treat a woman how they should be treated and not some toy to play with.

He also rants about this “spiritual awakening” nonsense, like bro i don’t wanna watch some daoist monk massage his balls to release sexual tension and awaken my ultimate spiritual nut.

Like i consider myself a Christian, and i know when someone contradicts their knowledge about Christianity, but bro is literally everything. Ranging from Daoism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Confucianism, even Catholic and probably some ancient African+Egyptian dark magic religion nobody has heard of since Mongolia ruled. Like bro pick a team, you cant combine knowledge from all of these religions when some of them only believe in one God and they all contradict each other. And how are you gonna use some crystal gemstone astrology stuff to summon some islamic Demi-god whilst being right next to a picture of Jesus and a hung up rosemary. Like holy patrick drooling gif.

Knowing him he probably used some AI google reviews while he was at it after i left a few months ago too 😭. Going off that there literally was a review talking about how the workers there were “flirty” and made them uncomfortable, go check it out for yourself if you would like you know the name of the place already. (First paragraph to jog your memory)

Not only did he do all of these things, he also basically talked about how latinos were the superior race and even praised cartel bosses saying how confident and proud they are to show how powerful he was. Like have you not seen what they’ve done? They would do that to you in a heart beat.

This guy is a genuine degenerate and i lowkey wouldn’t have posted this because i consider myself a “Christian” and wrath is bad because I’m gossiping about him, but im genuinely trying to tell people to stay far away from this guy as possible. Even other past coworkers think he is a genuinely a disgusting human and know about his manipulation, poor management, bad pay, like every 3-4 weeks when it was supposed to be bi-weekly, and blamed it on his “debt”.

If you took the time to read this, don’t put bad reviews, or text him saying how much of a bad person he was, just know that this place is a joke now and would not ever recommend going there with your wife. Because he will insult you for being a puss for having a happy marriage and not a lust incubus demon who tries to bang every woman he sees.

I have this very traumatizing experience. A fresh grad and eager to have a job and learn new things. During my first month, my boss handed me my salary and sugarcoated it with saying “I did a good job”. After that, she came in front of me told that “just do your job properly, or else you’ll see the winds of change”. (it was uttered with high emphasis that I felt something was wrong behind those words) I acted normally and didn’t show anything aside from my frightened smile. Yet deep inside, I was about to cry and tremble in front of her. Is this really ethical? What should I do since I am planning to resign the following month?

I worked in a locally owned place for nearly 10 years. Six years into working there, management hired on someone from a similar chain type place to help run it.

The person was the absolute worst boss ever. They carried themselves like they knew everything when they didn't. They were overheard talking to a customer and giving them false information on some products. Turns out they had actually bought a large stock in these products and basically overbought them to make their stocks rise.

Shortly after I left, the business was sold to a chain and their corporate managers came in and lost it over the abundance of this product. In which they turned around and fired everyone remaining from the original management team.

I work at a dental office & my boss tells the office manager which days he’s not coming in. One of those days was this Friday, July 3rd. His daughter had graduated from dental school in out of state in Florida & decided to return & he was so happy that he said he wanted all the Fridays off in July to spend time with her.

It appears that his daughter is unable to or doesn’t want to spend the Fridays with him so he on Monday he has decided to he’s going to come in on all those Fridays including July 3rd. The office manager reminded him this was a holiday weekend & almost everyone made plans to be off because he wasn’t coming in the office was going to be closed. He got angry with her & claimed that he never said that he wasn’t coming in July 3rd & we don’t get Friday off because it’s not the actual holiday. Now we won’t get a 3 day weekend because he’s pissed his daughter doesn’t want to hang out with him.

He made her open the schedule & put patients there. I already made plans too & said I wasn’t coming in but 2 other people can come in. I don’t know why he couldn’t just give it to us especially when we were already going to off. He refused to believe that July 3rd is the observed holiday date as well. I am so annoyed about this.

I sort of slid into doing a new role for my company on top of my normal position. I am interacting with stakeholders now and they're asking my title. Its generic and moderately paid, I am telling them that title. I went to my boss and made a case, he had a million excuses and said to wait, which is fair, theres a lot factors that go into a decision like this. But now I see an "anonymous" company has posted this exact position locally offering 4x my current salary. We are in the middle of nowhere, it's him who posted. When I came to him about a raise and title change, he threw out a suggestion of an extra 200 dollars a month which I did not accept. There is work waiting to be done which I am being grossly underpaid for. I am considering quietly laying off those duties for now.

I'm frustrated and irritated. Help.

And for the record, he has a history of treating people like this, it's not personal.

I’ll try to keep it short.

I’m a fresh graduate. Landed a job been working for half a year. First place I’m working at. I’m overworked like fucking crazy. My boss is bad.
Doesn’t give a shit about anything but the deadline has to be met no matter what.

I’ve worked under a different boss temporarily bc a project stopped and even tho it was super stressful I actually enjoyed it. I love the work place but hate the boss. She’s extremely aggressive, and hostile, extremely stressful.
Been working 10-12 hours daily for a while and the commute is 1.5h. Clearly doesn’t give a shit.

Idk what to do. Idk if I have grounds to ask for a transfer, they could fire me claiming it’s better to give her someone new rather than do what I ask for. She’s obviously way more valuable to them than me.

Idk if it’s smart to give out much info about the situation cuz what if someone recognizes me.

I started sobbing today while talking to another coworker when asked how things are going.

Ps- she got one person fired. One person quit bc of her. And one transferred out of her team over the course of her being a boss. They know how she is. I can see that she holds back a bit but I’m not fine when I barely see my family throughout the week and have to work under extremely stressful circumstances, because “that means I have responsibility now”.

I applied for a **marketing role** at a small business, but after only two weeks I'm seriously considering resigning.

The business suddenly shut down one day, and everyone was sent home with no explanation. When we came back, the owner acted as if nothing had happened. It honestly made me feel unsafe and unsure whether my job could disappear at any time.

Since then, multiple people have left, including the admin and the person managing the website. One of the coaches told the owner he felt lost and was struggling to trust the situation after everyone was unexpectedly sent home. I mean, everyone does at that point, but the owner started to get mad and kept spamming bad convo with the old coach and eventually kicked the coach out and didn't pay him his salary. He spammed bad words and if the coach doesn't reply, he would spam calls???

I still don't even have a proper employment contract despite working full-time hours as a casual employee.

The communication is all over the place. One day I'm told to create content and work with influencers. The next day I'm told not to film, not to create content without permission, not to feature people, and to "just edit." The problem is that there are almost no videos or photos for me to edit because he doesn't want anyone to be in the videos because they are potentially betrayals or bad reviewers on Google Maps (?) he said. How am I supposed to create content or edit without any photos/videos??? It doesn't make any sense, but he still has high expectations about getting likes and followers for his page

Whenever I ask for approval to post or talk about work, I'm told to stop messaging about work, like "Just do it, stop texting me about work, please". Then later I receive more work messages and new instructions, even overtime. I genuinely don't know what I'm supposed to do anymore.

I was also yelled at by the owner recently for no reason. The next day he acted like nothing had happened, which made me even more uncomfortable.

I've started dreading going to work every morning. I feel like I'm being held responsible for results while having almost no control over the strategy or resources to achieve them.

The only reason I'm still here is that payday is on Monday, today is Thursday. I have another casual job, so I'm not financially trapped.

Am I giving up too early after two weeks, or are these enough red flags to walk away?

I landed a new gig about 7 months ago. I work on a dedicated app as a designer.

My boss is a workaholic. Her life is work. Not to discount her in this, and only to provide context, she has no significant other and no kids. I believe she spends on average 12 hours a day working. Just this week she mentioned that she didn’t sleep. She worked through the night into the next workday.

I have no problem putting in extra time every now and then. Like maybe once a month, but working with her I feel the pressure of keeping up with her pace. And I’ve never dealt with a personality like this. She is extremely intense and direct. Which would be fine alone, but she is also scatter-brained. Just this evening at 4:50pm she sent 11 sequential slack messages spanning 5-6 different directions of feedback in under 1 minute. This is after I commented and tagged her multiple times throughout the day in our working file. I asked her to quickly meet because I’m not going to attempt to type out answers to her half-baked questions. I have to relieve my babysitter at 5 but said I can push til 515 or later no problem. We met and I hit a breaking point. I essentially gave up and just accepted anything she said. She interrupts me mid-sentence and just continues to talk at me.

It’s not give and take. Anything I say or anything I propose as a solution seems to be immediately picked apart and discounted. There is no process that is adhered to. There is very clear and obvious friction between our team and the Product team every single meeting. I get the sense that the majority of colleagues who work with her are just dealing with her based off of their interactions with her, but of course I could be wrong.

It’s suffocating. But it’s also good pay and me and my wife are expecting. I’m trying to stick it out until my signing bonus is guaranteed. It’s not an ideal time to try and find a new job with this and the current job market in mind. At least from my perspective.

I guess in a sense I’m looking to vent as well as field any possible advice if anyone else has experienced this.

I’m struggling as a type B personality who tends to be hyper-aware of and picks up on the energy in the room. Every discussion I have with her is discouraging and takes me one step closer to saying fuck it and sending out applications.

If you made it this far thanks for reading my rant. And thank you in advance to anyone who is able to provide any personal experience or advice.

I’ve been at this job a few months. Its a fairly new restaurant. Im one of the main foh staff (21f) . It’s
mainly be me and my manager (45m) on the floor. Sometimes the owner too. So i’m barely
Working with anyone else. My manager who i liked at first, thought he was chill.

But there was an instance a few weeks ago where he kept making comments, calling me pretty in like the most random moments , saying he liked my weight, askinh me to go dancing with him. Saying i look like his ex that my skin is rlly nice. Then was rubbing my neck without permission i didnt know what to do.

Ever since then im more wary, kinda uncomfortable around him. He will stare at me for ages to the point i have to be like , yes? Just odd, i like this job but its off putting. He’s offering me the chance of being manager eventually. My bf and i came for a drink last week then the next day non stop askef me wuestions about him.

Today i was also just scraping a plate and he randomly says i look so pretty… thanks ? I doesnt seem weird but u have to know how he is , i dont know how i feel about my boss thinking im pretty, then kept rubbing my shoulder , he’s like overly touchy.

Anyway, my bf comes to my job today and waits while i finish work. He’d never been properly , they knew he was my bf cus he asked where i was. I was finishing up. All my other co workers said hi to him talked to him and my manager didnt even say anything (mind u this man is OVERLY chatty and i could tell he was acting weird ) i felt uncomfortable, he saif i can have a drink but didnt offer if my bf wanted one or anything. Mind u my co workers partner came the other day and he was talking to them.

It just felt off, my bf felt uncomfortable too. I said bye when we were leaving and he gave my bf the dirtiest look, he was all quiet and moody from when my bf came in. Odd . I was finishing up relaying tables and my bf was waiting , normally my manager will let me go when i ask but he kept nit picking and checking if everything was done its like he was tryna delay me finishing ? Also got another guy to make my drink cus my bf was at the bar and i had a weird feeling he didnt wanna make it cus that would mean he would have to talk to my bf…

Cus any other time he will get me a drink himself no issue.

Idk how to feel but its uncomfy and i shouldnt feel uncomfortablrnif my bf just wants to meet me after work? Opinons?

ive also been reading a book and i will take it to work when its quiet and read . Or on my break. He was insisting to borrow it when im done. And he would give me one of his books. Ok cool. Kept asking if ive finished it yet . When i said no he said ‘ i feel like you dont want me to have it’ no… i just didnt finish it. I did finally cus he kept asking and gave me his, this book is about murder and kidnapping. Just a book i know , but he will literally bang on about something and not let it rest . Im blunt with him and just get on with my job but it doesnt seem to work. I need this job rn .

Edit- its hard too , as him and the owner run it together. Its a pretty smallish pub but repopened and it just getting busier. I literally never work with any other staff. Even yesterday he cancelled two others and kept me cus it was quiet , told a customer that and the customer asked if im his favourite and he said yes and winked at me.

Im pretty confident and i can stand my ground but when it comes to this stuff clearly not. I get so uncomfprtablr and scared and its also the fact i dotn wanna upset him cus i need the money rn. Its a weird situation. Cus he is the only con .

Im thinking of more incidents now that i write this.

The bartender joked about him being gay and he then kept saying he is defo not gay while looking at me . Goes on about how he’s almost forgotten the anatomy of a women, stuff like this. Like stuff i do not need to know .

Recently I interviewed for a higher paying position at the company I now work for. This would have big a huge increase in pay and status and it was a job I was very qualified for. I was told at the end of the interview how well I had done and how pleased they were with my presentation.

Two weeks later it was announced that a person was chosen for the job that had less time with the company and was much less qualified than I was. I was called to HR to have a final interview (after the appointment of the other person) for an explanation of why they didn’t hire me. Mind you, I am 70 years old and the person they chose is 30. It’s not like I didn’t know the reason I wasn’t chosen. The disrespect came when I was told that they wanted me to sit in to watch this person doing his job and they would hire me for the same position later on if more openings came up.

Naturally, I declined the offer and explained to HR that it was fine and it is their loss. I continue to do my job there but now searching outside the company for advancement.

I have a problem. I don’t want to express publicly, I won’t say who they are or what they are. I don’t know why, but I get so upset when my bosses contact me at all hours 24/7, 365 days a year ( granted I don’t get salary I get paid by the hr and I make sure to take my three day off a week) I’m the type of person who won’t send an email after 5 o’clock, but unfortunately, my bosses aren’t like that. They send emails constantly, even though I’m not going to read them until the next day ( at least that the plan)
I work alone in a 32,000-square-foot building. There’s no one helping me it’s just me. My main office is three hours away, and that’s where the owners live, in a big city. I live in a small town and take care of their product all by myself. The pieces are pretty big and heavy, so it’s a lot of physical work. I’ve spent about six months straightening out the whole place because it was a complete mess when I started.

The previous workers would just drop stuff off, get paid, and leave. I could easily do the same thing punch in, do the bare minimum, and then go handle other things — but I’m not built that way. I’m a very honest and thorough person. Inventory in any business is extremely important, and I’ve asked for help at least a thousand times. I keep being told, “We can’t have anybody else touching it.”
Let me go a step further: my bosses are super cheap. They’re some of the cheapest people I’ve ever met. They get upset when I tell them I cannot fix something like our Forklift. They make a lot of money, but they don’t have much personal wealth outside the business. Everything — their house, cars, and assets is tied to the company for tax purposes. They structure things so they pay themselves very little in salary and shelter the rest. I could talk about their tax strategies for hours because I’ve learned a lot about it working for them.
For my Christmas bonus, they gave me $100. I work part-time for them, usually 30 to 35 hours a week and they had their accountant run the bonus through my regular paycheck. After taxes, I ended up with only $34. That’s it. Thirty-four dollars barely enough to buy five gallons of gas. They do stuff like this all the time.
They like to portray themselves as caring employers, but when it comes to money, they really don’t care. I’ve been an employer myself. I once owned a business with 13 employees, and I always tried to do things right. I’d give bonuses on prepaid cards so employees could spend them freely, throw barbecues, and even shut down for the day during big events like the World Cup to let everyone enjoy themselves and still get paid. That’s the kind of boss I was.

But when you work for someone else, you see what real jerks can be like. My boss thinks he’s a nice guy, but I can tell you right now his wife is the one who really runs the show. She’s ruthless and difficult. That’s my confession. I just had to get this off my chest. I know a lot of you out there have dealt with the same kind of thing.

I started work and was given a job description. 2 months in my immediate supervisor had health issues. As it was just the 2 of us in the office the head office started expecting me to cover for him. I was happy to do so and worked a ton of unpaid overtime to try to keep things rolling. At the same time head office started a new regional office and started messing with the contractors they employed because they were having trouble meeting payroll due to the expense of the new location. Several contactors quit and walked out of the agreements they had. I spent even more unpaid hours trying to support the remaining contactors who now had the additional responsibilities on them. At the end of the year performance review I was told that all the stuff I'd been taking on unpaid was being added to the duties in my job description and the job title was changing to reflect the new responsibilities. They were however not giving me any more money and they were giving me an unsatisfactory performance review because I hadn't done as well as they wanted on some metrics of the new position (like the contractor retention.) I told them it was not ok to base my performance review on duties that were not part of the job I was hired for, the contactors left because of they weren't being paid (not my dept.) and after putting in literally thousands of hours of unpaid overtime to keep the office running I expected, and deserved a good review. Then I quit. They had to close the office after that because they couldn't find anyone to do the new improved job for the salary they were offering.

In my particular case she was quoting a new insurance policy for a customer with a rather large account. Instead of issuing it while talking to him she pended the quote to have me finish up this week because she was going on vacation.

I called him today to go over the quote and get it issued as I was directed. It ended up being a 20-30 minute conversation with the customer. He was very condescending towards me, kept demanding answers that already gave him. He had me quote 3 different deductibles, which I did, and gave him the price differences. To which he kept demanding I give him the “price difference” over and over. Which was very frustrating. I asked him if he’d be okay writing the price differences down. He snapped “No! I’m driving. You should remember the price differences!” (I somehow was supposed to know he was driving?) So I asked him if he’d be okay calling back while not driving. He refused. I finally told him I’d email him the individual quotes.

I do not get commission because this is just a rewrite.

I am only a CSR.

My boss does this all day. Forwards all customer emails to me for things like premium complaints, billing problems, and changes. Which I’m used to. But then this happens.

I just do not feel this to be an appropriate hand off at all. Boss or not. She started this quote, this was a customer she’s always worked closely with. He also owns a small business in our town. As a fellow business owner in the same town, to a business we insure, my boss should have saw this all the way through. He has a VERY large account. She should have completed all the way through instead of “finish this so I can go play.” She did this because she knows he’s difficult and didn’t want to be bothered with it.

What concerns me is, with how particular this customer is, if I even slightly tip him off (which I’m not comfortable with how the conversation I had with him went) it’s going to be my head. Which is completely unfair when this is something that originally had nothing to do with me.

I’m also kind of pissed that this added undue stress to my day for something I should not have been asked to even so much as look at.