Unfiltered Story #56907

(My boss used to be very chaotic, demanding, unreasonable and mean. I loved the work but hated the man. He messed up existing schedules by acting without consultation, and was always expecting everything he wanted to be done in a jiffy. Once he had a conflict with a co-worker who had to cover for the head planner, who had been temporarily fired in hopes of saving money. He demanded that she did several jobs in the time of one. She complained it was too heavy, which resulted in him calling her “inefficient” and “slow”.

The conflict progressed for several weeks. Boss didn’t relent a bit and even tried to manipulate the talks of the co-worker with the confidential person.
Finally, the co-worker had enough and stepped down as assistant planner, just assuming her other job in the company. Since the head planner wouldn’t be back for more than a month, our boss took up the planning himself.

The result was disastrous…)

Me: “Hey, [co-worker 2] is on the roster again, but I haven’t seen him. That’s the third day in a row.”

Team leader: “I asked him over facebook. Turns out he’s in England for several weeks.”

Me: “I guess he sent an E-mail about that to the planning address?”

Team leader: “Yep.”

Me: “Why did I even expect [boss] to read any E-mails? Everyday several people on the roster don’t show up. And the daily roster never matches the weekly schedule. You weren’t here yesterday too, [co-worker 3].”

Co-worker 3: “Yeah. The night before, I received an E-mail of [boss]. It said: ‘Please come working tomorrow. Thanks.’ So I replied: ‘No.'”

Me: “I’m also wondering why he sends us a scan of a print of the roster. So, first he prints it, than he scans it, and then he mails the scan to us. Why not simply mail the Excel file like we used to?”

Team leader: “I guess he doesn’t know how to do that from the planning computer.”

(The mails containing the rosters used to be titled “roster week [number]”, Now, they were all titled: “FW: scan from the scanner”. The reason why was a total mystery.)

Me: “He’s also not really paying attention to our wishes. I want to work 5 days a week, but I’m scheduled for 3 days only. And [co-worker 3] wants to work 3 days, but he’s scheduled to work 5 days next week. It doesn’t make sense.”

Team leader: “I think he just doesn’t really care.”

Me: “No wonder he could do the planning so much faster then [co-worker 1]. He’s rushing it in a totally careless way. [Boss] is making the rosters indeed, but he’s not doing any planning!”

(Due to contract expiration I left the job a year later. One year after that, I heard he was still bullying co-worker 1, until she decided to quit working for him forever. Good for her.)