http://www.theguardian.com/careers/2015 ... er-stories

M was a crap boss, but never mind...

I've had one or two good bosses, but most range from crap to cnut, frankly. I'll go into more detail tomorrow. You?

My immediate bosses, I have always tended to work with rather than for, and they have been alright.
It's the bosses boss that's always seemed to bit a bit [LIFTED].

Mark

Generally speaking I think I've probably been incredibly lucky as far as my direct bosses have gone.
I've never really had any major issues with any of them although I did have a bit of a ding dong at my appraisal with my previous boss because I was being marked down for not doing stuff I thought I didn't have to do.

Immediate bosses have tended to be absolutely fine, it's always been higher ups that have been the [LIFTED].

My last two bosses have been great, but the next level up is very hit and miss. My boss's immediate superiors are the members of the board, and they mostly display a mixture of indifference and ignorance towards me and my fellow managers. One of them is decent though.

My immediate boss in my previous job was a total w***er. He was sh!t at his job but had mastered the art of taking credit for other peoples' work and sheltering the head of dept from direct contact with thpose people wherever possible - those of us who were wise to him were undermined at every opportunity so the only option was to go on the offensive and drop bombs in meetings where his boss was present.

Thankfully I've never had a horrible boss.

I guess I'm really lucky, I've never had a "bad" boss, my current place I have 3 levels of boss above me and they're all lovely!

Let's see...

First boss was fine.

Second boss brought not only her insecurities to the job, the fact she was having an affair with a married man was taken out on everyone else. She even accused someone else of having a similar affair later, like nobody knew about her!

Third boss was an absolute bitch who would have gone on the defensive if you'd said so much as hello to her.

Fourth boss didn't really give a sh1t about anything which of course suited everyone.

Fifth boss was utterly spiteful behind people's backs. Actually held her urine sample container to the side of a guy's face one day! Fell out with everyone in the end.

Sixth boss was a delight as was the seventh.

Eighth was another insecure type who had serious mood swings just within sentences.

Ninth boss seemed perfectly nice at the start, but you know how angry us geeks get... He eventually decided to team up with the senior management team who didn't even get on with each other, and they actively tried to frame me. I kid you not. Long story short, I made that incident work for me and I got them somewhat investigated. Even today I could still take it further.

Tenth boss had a thousand-yard stare he'd been dealing with two obsessives that long. In the end he quit.

Eleventh boss is ostensibly spot on, but has more faces than a clock. This is because he's in the middle of the two obsessives mentioned above.

Twelfth boss is one of the above obsessives. Doesn't matter what the project is, the goals change every day. This way she can belittle the staff to those above her, while appearing like she knows everything. She gets away with this because our senior boss in the building needed a project setting up years ago that is still ongoing. She knows the leeway this gives her, and actually talks to him like he's a child in front of us. She hasn't a friend in said building now, so she's actively lashing out at the staff any way she can. Uses blatant divide and conquer tactics just to gain a social foothold, but she's too far gone in that sense.

All of the above bosses? All in one line of work which I'm not going to disclose

I can be a little ... intense when I'm working and anybody who can't keep up gets found out.

I tend to go through bosses quite quickly.

Frankly, that says more about your people skills than your bosses.

I have a problem with authority figures, apparently. This is what I've been told anyway. I probably do, but, at 46 years old, I'm damned if I'm going to change who I am. For anyone.

True enough

I have excellent people skills normally - especially if something couldn't be helped or someone didn't know better. However I do have the rather ugly habit of turning them off if I sense someone getting unfairly treated or someone else being lazy.

For instance, I really should revisit the number of times a day that I use the word "retarded".

My current boss is pretty cool. I had man-flu this week and after ringing in he emailed everyone to let them know I'll be off. It went something along the lines of "A Dalek phoned up claiming to be Phil this morning. Or something sounding non human anyway. Needless to say he won't be in today."

My last boss was a [LIFTED] though.

Not sure how to answer this. When I started working, I was in hospital and did rotations through specialties, so I had a consultant as my boss for the duration of each job but then there was an overarching supervisor for the year. Most of the bosses were okay. A few were d**ks. I had consultants who were lazy, some who were conniving, some who were sincere and some who were smart. There was one boss who wasn't impressed with me at the start but by the end of my six month rotation she wanted me to leave GP training and join her specialty instead.

Then there was my GP trainer who oversaw my GP training but was also my direct boss for the final year as I worked in his surgery. He was truly an inspiration and I tried hard to emulate him. He had vision as well as intelligence. After he left, I took a job at the same surgery and tried to continue the trajectory he set me on. For the first twelve months, I was doing well but for the last two years, the same things that dragged him down are dragging me down and that's the practice and the way it's run.

Current bosses just want to keep going. They're nearing retirement and want the easy life. They don't want drastic changes and do the same stuff day in and day out. Compare this to my old boss. At one point I started thinking about algorithms and to try and simplify some of the work I did to speed up consultations. I then met my old boss who had not only thought of this, but had created protocols that automatically triggered depending on what you typed into the clinical software. He was miles ahead of me. He was an inspiration and moulded how I dealt with and helped with trainees passing through the practice. He was a friend too. I would love to work with him but I'd have to relocate to East Anglia.

Of the bosses I've had. All the women bosses have been completely power crazy and a ball ache to work for.

I must have had bad luck in the few I've had but it has been the same for all of them.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk