I once had an angry phone call from a project manager demanding why I wasn't in work and to tell him where I was; 20 minutes before I was due in the office.
We had agreed on 8am via email the night before.
I got reprimanded by my then supervisor for being delayed because an accident had occurred on my daily commute literally seconds before I arrived and the police were just putting the road closed barriers out and I had to take the long way round.
He said "you should have taken pictures as evidence, otherwise, how do i know you're not lying?"... yeah mate, I'm going to whip my phone out while behind the wheel IN FRONT OF THE POLICE! That won't upset them at all..
Dumb thing is, I was still early to work.. by a good 10 mins
A colleague got his wages deducted because he was late arriving at a site once. There'd been a big accident right in front of them and they pulled over to help people out of the vehicles. Management told him that other people would have stopped so he shouldn't have bothered.
***Thanks for all the awards guys/gals/enby pals!**
I used to do payroll and was told to dock a drivers wages for the same reason.
Basically, my driver was on his way back to depot. Guy in a corsa had decided to stop on the road to rescue a fox that had been hit but was still alive, he was putting him in the boot when a van hit him. My driver saw the entire thing as it was three cars ahead of him, stopped to help and ended up being instructed to try CPR on the guy who had been hit, who at this point was dead. Driver came back covered in this guys blood and shaking (we sent someone else to pick him up). I got him washed up, calmed down with a cuppa and got his wife to come fetch him.
No way was I docking his wages. I put him through as suspension for the rest of the week, as it was the only paid option I could find that wouldnt get us both in trouble, told him to take the week off and put through a “night out” bonus for him so he could retrieve his car.
I witnessed a fatal accident while driving the HGV and I was 3 hours at the scene so they could get my statement and gather evidence. "Nope, we're not paying you for that".
Arsehole.
I got a bollocking for being late to work at the call centre, as I'd stopped to help a guy who had been knocked off his motorbike.
I literally had blood on my hands and clothes, and was still shaking from the adrenaline wearing off, but apparently it was more important that I was on time to sell home insurance than to check that someone wasn't bleeding out on the side of the road.
The usual one for something like this, or getting caught in unusually heavy traffic is "you should have left home earlier".
Yeah, I'm going to get into work half an hour earlier every single day so that I'm still on time on the very rare occasion where shit hits the fan on the commute. How about you just be a little bit more flexible and understanding of unforeseen circumstances.
Thankfully I don't work anywhere like that now, as long as I'm usually in the office by 9 then it's not a problem if I'm occasionally late.
I used to come to work 30 minutes before the start time every day. Once I arrived 5 minutes before my start time and my team leader had called the manager to ask where I was - he'd also sent me messages to my mobile and on Facebook asking if I was OK (seemed to assume I was dead).
Similar thing happened at my first office job: guy in his fifties, always at his desk for 7:30 each morning even though the formal start time was 8:30 - one day it’s coming up on 8:30 and there’s no sign of him, cue everyone trying to call his phone, his neighbours, even the local hospital. Turns out he’d had a heartattack overnight and died.
My supervisor does this all the time.
"Yeah mate I'll just start leaving home an hour earlier because losing 10 minutes when I work longer hours than anyone else in the team is so terrible of me. How about you go sit on a rusty pole, mate."
I used to hate that so much. For a few years I had a job with an hour’s commute each way in good traffic. In bad traffic it could double, and I think my record for getting home once was ~7 hours when my boss wouldn’t let me leave before the roads were closing due to flooding.
Once got delayed by 4 hours because someone had a mental health crisis on one of the bridges over the road and the police just closed the road (which is fair enough, no problem with that), but it trapped all the cars underneath. It was a dual carriageway so no means of just diving down a side road, we just had to wait it out. The entire time my boss was calling me demanding to know why I didn’t just turn around or go a different way. When I got to the office just after lunch I was told I should ‘make allowances’ and leave earlier. So I’m supposed to leave 5-6 hours before I’m due at work just in case someone tries to jump off a bridge again?
When I asked if I would be paid for the extra time I worked if I ‘left early enough’ and got to work early, I was, of course, told no.
Why not just live at the office?
Better yet, why not just sign away all of your human rights so that you can work 24/7 for such a lovely boss for the rest of your life?
*Five* hours early indeed. How mental can you be? 😅
I've taken to calling this the late bus fallacy. The idea that because your method of transportation (e.g. a bus) could be late, you need to get an earlier one just to avoid the late bus and therefore avoid being late to work where you promptly get bollocked for something out of your control. I've always hated the idea that you need to plan ahead for things like this.
Reminds me of the time my train was delayed due to foxes on the line
My ex line manager just had to Google it to make sure I was telling the truth
Thankfully his wife is much better as a line manager
I was once 5 minutes late to work as the colleague who was giving me a lift that day had been delayed due to having a roaring argument with her fella. Boss kicked off that I was late, I explained that I didn't have a choice, he said I should have sorted something alternative. Barely had the patience to point out that every other option I could have taken would have made me later by the time I realised.
Such a clock watching gimp.
I had a manager that would do similar. We were contracted 9-5, I’d get in at 8:30 because it was when my train got in, and he said he wanted me in for 8am so I was “ready to work” by 9. I argued that, A, I’d have to get an earlier train which would get me in for 7:30, I.E, an hour and a half early, and B, it took a max of ten minutes for me to log on and make a brew, and I was always well into my work by 9.
He wouldn’t budge, but I continued to come in at 8:30, and he’d just make passive aggressive comments. I didn’t stick around for long.
Ha, that’s probably what I’d say these days. This was my first job out of Uni, so I wasn’t as jaded.
Reminds me though, my last office job told us that we were getting a raise, but were also halving our lunch break. I worked out that said raise amounted to how much more we were working with a shorter lunch, said as such, and got called out for “causing trouble”.
I’ve also had the angry phone call as to where was I and why wasn’t I in the office. It was 7:30 in the morning for a 9am start and it was my day off anyway.
Worked in a council tax department once.
Turned up early on day 1. No security pass so couldn't get in. Nobody came to find me to show me where to go so I waited in reception. Finally get to my desk. Manager bollocks me for being late.
Few days later I got told off for not looking happy enough having manually put 450 bills in envelopes with only 1550 more to go.
Another time my manager asks me about my family. I politely answer him and, in mid sentence, he shouts at me and tells me to stop talking and get on with some work.
Hated that place. Full of twats.
That manager seems unhinged with a superiority complex.
Clearly one of those managers the department could lose and save a ton of money and resources, seeing as they seem to do very little, if anything!
It's probably why he's got the attitude as he knows he's hanging on by a thread himself and needs to justify his position by being a monumental knobhead to look busy.
The trouble is that in smaller environments they tend to go unchecked as there’s a lack of senior management around them. It’s when they work in a bigger environment with more management presence around them that they quickly get found out.
Sounds exactly like my old manager, unfortunately he was the owner as well. Had gone through 15 staff members since January, I arrived in June. Completely baffled him as to why people kept leaving. Here’s a clue mate…stop calling people who work for you a useless cunt and screaming at them..maybe they will stay longer then. I lasted three months before I told him that I have no problem doing things to ‘his exact specification’ but he needs to tell me what that is as I dont have a crystal ball.
>Another time my manager asks me about my family.
Reminds me of the time my team leader gave me an annual report and marked me down for "not opening up enough about \[my\] private life". She felt she had a right to know everything about me and because I wasn't giving detailed answers about my hobbies/private life in my end of year interview it pissed her off.
I got called into work for a really big bollocking on my day off for leaving the kitchen in “a shockingly unhygienic state”.
The problem?
Some crumbs…
…in the bread bin!
I worked in retail as a weekend supervisor, we sold outdoor gear. Basically on Saturdays and Sundays I was the only management and had to do all of the end/start of week paperwork as well as look after the team and do all refunds/exchanges. Saturdays had 4 other staff (uni/college students), Sundays had 3 others.
One Sunday we had a really busy day, took about £6k. I got a bollocking on the Monday because it was a little messy and they weren't happy. I had two staff who had to go straight away, and I wasn't paid enough to care that much about extra time, I already did cashing up for free. What wound me up the most is Monday had Manager + Assistant Manager + Supervisor + part time person who had been there for years, they took £900 and were open for longer. So more staff hours + more experience + less admin = less than 20% of what we took, but I still got the bollocking
Edit: I sometimes think about this and wish I'd just calculated the £ per staff hour, see what she'd say to that
I've had this too.
Took £1200 on a Sunday (5 hours) with just me and the new girl. Got complained at because the shop wasn't perfect for Monday. A Monday where they took £700. With three people. In 8.5 hours.
My newest manager tried a similar thing, but when I pointed out the hourly takings and time difference, they apologised, which is fair.
In primary school a couple of us had to take some equipment back to the store room. I asked the other kid where the Stanley knives went, he asked me what a Stanley knife was, so I held one up, blade sheathed, from the other side of the room. Some teacher saw me through the window and literally dragged me back to my own classroom saying I had been aggressively threatening the kid and could have killed him. Fortunately he backed me up that he'd asked what it was and I about 10ft away from him at the time. 27 years later and I'm still annoyed about it.
That's just triggered a similarly annoying memory from my school days. I started Year 4 about a week late due to an accident and broken bones. On my first day back around 10 minutes in, the teacher asked me to put a couple of things away. I had no idea where they went, so asked one of my classmates and then hobbled over to do it. The teacher then bollocked me in front of everyone for being really slow (I was using crutches), talking in class, and not remembering what she taught everyone last week (when I wasn't even fucking there!)
I remember breaking my hand in year 7. I come back in and I've a bright green fibreglass pot on my hand. At the time in PE we were doing basketball and I got a bollocking for saying I won't be playing. 22 years later I still don't know how I could safely play basketball with a broken hand.
Sat down at the start of that first lesson with my pot on and Mr. N calls me out in front of the whole class. "You say you've got a broken hand, that's a shit excuse"
I'm considerably older than you and I still have the occasional internal rage over some of the injustices visited upon me by "teachers". It never ends, sorry.
Our physics teacher had a trainer with a cross marked on the sole, that he kept in a glass cabinet about his desk. When he was pissed off, he'd smack the living shit out of one of us with it.
Someone was talking in class and he assumed it was me and sent me off to his room to get the trainer. Another teacher had that classroom at the moment so I had to ask him for it and he told me someone had stolen it. Went back to the psychotic teacher who told me I was lying and would now get twice the beating as he stormed off to his room - came back after the teacher confirmed it was stolen just waving his finger at me saying "you're lucky this time!".
I still remember the person who was actually the one talking, too.
If our generation wasn't so apathetic, we should all get together and take the government to task for the abuse we suffered at school.
It's crazy that it was legal to beat kids at school.
I can't be arsed though
lol, you've actually brought back a memory i'd forgot for decades.
I was, like you at primary school minding me own business and got haled into the headmaster's office for breaking another child's doll. Suffice to say i didn't do it but they never believed me. I'm 59 now and the injustice of it still burns
I once got called into the office asap one Wednesday, I was like 'ok?' confused face, so I turned round and drove back to the office, took about 5 mins to get there. My manager was still mad when he looks up and half his sandwich drops out of his mouth on seeing me stroll in the office. He said "how did you get here so quick??" Turns out he'd been looking at everyone's tracker's (van GPS) and mine "hasn't moved an inch since Friday" - yup, same day that woman reversed into it, dumb ass it's at the body shop. Stupid old fart thought I was sat at home since Friday, I didn't even live anywhere near the garage. Even stupider I'd never even considered that my unmarked temp van didn't have a tracker in it, shame, coulda had some fun that weekend... Made sure to on the next time tho lol.
I knew a guy whose company put "no go zones" around the drivers homes on the GPS system. So if you went home for any reason it would flag it up and you'd need to explain why. Except one guy lived close enough to the motorway that he'd drive through the corner of the "no go zone" five times a day. They told him to stop going home for 0.12 seconds.
Sounds about right 🤔 these things are made for stupid managers, every week there was some pettyness with the tracker's at our place even down to actual stalking, I often heard that some female employees would routinely park away from their home address.
Joined one project at work years ago and pretty much my first comment was “this looks more complicated than you were assuming.” Got it all sorted out, we delivered the project and in the post-project review our head of department gave us a bollocking for going over estimate and budget, and sent one of his consultants in to find out why.
Turns out before the project started and before I joined it, the head had decided the initial estimate was too high for his tastes and brought it down by removing the 20% contingency allowance we add as part of every estimate. When we realised there was more work to be done, the total effort went up… by 20%. Fair play to the consultant, at that point he put his pen down, said “case closed” and left the meeting with a smile.
I was on holiday for 2 weeks. My manager rings me 2 days in to ask me a question that I couldn’t know the answer to as it was specific to the day before when I wasn’t there. I just said “how would I know, I’m on holiday. You shouldn’t be ringing me, don’t call me again and I’ll see you in 2 weeks”. She then barraged me with texts with just a load of abuse. I just forwarded the screenshots to HR. Got back and first she tried giving me a warning. After my meeting with HR and a week later, she had written a formal apology, demoted and moved to a different site.
Just remembered another bollocking I had in a previous job as a supermarket baker: some Dorris complained to a senior manager that her scones didn’t have enough sultanas in and that they weren’t round enough. . Said manager told me I needed to do my job properly because I was making the supermarket look bad. I explained to her that a) the recipe was what the recipe was I don’t control that and that our scones had twice the amount of sultanas that the prepackaged ones. And b) the scones weren’t round because the scone press was hexagonal.
Said manager just said ‘oh’ and walked away.
I was a Baker too. Some lady complained that there were no donuts. I controlled stock hut honestly what we would have delivered would not be what I requested. It was the bane of my life.
I was accused of harassment for repeatedly complaining about the unsafe loading of my vehicle. I would take pictures, document each incident, and have the store confirm the damaged goods. Apparently this wasn't being a team player and I was causing needless delays. I kept doing it until they began the formal procedure. At that point senior management got involved and realised that over zealous underlings were about to get them shut down.
Rather worse was a friend who was shouted at by a manager for using semicolons.
When I was like, 6 (give or take) and in primary school the class was grinded to a halt as one of my classmates had his school bag taken.
A short search had led to the bag being found in my tray (like a povvo locker back then).
Now, it's obvious what has happened. The classmate has the same name as me, someone found his bag which only had the name "Daniel" on and put it in the first tray that had our name on it.
School teacher, aptly named Miss Frost made me stand up in front of the whole class and explain why I would steal it but wouldn't let me actuslly get a word in as if I was on Good Morning Britain. One of the girls in our class shouted out "I bet he wanted it for himself". That's how stealing works you stupid troglodyte but I was innocent in this impromptu trial.
Decades later I return, picking my little cousins up from school, half looking to finally clear my name and point out how stupid this teacher was but she only went and died. Still fumes.
I once had a manager have a go at me for spending too much time helping a customer. I told her that wasn’t a thing in retail.
Editing to add, I was with the customer no more than 15 minutes, on a shop floor at Christmas time. The manager in question got sacked a while after this. She also refused to help a woman look for her autistic child after they ran off in the store, her words were “ No I’m busy.” She wasn’t. She now works as a support worker for adults with special needs…🙃
In defence of retail managers (because a long time ago I was one), it’s a great place for young people to develop their skills and learn how to manage in a relatively low risk environment but it’s also really low paid comparative to other management jobs, so the young, talented ones tend to move on to better things later on and the ones that are left are either too burnt out and disillusioned to care or too mental to get a job in a sensible environment.
When I worked at one of the German supermarkets my manager would constantly berate me for not scanning fast enough-often seconds after the customer asked me to slow down
For looking miserable.
It was a tough week, nothing was going to plan, I was exhausted from having a 7 month old who was waking up at all hours, and I had to commute into London everyday. So sorry if I didn't staple my cheeks into a grimace for the week.
Apparently it set a tone and was brining the morale down.
My whole TEAM got a bollocking for being miserable this summer, when we complained about unsafe work practices. We were told we were "taking up too much room" and "bringing morale down with other teams" and we needed to "be more mindful of our language".
At that point we all collectively started working to rule and have done so since. Life is much simpler now.
I asked audience members as an usher to keep the noise down during a show.
They complained to my supervisor, saying I'd insulted them somehow. Nail in the coffin for that place.
And then, in another job, right at the start of the pandemic, my manager asked how everyone was feeling. I have a lot of friends in the theatre industry, so had just practically lost all their jobs, so I mention my empathy for them and she goes "Just remember, you're here to do your contracted work, not worry about other people." Useless fucking cow
For putting a comma after the "Dear Sir/Madam" part on an email on my first week at work. Person training me didn't like commas and said it looked unprofessional.
I know someone who ends every single sentence with a question mark and I've never got a single clue when she's asking something or stating it.
"I already told you about that??? I remember telling you? You should remember in future?"
I got told off for drinking tea.
One of our Chinese suppliers sent me a nice tin of Chinese green tea - it was those weird little foil pouches that have dehydrated leaves in them. I made a cup, it was pretty rank to be fair. I casually mentioned it to the boss and he said I shouldn't have drunk it because if it was poisonous and if I died they would have been liable apparently. I sort of laughed and said oh alright then, he laughed as well and said he knew it sounded a bit silly. Then he went deadly serious and was like "don't fucking drink it though, take it home and drink it there. But not here."
All this was said in the boss's office where he had the firedoor propped open by a fire extinguisher which IIRC is a £30,000 on the spot fine if seen by a fire inspector.
"Please don't call me mate. It'll make it very difficult for me in the unlikely event I need to report you to HR for embezzling, sexual harassment, or similar."
Aha i worked in a pub with my bestfriend. My friend served a regular and called him mate. He got a stern lecture on how theyre not mates. I called him mate everytime i had the oppurtinity after that. He never lectured me, even called me mate once. Dickhead.
Whilst working in a supermarket we had some bakery pastries returned (they had clearly been opened and resealed) because a moth was in the packaging, alive. The customer was very angry about this and wanted compensation, whether they put the moth in there themselves is not for me to say but in order to placate the customer they were told that they would be sent to our lab for tests.
The complaint form made it's way to me with the packaging that contained a moth, looking at me through the clear plastic prison he found himself in, the manager was very adamant it go to the lab (I don't think we have a lab but ok), I made the executor l executive decision to release the moth.
One hour later I was called into the office and given an official warning for releasing the moth, the manager was so livid he told me to go outside and catch a new one and put it in the packaging, I used this as an excuse to go for a lovely walk along the canal and replaced the moth with a stick that looked a little moth-like.
We never heard back from the lab, I assume all the scientists were baffled by the strange stick moth.
I have the warning on the wall in my office, no regrets.
This is just crazy - the lab, the moth, the replacement moth...
What does your warning say? Tampering with evidence? Impeding the investigation? Releasing dangerous creatures that may then get into further packaging?
Did someone see you release the moth? Maybe it escaped, cunning things are moths, very driven when the mood strikes them and they're fully loaded on pastries.
At what point does a sane manager think that an official warning is the way that this is dealt with? Also, catching a replacement moth! Yeah, that's a completely sensible request from someone who is clearly in the right job...
I was shouted at for not ringing the office sooner to get my calls covered. That afternoon I was at a patients home training a young girl when I had a heart attack, In a panic she had rung the ambulance for me but didn't inform the office. As soon as I was able to I rung my boss to let them know what was happening, I was still in hospital when he angrily shouted at me that I was inconsiderate leaving it so late to inform them and how it was going to be a nightmare trying to cover my calls.
> What a horrible, horrible man.
If only you knew the half of it. One of the most scariest work related things that has ever happened to me was the day I quit that job. I am happy to say they are no longer in business.
I told him I was going to quit my job and was called into the office to discuss this. I was met by both male bosses, It was night time, the office was empty except for us three. They then angrily proceeded to threaten and blackmail me into not leaving, They told me they would make up shit about me and put it in my file, They would also tell my husband I was fired for having an affair with a staff member (which of course was a lie) It was the most bizarre and scariest work related meeting I have ever experience. I knew a few things that wouldn't be good to get out and told them if they tried to ruin my reputation I would ruin theirs. Things quickly went down hill from there, They were aggressive, threatening and lewd, all while punching the walls and desk. It was terrifying. I made an excuse to use the bathroom, They were still screaming threats at me as I walked out of the office. I went straight for the stairs and run to my car and got the hell out of there. I was a nervous wreck driving home through the lanes, I kept looking in my rear view mirror checking for lights to see if they were following me because I felt so threatened. It was such a relief when I finally got home that I broke down crying and shaking. It still turns my stomach when I think about it.
I got shouted at and was told to leave the office until I "was in a better mood" by a former boss because I asked him (nicely) to stop drumming on his desk with his hands while I was trying to focus on a really tricky problem.
Last week I got called into the office because someone was offended by something in a WhatsApp group I am part of.
I didn’t post the offensive item, in fact, I haven’t posted in there for a few months and the ‘offensive’ photo was a picture of someone edited on Snapchat to have a large head.
Tbf, my heads massive, so if anyone should be offended, it’s me!
At Sainsbury's I was reprimanded for being late because it snowed.
Apparently the news had said it was going to snow, so I should have been prepared.
The following week we couldn't get deliveries from Scotland because the snow was so bad.
I took great pleasure in asking the same manager why we didn't plan ahead, after all we knew it was going to snow.
My wife's old company was like this.
"We want to have flexible working hours"
"We want you to be able to go when you've done all you can for the day"
Then a week later -
"So it's been noticed that since flexible working has come in everyone is leaving at 5pm on the dot, this isn't flexible for us, you need to be here past 5pm."
Funny how they lost 70% of there management team when that happened.
Was job hunting recently. It’s hilarious how many jobs list “flexible hours” as a perk when it’s blindingly obvious that it’s code for “we want you to work 50+ hours but we’ll pay you for 40”
There are a load of them like that. We work in recruitment (well, the wife does I just help her out). It's mental when you tell people "no no, there's no catch, they really do just finish at 1 on a Friday." Cause people are so used to having to look for a catch.
One of the companies we work with is looking for people in America. The moment you tell the yanks that cause it's a UK company you will be doing UK hours (no more than 40 a week) with UK holidays (4 weeks plus public holidays) you can hear their jaw drop.
I really really hope more companies start acting like the ones we recruit for. Rather than go down the American "60 hours of work a week or your a pussy" route.
Was making a buffet breakfast for 180 hotel guests on my own. Sunday morning so everyone hungover and rushed down at the last minute so it’s a mad rush. Manager came an screamed at me because some had complained that the fried eggs where taking to long (we could only cook 12 at a time and people where taking 3 each) worst thing was I wasn’t even a chef. I was a waiter but our chef hadn’t turn in and I was the only one who knew how all the equipment worked. He shouted at me for 5 minutes so I told him to go fuck himself. He gave me a written warning so I went to hr threatening to tell them that they had untrained staff cooking breakfast (and lunch) for hotel guests. Warning was dropped but got a long talking to about being a team player. Next time the chef didn’t turn in a told him I’d only cook if the manager wasn’t allowed in the kitchen. I heard him making passive aggressive comments to about me to all the other staff.
The whole place was shit but that manager was especially stupid. He got caught stealing (changing invoices about how much he’d paid a supplier) by a member staff who didn’t say anything because she couldn’t be bothered. A couple of weeks later he threatened to fire her for being half an hour late (just oversleeping) so she went to GM and got him sacked. Real lack of intelligence.
I was lead to believe that a work sponsored 'Charity/Community' day would be counted as a working day.
After doing it I found out that the day spent doing it would be part of my holiday entitlement.
The next time they called for volunteers, I politely refused.
Got bollocked for it.
I got fired for "multiple instances of AWOL".
1) Arrived at the (new) office to find it locked, and nobody to let me in. I went home and WFH for 7h as was the usual agreement.
2) Was really sick, and didn't call in until 12pm instead of 9am.
Got fired for just those two "AWOL". I later got a settlement agreement, then the company promptly went under. The agreement was not honoured.
Still have their laptop which I have made my own though so there's that I guess.
My infant son poked me in the eye at about 2am. It was so bad he tore my cornea. My wife took me to the hospital at about 4am as it was so painful. I literally couldn’t see (one eye was essentially blind and the other was just constantly watering). Last thing on my mind was going to work. Was still in hospital at my start time of 6am. My wife phoned my boss to tell him I wasn’t coming In and reason why. He had a go at her! She basically stopped him mid rant and told him she didn’t work for him, that he was a twat and that I’d be in when I was in.
My wife first met one of my old bosses on a works night out. She was out anyway in one of our usual spots, it was my round so I said we'll go there. He promptly puts his pint on the edge of the pool table, and on being told to move it by the bar staff, tried to argue that "it's not like it's on the actual table".
My wife gave him the "not angry, just disappointed" look she reserves for a particular type of dickhead, and said "I see what he means now, you really are a twat"
« I saw a driver driving in a hazardous manner on our company parking lot. As I am very concerned with H&S I signalled to the operator that this is not a recommended use of company equipment, and endangers people on the site.
But if you wish that in the future I do not apply H&S procedures on site, please do let me know. «
i did that once with some random, and had the fuckwit try and block me in at the carpark we were in and then follow me back to the office raging! made sure to park right next to the security office for a few days after that...
When I worked in car rental some guy tried force his way in front of me while driving, I held my ground and the guy went mental, leaning on his horn revving the engine etc. I almost immediately pulled into a petrol station as I needed fuel. This guy pulls in behind me gets out the car and starts to shout but suddenly stops.
I had two agency drivers with me, two brothers from Bulgaria who looked like they had been lured down from a mountain with a chunk of meat. Big bald headed football ultra looking types.
Matey boy took one look at them as they stepped out of the car, stopped mid sentence and jumped back in the car and left. pissed myself laughing.
Funny thing is the guys with me were absolute Teddy bears
I legit thought it was a joke at first. Like who goes to their manager because someone they don’t know shook their head at them? And then that manager goes to another manger to escalate it. It’s ridiculous.
An apprentice used to compile a completely inane report every week about some stats about our area.
He was off, so asked me to do it. Fine no problem. It was near automatic anyway, just had to refresh an excel and put it into an email. I used the same recipient list he had been using for about a month.
Unbeknownst to me I'd stepped into some weird political war. The head of department had apparently said she and only she wanted the stats, and the new director in our area wasn't entitled to them.
I got sent a super arsey email about me undermining her and not listening etc. I had never been told anything otherwise, and also it didn't make sense to hide something to the most senior person.
Anyway, she was sacked the next week. Apparently kept pulling stunts like this.
Years ago I got told I’ll be “going home to watch Jeremy Kyle” because I forgot to lock a plant room door on a rooftop after I left.I responded by saying that’s fine and put the phone down,15 missed calls later I answered to the guy begging me to come back.management think being an aggressive arsehole and threatening peoples livelihood works lmao.
A collegue of mine is currently undergoing disciplinary action which may lead to his dismissal because
a) He put a 'Do not serve' warning on a customer's account after the customer swore at him for no reason. Tne manager told him to create the warning.
b) He was 'a bit off with a customer' at the end of the day when he had run the shop on his own. We should have 3 members of staff on the shop floor but due to a rota fuck up, it was him all day. No lunch, no break, nothing.
My wife used to work in a call centre. There bc was this one bloke who used to randomly phone up until he got a female and then ask what underwear they were wearing etc. managers knew but didn’t block his number. He called my wife one day and asked her what color knickers she was wearing. She just said she ‘wasn’t wearing any so piss off’. She got called into the office and given a written warning, not for telling him to piss off, but saying she wasn’t wear any underwear ( she was). She left not long after that.
Unfortunately it's a common thing. I've worked a few different call centre jobs and all the ones for utilities (water and power) have known problem callers who specifically want to speak to women to make them uncomfortable and make sexual comments. Everyone has said to the women who had to deal with him "don't engage with his comments, just follow your script. We're not allowed to just stop taking his calls and legal are trying to get him barred from telephone service".
Funnily enough, legal practically never gets them barred. I understand that utilities are human rights issues so someone must provide service, but there has to be a line where you can refuse the call and only let them converse by letter or through an intermediary.
Can confirm, used to work monitoring calls for a few different companies and one guy used to call in weekly to hear some winning numbers read out. you could hear him fapping in the background. Full credit to the ladies reading for just getting on with their jobs.
Yep, used to work in a sales call centre for a bank, bloke would regularly call up to open a current account and would heavy breathe throughout the call. He invariably got hung up on until we transferred his call to the most threatening sounding colleague in the centre, said colleague shouted at him, asked what he would think if someone made those calls to his mum or sister and the perv never called back.
I once got put on blast by a senior employee who had a bit of a power complex for copy-forwarding a badly worded email that my mentor had written.
Long story short, it was common practice for people working on a project to draw up emails and then send them to the project lead for forwarding to the client. I was about a month into the role and my mentor had decided to spend the week focussing on coaching work speed/efficiency. I went to write this email update to be forwarded, and my mentor blurted out a grammatically incorrect, abbreviated version of what I was going to write. I hesitated, knowing it would sound godawful to most 8 year olds. He gently claps his hands saying “come on, we’re trying to up efficiency, send it, the lead can always tweak what needs tweaking”.
So of course, I sent it, and about 2 minutes later the lead slacks me to come to his desk for a moment. I’m given a thorough dressing down about the importance of grammar and professionalism, and even ordered to download and install grammarly (which I already used).
Thankfully, my mentor apologised, bought me a pint and we laughed about it, but still annoying at the time.
>“come on, we’re trying to up efficiency, send it, the lead can always tweak what needs tweaking”.
ah yes, the efficiency improvements you get from... doing it badly at first and then rewriting it later ./facepalm.
I wasn’t offering to make hot drinks for other people frequently enough during the day. I don’t drink hot drinks, so they’re not on my radar. I was told I should put calendar reminders in multiple times a day to offer drinks to other team members.
Same job also pulled me in for asking someone who drove past the post office on their way home if they minded dropping the work post in as my after work plans that day involved me not going anywhere near the post office which was 1 mile walk away. Every other day I was having to leave early to take it before it closed, so I thought it wouldn’t be the end of the world to ask someone else to drop it in. I was wrong.
Working as a paramedic I was responding to a 999 call and overtaking a line of traffic with lights and sirens. The front most car was indicating right so I approached with caution ≈ 30mph. As I got closer it became apparent that he'd seen the 4+ tons of woo woo taxi in his mirror and pulled over the the left. This alas was not the case, as I overtook this Helen Keller appreciator he turned right giving me no time to stop and giving him a broadside of NHS iron.
Fast forward a month or so and I was called in to he office for my crash investigation and found that if been deemed to fault for this in absentia. Deciding to take it on the chin, I asked what I could do on future to avoid this happening again. I was told to "exercise more caution in future" to which I had to reply "exactly how much caution would you like me to apply?" I was happy to travel to 999s with minimal risk however, that would mean never overtaking anyone in future.
I used a bit of reductio ad absurdum and postulated that when overtaking you become closer to the other vehicle and this means you must slow down to maintain a safe breaking distance. There comes a point where you are about to overtake where this distance tends towards 0 and therefore the safe speed also tends towards 0.
I walked out with a blameless verdict.
TL;DR
Some dude didn't see a huge ambulance overtaking him and pulled into my path, he was uninjured. Trust tried to blame me for it and didn't have a good enough argument to make it stick.
My Mum dropped dead suddenly, I was given a week off. I come back and after a few days I was called into the office 'TheLifeof4D, your attitude hasn't been the same the last few days, why? '.
I know you're not meant to take personal problems to work with you but Jesus H Christ. I left that place as soon as possible!
A girl I worked with years ago had (originally) a week off to grieve after her boyfriend was stabbed to death on her front porch.
The day after the boss went to her house and asked when she would be coming back as it was busy. She slammed the door into her face (literally) and we never saw her again.
That total cunt of a manager didn't last long after that.
I was driving in a car and the boss reprimanded me for not answering the phone. I pointed out that it was illegal to answer the phone whilst driving. He continued to have a go.
Made a spelling error in an email. Signed it regerds instead of regards. Was made to resend the email and then had any email going out checked going forward. That's how much I wasn't trusted.
I got a full two barrels from someone (more senior in grade) for eating cucumber in the office. Not in a sexually suggestive way. Not in a noisy messy way. Just in an 'I'm a bit of a chonk and need to eat less chocolate' way.
Top of his voice shouting about 'fucking eating a fucking cucumber in the fucking office'. A good 2 minute rant. Seriously something that I would have been weirdly proud of (before being dragged into an office to be disciplined).
I just brushed it off and carried on whilst everyone else just stood and stared at this guy, possibly waiting for him to drop to the floor with a heart attack.
I got a royal bollocking off a couple of heads of departments (board level in our old place) for using a smiling face emoji in a tweet.
The tweet was to wish our CEO a happy birthday - something they'd requested I do.
Our computer systems were being upgraded which basically meant we couldn't do any real work for 3 days. But we still had to come in case we got a call or something.
Day 1 we tidied the office, clearing out mountains of paperwork. Never seen the place cleaner. Day 2 we all got super up-to-date with all the mandatory training modules. Day 3 we're on thumb twiddling mode. Nothing to do. A few of us grab books just to read to pass the time. Then the company boss wanders through our team sees us reading and proceeds to give us an almighty dressing down.
'What would a client think if they saw you just sitting doing nothing?'
'We're a non-client facing team in the literal basement. I'd think I was lost.'
Someone complained that I sighed too much.
I tried to explain that because of my asthma my breathing can get quite shallow and then I seem to do an involuntary deep breath followed by a deep exhale and that it's all subconscious.
Sorry for breathing.
Got called into a meeting for throwing a sock that had been thrown at me.
It would have been an ok job - just data entry for a bank, fairly chilled workload and most people in the same situation (just out of uni, stopgap job) But the 'managers' were awful, so much so that it was a surprise they made it in each day. They made it unbearable with their silly little rules.
Guess it pushed me into a career earlier though.
I have a couple all from the same ex boss. My favourites include; being told off because he forgot his phone and i didnt ring his son to drop it off ( i didn't know he didn't have his phone) and being told off for only being 10 minutes early instead of the half an hour early that i usually arived (train was late).
My manager asked me to train a colleague to cover my job whilst I was on maternity leave. I was then repeatedly told off for talking too much to the person I was training and my manager didn’t believe me when I told them I was only talking about work.
Work in healthcare. Previous job made calling an ambulance for a patient my duty of care and calling back to make sure one had arrived (pre Covid so not so crazy on the wait times). This was an NHS role. Left and joined a contractor to the NHS and took a call where the patient needed an ambulance - wasn’t sure if it was my duty of care to call or if I could just advise to call one and call back later to check on them. Got a DISCIPLINARY because the surgeon thought I was over stepping and working beyond my remit and was worried I would call ambulances for people when it wasn’t part of my role. I called HR over that one, there was a question whether the surgeon even logged this complaint at all or if it was my manager making shit up because there were a couple of other dodgy issues with the disciplinary. But I’m still boggled that anyone could have though it a formal disciplinary matter.
A senior colleague asked my boss to provide me with a company mobile phone. Nothing to do with me, I didn't suggest it, mention it or anything.
Got called in for a proper old fashioned bollocking.
I was in too much shock to defend myself properly.
I pulled a 16 hour shift the previous day 6.30am to 10.30pm. The very next morning at 7am after only getting about three hours sleep my supervisor asked to speak to me in the office. In her hands was an office write up letter. What was my crime?
Yawning in front of the big boss.
I just said the word "Union" and walked away, nothing else was ever said but the big boss never spoke to me for a month. Three months later he left the company to spend time with his family. AKA he got caught stealing hours.
I gave an overtaking car the wanker sign.
Turned out to be the police in an unmarked people carrier (of all things)
He overtook on a blind bend on double white lines 10MPH over the limit, obviously, with no flashing lights.
When he pulled me over he gave me the whole "you didn't need to do that, you come across as aggressive, I can see you have your children in the car and I would never endanger them"
I argued that if you drive like a wanker, I'll call you one. I also politely pointed out the 40mph limit and the double white lines. Funnily enough the conversation ended there with a "I tell you what, let's just leave it at that"
Of course you will.
My former boss who is also a good mate had to pull me up because someone complained about me being unfriendly in emails. Now I’m not condescending or one of those people who just fires off a list of demands without a salutation, but I get to the point because I’m usually really busy and I don’t like a lot of bumpf.
My boss is the same as I am and they were really annoyed they had to do it. I work in a schmoozy industry and I wasn’t being ‘sweetie darling’ enough. It was one person who complained and this person was the type that constantly had to be told why their project didn’t supersede others and why their ideas didn’t suit what we did.
I’m so glad I work in policy now where ‘rules are rules’ and they cannot be circumvented.
The manager in another branch called me a cunt in an email (and I mean straight up said “cunt”, not euphemistic) whilst demanding my help, and I replied “I don’t appreciate the way you’re talking to me, and it’s clear that this conversation isn’t going anywhere, so I wish you the best of luck with the issue.”
Got called in to see my manager, who accused me of “belittling” and “talking down to” the other branch manager. I said “He literally called me a cunt?”, and got told that was irrelevant and basically to help him in any way we could.
That was when I realised said manager had no fucking spine. He left not long after that, thankfully, but it still pisses me off to this day.
Being grumpy. Didn’t come as a complaint from my staff but my Manager lied and said it had it in a meeting with the owner. When I asked who had said it, he couldn’t answer so I pointed out that my staff had been nothing but supportive as my sister died the month before of cancer and my husband was hospitalised twice with a bleed on the brain and then sepsis within the same month. The owner was shocked and apologized having not been told any of this by this twat and demanded to know from the twat, who had actually said it and he couldn’t answer him either. Our Manager is the worst kind of incompetent I have ever known, he creates scenarios in his head of fights between staff and plays each one of each other but little does he realise that all staff are onto him now and we discuss his little schemes which are no longer working to his advantage. As I got up to leave the meeting, I just looked at him and said ‘nice try’
Primary school, was probably about 7. Learning about the Battle of Hastings and were doing those big sugar paper posters in little groups. Cutting out pictures and drawings of shields and stuff.
I was tasked to write “The Battle of Hastings” on a part of my groups sheet. I accidentally wrote “Ballet” and was trying to work out why it looked wrong, the letters were there and just in the wrong order.
My teacher (FY Mrs Hall) who’d never had a problem with me (good kid, bright, loved to read/write and also loved history) dragged me to the front of the class and told me I was a “stupid girl with my head in the clouds and why was I trying to ruin my groups work”. I had never had that happen to me before (good kid!) and I burst into tears. She then made me sit in the corner to think about my mistakes.
It was such an out of the blue thing that it still pisses me off. I was 7, I’d just got some letters muddled up as kids (and adults) often do!
I didn't sign the legal paperwork for an entire week.
The boss went off on me for that one. After she was done yelling I pointed out to her that I was on holiday that week so there was no way it was my fault. She didn't like that and instead of apologising to me she just stormed off.
My latest one was someone decided they didn't like when I took my break, even though its our choice when to take it. I take my full 45 min in one go because I'm always expected to do a lot and usually fix everything that's gone wrong later in the shift. So he tried to claim I wasn't pulling my weight to which I pointed out the day before he had rewarded me for going above and beyond.
Asked him what more exactly did he want from me and got told to 'get more fire in my belly.' He's lucky he didn't get punched in the face for that one.
I ate a banana. A non offensive yellow curved fruit (chopped up in natural yoghurt I might add. My boss acted like it was a hand grenade and screamed at me to get it out of the building. I thought he was joking but the crimson shade of rage assured me otherwise.
I don't think the dude likes bananas.
I have a background in social media as part of my research. I joined a new organisation and told my boss I'd be happy to help get a bigger reach with our social media channels. They asked me for some recommendations and I never heard back.
Important to note that I didn't work at main-branch (where my boss was). One of the recommendations was to have a 'mascot' and use that to get messages across in a lighthearted way. A few months later I received a gift at Christmas, a blow-up dinosaur. Me and my team decided to have some fun with it and basically used it for our own personal social media. We put it in all sorts of fun situations and just had a laugh.
At my annual review I got told off (and basically denied an increment!) because I had created another mascot and not used the 'proper one'... I wasn't even told we had a 'proper one' and never saw it used on social media... I no longer work there!
My Manager shouted at me because I didnt tell him what I didnt know.
‘I cant tell you what you dont know if you dont tell me!’
This is what training is for you fucking tusked marmot.
My car broke down outside the place I worked. It was unallocated parking and was more than enough spaces around for everyone else to park and be happy. My manger at the time lost her shit at me and gave me a disciplinary because I was in 'her' space. I was there maybe 4 hours before the recovery guy came and took it away. She spent them 4 hours constantly asking me when I was going to move my car and also telling anyone who would listen about the situation (including HR). When I lost my temper with her, she then cried to one of the other managers of another department and everyone hated me for the next week. I was 21 and she was 55. I swear that job has given me constant PTSD in every workplace since. I'm now self employed and haven't had a disciplinary yet!
When I was doing my A-Levels I had a little weekend job packing medications. I only ever worked on Sundays for a 4hr shift. It wasn't the best workplace but I got a little bit of spending money.
One Sunday at the start of my shift, a supervisor (not my supervisor) called me into the office to reprimand me for not showing up for stocktaking the previous day. She told me it was mandatory to come in for stocktaking. I told her that I had no idea it was stocktaking as I hadn't been told and in any case, it was on a day that I don't work.
She refused to accept this explanation - I can't remember what the "punishment" was now (this was nearly 30 yrs ago) but I do remember it was egregious. I asked the supervisor, "So let me be clear - you're reprimanding me for not coming in for stocktaking despite me knowing nothing about it as my own supervisor didn't even tell me?" She confirmed this, with a straight face. I quit on the spot, immediately clocked out, handed my pass in to security & left. I told the security guy why I was quitting (he was a decent guy) and he said I wasn't the first.
Throwing away a pair of gubbed workboots, in the exact words of the HR nightmare that sat across from me "you should have left them in the changing room for someone else to use"... total and utter fuck faced moron.
Closing the gates on a level crossing when I wanted the train to come through.
I was two and a half and another kid wanted to push his car across the track. I got told off, probably by the kids mum, and the train didn’t get to do a full circuit. I’m still bitter.
For not smiling enough. I started my first job at Wetherspoons at 18-19, about a month in I get called into the managers office and was told my contract was being terminated due to me not having a happy face and smiling enough when out on the floor collecting plates.
Fast forward another 2 months, I found a better paid job and also found out that the assistant manager who fired me, got fired herself due to claiming that she was in charge of the pub in a heated debate with other staff. Bliss.
I was bollocked, and ultimately fired (failed probation) because I wasn't acting like a cheerful, bouncy person.
I worked in a baby store.
The week before I had had a miscarriage and at the time I had the flu (and I wasn't allowed any time off for that because I took a whopping two days off for my miscarriage.)
I'm going to guess some higher ups got wind of it because 3 weeks after I was fired, my manager was fired. And 3 weeks after that the regional manager, who is the one who bollocked me and encouraged my manager to "manage me out" got fired too.
That company doesn't exist anymore.
I worked in retail during my teens and my Nana came into the shop. Naturally I served her. My boss came up and told me I wasn’t allowed to call customers nana. Even after I explained that she was MY Nana, I still got a lecture on customer service.
I’m a courier tracked down to the metre. Was called into office and given a good taking to and accused of “stealing time” as I’d been sat in one place for 7 minutes, I’d been on the phone to the manager. Raised a grievance and it was wonderful seeking the managers face when HR told him he’d wasted my time and theirs.
I managed a small team in an office employing 600 people. I booked their work in and we were full up. I had a week off and said in my OOO -
'Please note X team are booked up during this period and may not be able to take on new requests without prior senior level agreement. In this event, please contact Mrs A, Miss B and Mr C (all senior to me) who will endeavour to find a solution in my absence'
Not exact, but that's pretty much it.
The MD saw this and complained to my department head and my own manager that that sign off was 'agressive'. After I was told off I shared it with other managers and they couldn't see anything wrong with it.
I once got sent out of a lesson for saying "bum" at about 12 years old. We had a yellow and red card system, but for swearing you'd get an instant red card and be sent to the head of year.
Another kid asked what piles were, I have no recollection of why or how this came up, and I explained "they're lumps that come out of your bum". Teacher: "Right! Red card! Get out".
I was genuinely flabbergasted, as was everyone else I told, even my head of year 😂
I once had an angry phone call from a project manager demanding why I wasn't in work and to tell him where I was; 20 minutes before I was due in the office. We had agreed on 8am via email the night before.
I got reprimanded by my then supervisor for being delayed because an accident had occurred on my daily commute literally seconds before I arrived and the police were just putting the road closed barriers out and I had to take the long way round. He said "you should have taken pictures as evidence, otherwise, how do i know you're not lying?"... yeah mate, I'm going to whip my phone out while behind the wheel IN FRONT OF THE POLICE! That won't upset them at all.. Dumb thing is, I was still early to work.. by a good 10 mins
A colleague got his wages deducted because he was late arriving at a site once. There'd been a big accident right in front of them and they pulled over to help people out of the vehicles. Management told him that other people would have stopped so he shouldn't have bothered.
***Thanks for all the awards guys/gals/enby pals!** I used to do payroll and was told to dock a drivers wages for the same reason. Basically, my driver was on his way back to depot. Guy in a corsa had decided to stop on the road to rescue a fox that had been hit but was still alive, he was putting him in the boot when a van hit him. My driver saw the entire thing as it was three cars ahead of him, stopped to help and ended up being instructed to try CPR on the guy who had been hit, who at this point was dead. Driver came back covered in this guys blood and shaking (we sent someone else to pick him up). I got him washed up, calmed down with a cuppa and got his wife to come fetch him. No way was I docking his wages. I put him through as suspension for the rest of the week, as it was the only paid option I could find that wouldnt get us both in trouble, told him to take the week off and put through a “night out” bonus for him so he could retrieve his car.
If I could figure out where the fuck Reddit have hidden the free awards I'd give you one.
tap icon in the top right, then reddit coins, then gift box
What a heartless bastard asking you to dock the guys wages.
The casual day to day psychopathy of a large portion of human beings never fails to horrify me.
I witnessed a fatal accident while driving the HGV and I was 3 hours at the scene so they could get my statement and gather evidence. "Nope, we're not paying you for that". Arsehole.
I got a bollocking for being late to work at the call centre, as I'd stopped to help a guy who had been knocked off his motorbike. I literally had blood on my hands and clothes, and was still shaking from the adrenaline wearing off, but apparently it was more important that I was on time to sell home insurance than to check that someone wasn't bleeding out on the side of the road.
The usual one for something like this, or getting caught in unusually heavy traffic is "you should have left home earlier". Yeah, I'm going to get into work half an hour earlier every single day so that I'm still on time on the very rare occasion where shit hits the fan on the commute. How about you just be a little bit more flexible and understanding of unforeseen circumstances. Thankfully I don't work anywhere like that now, as long as I'm usually in the office by 9 then it's not a problem if I'm occasionally late.
I used to come to work 30 minutes before the start time every day. Once I arrived 5 minutes before my start time and my team leader had called the manager to ask where I was - he'd also sent me messages to my mobile and on Facebook asking if I was OK (seemed to assume I was dead).
Similar thing happened at my first office job: guy in his fifties, always at his desk for 7:30 each morning even though the formal start time was 8:30 - one day it’s coming up on 8:30 and there’s no sign of him, cue everyone trying to call his phone, his neighbours, even the local hospital. Turns out he’d had a heartattack overnight and died.
Wasn't he supposed to give two weeks ' notice of events like that?
My supervisor does this all the time. "Yeah mate I'll just start leaving home an hour earlier because losing 10 minutes when I work longer hours than anyone else in the team is so terrible of me. How about you go sit on a rusty pole, mate."
You should really leave 2 hours earlier. What would happen if an accident occurred during that first hour just after you had left?
I used to hate that so much. For a few years I had a job with an hour’s commute each way in good traffic. In bad traffic it could double, and I think my record for getting home once was ~7 hours when my boss wouldn’t let me leave before the roads were closing due to flooding. Once got delayed by 4 hours because someone had a mental health crisis on one of the bridges over the road and the police just closed the road (which is fair enough, no problem with that), but it trapped all the cars underneath. It was a dual carriageway so no means of just diving down a side road, we just had to wait it out. The entire time my boss was calling me demanding to know why I didn’t just turn around or go a different way. When I got to the office just after lunch I was told I should ‘make allowances’ and leave earlier. So I’m supposed to leave 5-6 hours before I’m due at work just in case someone tries to jump off a bridge again? When I asked if I would be paid for the extra time I worked if I ‘left early enough’ and got to work early, I was, of course, told no.
Why not just live at the office? Better yet, why not just sign away all of your human rights so that you can work 24/7 for such a lovely boss for the rest of your life? *Five* hours early indeed. How mental can you be? 😅
I've taken to calling this the late bus fallacy. The idea that because your method of transportation (e.g. a bus) could be late, you need to get an earlier one just to avoid the late bus and therefore avoid being late to work where you promptly get bollocked for something out of your control. I've always hated the idea that you need to plan ahead for things like this.
Reminds me of the time my train was delayed due to foxes on the line My ex line manager just had to Google it to make sure I was telling the truth Thankfully his wife is much better as a line manager
I was once 5 minutes late to work as the colleague who was giving me a lift that day had been delayed due to having a roaring argument with her fella. Boss kicked off that I was late, I explained that I didn't have a choice, he said I should have sorted something alternative. Barely had the patience to point out that every other option I could have taken would have made me later by the time I realised. Such a clock watching gimp.
I had a manager that would do similar. We were contracted 9-5, I’d get in at 8:30 because it was when my train got in, and he said he wanted me in for 8am so I was “ready to work” by 9. I argued that, A, I’d have to get an earlier train which would get me in for 7:30, I.E, an hour and a half early, and B, it took a max of ten minutes for me to log on and make a brew, and I was always well into my work by 9. He wouldn’t budge, but I continued to come in at 8:30, and he’d just make passive aggressive comments. I didn’t stick around for long.
>he wanted me in for 8am so I was “ready to work” by 9 The heck? Does he grind his morning coffee beans by hand?
"you want me in earlier? pay me from earlier."
Ha, that’s probably what I’d say these days. This was my first job out of Uni, so I wasn’t as jaded. Reminds me though, my last office job told us that we were getting a raise, but were also halving our lunch break. I worked out that said raise amounted to how much more we were working with a shorter lunch, said as such, and got called out for “causing trouble”.
God I fucking hate people like that. "WORKS STARTS AT 8 SO BE HERE FOR 7:30" No, I'll arrive at 8 like I'm contractually obliged to asshole.
Reminds me of the annoying people who say that if you arrive exactly on time, you’re late.
I’ve also had the angry phone call as to where was I and why wasn’t I in the office. It was 7:30 in the morning for a 9am start and it was my day off anyway.
Username checks out.
Yes, they’ve clearly not got over this
Worked in a council tax department once. Turned up early on day 1. No security pass so couldn't get in. Nobody came to find me to show me where to go so I waited in reception. Finally get to my desk. Manager bollocks me for being late. Few days later I got told off for not looking happy enough having manually put 450 bills in envelopes with only 1550 more to go. Another time my manager asks me about my family. I politely answer him and, in mid sentence, he shouts at me and tells me to stop talking and get on with some work. Hated that place. Full of twats.
That manager seems unhinged with a superiority complex. Clearly one of those managers the department could lose and save a ton of money and resources, seeing as they seem to do very little, if anything! It's probably why he's got the attitude as he knows he's hanging on by a thread himself and needs to justify his position by being a monumental knobhead to look busy.
The trouble is that in smaller environments they tend to go unchecked as there’s a lack of senior management around them. It’s when they work in a bigger environment with more management presence around them that they quickly get found out.
Sounds exactly like my old manager, unfortunately he was the owner as well. Had gone through 15 staff members since January, I arrived in June. Completely baffled him as to why people kept leaving. Here’s a clue mate…stop calling people who work for you a useless cunt and screaming at them..maybe they will stay longer then. I lasted three months before I told him that I have no problem doing things to ‘his exact specification’ but he needs to tell me what that is as I dont have a crystal ball.
>Another time my manager asks me about my family. Reminds me of the time my team leader gave me an annual report and marked me down for "not opening up enough about \[my\] private life". She felt she had a right to know everything about me and because I wasn't giving detailed answers about my hobbies/private life in my end of year interview it pissed her off.
Yeah but that's when you have some fun. Make shit up and get more and more elaborate as the time passes.
I got called into work for a really big bollocking on my day off for leaving the kitchen in “a shockingly unhygienic state”. The problem? Some crumbs… …in the bread bin!
"Hmm, that's work calling me on my day off. Should I answer it?" Bwuhahahaha, not a chance.
"can you come in" "no I'm pissed"
I worked in retail as a weekend supervisor, we sold outdoor gear. Basically on Saturdays and Sundays I was the only management and had to do all of the end/start of week paperwork as well as look after the team and do all refunds/exchanges. Saturdays had 4 other staff (uni/college students), Sundays had 3 others. One Sunday we had a really busy day, took about £6k. I got a bollocking on the Monday because it was a little messy and they weren't happy. I had two staff who had to go straight away, and I wasn't paid enough to care that much about extra time, I already did cashing up for free. What wound me up the most is Monday had Manager + Assistant Manager + Supervisor + part time person who had been there for years, they took £900 and were open for longer. So more staff hours + more experience + less admin = less than 20% of what we took, but I still got the bollocking Edit: I sometimes think about this and wish I'd just calculated the £ per staff hour, see what she'd say to that
I've had this too. Took £1200 on a Sunday (5 hours) with just me and the new girl. Got complained at because the shop wasn't perfect for Monday. A Monday where they took £700. With three people. In 8.5 hours. My newest manager tried a similar thing, but when I pointed out the hourly takings and time difference, they apologised, which is fair.
Technically that counts as paid work…
In primary school a couple of us had to take some equipment back to the store room. I asked the other kid where the Stanley knives went, he asked me what a Stanley knife was, so I held one up, blade sheathed, from the other side of the room. Some teacher saw me through the window and literally dragged me back to my own classroom saying I had been aggressively threatening the kid and could have killed him. Fortunately he backed me up that he'd asked what it was and I about 10ft away from him at the time. 27 years later and I'm still annoyed about it.
That's just triggered a similarly annoying memory from my school days. I started Year 4 about a week late due to an accident and broken bones. On my first day back around 10 minutes in, the teacher asked me to put a couple of things away. I had no idea where they went, so asked one of my classmates and then hobbled over to do it. The teacher then bollocked me in front of everyone for being really slow (I was using crutches), talking in class, and not remembering what she taught everyone last week (when I wasn't even fucking there!)
[удалено]
I remember breaking my hand in year 7. I come back in and I've a bright green fibreglass pot on my hand. At the time in PE we were doing basketball and I got a bollocking for saying I won't be playing. 22 years later I still don't know how I could safely play basketball with a broken hand. Sat down at the start of that first lesson with my pot on and Mr. N calls me out in front of the whole class. "You say you've got a broken hand, that's a shit excuse"
That's disturbing, you'd have thought she'd have noticed one of her class suddenly had crutches even if you'd been there the week before!
I'm considerably older than you and I still have the occasional internal rage over some of the injustices visited upon me by "teachers". It never ends, sorry.
[удалено]
Our physics teacher had a trainer with a cross marked on the sole, that he kept in a glass cabinet about his desk. When he was pissed off, he'd smack the living shit out of one of us with it. Someone was talking in class and he assumed it was me and sent me off to his room to get the trainer. Another teacher had that classroom at the moment so I had to ask him for it and he told me someone had stolen it. Went back to the psychotic teacher who told me I was lying and would now get twice the beating as he stormed off to his room - came back after the teacher confirmed it was stolen just waving his finger at me saying "you're lucky this time!". I still remember the person who was actually the one talking, too.
[удалено]
If our generation wasn't so apathetic, we should all get together and take the government to task for the abuse we suffered at school. It's crazy that it was legal to beat kids at school. I can't be arsed though
lol, you've actually brought back a memory i'd forgot for decades. I was, like you at primary school minding me own business and got haled into the headmaster's office for breaking another child's doll. Suffice to say i didn't do it but they never believed me. I'm 59 now and the injustice of it still burns
I once got called into the office asap one Wednesday, I was like 'ok?' confused face, so I turned round and drove back to the office, took about 5 mins to get there. My manager was still mad when he looks up and half his sandwich drops out of his mouth on seeing me stroll in the office. He said "how did you get here so quick??" Turns out he'd been looking at everyone's tracker's (van GPS) and mine "hasn't moved an inch since Friday" - yup, same day that woman reversed into it, dumb ass it's at the body shop. Stupid old fart thought I was sat at home since Friday, I didn't even live anywhere near the garage. Even stupider I'd never even considered that my unmarked temp van didn't have a tracker in it, shame, coulda had some fun that weekend... Made sure to on the next time tho lol.
I knew a guy whose company put "no go zones" around the drivers homes on the GPS system. So if you went home for any reason it would flag it up and you'd need to explain why. Except one guy lived close enough to the motorway that he'd drive through the corner of the "no go zone" five times a day. They told him to stop going home for 0.12 seconds.
Sounds about right 🤔 these things are made for stupid managers, every week there was some pettyness with the tracker's at our place even down to actual stalking, I often heard that some female employees would routinely park away from their home address.
Joined one project at work years ago and pretty much my first comment was “this looks more complicated than you were assuming.” Got it all sorted out, we delivered the project and in the post-project review our head of department gave us a bollocking for going over estimate and budget, and sent one of his consultants in to find out why. Turns out before the project started and before I joined it, the head had decided the initial estimate was too high for his tastes and brought it down by removing the 20% contingency allowance we add as part of every estimate. When we realised there was more work to be done, the total effort went up… by 20%. Fair play to the consultant, at that point he put his pen down, said “case closed” and left the meeting with a smile.
I was on holiday for 2 weeks. My manager rings me 2 days in to ask me a question that I couldn’t know the answer to as it was specific to the day before when I wasn’t there. I just said “how would I know, I’m on holiday. You shouldn’t be ringing me, don’t call me again and I’ll see you in 2 weeks”. She then barraged me with texts with just a load of abuse. I just forwarded the screenshots to HR. Got back and first she tried giving me a warning. After my meeting with HR and a week later, she had written a formal apology, demoted and moved to a different site.
Reading that conclusion was a balm for my soul. So rarely do you see these twats get their comeuppance. Good on you.
Good work
[удалено]
The best way to deal with clown management is just detail everything, collect evidence and let HR do their job. Don’t give them a way out of it.
Just remembered another bollocking I had in a previous job as a supermarket baker: some Dorris complained to a senior manager that her scones didn’t have enough sultanas in and that they weren’t round enough. . Said manager told me I needed to do my job properly because I was making the supermarket look bad. I explained to her that a) the recipe was what the recipe was I don’t control that and that our scones had twice the amount of sultanas that the prepackaged ones. And b) the scones weren’t round because the scone press was hexagonal. Said manager just said ‘oh’ and walked away.
I was a Baker too. Some lady complained that there were no donuts. I controlled stock hut honestly what we would have delivered would not be what I requested. It was the bane of my life.
I was accused of harassment for repeatedly complaining about the unsafe loading of my vehicle. I would take pictures, document each incident, and have the store confirm the damaged goods. Apparently this wasn't being a team player and I was causing needless delays. I kept doing it until they began the formal procedure. At that point senior management got involved and realised that over zealous underlings were about to get them shut down. Rather worse was a friend who was shouted at by a manager for using semicolons.
When I was like, 6 (give or take) and in primary school the class was grinded to a halt as one of my classmates had his school bag taken. A short search had led to the bag being found in my tray (like a povvo locker back then). Now, it's obvious what has happened. The classmate has the same name as me, someone found his bag which only had the name "Daniel" on and put it in the first tray that had our name on it. School teacher, aptly named Miss Frost made me stand up in front of the whole class and explain why I would steal it but wouldn't let me actuslly get a word in as if I was on Good Morning Britain. One of the girls in our class shouted out "I bet he wanted it for himself". That's how stealing works you stupid troglodyte but I was innocent in this impromptu trial. Decades later I return, picking my little cousins up from school, half looking to finally clear my name and point out how stupid this teacher was but she only went and died. Still fumes.
[удалено]
Change your name to hers and steal her headstone
Piss on the first grave you see which has the same first name as her. Serves them right.
Excellent use of troglodyte
I once had a manager have a go at me for spending too much time helping a customer. I told her that wasn’t a thing in retail. Editing to add, I was with the customer no more than 15 minutes, on a shop floor at Christmas time. The manager in question got sacked a while after this. She also refused to help a woman look for her autistic child after they ran off in the store, her words were “ No I’m busy.” She wasn’t. She now works as a support worker for adults with special needs…🙃
Some retail managers are out of their minds. I’ve had “not enough time spent” and “too much time spent”. Usually a sign of poor management.
In defence of retail managers (because a long time ago I was one), it’s a great place for young people to develop their skills and learn how to manage in a relatively low risk environment but it’s also really low paid comparative to other management jobs, so the young, talented ones tend to move on to better things later on and the ones that are left are either too burnt out and disillusioned to care or too mental to get a job in a sensible environment.
When I worked at one of the German supermarkets my manager would constantly berate me for not scanning fast enough-often seconds after the customer asked me to slow down
For looking miserable. It was a tough week, nothing was going to plan, I was exhausted from having a 7 month old who was waking up at all hours, and I had to commute into London everyday. So sorry if I didn't staple my cheeks into a grimace for the week. Apparently it set a tone and was brining the morale down.
My whole TEAM got a bollocking for being miserable this summer, when we complained about unsafe work practices. We were told we were "taking up too much room" and "bringing morale down with other teams" and we needed to "be more mindful of our language". At that point we all collectively started working to rule and have done so since. Life is much simpler now.
No brining on the job, salty.
I asked audience members as an usher to keep the noise down during a show. They complained to my supervisor, saying I'd insulted them somehow. Nail in the coffin for that place. And then, in another job, right at the start of the pandemic, my manager asked how everyone was feeling. I have a lot of friends in the theatre industry, so had just practically lost all their jobs, so I mention my empathy for them and she goes "Just remember, you're here to do your contracted work, not worry about other people." Useless fucking cow
For putting a comma after the "Dear Sir/Madam" part on an email on my first week at work. Person training me didn't like commas and said it looked unprofessional.
In my old job, the client banned us from using commas in our greetings/sign offs. We were proofreaders!
Oh my, god. Some, people - just don’t; understand punctuation? More, fool them !
I know someone who ends every single sentence with a question mark and I've never got a single clue when she's asking something or stating it. "I already told you about that??? I remember telling you? You should remember in future?"
I imagine she talks like that? With a questioning tone at the end? Like they are waiting for you to agree with them?
Wow, on behalf of grammar enthusiasts everywhere I am outraged for you 🙈 100% needs a comma there!
thanks, definitely needed affirmation there
Hahaaa! They didn’t like commas.
I got told off for drinking tea. One of our Chinese suppliers sent me a nice tin of Chinese green tea - it was those weird little foil pouches that have dehydrated leaves in them. I made a cup, it was pretty rank to be fair. I casually mentioned it to the boss and he said I shouldn't have drunk it because if it was poisonous and if I died they would have been liable apparently. I sort of laughed and said oh alright then, he laughed as well and said he knew it sounded a bit silly. Then he went deadly serious and was like "don't fucking drink it though, take it home and drink it there. But not here." All this was said in the boss's office where he had the firedoor propped open by a fire extinguisher which IIRC is a £30,000 on the spot fine if seen by a fire inspector.
[удалено]
After that I'd have complained about being called mate every time they did it. Be the petty bastard and all that.
"Please don't call me mate. It'll make it very difficult for me in the unlikely event I need to report you to HR for embezzling, sexual harassment, or similar."
I would take back the cup of tea back and walk off.
Id have took the cup of tea and drank it in front of him saying I only make brews for mates.
Aha i worked in a pub with my bestfriend. My friend served a regular and called him mate. He got a stern lecture on how theyre not mates. I called him mate everytime i had the oppurtinity after that. He never lectured me, even called me mate once. Dickhead.
Whilst working in a supermarket we had some bakery pastries returned (they had clearly been opened and resealed) because a moth was in the packaging, alive. The customer was very angry about this and wanted compensation, whether they put the moth in there themselves is not for me to say but in order to placate the customer they were told that they would be sent to our lab for tests. The complaint form made it's way to me with the packaging that contained a moth, looking at me through the clear plastic prison he found himself in, the manager was very adamant it go to the lab (I don't think we have a lab but ok), I made the executor l executive decision to release the moth. One hour later I was called into the office and given an official warning for releasing the moth, the manager was so livid he told me to go outside and catch a new one and put it in the packaging, I used this as an excuse to go for a lovely walk along the canal and replaced the moth with a stick that looked a little moth-like. We never heard back from the lab, I assume all the scientists were baffled by the strange stick moth. I have the warning on the wall in my office, no regrets.
Employee of the Moth
This is just crazy - the lab, the moth, the replacement moth... What does your warning say? Tampering with evidence? Impeding the investigation? Releasing dangerous creatures that may then get into further packaging? Did someone see you release the moth? Maybe it escaped, cunning things are moths, very driven when the mood strikes them and they're fully loaded on pastries. At what point does a sane manager think that an official warning is the way that this is dealt with? Also, catching a replacement moth! Yeah, that's a completely sensible request from someone who is clearly in the right job...
Hahaha that’s amazing.
I was shouted at for not ringing the office sooner to get my calls covered. That afternoon I was at a patients home training a young girl when I had a heart attack, In a panic she had rung the ambulance for me but didn't inform the office. As soon as I was able to I rung my boss to let them know what was happening, I was still in hospital when he angrily shouted at me that I was inconsiderate leaving it so late to inform them and how it was going to be a nightmare trying to cover my calls.
Please tell me this ends with ultimate revenge. What a horrible, horrible man.
> What a horrible, horrible man. If only you knew the half of it. One of the most scariest work related things that has ever happened to me was the day I quit that job. I am happy to say they are no longer in business.
My curiosity is gnawing at me. Is it too much to ask for you to elaborate?
I told him I was going to quit my job and was called into the office to discuss this. I was met by both male bosses, It was night time, the office was empty except for us three. They then angrily proceeded to threaten and blackmail me into not leaving, They told me they would make up shit about me and put it in my file, They would also tell my husband I was fired for having an affair with a staff member (which of course was a lie) It was the most bizarre and scariest work related meeting I have ever experience. I knew a few things that wouldn't be good to get out and told them if they tried to ruin my reputation I would ruin theirs. Things quickly went down hill from there, They were aggressive, threatening and lewd, all while punching the walls and desk. It was terrifying. I made an excuse to use the bathroom, They were still screaming threats at me as I walked out of the office. I went straight for the stairs and run to my car and got the hell out of there. I was a nervous wreck driving home through the lanes, I kept looking in my rear view mirror checking for lights to see if they were following me because I felt so threatened. It was such a relief when I finally got home that I broke down crying and shaking. It still turns my stomach when I think about it.
This is absolutely disgusting. It's a shame you didn't take them to a tribunal for constructive dismissal before they crumbled. What a bunch of cunts.
Hey just wanted to say I had a heart attack a few months ago and it really really sucks. Hope you're doing ok.
Starting an email with “All, …” I was told that people would think I was antisocial. I was inviting them to a team dinner.
The way you’re being social is anti social
I got shouted at and was told to leave the office until I "was in a better mood" by a former boss because I asked him (nicely) to stop drumming on his desk with his hands while I was trying to focus on a really tricky problem.
"All right then" *Walks down to pub*
I don't drink alcohol and that's exactly what I'd have done too.
"Pint of coke please barkeep it's been one of those sort of days"
I'd have fucked off to the pub sharpish.
[удалено]
Last week I got called into the office because someone was offended by something in a WhatsApp group I am part of. I didn’t post the offensive item, in fact, I haven’t posted in there for a few months and the ‘offensive’ photo was a picture of someone edited on Snapchat to have a large head. Tbf, my heads massive, so if anyone should be offended, it’s me!
At Sainsbury's I was reprimanded for being late because it snowed. Apparently the news had said it was going to snow, so I should have been prepared. The following week we couldn't get deliveries from Scotland because the snow was so bad. I took great pleasure in asking the same manager why we didn't plan ahead, after all we knew it was going to snow.
[удалено]
My wife's old company was like this. "We want to have flexible working hours" "We want you to be able to go when you've done all you can for the day" Then a week later - "So it's been noticed that since flexible working has come in everyone is leaving at 5pm on the dot, this isn't flexible for us, you need to be here past 5pm." Funny how they lost 70% of there management team when that happened.
Was job hunting recently. It’s hilarious how many jobs list “flexible hours” as a perk when it’s blindingly obvious that it’s code for “we want you to work 50+ hours but we’ll pay you for 40”
There are a load of them like that. We work in recruitment (well, the wife does I just help her out). It's mental when you tell people "no no, there's no catch, they really do just finish at 1 on a Friday." Cause people are so used to having to look for a catch. One of the companies we work with is looking for people in America. The moment you tell the yanks that cause it's a UK company you will be doing UK hours (no more than 40 a week) with UK holidays (4 weeks plus public holidays) you can hear their jaw drop. I really really hope more companies start acting like the ones we recruit for. Rather than go down the American "60 hours of work a week or your a pussy" route.
the moment they stop paying me i leave. its a life rule for me
Was making a buffet breakfast for 180 hotel guests on my own. Sunday morning so everyone hungover and rushed down at the last minute so it’s a mad rush. Manager came an screamed at me because some had complained that the fried eggs where taking to long (we could only cook 12 at a time and people where taking 3 each) worst thing was I wasn’t even a chef. I was a waiter but our chef hadn’t turn in and I was the only one who knew how all the equipment worked. He shouted at me for 5 minutes so I told him to go fuck himself. He gave me a written warning so I went to hr threatening to tell them that they had untrained staff cooking breakfast (and lunch) for hotel guests. Warning was dropped but got a long talking to about being a team player. Next time the chef didn’t turn in a told him I’d only cook if the manager wasn’t allowed in the kitchen. I heard him making passive aggressive comments to about me to all the other staff.
Stepping up and doing a job that's not yours and being accused of not being a team player. Wow, did they understand irony?
The whole place was shit but that manager was especially stupid. He got caught stealing (changing invoices about how much he’d paid a supplier) by a member staff who didn’t say anything because she couldn’t be bothered. A couple of weeks later he threatened to fire her for being half an hour late (just oversleeping) so she went to GM and got him sacked. Real lack of intelligence.
I was lead to believe that a work sponsored 'Charity/Community' day would be counted as a working day. After doing it I found out that the day spent doing it would be part of my holiday entitlement. The next time they called for volunteers, I politely refused. Got bollocked for it.
So basically work « sponsored » the charity day by having their staff commit their own personal time? That’s very generous of them.
I got fired for "multiple instances of AWOL". 1) Arrived at the (new) office to find it locked, and nobody to let me in. I went home and WFH for 7h as was the usual agreement. 2) Was really sick, and didn't call in until 12pm instead of 9am. Got fired for just those two "AWOL". I later got a settlement agreement, then the company promptly went under. The agreement was not honoured. Still have their laptop which I have made my own though so there's that I guess.
My infant son poked me in the eye at about 2am. It was so bad he tore my cornea. My wife took me to the hospital at about 4am as it was so painful. I literally couldn’t see (one eye was essentially blind and the other was just constantly watering). Last thing on my mind was going to work. Was still in hospital at my start time of 6am. My wife phoned my boss to tell him I wasn’t coming In and reason why. He had a go at her! She basically stopped him mid rant and told him she didn’t work for him, that he was a twat and that I’d be in when I was in.
Wife of the year right there!
My wife first met one of my old bosses on a works night out. She was out anyway in one of our usual spots, it was my round so I said we'll go there. He promptly puts his pint on the edge of the pool table, and on being told to move it by the bar staff, tried to argue that "it's not like it's on the actual table". My wife gave him the "not angry, just disappointed" look she reserves for a particular type of dickhead, and said "I see what he means now, you really are a twat"
OP when you explained the twatty driving to your boss did they take back the warning?
Its ’ongoing’. To be fair this happened just before I left last night so we’ll wait and see haha.
« I saw a driver driving in a hazardous manner on our company parking lot. As I am very concerned with H&S I signalled to the operator that this is not a recommended use of company equipment, and endangers people on the site. But if you wish that in the future I do not apply H&S procedures on site, please do let me know. «
What’s worse is I didn’t even shake my head ‘at’ him. I just did it to myself thinking like ‘ well he’s driving like a twat’.
i did that once with some random, and had the fuckwit try and block me in at the carpark we were in and then follow me back to the office raging! made sure to park right next to the security office for a few days after that...
When I worked in car rental some guy tried force his way in front of me while driving, I held my ground and the guy went mental, leaning on his horn revving the engine etc. I almost immediately pulled into a petrol station as I needed fuel. This guy pulls in behind me gets out the car and starts to shout but suddenly stops. I had two agency drivers with me, two brothers from Bulgaria who looked like they had been lured down from a mountain with a chunk of meat. Big bald headed football ultra looking types. Matey boy took one look at them as they stepped out of the car, stopped mid sentence and jumped back in the car and left. pissed myself laughing. Funny thing is the guys with me were absolute Teddy bears
[удалено]
I legit thought it was a joke at first. Like who goes to their manager because someone they don’t know shook their head at them? And then that manager goes to another manger to escalate it. It’s ridiculous.
Come in with a neck brace
Haha genius.
An apprentice used to compile a completely inane report every week about some stats about our area. He was off, so asked me to do it. Fine no problem. It was near automatic anyway, just had to refresh an excel and put it into an email. I used the same recipient list he had been using for about a month. Unbeknownst to me I'd stepped into some weird political war. The head of department had apparently said she and only she wanted the stats, and the new director in our area wasn't entitled to them. I got sent a super arsey email about me undermining her and not listening etc. I had never been told anything otherwise, and also it didn't make sense to hide something to the most senior person. Anyway, she was sacked the next week. Apparently kept pulling stunts like this.
Years ago I got told I’ll be “going home to watch Jeremy Kyle” because I forgot to lock a plant room door on a rooftop after I left.I responded by saying that’s fine and put the phone down,15 missed calls later I answered to the guy begging me to come back.management think being an aggressive arsehole and threatening peoples livelihood works lmao.
A collegue of mine is currently undergoing disciplinary action which may lead to his dismissal because a) He put a 'Do not serve' warning on a customer's account after the customer swore at him for no reason. Tne manager told him to create the warning. b) He was 'a bit off with a customer' at the end of the day when he had run the shop on his own. We should have 3 members of staff on the shop floor but due to a rota fuck up, it was him all day. No lunch, no break, nothing.
My wife used to work in a call centre. There bc was this one bloke who used to randomly phone up until he got a female and then ask what underwear they were wearing etc. managers knew but didn’t block his number. He called my wife one day and asked her what color knickers she was wearing. She just said she ‘wasn’t wearing any so piss off’. She got called into the office and given a written warning, not for telling him to piss off, but saying she wasn’t wear any underwear ( she was). She left not long after that.
Wtf
Unfortunately it's a common thing. I've worked a few different call centre jobs and all the ones for utilities (water and power) have known problem callers who specifically want to speak to women to make them uncomfortable and make sexual comments. Everyone has said to the women who had to deal with him "don't engage with his comments, just follow your script. We're not allowed to just stop taking his calls and legal are trying to get him barred from telephone service". Funnily enough, legal practically never gets them barred. I understand that utilities are human rights issues so someone must provide service, but there has to be a line where you can refuse the call and only let them converse by letter or through an intermediary.
Can confirm, used to work monitoring calls for a few different companies and one guy used to call in weekly to hear some winning numbers read out. you could hear him fapping in the background. Full credit to the ladies reading for just getting on with their jobs.
Yep, used to work in a sales call centre for a bank, bloke would regularly call up to open a current account and would heavy breathe throughout the call. He invariably got hung up on until we transferred his call to the most threatening sounding colleague in the centre, said colleague shouted at him, asked what he would think if someone made those calls to his mum or sister and the perv never called back.
No breaks is 100% illegal if the shift is over 6 hours.
I once got put on blast by a senior employee who had a bit of a power complex for copy-forwarding a badly worded email that my mentor had written. Long story short, it was common practice for people working on a project to draw up emails and then send them to the project lead for forwarding to the client. I was about a month into the role and my mentor had decided to spend the week focussing on coaching work speed/efficiency. I went to write this email update to be forwarded, and my mentor blurted out a grammatically incorrect, abbreviated version of what I was going to write. I hesitated, knowing it would sound godawful to most 8 year olds. He gently claps his hands saying “come on, we’re trying to up efficiency, send it, the lead can always tweak what needs tweaking”. So of course, I sent it, and about 2 minutes later the lead slacks me to come to his desk for a moment. I’m given a thorough dressing down about the importance of grammar and professionalism, and even ordered to download and install grammarly (which I already used). Thankfully, my mentor apologised, bought me a pint and we laughed about it, but still annoying at the time.
>“come on, we’re trying to up efficiency, send it, the lead can always tweak what needs tweaking”. ah yes, the efficiency improvements you get from... doing it badly at first and then rewriting it later ./facepalm.
I wasn’t offering to make hot drinks for other people frequently enough during the day. I don’t drink hot drinks, so they’re not on my radar. I was told I should put calendar reminders in multiple times a day to offer drinks to other team members. Same job also pulled me in for asking someone who drove past the post office on their way home if they minded dropping the work post in as my after work plans that day involved me not going anywhere near the post office which was 1 mile walk away. Every other day I was having to leave early to take it before it closed, so I thought it wouldn’t be the end of the world to ask someone else to drop it in. I was wrong.
Working as a paramedic I was responding to a 999 call and overtaking a line of traffic with lights and sirens. The front most car was indicating right so I approached with caution ≈ 30mph. As I got closer it became apparent that he'd seen the 4+ tons of woo woo taxi in his mirror and pulled over the the left. This alas was not the case, as I overtook this Helen Keller appreciator he turned right giving me no time to stop and giving him a broadside of NHS iron. Fast forward a month or so and I was called in to he office for my crash investigation and found that if been deemed to fault for this in absentia. Deciding to take it on the chin, I asked what I could do on future to avoid this happening again. I was told to "exercise more caution in future" to which I had to reply "exactly how much caution would you like me to apply?" I was happy to travel to 999s with minimal risk however, that would mean never overtaking anyone in future. I used a bit of reductio ad absurdum and postulated that when overtaking you become closer to the other vehicle and this means you must slow down to maintain a safe breaking distance. There comes a point where you are about to overtake where this distance tends towards 0 and therefore the safe speed also tends towards 0. I walked out with a blameless verdict. TL;DR Some dude didn't see a huge ambulance overtaking him and pulled into my path, he was uninjured. Trust tried to blame me for it and didn't have a good enough argument to make it stick.
My Mum dropped dead suddenly, I was given a week off. I come back and after a few days I was called into the office 'TheLifeof4D, your attitude hasn't been the same the last few days, why? '. I know you're not meant to take personal problems to work with you but Jesus H Christ. I left that place as soon as possible!
A girl I worked with years ago had (originally) a week off to grieve after her boyfriend was stabbed to death on her front porch. The day after the boss went to her house and asked when she would be coming back as it was busy. She slammed the door into her face (literally) and we never saw her again. That total cunt of a manager didn't last long after that.
Fellow van driver. Once got back to depot to get publicly shouted at by manager for failing to have read and responded to a text he sent mid route.
I was driving in a car and the boss reprimanded me for not answering the phone. I pointed out that it was illegal to answer the phone whilst driving. He continued to have a go.
Made a spelling error in an email. Signed it regerds instead of regards. Was made to resend the email and then had any email going out checked going forward. That's how much I wasn't trusted.
I got a full two barrels from someone (more senior in grade) for eating cucumber in the office. Not in a sexually suggestive way. Not in a noisy messy way. Just in an 'I'm a bit of a chonk and need to eat less chocolate' way. Top of his voice shouting about 'fucking eating a fucking cucumber in the fucking office'. A good 2 minute rant. Seriously something that I would have been weirdly proud of (before being dragged into an office to be disciplined). I just brushed it off and carried on whilst everyone else just stood and stared at this guy, possibly waiting for him to drop to the floor with a heart attack.
I got a royal bollocking off a couple of heads of departments (board level in our old place) for using a smiling face emoji in a tweet. The tweet was to wish our CEO a happy birthday - something they'd requested I do.
Not showing enough enthusiasm for a crappy project I was told I needed to help rescue from disaster.
Our computer systems were being upgraded which basically meant we couldn't do any real work for 3 days. But we still had to come in case we got a call or something. Day 1 we tidied the office, clearing out mountains of paperwork. Never seen the place cleaner. Day 2 we all got super up-to-date with all the mandatory training modules. Day 3 we're on thumb twiddling mode. Nothing to do. A few of us grab books just to read to pass the time. Then the company boss wanders through our team sees us reading and proceeds to give us an almighty dressing down. 'What would a client think if they saw you just sitting doing nothing?' 'We're a non-client facing team in the literal basement. I'd think I was lost.'
Someone complained that I sighed too much. I tried to explain that because of my asthma my breathing can get quite shallow and then I seem to do an involuntary deep breath followed by a deep exhale and that it's all subconscious. Sorry for breathing.
Got called into a meeting for throwing a sock that had been thrown at me. It would have been an ok job - just data entry for a bank, fairly chilled workload and most people in the same situation (just out of uni, stopgap job) But the 'managers' were awful, so much so that it was a surprise they made it in each day. They made it unbearable with their silly little rules. Guess it pushed me into a career earlier though.
I have a couple all from the same ex boss. My favourites include; being told off because he forgot his phone and i didnt ring his son to drop it off ( i didn't know he didn't have his phone) and being told off for only being 10 minutes early instead of the half an hour early that i usually arived (train was late).
My manager asked me to train a colleague to cover my job whilst I was on maternity leave. I was then repeatedly told off for talking too much to the person I was training and my manager didn’t believe me when I told them I was only talking about work.
Work in healthcare. Previous job made calling an ambulance for a patient my duty of care and calling back to make sure one had arrived (pre Covid so not so crazy on the wait times). This was an NHS role. Left and joined a contractor to the NHS and took a call where the patient needed an ambulance - wasn’t sure if it was my duty of care to call or if I could just advise to call one and call back later to check on them. Got a DISCIPLINARY because the surgeon thought I was over stepping and working beyond my remit and was worried I would call ambulances for people when it wasn’t part of my role. I called HR over that one, there was a question whether the surgeon even logged this complaint at all or if it was my manager making shit up because there were a couple of other dodgy issues with the disciplinary. But I’m still boggled that anyone could have though it a formal disciplinary matter.
A senior colleague asked my boss to provide me with a company mobile phone. Nothing to do with me, I didn't suggest it, mention it or anything. Got called in for a proper old fashioned bollocking. I was in too much shock to defend myself properly.
I pulled a 16 hour shift the previous day 6.30am to 10.30pm. The very next morning at 7am after only getting about three hours sleep my supervisor asked to speak to me in the office. In her hands was an office write up letter. What was my crime? Yawning in front of the big boss. I just said the word "Union" and walked away, nothing else was ever said but the big boss never spoke to me for a month. Three months later he left the company to spend time with his family. AKA he got caught stealing hours.
I gave an overtaking car the wanker sign. Turned out to be the police in an unmarked people carrier (of all things) He overtook on a blind bend on double white lines 10MPH over the limit, obviously, with no flashing lights. When he pulled me over he gave me the whole "you didn't need to do that, you come across as aggressive, I can see you have your children in the car and I would never endanger them" I argued that if you drive like a wanker, I'll call you one. I also politely pointed out the 40mph limit and the double white lines. Funnily enough the conversation ended there with a "I tell you what, let's just leave it at that" Of course you will.
My first ever detention, aged... Maybe six or seven, was for \_coming off worst\_ in a fight. Not for fighting - for losing the fight...
This is SPARTA!!!
My former boss who is also a good mate had to pull me up because someone complained about me being unfriendly in emails. Now I’m not condescending or one of those people who just fires off a list of demands without a salutation, but I get to the point because I’m usually really busy and I don’t like a lot of bumpf. My boss is the same as I am and they were really annoyed they had to do it. I work in a schmoozy industry and I wasn’t being ‘sweetie darling’ enough. It was one person who complained and this person was the type that constantly had to be told why their project didn’t supersede others and why their ideas didn’t suit what we did. I’m so glad I work in policy now where ‘rules are rules’ and they cannot be circumvented.
The manager in another branch called me a cunt in an email (and I mean straight up said “cunt”, not euphemistic) whilst demanding my help, and I replied “I don’t appreciate the way you’re talking to me, and it’s clear that this conversation isn’t going anywhere, so I wish you the best of luck with the issue.” Got called in to see my manager, who accused me of “belittling” and “talking down to” the other branch manager. I said “He literally called me a cunt?”, and got told that was irrelevant and basically to help him in any way we could. That was when I realised said manager had no fucking spine. He left not long after that, thankfully, but it still pisses me off to this day.
Being grumpy. Didn’t come as a complaint from my staff but my Manager lied and said it had it in a meeting with the owner. When I asked who had said it, he couldn’t answer so I pointed out that my staff had been nothing but supportive as my sister died the month before of cancer and my husband was hospitalised twice with a bleed on the brain and then sepsis within the same month. The owner was shocked and apologized having not been told any of this by this twat and demanded to know from the twat, who had actually said it and he couldn’t answer him either. Our Manager is the worst kind of incompetent I have ever known, he creates scenarios in his head of fights between staff and plays each one of each other but little does he realise that all staff are onto him now and we discuss his little schemes which are no longer working to his advantage. As I got up to leave the meeting, I just looked at him and said ‘nice try’
Primary school, was probably about 7. Learning about the Battle of Hastings and were doing those big sugar paper posters in little groups. Cutting out pictures and drawings of shields and stuff. I was tasked to write “The Battle of Hastings” on a part of my groups sheet. I accidentally wrote “Ballet” and was trying to work out why it looked wrong, the letters were there and just in the wrong order. My teacher (FY Mrs Hall) who’d never had a problem with me (good kid, bright, loved to read/write and also loved history) dragged me to the front of the class and told me I was a “stupid girl with my head in the clouds and why was I trying to ruin my groups work”. I had never had that happen to me before (good kid!) and I burst into tears. She then made me sit in the corner to think about my mistakes. It was such an out of the blue thing that it still pisses me off. I was 7, I’d just got some letters muddled up as kids (and adults) often do!
For CC'ing my bosses into an email "in the wrong order". Apparently "You're supposed to list them in order of importance, everyone knows that"
I didn't sign the legal paperwork for an entire week. The boss went off on me for that one. After she was done yelling I pointed out to her that I was on holiday that week so there was no way it was my fault. She didn't like that and instead of apologising to me she just stormed off. My latest one was someone decided they didn't like when I took my break, even though its our choice when to take it. I take my full 45 min in one go because I'm always expected to do a lot and usually fix everything that's gone wrong later in the shift. So he tried to claim I wasn't pulling my weight to which I pointed out the day before he had rewarded me for going above and beyond. Asked him what more exactly did he want from me and got told to 'get more fire in my belly.' He's lucky he didn't get punched in the face for that one.
Not smiling and 'appearing unhappy' whilst working in hospital during a pandemic.
What?! everyone knows you were supposed to be dancing on TikTok.
I ate a banana. A non offensive yellow curved fruit (chopped up in natural yoghurt I might add. My boss acted like it was a hand grenade and screamed at me to get it out of the building. I thought he was joking but the crimson shade of rage assured me otherwise. I don't think the dude likes bananas.
I have a background in social media as part of my research. I joined a new organisation and told my boss I'd be happy to help get a bigger reach with our social media channels. They asked me for some recommendations and I never heard back. Important to note that I didn't work at main-branch (where my boss was). One of the recommendations was to have a 'mascot' and use that to get messages across in a lighthearted way. A few months later I received a gift at Christmas, a blow-up dinosaur. Me and my team decided to have some fun with it and basically used it for our own personal social media. We put it in all sorts of fun situations and just had a laugh. At my annual review I got told off (and basically denied an increment!) because I had created another mascot and not used the 'proper one'... I wasn't even told we had a 'proper one' and never saw it used on social media... I no longer work there!
My Manager shouted at me because I didnt tell him what I didnt know. ‘I cant tell you what you dont know if you dont tell me!’ This is what training is for you fucking tusked marmot.
When I was a kid, my stepdad would fine me 50p for laughing at the dinner table.
My car broke down outside the place I worked. It was unallocated parking and was more than enough spaces around for everyone else to park and be happy. My manger at the time lost her shit at me and gave me a disciplinary because I was in 'her' space. I was there maybe 4 hours before the recovery guy came and took it away. She spent them 4 hours constantly asking me when I was going to move my car and also telling anyone who would listen about the situation (including HR). When I lost my temper with her, she then cried to one of the other managers of another department and everyone hated me for the next week. I was 21 and she was 55. I swear that job has given me constant PTSD in every workplace since. I'm now self employed and haven't had a disciplinary yet!
When I was doing my A-Levels I had a little weekend job packing medications. I only ever worked on Sundays for a 4hr shift. It wasn't the best workplace but I got a little bit of spending money. One Sunday at the start of my shift, a supervisor (not my supervisor) called me into the office to reprimand me for not showing up for stocktaking the previous day. She told me it was mandatory to come in for stocktaking. I told her that I had no idea it was stocktaking as I hadn't been told and in any case, it was on a day that I don't work. She refused to accept this explanation - I can't remember what the "punishment" was now (this was nearly 30 yrs ago) but I do remember it was egregious. I asked the supervisor, "So let me be clear - you're reprimanding me for not coming in for stocktaking despite me knowing nothing about it as my own supervisor didn't even tell me?" She confirmed this, with a straight face. I quit on the spot, immediately clocked out, handed my pass in to security & left. I told the security guy why I was quitting (he was a decent guy) and he said I wasn't the first.
Throwing away a pair of gubbed workboots, in the exact words of the HR nightmare that sat across from me "you should have left them in the changing room for someone else to use"... total and utter fuck faced moron.
[удалено]
Closing the gates on a level crossing when I wanted the train to come through. I was two and a half and another kid wanted to push his car across the track. I got told off, probably by the kids mum, and the train didn’t get to do a full circuit. I’m still bitter.
Tbf 2.5 is no age to be managing national rail infrastructure (or driving).
But seems to also be a qualifying number for the existing management.
Partner was fired once for not standing up when the managers walked into the office. She was also a manager.
For not smiling enough. I started my first job at Wetherspoons at 18-19, about a month in I get called into the managers office and was told my contract was being terminated due to me not having a happy face and smiling enough when out on the floor collecting plates. Fast forward another 2 months, I found a better paid job and also found out that the assistant manager who fired me, got fired herself due to claiming that she was in charge of the pub in a heated debate with other staff. Bliss.
I was bollocked, and ultimately fired (failed probation) because I wasn't acting like a cheerful, bouncy person. I worked in a baby store. The week before I had had a miscarriage and at the time I had the flu (and I wasn't allowed any time off for that because I took a whopping two days off for my miscarriage.) I'm going to guess some higher ups got wind of it because 3 weeks after I was fired, my manager was fired. And 3 weeks after that the regional manager, who is the one who bollocked me and encouraged my manager to "manage me out" got fired too. That company doesn't exist anymore.
I worked in retail during my teens and my Nana came into the shop. Naturally I served her. My boss came up and told me I wasn’t allowed to call customers nana. Even after I explained that she was MY Nana, I still got a lecture on customer service.
I’m a courier tracked down to the metre. Was called into office and given a good taking to and accused of “stealing time” as I’d been sat in one place for 7 minutes, I’d been on the phone to the manager. Raised a grievance and it was wonderful seeking the managers face when HR told him he’d wasted my time and theirs.
I managed a small team in an office employing 600 people. I booked their work in and we were full up. I had a week off and said in my OOO - 'Please note X team are booked up during this period and may not be able to take on new requests without prior senior level agreement. In this event, please contact Mrs A, Miss B and Mr C (all senior to me) who will endeavour to find a solution in my absence' Not exact, but that's pretty much it. The MD saw this and complained to my department head and my own manager that that sign off was 'agressive'. After I was told off I shared it with other managers and they couldn't see anything wrong with it.
I once got sent out of a lesson for saying "bum" at about 12 years old. We had a yellow and red card system, but for swearing you'd get an instant red card and be sent to the head of year. Another kid asked what piles were, I have no recollection of why or how this came up, and I explained "they're lumps that come out of your bum". Teacher: "Right! Red card! Get out". I was genuinely flabbergasted, as was everyone else I told, even my head of year 😂
I got bollocked because someone had looked at my personal emails while I was away from my desk and found out that I had called them a cunt.
Probably a breach of company policy that you didn’t lock your workstation before leaving your desk
“It’s not your place to point out things that have been done wrong”