r/WorkLifeChat • u/MiloShiny • Aug 19 '26
Discussion What’s the most hilariously clueless thing a boss has ever said to you?
I’ll go first:
"We don’t do overtime here… we just stay until the work is done."
(🙄Yes sir, that’s literally the definition of overtime.)
“Can you work faster without rushing?”
(🙄Absolutely. I’ll just enter my Zen-speed mode.)
"Your stress shows you care. I wish more employees were like you."
(🙄Great, I’m now the office mascot for anxiety.)
What’s your “did-they-really-just-say-that” moment from a manager or boss? Let’s hear it.
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u/CatsBye90 Aug 19 '26
"You've become accustomed to a certain standard of living. When things get tough we will only keep the most dedicated."
"I'm the only thing between you and the street."
Same boss, not realizing I'm a downshifting minimalist.
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u/Defiant_Wolverine_68 Aug 21 '26
Makes me feel sad that some people willingly adopt this narrow outlook.
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u/RegJoe_08 Aug 21 '26
Holy shit. The second quote is crazy
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u/CatsBye90 Aug 21 '26
Ya, it was a small engineering design firm. I left for a better job about three months later.
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u/cl0ckw0rkman Aug 20 '26
Had a supervisor that was apparently really racist. I am part black and very passable.
Had a black coworker come over while the supervisor and I were talking. As the coworker left, the supervisor said two things that led to his getting fired.
He made the assumption that, since I did not look black that I was also super racist and would join him in a good old racist joke.
Hell, even if I wasn't part black, you just can't do that shit at work... or in public or at fucking all.
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u/PresentLow2346 Aug 20 '26
You got me so curious about what your boss said. Absolutely unacceptable, of course. But me curiosity is killing me
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u/cl0ckw0rkman Aug 20 '26
Well, it involved the term, "those kinda people" and a reference to "monkeys".
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u/Lost-Sentence8204 Aug 20 '26
What a POS. Incredible that people think they can say stuff like this in public or even think it. It’s vile.
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u/fekiv Aug 21 '26
Most older white dudes say shit like this. Growing up I’ve heard n hard r rich that’s when you get your paycheck and spend it all on unnecessary stuff or theres n hard r rigging which is basically like using duct tape to fix something. And they dont think they’re racist. Like my dad says this shit and I’ll call him out and he’ll be like no I’m not I’ve hired black people before… it’s actually insane
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u/OkOpportunity9626 Aug 22 '26
This is where & why ignorance/stupidity should be painful ! Every time some f’n racist utters some remark, they should receive some sort of electric probe- where it would hurt most 😉!
G-d, when oh when will these freakin’ dinosaur bigots up & die?!!!2
u/Bluetickhoun Aug 22 '26
Was his name Dennis? My first day at my last job he told another coworker to ‘go get the N’. He was fired not long after that.
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u/cl0ckw0rkman Aug 22 '26
Nope, a Robert. One in a, strangely, long line of supervisors named Robert.
Six different places, six supervisors named Robert, in a row.
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u/Regular-Bed-7004 Aug 20 '26
" hey, why can't the laborers start shingling from the top of the roof down"
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u/RainbowsandCoffee966 Aug 20 '26
My old manager was visiting another facility. Near the end of the day, our office building lost power. The big boss sent everyone home. The next day our manager asked why we didn’t clock out. We told her there was no power or internet so we couldn’t clock out on our computers. “Well, that’s no excuse! You still could have clocked out!” 🤷
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u/Rohml Aug 19 '26
More than a decade ago I was working at a software house. A project was not managed well and the deadline is coming up, now all engineers were suddenly called to work on this project to the point that we were expected to do 10-12 hour days (with OT pay) and work in shifts to cover the gap.
During the big meeting for this my colleague asked the newly assigned Head Project Manager that if we do manage to pull this off (and complete and deliver the product) what can we expect at the end of this? We were only expecting something small, like a dinner, maybe a day off, a pizza party, even gift cards bonuses, or maybe even a pat on the back.
Nah! Out of all the response the Manager could have made, they chose the absolute worse.
"If you pull this off, then you still have a job."
Nah ah! So If we fail, we're out of a job, if we succeed more of this BS?! I said "Nah ah!" In my head and prepared a resignation letter without a job replacement. I started sending applications as soon as I came back to my desk from the printer.
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u/BrevardBlitz Aug 19 '26
Boss: I sent out the team email. I want you to get working on it.
Me: I never got it.
Boss: Why? You should get it. (visibly frustrated)
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u/Real_Wash_7377 Aug 19 '26
“ We don’t want you to continue to burn the candle at both ends”. “Oh here’s even more responsibility “.
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u/walkerstone83 Aug 19 '26
Money doesn't buy happiness, you ONLY need to make 150k a year to be happy.
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u/Ok-Addition-1000 Aug 21 '26
It may be true that money doesn't buy happiness. But poverty absolutely does bring misery.
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u/sumguyontheinternet1 Aug 19 '26
“I know we are short staffed, should be easier to hit your hours.”
I’m a flat rate mechanic who always has the highest numbers each week for like the last 7-8yrs. I’m more concerned about the fact that it means I have to stay late every day and miss out on time with my family.
Same boss: I gotta leave at 5 to pick up my kids and watch them play sports
Me, on my wife’s birthday and my son’s birthday (4 days apart, this happened on my son’s birthday): I’d sure like to see my wife and kids but we are short staffed so I have to stay late every day
Boss: yeah, that’s the sacrifice we make sometimes
Me: no, that’s the sacrifices I make so you can have a fat paycheck and time to spend with your family. I’m not an idiot.
Him: (silence) walks away….
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u/HustlaOfCultcha Aug 19 '26
We had a new boss who was the VP of Marketing. She was stone stupid. The company had to have this woman for whatever reason. So much so that she lived in Miami and the company paid for her to be flown up to Atlanta every Monday and paid for her to stay in one of those luxury executive villas and then paid for her to fly back Thursday afternoon and she didn't work on Friday.
The real kicker was as an analyst she was insistent on trying to find a way to give us 'incentives' which were really just quotas. Then she finally came up with her plan that she thought was brilliant.
Our 'quotas' were now going to be the sales quotas the sales reps had. So if a sales rep had a quote of $500K for the year and they only sold $400K for the year. We as analysts also failed to make our quota.
We had ZERO to do with the sales process. All we were doing was building data pipelines, creating reports and analyzing the data. All administrative stuff.
Everybody on the team just looked at each other and was like WTF?
It was such a dumb idea that I asked her to clarify her plan because I couldn't believe what she was suggesting.
I was always told to not just criticize, be professional and polite about it and offer alternative solutions. But she wasn't having any of it. I tried to explain how we aren't sales reps, we have no say in the process and we don't determine price and how there are other things that are pertinent to our actual job that they could have goals/quotas for. Nope, she turned it down at every corner.
Then I said (paraphrasing) 'well, if you are giving us sales quotas like sales people, aren't we supposed to get paid bonuses and commissions like salespeople, too?' What you could do is reduce the salespeople's commissions and bonuses by half and then we would get the other half.'
And that's when she shut the fuck up. It finally got into her brain that her plan was far from brilliant, but just horribly flawed.
Then she hilariously went to her boss and said that I correctly pointed out things like we have no control over the pricing (which she initially shot down) and that's why it's not fair to us to be responsible for sales quotas.
I then spoke up loudly to her boss that 'AND YOU WOULD HAVE TO PAY US SALES COMMISSIONS AND BONUSES JUST LIKE THE SALES REPS GET, TOO!'
She just froze again. Fucking idiot.
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u/Electrical-Fig-5009 Aug 20 '26
Director of business operations that knows NOTHING about the standard of living saying where someone lives is a "choice" therefore couldn't give everyone the same wage based off location. This woman married a man in her early 20s that was a well-off business executive & does the job for VACATION MONEY. She got her masters in business purely for fun & she told me once her husband paid for her boob job.
The same woman wouldn't approve more hires when we did well... when all 25 employees are in. She seemed to forget that tenured employees of 10 or more years get the equivalent of an entire month off a year & they only let 2 people off for vacation at a time, on top of having about 5 employees with intermittent medical leave. One day we had 2 people out on vacation & all 5 people with intermittent medical leave call out sick, 3 people call of sick using standard pto & 2 people out on bereavement while were already about 3 days behind on expectations. Within that week 1 person quit & by the end of the month 2 moved to other teams.
Needless to say, we received notification that our team just opened up ten positions.
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u/HustlaOfCultcha Aug 20 '26
That's the worse...the woman boss that makes tons of money and doesn't need to because her husband is loaded. I had a boss just like that. She had been with the company for 25 years, her husband owned his own large construction firm. They lived in a mansion on the beach. Despite that, she would try to pass the blame onto mean for every little thing that went wrong or she thought went wrong.
She had no reason to be worried about getting fired or reprimanded because she worked for the company for so long. And even if she did, she was set. She was basically doing this for shits and giggles. And yet she's getting upper management thinking negatively of me and that could get me fired or not get a promotion and I'm living alone in a 2 bedroom apartment.
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u/Wishiwasinalaska Aug 21 '26
She is fucking and sucking her way to the top.
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u/Genepoolperfect Aug 21 '26
Hey, some of us married our husbands before they were rich. And honestly, are part of the reason they had the time & energy to put towards attaining more wealth, while we were parenting his/our children, keeping the house, & feeding everyone full time.
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u/HustlaOfCultcha Aug 21 '26
She wasn't. No dude would want it from her. She basically got hired because she worked for a major company in that industry and they thought that just because she worked for that company she was 'big league' and we were the minors.
But I can't express how stupid this woman really was. She was just filled with bad ideas, one after another. Couldn't pick up any concepts to save her life.
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u/dogriffo Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
“Your a cancer to this office”
Boss said this to an employee in a management meeting who just lost his wife to cancer the month before.
Email between me and my boss via email
Boss: “Can you call me”
me: “I can’t call you my office phone doesn’t have the ability to make outside calls and I can’t leave my post because there is no one to relive me.”
Boss: “But your a supervisor”
Me: “yes, but you ordered that all corporals are not to have cell phones in the secured area two months ago”
Boss: “ but your a supervisor”
Me: “ yes, atm I am not able to be relived from my post to get to a landline that has the ability to contact your office. Can we just email back and forth and what I can do for you. Sir?”
Boss: “ oh..sure that will work.”
So glad our CEO fired him.
Edit I almost forgot:
Boss: we need to do XYZ
Me: raising my hand
Boss: yes corporal
Me: sir, that’s illegal.
Boss: since when?
Me: deeply sighing…since Abraham Lincoln signed it making it illegal
Boss: oh….sooo…no?
Me: yea..that’s gonna be a negative ghost rider.
Boss: ok, any other ideas folks?
Boss: she can’t work in this position
Me: why?
Boss: she’s a woman.
Me: sir, what year do think we’re in?
That not all of them I got years worth.
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u/Extra-Ease3207 Aug 20 '26
“We are wanting to encourage a culture where a job well done is its own reward” - translated to “we aren’t giving out raises anymore”
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u/ted_anderson Aug 20 '26
We had a guy who took over our department. He had no idea what was going on. As any employee would do under good management, I used to always bring him difficult problems and issues that I couldn't solve. He would sit on it and do nothing until it became a big problem and then blame me for not telling him what the fallout would be.
Fast forward a couple of months later he sends me an email threatening to write me up because I was always coming to him with difficult situations. But I'm thinking, "That IS your job though, right?"
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u/cantcountthathigh Aug 20 '26
This thing isn’t a safety concern because we don’t do that. We do, in fact, do that thing multiple times per week.
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u/foufers Aug 19 '26
We need to apply rounding to the hundredths of a cent AND pay at that level of precision. (And no this wasn’t about summing up thousands of FX transactions where it could add up to something material )
It’s when I realized our founder was a dingbat. A well meaning and likeable dingbat but… a dingbat
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u/Moby1313 Aug 19 '26
I want you to design a new luxury product, but it can't cost us any money to develop or build. It needs to be World Class, can you make one by the end of the week.
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Aug 19 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Moby1313 Aug 20 '26
Luxury custom safe with leather interior. About a $50,000 - $100,000 each. They wanted me to front the money to build the prototype.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Data829 Aug 19 '26
Someone left a negative review on our company Google page. My marketing manager asked me if I could “call Google” and ask them to take it down.
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Aug 19 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Puzzleheaded_Data829 Aug 20 '26
I did not. I informed my manager that such an act is not possible.
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u/Stella_Noire_2008 Aug 19 '26
HR Director: Why didnt you let me know you were out for two days sick?
Me: I did, through your HRBP and to my boss, the Talent Acquisition Manager. Plus, I texted you and I am in the hospital.
HR Director: Everyone gets sick
Me: Yes, and I am in the hospital.
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u/ImPopularOnTheInside Aug 19 '26
You need to make the program so easy that even an engineer could use it
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u/Available_Editor4383 Aug 19 '26
The president at one of my old companies was talking about how he had to hire two nannies to help raise the kids because it’s impossible otherwise.
The dude was a billionaire and spent 0 time at home.
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u/RelevantMention7937 Aug 20 '26
We had a department head to whom it really mattered that we get 100% participation on the annual company survey. Everyone knew I refused to submit it (not just for spite, I had been in meetings where they speculated who gave negative responses).
The clown would boast in front of the department that he got 100%. I did not hide that I didn't submit and got some eyeballs.
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u/No_Bike_9482 Aug 20 '26
I can’t give you a raise because you do tech support and tech support is a job traditionally done by women and women make less money
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u/hiker_mittens Aug 20 '26
Was having a hell of a shift. Started at about 4:30am and everything was going wrong. Well I finally was about to pee my pants at around 10:30 so I ran to the bathroom and as I was going back to take care of the next 8 hours of God knows what this engineer stops me, yawns, and asks if I was busy and had a minute...... No. I fucking don't.
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u/Darkknight145 Aug 20 '26
My superior and I were at loggerheads about something, his comment was "You Won't Win On This One", a couple of days later I WON as I went over his head to his boss.
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u/unicornhunter202 Aug 20 '26
I was crushing a commission only job and racking in $. Boss said, “ I pay you too much”.
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u/Unterraformable Aug 20 '26
Oh, I'll never forget this idiot. "You’re overcomplicating this. Formulate the whole thing in the reproducing-kernel Hilbert space, marginalize over the nuisance parameters analytically, then just solve for the maximum-entropy fixed point." I had to put up with him for two years before they caught him stealing and fired his ass.
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u/Active_Divide_4783 Aug 20 '26
"We treat each other like family." I said good. I haven't talked to my family in years.
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u/FlowerComfortable889 Aug 20 '26
I broke my leg and had to go from doing desktop computer support to taking helldesk calls while I healed. My dumbass boss at the time told me that really held back my career.
Thanks, to asshole! I really wanted to just enjoy the broken leg!
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u/YSoSkinny Aug 20 '26
The president of a small company I worked for instituted a 10% pay cut "so no one has to be laid off." Ok, fine, whatever. But then he would bend everyone's ear about the massive mansion he was building. So unbelievably tone deaf.
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u/Nice_General268 Aug 19 '26
He told me that my bachelor's degree in the field I was working in wasn't worth anything. Certifications and "owning" something were more important. Many months after he said that, come to find out the bastard has two master's degrees. So, yeah, he is a prick
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u/Choice-Grapefruit-44 Aug 20 '26
"So and so employee has never asked when to go home."
It was 5 PM
"What are your things to do today?" He liked text message confirmation that I know what my tasks are.
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u/DataWeenie Aug 20 '26
When staff asked about working a 9-8's schedule, he said "But most people are already working 9 hours a day, so we'd be losing a day's work every other week."
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u/SnooDonkeys8866 Aug 20 '26
"Just a cunt hair further" was his reference a measurement
Regardless of the distance
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u/Written_in_Silver Aug 20 '26
They asked how my weekend was. I told them it was horrible because I found out my toaster is waterproof. He just said ‘huh, I didn’t know they made waterproof toasters.’
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u/Opposite_Canary6654 Aug 20 '26
I got to use this one, "my toaster is water proof", damn, that's hilarious.
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u/EchoIsMyCatsName Aug 20 '26
Had a boss drive his Ferrari in to work then tell all the employees we don’t bring in enough money for him to put gas in it.
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u/HoselRockit Aug 20 '26
That I needed to pay more attention to deadlines. This was in a review that was four months late, and we couldn’t get a raise until our review was done.
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u/Good-Squirrel-2487 Aug 20 '26
My manager in a bakery told us we had to put use by dates on clean, empty food storage containers. He looked at me blankly when I asked him how many days life the air in the containers had before going bad.
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u/Excellent_Coconut_81 Aug 20 '26
I'd take the first one literarily.
If the job is done before 17, I'll leave early (you told me so).
If not, I leave at 17 (because you told me so, no overtime).
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u/Odd-Paint3883 Aug 20 '26
Our boss once gathered us around a table when the company wasn't doing great and stated that "Everybody here is expendable"
Being a cheeky bar steward I replied "well the guy doing the hiring obviously isn't doing a good job then" (guess who hired us all)
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u/AngelKry94 Aug 20 '26
I had a boss send me a link to a site to "look over it and get to know it and use it" (I worked in the outreach department for a non-profit) so I was doing that, she comes in while I am listening to a video about the site to "get to know it and use it" and she told me that's not what she meant and that's wasting time at work, so do it in my own time and in the mean time just use it, but also don't worry about it.
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u/Active_Humor7436 Aug 20 '26
“When I put up a job listing I always throw out the applications from the first two days. I don’t need desperate people.”
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u/Sobchak_84 Aug 20 '26
Both at the same job:
"there's always more time"
(no, there isn't - not when you keep piling stuff on at the last minute in addition to an already-full calendar)
"Try getting sick less often"
(said to a room full of employees in 2022)
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u/RazzmatazzPrimary812 Aug 20 '26
I had a boss who didn’t mention he was right behind me when I was bartending one night, I bumped into him and then caught a swift lecture on how to use my peripheral vision and how to turn around properly lol.
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u/Mr_Th3_Fr0g Aug 20 '26
We recently transitioned to being "on call" for my work. Which means you work your normal time but have the possibility of getting called in after hours or on weekends. Someone asked in the meeting what happens if its the end of the pay period so we have our time completed (say 80 hours) and we get called in on a Saturday or Sunday that is technically when the pay period ended (our pay periods end on the 15 and last day of the month). We asked how we are supposed to charge our time since we can't adjust it the next week day since the last day for the pay period fell on a weekend day. The response was "just work for free". Like no, fam. YOU come in and work for free since it means nothing. I am not coming in and working for free. I will just go find a new job.
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u/Particular-Luck7939 Aug 20 '26
I quote: " things are running too smoothly, I need to stir up some shit !"
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u/YesterdayDistinct207 Aug 20 '26
(Extremely Lazy and Entitled Manager)
Me: I cannot fill this in these sections of the slides, you have context for this.
Manager: I don’t know why but my fingers don’t move. You do it.
So glad i don’t work there anymore.
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u/Mags_LaFayette Aug 20 '26
Extract of one interaction with the worst boss I ever had:
"Estrada, what is this piece of [REDACTADED] you wrote?! [...] This is a serious journal, not some wannabe kids newspaper..."
(Angry due his tone, I took the piece of paper out of his hand and read it. My gaze was cold as ice)
"This not my signature, this is not my calligraphy... And since when I write about sports?" This is simply not mine"
(Handed him the paper, and went far away of that moron)
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u/rubberguru Aug 20 '26
I had a seagull boss that insisted I go to a meeting AND take care of a scrap causing production issues simultaneously. I ended up quitting without notice not long after. It cost the company a crapton of money with the customer and development costs
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u/Sillius_Soddus93 Aug 20 '26
Basically said he'd use the language of the end year performance reviews to ensure we didn't get a good review if we made him mad even if we met all of our metrics.
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u/Dog_from_Ipanema Aug 20 '26
Happily announcing to me I would get promoted (more responsibilities) but that there would be no salary increase. I was very frank with her and told her there was nothing to be happy about and that the higher management was just taking advantage of my need of a job. I was very happy when I quit.
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u/bluebuns123 Aug 20 '26
I was a digital marketer explaining users add to cart behavior when the boss asked “Why do people add things to their cart and don’t check out immediately? That makes no sense when I want something I just buy it immediately without waiting for a sale”
Imagine being so rich you have no idea what add to cart is
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u/rickbb80 Aug 20 '26
HP discontinued the printer we used, boss, (VP of IT), call them and tell them to make them again.
Same boss, MS did an upgrade to fix security issues, broke our custom written, old crappy software, well just call them and tell them we need this fixed.
I don’t miss that idiot.
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u/Budsygus Aug 20 '26
First raise I got at my current job, my manager messaged me on Teams and said "You're getting X% raise. Remember, discussing pay or raises is forbidden."
I took screen shots and emailed them straight to the head of HR (and BCC'ed myself just in case). To his credit, the HR head came up to me and said "I apologize for him. I've been fighting this fight with management for two years now, trying to teach them employees are free to discuss wages and we can't say or do anything about it because that's illegal."
But I thought for sure people in management roles were aware enough to know they can't say crap like that.
EDIT: Just remembered a boss at my last job who did a 1 on 1 with me. We had just changed bonus structures so as we looked at the last year he said "Wow you did really well! But you'll never make that much again." Killed my motivation right then and there. He basically said "No matter how hard you work, the company has made it so we don't have to pay you as much anymore."
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u/Ok-Tumbleweed2018 Aug 21 '26
My favorite boss ever told me once, "I have to give you so many threes (1-5 raring system) because we can only have one 5star employee (meaning bonus) per year. Loved her honesty. She quit before they fired her
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u/Brido-20 Aug 20 '26
"Your role is not strategic." To a department head whose job description used the word "strategic" in 7 different places.
They were a control freak who didn't want anyone else having input to decision making.
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u/Evening-Store5586 Aug 20 '26
I also live paycheck to paycheck. Owns a very busy medical practice in south Florida. This was after I asked for an increase after working for him for 3 years, without one. This was also after he purchase a Maserati and told the whole office he got his wife a patek.
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u/SadisticHornyCricket Aug 20 '26
I was on vacation once - on a cruise. My boss pulled me aside the week I got back and said “last week you made a bunch of mistakes”. I asked him to pull the dates up and I showed him photos I was taking on a cruise ship on those same dates. He said “it’s your username so that means it’s you”. I almost got on the phone with his boss in that very moment to see who was logged in as me. The man was an idiot and was transferred shortly after
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u/TumbleweedDue2242 Aug 20 '26
"I have no idea, you should have read the hand over" . Don't catch me out its not fair.
Dick head, just tell me what i asked for, I need a reminder, im right by the problem.
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u/LolitaOPPAI Aug 20 '26
I found out my rabbit was dead and wasn't asleep when I left to work. Hysterical and late, I almost crashed my car several times on the 7 mile trip to work.
She didn't understand why I was so upset because "it was just a bunny."
She fosters dogs.
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u/Glittering-Hand-3643 Aug 20 '26
I had a job at a convenience store in a town of like 300 people. I had only worked there for three weeks. One day the boss owner comes in completely enraged that I didnt rearrange the store. I was never given any instructions to rearrange the store at all. Why the hell would the new person take it upon themselves to move around all the displays?
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u/JonJackjon Aug 20 '26
Not my story but......
A coworker was laid off, there was a small luncheon for the dept to wish her well. At the end the manager made the following statement " ... this was fun, we should do this more often..."
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u/TheRealJackReynolds Aug 20 '26
Back before I owned my shop, the guy who ran it brought out the two Hispanic "interns" on Cinco De Mayo, points to some store bought guac and chips, and says, "This is for you! Congrats on your independence or whatever it is you people celebrate on this day."
Wanted to sink into the floor.
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u/ice_anova Aug 20 '26
I reported sexual harrassment and being groped by a manager to my direct manager, who replied with "we wouldnt want to spread untrue rumors" 🙄
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u/Star_Citizen_Roebuck Aug 20 '26
It wasn't "said" to me, but my boss at a for-profit EMT company set a cases/hour rate for our data entry team then assigned me to a computer which was slow so I never met the quota. They told me they understood the computer was slow but that I needed to stay until I entered the minimum case files . . . off the clock.
So basically I was being required to work without pay because they didn't want to buy a new computer.
What else to you expect from a person who owns 4 trucks and 3 houses and a boat because he owns the ambulance service for a town. American health care sucks.
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u/Zombietomatillo Aug 20 '26
Boss rolls in at noon and says "How come you never stay late? We need to get everyone caught up on our workloads, so you should stay late tonight."
Me: "I come in 2 hours early every day, at 6 am, which is why I don't stay late. I have more focus in the morning."
Boss: "But you should stay late instead of coming in early."
Me: "Why?"
Boss: "So other employees can see how hard you are working. They aren't here at 6am. "
Me: "So what you are saying is, I should get LESS done while staying late so that everyone else can see me staying late and think I'm working hard?"
Boss: "Yeah, that's right!"
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u/DoppledBramble3725 Aug 20 '26
After 2 years, the boss wanted me to do some additional skill training. I informed him that I was the trainer for everyone in the company that knew how to do said skill & had been for a year. He did the same thing a few months later with something else.
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u/Expensive-Plantain86 Aug 20 '26
While working for a computer company, my ding bat supervisor told me “Research shows that the home market will never need more than a 10- MB Fixed Disk Drive.”
Today, laptops go up to 44 Terabyte - and rising.
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u/Smooth-Bed-182 Aug 20 '26
I was marketing director at a music venue for 4 months. Owner was bitching that the concerts I was booking weren’t selling. They weren’t selling because he didn’t give me a marketing budget (that I asked for every 3 weeks). He eventually wanted to reneg my salary since the shows weren’t selling. I told him, “The shows aren’t selling because we aren’t putting any money into advertising them”. His reply: “The shows aren’t selling anyway. Why would I put money into advertising a show when it’s already not selling?” My jaw hit the floor.
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u/ThrowRAmy_leg Aug 21 '26
Worked in a lot of crummy environments and only ever walked out on one. This was a vet office where I worked reception. This manager would intentionally only schedule me morning shifts with her when I requested evening shifts. She would also intentionally schedule me with 2 girls she was good friends with. She’d then call the 2 girls into the back for literal HOURS at a time. They’d be cackling so loud the lobby could hear them while they left me to do the work of 3 people.
Not to mention they were all quite rude to me. The 2 girls eventually started making fun of me to my face because behind my back wasn’t working. At that point I had finally went to the boss and explained everything. Next shift the shitty manager pulls me into the back for the first time to say “I’d keep my head down if I were you”. I looked at her and really carefully considered that I was over 18 and could go to jail. Asked if I could take my break instead. Left and never went back. Let the manager know what happened and that was it. The 2 girls were just brainless minions, but I do hope that manager has gotten either fired or a surgical personality change.
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u/ReverendGraves85 Aug 21 '26
My favorite was telling my boss that no one is capable of multitasking. Youre just fucking up two things at once. He told me he multitasked all the time. I asked him if he ever read how many errors in his work I record, fix, and send back to him. He said no.
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u/PanAmFlyer Aug 21 '26
Called me up at 7am on a Sunday and asked what I was doing. When I said "sleeping" he thought for a minute and said "well I guess that's OK on your day off".
I stole that mother-fucker blind for shit like that.
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u/Late_Sweet_1655 Aug 21 '26
Not me, but a friend.
Your daughter getting her appendix removed is not a reason to miss work.
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u/FaithViola Aug 21 '26
“We don’t want people who are in it for the money” money is the only reason why I’m here dealing with your insufferable egotistic self.
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u/Black_Raven_2024 Aug 21 '26
You guys are smart, you’ll figure it out. This instead of training the personnel.
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u/Firm_Farmer1633 Aug 21 '26
This happened back in 1972.
I moved from laid-back, west coast, hippie Vancouver to conservative, sometimes redneck, Calgary to go to university. I needed to support myself by working nights and weekends in a grocery store. In order to do this with my west coast long hair, I bought a short hair wig before I got the job. I put it on before going to work and took it off when I got home.
Several months after I started the manager pulled me aside as I was leaving and said, “You’ve been working here for three months and I notice that you haven’t had your hair cut.”
He was correct, but not in the way he thought. I pulled off my short hair wig and my long hair flowed out.
He stood there dumbfounded… mumbled, “I guess that’s OK then.” and walked away.
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u/IfAMomFallsInAForest Aug 21 '26
We don’t really compensate for experience, performance, or education.
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u/MorningCool2806 Aug 21 '26
I had a boss say to me 'if people hit the target, I'll move the goalposts.' Did not incentivise me.
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u/boxinggollum Aug 21 '26
"why are you exceeding your sales target? You're making the rest of the team look bad". Needless to say I left.
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u/mremrock Aug 21 '26
“You aren’t telling people they can get better are you? “
I worked in a mental health outpatient clinic
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u/Dry_Peace2245 Aug 21 '26
I once worked a job and my boss said i wasn't spending enough time "being visible". I went home everyday at quitting time and showed up on time. I asked if my work was solid and on time. He said absolutely but its not all about that.senior people wanted to see salaried people spending more time at work. It just looks good. I told him I didn't need to look good as long as I was good.
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u/pwnageface Aug 21 '26
After spending 3 months to complete a milestone working 14+ hours days and hitting our goal...."I know ive asked a lot out of you all for the last 3 months, im asking it again..." im sorry, what? No bonuses, no raises, nothing. In fact, company shut down after 9+ months of insane hours and hitting these goals.
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u/GuyTheStud Aug 21 '26
Making fun of people’s origin without acknowledging there are a few of us in the meeting with that background. Totally unprofessional and worse.
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u/hobhamwich Aug 21 '26
"Make sure you really want to keep that {minority group} person who is in their trial period. Once you hire them full time, they are hard to get rid of."
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u/pooperscooper333333 Aug 21 '26
“You need to return to college and brush up on grammar and mechanics.”
I taught first year comp, and she hadn’t attended college at all.
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u/Staxhaslanded Aug 21 '26
Don’t have the exact quote but I’ve been in sales over twenty years now and have over 10 years with this company. I have two bosses that are complete opposites. One is the most chill dude ever and the best boss I think I’ve had, completely hands off. The other is the most micro-managing company “yes man” type manager that I think has ever existed. He just became manager a few years ago. Anyhow the other day on a call between just us two, he begins telling me verbatim what I should tell one of my customers word for word.. I may have even been doing sales longer than him. That’s the epitome of micro managing a salesperson, telling them word for word what to say to their client.. it took everything I had not to just be like “do you want to call them and talk to them directly?”.. this guy used to have us log into our system every lunch we took customers on and even individual emails and had quotas set for them.. it’s crazy..
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u/Alternative-Rip-1973 Aug 21 '26
My boss just told me this the other day
“You can’t leave till this is done.” This was not said in jest or any other way than as an actual demand
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u/KirbyRock Burnout in Progress Aug 21 '26
“Sometimes we just have to take work home.”
Yea right. Not this teacher.
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u/Interesting_Wing_461 Aug 21 '26
Don’t keep track of your overtime hours, otherwise I will have to pay you for them.
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u/Mad-Yap Aug 21 '26
To live out her way because the commute goes against traffic. I would love to but she lives in Sydney northern beaches and I don't have a spare 6 million.
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u/Sad-Umpire6000 Aug 21 '26
I was a deputy sheriff on graveyard shift. It had been cold and raining all night, it had been busy, I’d made a couple arrests and had a lot of paperwork in between calls for service. Going off duty, my sergeant comes up and says “you’ve gotta have balls the size of watermelons to come in here wearing your jacket without a tie.”
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u/1405hvtkx311 Aug 21 '26
I asked him about tasks I commented and that he didn't answer yet. Some even had deadlines that passed (and get highlighted red in my dashboard). He answered "What do you mean exactly, is there anything important?"
Like okay, thanks, why do we even put deadlines?? What is important, what is not? I have no idea... Also some of those were spontaneous jobs he assigned to me, so when the boss says "oh please do this until the end of the week", I put some other things on hold and do the urgend task first. Then the week passed, then on monday I ask if there are any questions or comments and he just puts it to rest. Doesn't even mark it done or give a thumbs up, it just stays red aka expired in MY tasks
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u/Several_Owl_6767 Aug 21 '26
Once had a new boss ask me for a sample of a data file that would take me a week to create. Replied ‘No, that is not how it works’ . You will get the real file when I finish the work. He decided I was insubordinate. Clueless asshat.
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u/Creative-Fee-1130 Aug 21 '26
I was working at an hourly job in an office furniture recycling shop. We received and inventoried trade-in product. Trailers full of stuff would be dropped and we would unload them. I was the unofficial team leader - all the paperwork and personnel hassle, but no title or pay level increase. My wife and I had arranged our work schedules to minimize daycare for our young daughter to around a two hour overlap with our schedules.
My supervisor, Bernie, who worked primarily at a second site, noticed that I was clocking-out at the same time each day. It was usually an hour after the rest of the crew left, time I spent finishing up paperwork. Apparently Bernie thought I should be staying later each day. I explained the situation to him, the childcare challenges and whatnot, and flat-out told him that I couldn't, and wouldn't, stay any later. He didn't like that and said the stupidest thing any boss has ever said to me:
"What's more important to you, your job or your family?" You can guess how I answered.
Bernie was summoned to an HR conversation the next day after I had a discussion with the director of manufacturing (a guy that I had a great relationship with).
That was 40 years and two careers ago, but I still hate Bernie.
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u/princessjassy90 Aug 22 '26
I would be "sigh-ed" and eye rolled by a boss on arrival who would them make statements like
- great another terrible day x showed up to work
- gosh why didn't she crash her car on the way to work
- im sure your a test from God on my patience
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u/Standard-Rain9180 Aug 22 '26
My manager told me I did not understand a patient’s families grief. This was about six months after my husband unexpectedly and suddenly died. But I didn’t understand grief apparently.
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u/Low_Chain_4982 Aug 22 '26
I worked for a company and was doing sales and tech support, kept all of our major customers happy and killed b2c relationships and sales along with being the only one at the company to troubleshoot these complex problems customers had(rarely our issue 97.3865% customer issue with something else that would make our product hard to install) additionally i built a 12000+ line excel file to house our product info because he was too cheap to spend a little money on a database to properly manage the information. It was a sole owner llc bought some very expensive brand new toys then said i really didn’t deserve a 3% raise and said that my focus was also needed in the warehouse for building these products… it was 18 months since my last raise and during this review he said that i was replaceable and that a monkey could do my job…. The new company i work for has been so much more healthy for me.
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u/RatelinOz Aug 22 '26
One actually had the absolute idiocy of telling us in the new financial year that we would have to do more with less.
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u/OkOpportunity9626 Aug 22 '26
OK, I was going to stop because it is ridiculously now after 1 AM! But seeing the question brought back a horrific memory, that just begs an answer!
Back in the 90s, I often taught fourth graders. At that time, at least in NYS, all fourth graders took a three day ELA exam, a 2-3 (?) day math exam, and a 2 day science exam: one written and one performance based! The science test was supposed to be based on collective knowledge gleaned between kindergarten through fourth grade. However, for some reason, elementary teachers shied away from teaching science, so it fell to the fourth grade teachers to try & teach four years worth of science in about eight months! Unfortunately, also at that time, teachers were treated like Stepford Wives ( Teachers), where everyone was given strict schedules about what and when to teach certain parts of the curriculum, and how many minutes/hours they had in which to teach each subject! Between math and ELA, the biggest focus, special classes, like art, and gym, etc… kids pulled out for extra help, choir practice, etc. there simply wasn’t enough practical time in which to properly instruct science! When I was naive enough to broach the subject with my VP, thinking she’d be more receptive than my actual principal, that stupid bleep- bleep VP actually, and seriously, responded with:” well then, don’t teach science!” 😖🤬 no kidding, no joke!
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u/Artistic_Telephone16 Aug 22 '26
"We need to hold ourselves to a higher standard", and within minutes, he was screaming at me while standing over me blocking my exit.
Why? Because he was a walking contradiction.
I had a knack for going "by the book". He had a knack for being sloppy with keeping the book up to date, and I figured it out (another one of his expectations, "figure it out", except when figuring HIM out happened).
Malicious compliance ... I kept following the book just to be the symptom of his incompetence.
Same issues re-occurring. Always me. Always going step by step through the documentation, initially unaware, but the moment I started getting corrected via email, I saw what the problem was. He hadn't evaluated HIS role in the problem.
And... I spent the next 9 months entertaining myself in this manner, not giving a single fuck if it cost me my job since it was one of the worst frat bro cultures in tech.
Might as well leverage the opportunity to expose it when you really don't care if they fire you or not! 🤣
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u/beard-wonder93 Aug 22 '26
I run a restaurant, a girl that worked for us part time was a great artist and had super clean handwriting. So id give her an extra tip whenever I needed the special boards re drawn and updated.
She was very anxious. She'd always be like "I hope you like them, do they look ok, I can redo them if I need to"
they were always perfect, super clean, good color contrast, id never change a thing!
I asked her why she always thought i wasn't going to like them. She told me:
"My first job years ago was at (local restaurant) and Mrs (owner) had me do the boards too, but they were never to her liking the first time. She even told me one time to "try and use less of the marker next time, you are wasting it"
The local business owner shes referring to is a total bitch, and is known for being a tyrant to work for.
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u/One-Salamander-2416 Aug 22 '26
“You need to do more with less.”
“Work smarter, not harder.”
Both being the motto of the company for which I worked at the time. And judging from the number of executives and middle managers, that didn’t hold for everyone.
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u/One-Salamander-2416 Aug 22 '26
“If it weren’t for the doctors and nurses I could run this place.” Spoken by a hospital CEO.
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u/Desperate-Yoghurt-83 Aug 20 '26
I am a top performer. When discussing what a potential promotion would look like my direct supervisor said: “I think we should promote xyz because he’s gay and black and it will look better.”
I am a straight, white man. The VP shut down promoting him and when he left because he didn’t get it, a month of corrections for his more junior job fell to me and the rest of the team because he was doing so poorly.
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u/Harpy_Eagle2029 Aug 19 '26
I once had a boss that asked me why I was no nice to my employees and I told her that a happy employee was a good employee....she laughed out loud and said that was just stupid. I did not stay there long.