General

Awhile back, I was working for someone who dealt with computer hardware. Awesome boss. His whole family was awesome. Not just saying that. I met them. Just genuinely nice and good people.

One summer day the boss invited me and the other guy working there to play basketball with him and his son, during work hours. Another time the boss tells me to come upstairs because he got us lunch. I go up and he himself had put out a whole bunch of stuff. We ate and talked about random stuff. That was some good guacamole :)

You know how certain things just make you smile? That boss was one of those. Just a genuinely good person.

I went to a wedding in a nearby state earlier this year. And guess who I meet? That boss's brother. Has a huge grin on his face, comes over, apparently he knows the groom. We talked for awhile. He's similar to the boss in that he's just someone who it's hard not to grin when you see him. I don't know exactly what is. Just a genuinely good person who you want around.

I could write a book for this Forum.

Because I cared more about integrity than profits, the Sales Department worked to get me labeled "negative" (was honest when an idea wouldn't work) and "uncooperative" (wouldn't work on projects that had no chance of success and wouldn't fudge results). Within a month of the CFO dying (one of my supporters), they got the Executive Council (with 2 VPs of Sales on it) to put one of them in charge of my R&D department under the guise of "efficiency improvement". I was immediately demoted and replaced with someone who I threw out of my department for theft and insubordination (repeatedly worked unauthorized overtime and wouldn't stop when warned) but was willing to lie for them. I was expected to quit (they even suggested it), but I stayed because my former boss, who was semi-retired, asked me to stay. I tried to continue to do my job and avoid the politics, but until they fired me (3 years later) I was treated like crap with the hope that I would finally quit on my own and they wouldn't have to pay severance to a 30 year loyal employee. Regardless of how many times I saved their asses in those 3 years, my performance reviews were filled with made up failures and ignored anything I did well. 30 years of experience and more education than anyone in the department, My last year I was given 2 points out of 5 for "has knowledge appropriate for assignments". The explanation for the low score was "You have the knowledge, you just don't use it correctly."

The new VP immediately put a dry erase board with each employee's name, the days of the week, and a space for us to list the projects we were to be working on that week with how many hours we were to spend on each one. The hours had to add to a minimum of 40 (by then, everyone was no-overtime salary). We were told that we needed to learn to multitask and work on more than one project at a time. The notice about the dry erase board said it was an optional tool to help us keep focused on our goals. I ignored it. A week later, I was asked why I wasn't using it. "I don't find things like that useful." "Start using it." "So ... it isn't optional?" "No."

Later, we were told to fill out every 15 minute section of our Outlook Calendar with the projects we were working on and Share it with the new manager. Every time we would sit down at our desks, there would be reminders of each 15 minute action.

Once I injured my back and could barely walk. The doctor didn't find anything and essentially wrote a note saying to be careful. I was responsible for a large number of sample analysis every day. I told my supervisor(s) that I would only be doing work at my desk until I felt I could handle more. I told them to get someone else to handle my lab work. They didn't. On the Monday following the first week, I got a phone call early Monday morning saying the backlog of samples had to be completed that day and I would need to stay as long as necessary to complete them. I said "That isn't going to happen. I am nowhere near 100% and I'm not going to risk hurting myself for this. If these need to be done today, you need to assign someone else to do it." "Work long, Work hard. See what you can get done." "So ... they really don't need to be completed today?" "Click"

I quit my last job after 10 years because I just got fed up with my manager. I've never met a person less suited to be managing people in my life. We had a new hire that was not doing their job (yet marking the task as complete), but when I showed my manager undeniable proof of that fact she just told me to not raise a fuss and go behind the new hire and do the work for him. That is when I decided to leave. I put in my two weeks that day without having any other options lined up.

Our work was dog friendly, so this woman would bring her poorly trained, "rare" breed of dog into work every day and it would crap or piss in our shared office space at least once a week.

She bragged to me while working for her that she would agree to be someone's reference when applying for jobs and then crap on them when contacted as a reference so they wouldn't get the job.

Since I left, 4 other people also left due to her just being a disrespectful butt-hole yet the company still stands by her for reasons that are unclear to me.

During my exit interview I told them that she was the sole reason I was leaving, and while they were sympathetic they didn't offer to change anything so I bounced.

Best decision I've ever made.