terrible bosses: the boss sending stripper pics, the bully boss, and more

by Alison Green on November 22, 2019

Today is the final day of the week-long series I did with The Cut about bad bosses. Here’s the full week of entries:

Monday: my boss is always making racist jokes / my boss is inflexible and uncaring

Tuesday: my evangelical boss tried to convert me / my boss lied about salary

Wednesday: my boss texts pictures of strippers to my coworkers / my boss pushed me not to take bereavement leave

Thursday: my boss and his girlfriend bullied me / nannying is like being a better-paid indentured servant

Friday: my boss made me so mad I got fired / my boss yelled and threatened me

You may also like:
{ 91 comments }

{ 91 comments… read them below }

  1. Live and Learn*

    Unfortunately, where this is posted requires a subscription! So I was only able to read Monday-Wednesday!

      1. Miss Muffet*

        There’s a monthly limit. I think those of us that hit it were also going to the Cut for some of her other articles this month.
        We’ll just have to come back to this post in a week or so!

      1. Seeking Second Childhood*

        Maybe having a blurb in your links when it’s a paid site would reduce the frequency of comments about them?

      2. Galahad*

        Yeah, but it sucks when Askamanager is posting links that exceed the cut limit in a month. I only go there from your links and could not read Friday’s article.

        If you want to monetize your readers, then be clear about that. Note, I keep on all the ads (no ad blocker) when I read because I enjoy content and want creators to have a revenue stream so linking to paid subscription links to let me read just your postings is… not great.

    5. Spek*

      $30 per year kinda steep – no month to month option. I don’t wanna cheat by accessing thru VPN – will it reset in 30 days to allow access?

      1. Lily Rowan*

        Seriously, that’s $2.50 a month.

        I can’t believe how much people complain on this site about Alison linking to NYMag!

        1. HoHumDrum*

          I mean, I’m not currently in a position to pay for any media subscriptions so $2.50/mo is more than I can budget for. That said, I don’t blame The Cut for doing what it needs to to stay in business, nor do I begrudge Allison for the same.

          I think it’s fair for people to not be able to pay/feel disappointed when media they are interested in is behind a paywall, but it’s ridiculous to complain to Allison about it.

          1. Lily Rowan*

            Right. It’s ridiculous to complain to Alison about it, and I think it’s basically ridiculous to complain about it at all. Media costs money! And yes, there are also ads, but there are also ads in the daily hard copy newspaper that people still pay money for.

            I’m not saying anyone has to like it, or pay for it, but it’s not crazy that New York Magazine would like their readers to give them some money.

            1. LadyL*

              Well I do think some media ought to be free so as to have an informed populace regardless of income level, but I don’t look to The Cut for that (I’m thinking more of the importance of PBS, NPR, etc).

          2. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

            It’s totally ridiculous. And yet they do. Every time. Like they’ve never seen it before. :-P

        2. Emilia Bedelia*

          Agreed, especially considering how much everyone talks about the importance of paying people a living wage, staffing adequately, freelancers making enough money/not working for free, and “______ expense is just a cost of doing business”.
          And then also, how much people use adblockers/complain about advertisements. You can’t have it both ways – either put up with ads, or pay for your content.

          You would never dream of strolling into Costco and complaining that they won’t let you eat all of the free samples, and you wouldn’t go to the hair salon and ask for a free haircut…expecting writers/editors/web developers to provide content for $0 is not reasonable.

    8. Platypus Enthusiast*

      As suggested before, Incognito mode may work. Also (theoretically) it’s 3 articles per browser, per device, across all the NYMag content. So if you usually use Google Chrome, maybe try Mozilla or Safari, or even Internet Explorer.

      2. Emily K*

        Mostly o/t but: folks should know the last version of Internet Explorer was shipped in 2013 and Microsoft officially stopped releasing updates, including critical security patches, in 2016. It’s a very unsecure browser that folks really should stop using. The browser Microsoft makes now, Edge, is also free and they’ll actually support and update that one.

        Sincerely, someone who’s reality is that 2% of my org’s web visitors are still using this 6 year old unsupported browser, and it’s left to our little IT team to troubleshoot every time something doesn’t work well or correctly in IE, which is increasingly often because no one, including lots of external vendors we use, is designing for it anymore.

      1. Cyanide Diamond*

        You can get around this by using a different browser or a different device. I use both Chrome and Firefox and read either on my phone or tablet. I just switch around. I use this for NYT too.

  2. Antilles*

    Today’s is…interesting. I’ve read it twice and I’m still unconvinced the boss is actually a “bad boss”.
    The only specific example given is that the boss is apparently bad at preparing shiny proposal documents. That is a weakness sure, but in a lot of cases, being able to be “super nice, really charming, and lovely” to clients is far more important than being able to be a star at Word document prep. As for the boss ‘relying on me to do parts of her job’, that’s actually what *should* be happening in a functional organization; the lower-level employees gain more experience and slowly take over the manager’s tasks, which frees up that manager to do more high level work or take on new roles themselves.
    And the rest of the letter is so strongly negative towards the boss that I can’t help but wonder if we’re missing part of the story. Resenting your boss succeeding? Seeing red any time you get an email from her? “I’d always revert back” after getting straight-forwardly told to fix your attitude by the CEO and COO? Getting a formal warning and still being unable to rein it in? That is all strong enough that it really makes me think we’re not getting an objective viewpoint as to the boss’ abilities.

    1. fposte*

      I wondered about that too. There are also jobs where the kind of work described would have been pretty par for the course–here are my messy notes, please use them to create a presentation. It seems like these are somewhat shorter-form answers so Alison may have just chosen to focus on the way your own attitude can burn you, whether or not there’s an inciting reason for it.

      1. Ask a Manager* Post author

        Yes — I didn’t pick the bad boss stories in this series but if I had, I probably wouldn’t have picked that one! Originally these were going to run as one long piece (rather than five separate ones), which is why the responses are so short.

    2. Taura*

      Idk, I agree with you about the attitude, but it sounded to me like LW wasn’t actually supposed to be doing this for ther boss? Like looking it over for spelling/grammar issues as a fresh set of eyes is one thing, having to completely redo a project is another. Also maybe the fact that the boss succeeded at getting more and bigger clients resulted in even more projects having to be done that all got shoved off onto LW with no apparent improvement in either the base material or compensation.

      1. Richard Hershberger*

        I don’t see that we have the information to know if this was supposed to be part of LW’s job or not. The letter is vague, leaving out this critical piece of information. It might be that this was totally part of LW’s job, but a part they didn’t enjoy.

      2. Tallulah in the Sky*

        The boss also never apparently asked for LW to redo whole projects. I understand wanting to help out, and that it’s awkward to tell your boss that what they send you is so bad you had to start from scratch. But LW did create that situation by not speaking up. Replying with “This seems to be still at the early stage of the project, what kind of feedback do you need from me ?” could have made things easier/clearer/… Or OP could have spoken up to someone at the company during one of the meetings (since it took several meetings and outbursts from OP, seems like this could be a considerate company).

        1. Working Mom*

          I think a lot of OP’s frustration could have been addressed much earlier. It does sound like the OP’s boss grew (over time) to expect the OP to make major changes to her work, because she did such a good job – and made the boss look really good.

          If we could go back in time… I’d tell OP right away (like above) to go back to the boss and ask for some more direction with her terrible projects. OP could have responded with “here are the edits I’d suggest – do you want me to move forward with these?” Assuming boss says yes, then the 2nd time it happens (or 3rd, whatever), OP could ask boss how she wants these projects prioritized with OP’s other work. Acknowledge the amount of time it takes, and partner with the boss on them more, as opposed to becoming boss’ dumping ground for bad work for the OP to just completely re-do. If OP had taken an approach like that, it would be very well documented how much time/work OP is spending on boss’ work – and a lot harder for boss to take all the credit (which I suspect may have been a big source of OP’s frustration). Making your boss look good is good for your career – but not to the extent that you’re being completely taken advantage of.

    3. Rick Tq*

      Perhaps BadBoss is keeping all the credit for OP’s work and never acknowledging her major contributions to OP or to the rest of the company…

      Having someone you support being credited as a rock star only because you do all the detail work would be enraging.

      1. starsaphire*

        That was my take on it, too. That she was angry because her boss was taking all the credit and getting bigger and better accounts, and she was stuck in the same job with the same pay, and yet she was the one doing all the design work. I would be incandescent with rage after a while, in that situation.

        1. Jessen*

          Mine as well. It sounded to me like the boss was passing off these edited presentations as purely her own efforts. And OP wasn’t getting credit for her role – which would put her in an even worse situation to complain against her boss (because the boss is now a highly reputable employee based on OP’s work).

        2. quirkypants*

          I can see the frustration if the boss took all the credit. People on my team do some work for the department that I have to present from time to time but I try to give them credit.

          In terms of being “stuck in the same job”, I’d have a lot more questions before I give them a pass for their behaviour.
          -How long are we talking here? It can take time to move “up”.
          -Are they actually good at higher level tasks or just making better PowerPoints? I’m solidly ok at PowerPoints but not great. I’ve moved up because of ideas, expertise, experience.
          -Have they tried to make a case for a raise or promotion? Bosses should recognize good work but staff should also advocate for themselves.
          -finally, even if they are really good and deserve a raise their behaviour and rage seems a bit… Extreme? There’s a certain amount of professionalism I’d expect, and while this boss sounds clueless there’s nothing in the letter that makes me think their unprofessional behaviour is warranted. I couldn’t promote someone like that, especially if the new role had someone reporting to them.

    4. Meg*

      It wasn’t super clear to me if the issue was the formatting or the content. Because I’ve worked with people who can’t format a document to save their lives, and at times part of my job has been to make the content look presentable. And in my current organization the communications staff prefer that people don’t try to format everything first, because it makes it harder to spot inconsistencies with our style guide.

      If I were getting documents with a million fonts I would probably roll my eyes and then reformat it. But if the *content* is equally all over the place, that’s a different story.

      1. Yorick*

        I think a lot of people really confuse this. It seems to us like we’re doing the whole project when we have to redo the terrible formatting, but we don’t think about how much work went into coming up with what would be in that terrible format.

    5. MissDisplaced*

      It did sort of feel there was something left out.
      I don’t know what the OPs role actually was in this case, which might give it some context.

      Or maybe it was just a situation where OP felt constantly undercut. I admit that I have a current situation with one manager who just seems to love ‘throwing wrenches’ into planning and work at the last minute and on a whim. Like big derailing wrenches that create havoc wherever she goes, even though she was thoroughly briefed for weeks but kept quiet. It creates a lot of anger from people.

    6. Sir Non Passus Aggrevoso*

      On the flip side, I’ve dealt with bosses that only rope you in to these questions because it will give them plausible deniability if things go wrong. So in the end, you’re doing your job and your bosses job. Your boss then gets upset when you can’t help them with that stuff.

    7. ATraveller*

      The thing is, it doesn’t sound like the LW was getting any kind of recognition for redoing the proposals.

      Whether it was a total redo incl. content or just re-formatting is unclear. But either way, people want to hear ‘nice work.’ They want their name to appear in context with the work. However, there are Bosses out there who’ll just present the whole thing as their own creation, without mentioning that they got help. Sometimes you even get to sit in on meetings where Boss is giving the presentation and saying things that you know to be wrong, but you can’t speak up because that’d be undercutting your Boss in front of the clients, and you never get called on to explain. This breeds resentment, and yes, rage.

      In the meantime, your CV has stagnated. Your primary accomplishment – helping the Boss look better – can’t be written down, because it’s not been officially acknowledged anywhere. Sure, you’re probably getting decent performance reviews, and the obligatory just-under-the-inflation pay raise each year, but beyond that, your carrier has died. 90% of your work is invisible, and now your attitude is getting noticed as well. Good luck getting a new job.

      Sure, your job is always helping your Boss, your Bosses Boss, your CEO, your Firm to look better, do better, to deliver better results. But it needs to be reciprocated: Your Boss needs to back you up and help you advance, by making sure you get credit where credit is due. If their just enjoying a free ride, then people get upset. And rightly so – they’d get upset too, if the shoe was on the other foot.

  3. Mae*

    I would to know what happened to the LW1 in today’s article- the one who got so mad they got fired. I wonder if the CEO and COO realized about bad that manager was after the LW left.

      1. Working Mom*

        Yes! This reminds me of an old King of Queens episode where Carrie got another secretary to do reports for her – that she had NO clue how to do. The other secretary was awesome at them… and she took all the credit. Then when other secretary left Carrie was obviously in big trouble. Neatly wrapped up in 22 min though :)

  4. Poppy Socks*

    I had nannies as a kid. My oldest daughter is named after the nanny who cared for me from kindergarten through fifth grade. I can’t speak for the kids this nanny has cared for, but my nannies have had an enormous impact on my life.
    But I’m now a stay at home mom with four little kids in large part because I don’t want my kids to miss me the way I missed my parents.

    1. NotAPirate*

      I only nannied for a summer, but it was eye opening. The parents always wondered why the kids behaved better for me than for them. I had clear boundaries, and clear time out rules. Parents were more wishy washy. They didn’t want to spoil the time they had together with time outs and tantrums but ignoring misbehavior leads to more misbehavior overall. I was also shocked the number of people who thought they were mine, I was 18, kids were like 3 and 6. Now that I’m older I understand that judging ages is harder but back then oh man. So many people thought I was the parent and were judgemental about it.

      1. Anonymosity*

        I already decided if I ever needed (and could afford) a nanny and I found a good one, I would do everything I could to hang onto them. I would make the gig so great they’d never want to leave.

        1. ampersand*

          Agreed. This is why I do everything I can to make sure our daughter’s nanny is happy working for us (competitive pay, paid time off, bonuses, raises, letting her take the lead with choosing activities for/taking care of my kid, telling her how much we appreciate her, etc.). She’s wonderful, we love her, and I would never in a million years want her to leave because of something we were (or weren’t) doing. I’ve read nanny horror stories and it’s so clear that nannying can be a virtually thankless job. I try to make it not suck.

          1. Working Mom*

            Having a nanny would be awesome. If I could afford to really pay one well and be good to him/her, I would totally want one! I also can say that if I were a nanny – I would be way more consistent than I am as a parent, so I can see that one pretty easily. God bless the nannies out there who take incredible care of our babies for us!

      2. Gumby*

        I was a nanny in college and it was a great job for me. The family was able to be super flexible and work around my class schedule and for all that they were extremely well to do, they were also down to earth. Many times when I was on duty it was so the parents could have one-on-one time with one kid while I watched the other two. I didn’t particularly screen for a great family (it was a craigslist job posting IIRC), but I did luck out there!

        But on the judging ages thing – apparently when I was around 10, someone implied to my mother in the grocery store that my 1-year-old sister was my daughter (well, they implied that said sister was my mom’s granddaughter and since I was the one holding said sister and the only other person there, I assume they had slotted me into the role of mother). Oddly, they weren’t even judgmental about it! I don’t *think* that I looked particularly adult as a 10-year-old.

        1. alienor*

          I used to get mistaken for my brother’s mother all.the.time when he was kindergarten age and I was a freshman in high school. At least I was a teenager who could theoretically have been older–although in photos from that era I look like I’m 10 instead of 14–but I always wondered how people thought I’d birthed this child when I was eight or nine years old!

    2. FrenchCusser*

      I was a nanny for 10 years for two different families. I always said it was an intimate relationship, and you couldn’t just quit, you had to break up.

      The first break up was traumatic, and the parents allowed no contact with the kid afterwards. I still have contact with the ‘kid’ from the second family (she’s 26 years old now).

  5. Blueberry*

    “It feels trite to say that sometimes getting fired can be a blessing … but sometimes it can get you out of a bad situation that for whatever reason you hadn’t left on your own.”

    This is so very true. At my last position before this one (the hospital medical secretary position) I was miserable on so many different levels, not least that the nurses and techs of one political persuasion banded together to loudly discuss politics and to tease/bully those who were not of that political persuasion. (As can be seen in my comments, sometimes I have a difficult time not expressing my opinion, so they knew I disagreed with them.) Still, I was too afraid of joblessness to quit and too drained from work to jobhunt. Eventually I was fired for violating HIPAA (which I deserved — medical privacy is very important, I said more than I should have, and I should have thought twice about my training) but my boss was awesome and kind and arranged for me to get unemployment, and she let me hug my friends goodbye and leave with dignity. A few months later [terrible political scandal] erupted and I can just imagine how if I were still there I might have finally gotten into a shouting match with someone and been dragged out by security instead.

    1. 653-CXK*

      This sounds almost exactly like what I went through when I was let go from ExJob back in May 2018 – I too was afraid to quit (and looking back, I should have), I knew termination was coming, but it was certainly a blessing in disguise.

    2. corporate engineering layoff woo*

      See my username. I’m rather grateful to be looking for a better team than the one I’ve had to put up with. Not a bad team, but a dysfunctional and potentially doomed business. Not my problem anymore!

  6. Quill*

    The “no bereavement leave” boss reminds me of my mom’s ex-boss, who similarly told her she couldn’t take multiple days of bereavement leave in the same calendar week because there was an inservice on one of the days. And who also took 2 weeks of vacation, not all of which was actually recorded, to go on a cruise during the same semester.

    Both of them need to get in the sea.

    Also, Friday’s terrible micromanaging boss is almost exactly my boss from pig lab from hell, except he kept buying us fancy food because the actual work being done in our lab was also pretty awful.

    1. Mx*

      I am so sad and angry on behalf of LW who had a bereavement. Some people are just not human !
      My jaw is dropping !

      1. AndersonDarling*

        There are some people that will push back on everything that is brought before them, it doesn’t matter what it is, it’s a power thing. These people have no filter.
        You need 5 days vacation? Nope, I think you should only take 3.
        You’ll have the report done by tomorrow at 10? Nope, I want it on my desk when I walk in the door tomorrow.
        You better stay late until it is done. (even though it won’t get looked at until next week)

        1. Jessen*

          I feel like if you have to deal with them, some version of the hairy arm principle might work best. You need 3 days? Ask for 5. You can get it by tomorrow at 10? Sorry, won’t actually be able to get it until close of business tomorrow.

    2. Fellow Bereavee*

      A relative passed away the day I returned to work after a medical leave. I was part-time at that point and still on short-term disability. I asked about taking bereavement the next day – HR said I had to clear it with my case worker, who always took forever to get back to me. At that point I hadn’t been paid for the last 6 weeks (and wouldn’t know for another month) so I couldn’t afford any more unpaid time off – I took half a day off for the memorial and somehow managed to bottle my feelings…

      3 weeks later I got a response that my gradual return to work didn’t affect my non-sick leave benefits and told my manager right away. She asked if I intended to take all the time I was allowed (my mother needed help getting some estate matters in order which could wait), and then told me I needed to coordinate with others and that I should take it soon since it had been almost a month. It wouldn’t have taken so long if I’d been given the correct answer when I asked!

      Fortunately I was already job hunting at that point and I left a month later.

    3. Gumby*

      In other news of bosses who fail as human beings: I know someone who was doing a summer job (roughly equivalent to programming director for a summer camp) whose grandparent died. The boss tried to talk the staffer out of going to the funeral because “you made a commitment” and “what if someone needs a toaster.”

      They went anyway, but kept the trip extremely short – just enough time to travel and attend the funeral but no extra time to mourn with family and share memories, etc. They actually really like the boss, which is inexplicable to me, but I didn’t spend the whole summer working with her so maybe she has other redeeming qualities that make up for the infuriating lack of compassion.

    4. CaliUKExpat*

      Wonder if they’re related to my husband’s ex-boss. She was literally hounding him the day after his mum died (and the two subsequent days after that) wanting to know when he was coming back because ‘the business has needs, you know’. He told her that the business was HER responsibility and that he would be taking two weeks off even if he had to have them unpaid. The company HATED unpaid leave. He got his bereavement allowance and the rest came from his annual leave, and she was pissed about it. Needless to say, he started job hunting in earnest after that, and it was a key bullet point in the bullying & harassment complaint he raised against her a couple months later. Things did not get better. Another bullet point? Also bereavement related – he was night shift, his half-brothers’ dad died, and she manipulated the time off he was ‘allowed’ so that he wasn’t able to go.

      He was the fifth bullying complaint against her that year. All the talented people on the team left in droves. His supervisor – the one who kept trying to block her awfulness when MIL died – left, and they kept offering her more. Even with the offer of a 15k raise, her counteroffer was ‘are you going to fire F?’ And God only knows how, that woman keeps getting promoted. God knows how much business growth she’s cost them with her antics.

    5. nonegiven*

      My niece was driving in on Sunday to help with funeral arrangements for my dad. Her boss told her to get on a plane for [town] 5 states away, she could fly back on Wednesday, and go to the funeral. (She was one of the most junior on the project.) She told him she’d rather update her resume, hung up, and called HR.

  7. WellRed*

    Bereavement boss is indeed an ass, but I think some pushback would have worked. Also, I wonder if it would have helped to be more forthwright (“I need to take three days off,” not “might” or “probably”)

  8. Didi*

    Interesting series, but I have to say that a “bad boss” doesn’t have to exhibit such obviously awful behavior.

    In my 30 years of working life, I have had bosses who were mean, stupid, cheap, cowardly, vindictive and untrustworthy. I figured out how to live with them all, mostly by just doing my best and adapting to each boss as he/she comes along. (If your boss is cheap, don’t ask for anything that costs money, for example.)

    But the one type of boss I have never been able to deal with is the boss who just doesn’t understand what I do. My husband’s had the same experience.

    Think of what it would be like to be a salesperson whose manager has never made a sale. A teacher whose school administrator has never taught in a classroom full of kids. A nurse whose manager has never worked 1:1 with a patient. This is the worst scenario because there is absolutely no getting through to this type of boss. Your fundamental existence in your job will never make sense to the boss. And this type of boss will forever make decisions that make you angry, inhibit your effectiveness, waste your time, embarrass you, and frustrate you.

    There are more of these types of bosses than you might imagine – people who get into “management tracks” without doing the field work first, so to speak.

    Conversely, the best bosses I have ever had were those who exactly understood my job because they’d done it themselves (or something very similar). They’re insightful, empathetic, strategic in their thinking, and well-positioned to help you grow in your career.

    1. Kimmybear*

      Yup. My last three bosses have all been Project Managers who didn’t understand my niche role. The first one was great because she trusted me to take what she needed and deliver something to fill that need. The other two could not understand what I did and so I would waste lots of time trying to explain why someone’s suggestion wouldn’t work or why their assumption was inaccurate.

      1. machinations and palindromes*

        Or they don’t value you because they don’t understand what you do. And don’t pay attention when you try to tell them.

        It’s great.

    2. Zephy*

      But the one type of boss I have never been able to deal with is the boss who just doesn’t understand what I do.

      +1000000! Or that boss’s even-eviler twin, “I don’t know OR care what you do.” How can you possibly manage a team of people when you don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing, how they’re supposed to be doing it, why they do it that way?

    3. Roy G. Biv*

      Didi – It’s Friday afternoon at then end of a loooooong week, and your post is speaking to me! And this list: mean, stupid, cheap, cowardly, vindictive and untrustworthy – it reads like a cartoon villain’s character sheet, but you’re so right on the money — these are the traits of bad boss behavior, and can be combined for extra awfulness.

    4. IthinkImTinabutmyfamilyswearsImLouise*

      Oh my, yes! As someone who just left a teaching role, there are few bosses more frustrating than the administrator who has never actually taught a class. He or she is only topped (in my opinion) by the administrator who HAS taught before and now thinks they are an expert on how you should run a high school classroom based on their 3 years of teaching elementary school. In the 80s.

    5. EH*

      I’ve mostly worked for people who don’t understand my job (tech writing). It works okay when they trust me. If for whatever reason they don’t? Nightmare. That’s only happened once, but it was so awful I still sometimes catch myself in avoidance habits I picked up there. Toxic workplaces breed toxic habits if you stay too long.

    1. Phoenix Programmer*

      My sucky manager “SM” for short was a lot like the bully boss. Except when SM called in staff before all staff meetings for complaints she would apparently turn on them if they didn’t have any.

      I only found out about this after a coworker called me crying because she felt guilty about making up complaints about me.

  10. Mae West*

    I just reread the letters from the bully who didn’t get hired because the person she bullied was a Rock Star at the company. She also found out her bf had been cheating and then was she was fired from her temp job! Oof.
    I’d really like to know how her life is going two years on.

  11. nutella fitzgerald*

    This probably won’t be popular, but I don’t really think the nanny letter fits with the bad boss theme. I think that at first glance, yes it seems cruel for the dad to delegate delivering bad news, but if he works long hours it’s entirely possible he wasn’t hearing as much about the recital as the nanny was. When I was a nanny I sometimes put the kids to bed before a parent came home (admittedly, they were younger than 12).

    The challenges of the job are definitely not exaggerated by the LW, especially the fact that they can fire you at any time but if you quit the guilt level is much higher than in a normal job, but I don’t think that’s indicative of a bad boss.

      1. spock*

        None of them were really questions, I don’t think they were intended to be. Just describing bad bosses

  12. Sonia*

    Bereavement leave is an interesting one. What was the relationship? Most organisations limit this leave to direct family or people you live with. Distant cousins, aunts etc are not always included in this. Depending on the relationship I can understand their response.

  13. TheFacelessOldWomanWhoSecretlyLivesinYour House*

    I am very curious about close family member who passed. Most places I’ve worked at do three days for immediate family including in laws like father/mother in law, one day for aunt/uncle, and that’s it. If this was, say, a close nephew, you’d get one day.

    1. NewHerePleaseBeNice*

      Which is the most infuriating thing. If my father passed away tomorrow, I’d take a day off for the funeral, perhaps. We’ve been estranged for 15 years, and yet my company would offer me at least 5 days of bereavement automatically. If my niece, to whom I’m very close, passed, the company would offer me nothing and I’d have to take holiday from my allowance. ‘Closeness’ is not always linked to blood lines.

  14. Meepmeep*

    In what way was the nannying letter describing a “bad boss”? The dad may have been a bad parent, but there’s no indication that the nanny was treated badly or paid badly.

    And the flip side of the power dynamics in the nanny-parent relationship is that the nanny can upend everyone’s lives by being flaky, quitting on a moment’s notice, or disappearing. We hired nannies when my kid was small to enable me to work. I frequently lost entire workdays because the nanny “couldn’t make it that day”, or was late to work because the nanny “had trouble getting there”. Explaining all that to my clients was oh so much fun, and living in a situation where I never knew if I was going to be able to work that day was a constant source of stress. The moment my kid went to preschool and I realized that I was no longer dependent on the whims of a nanny, I was ready to kiss the preschool director for relieving such a major source of stress in my life.

  15. Anastasia Beaverhausen*

    Monday boss is just like Brent Norwalk in The Good Place. It’s sad… but I laughed.

Comments are closed.