My old boss once asked what I'd done over the weekend and when I said I'd been refinishing a headboard, he asked if I was going to handcuff my husband to it. Then he told me a variety of handcuffing stories that I didn't want to hear.
He also liked to crouch outside my open office door and then leap in, shrieking, but that was more nonverbal.

"Before you go home tonight, you're going to have to find a way to wrap this 66-pound anchor in such a manner that I will be able to carry it on an international flight without being stopped by TSA officials AND without me having to pay extra because it is motherfucking heavy and also because IT IS A BIG GODDAMNED ANCHOR"

...or something like that. I am not ashamed to say that the anchor broke my spirit and I cried.

Also, his sandwich orders are ridiculous: meatball sandwich with two teaspoons of parmesan cheese, a long slice of pepper jack (not triangular), two jalapeno peppers (one on each half of the sandwich, like a little red-hot surprise in the middle of your cracker jax) and a "handful" of olives. Working for family is hell.

"So tell me about your erogenous zones. On you, I'm thinking the back of the neck and the nape of the knees."

Yeah.

He was fired shortly thereafter, remarkably for something completely unrelated to the above.

my boss and i are friends and have a no-holds-barred policy on banter, and i would certainly violate both rules 1 and 2 if i mentioned some of the things we say to eachother... but this grown man attorney continues to shock me from time-to-time in his displays of helplessness -- one time he asked me for a ride home because his car was in the shop; i drive him home and as he gets out of my car says "you have my spare set of keys, right?" fucktard. we had to drive all the way back to the office to get them.

"Let's hope the new agent has larger breasts." Special agent, that is, working for the federal government. This was six months after the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas thing. I complained, sworn statements followed, buttface got demoted and relocated, and I quit and moved to Alaska. The best thing that ever happened to me.

I used to wait tables in an upscale restaurant inside of a very annoying upscale department store. It was Halloween, and attempting to be festive at my super snooty and uptight job, I drew a pumpkin on my cheek with face paint. My boss walked in the restaurant during the lunch rush, and just as I was about to take another order for Cobb salad bleu cheese on the side, my boss had a breakdown and just kept pointing at me and spastically repeating "GET IT OFF!!! GET IT OFF YOUR FACE!! GO TO THE WASHROOM!! GET IT OFF!! {insert choking noise} GET IT OFF YOUR FACE NOW YOUNG LADY" And so I went to the bathroom and used the pink public bathroom soap and my face was tight with degradation for the rest of the shift. When I came out of the restroom, someone had summoned the paramedics, as Mister GETITOFF had hyperventilated. He had real pumpkin issues, apparently.

I'm an office assistant on a college campus.

"Kelly, great job cutting up those flyers. We've got about 800 of them now, right? That's not too many..."

"Yeah, I guess 800 isn't... too... many?"

"That's what I thought. There's 3 mistakes on each of them. Here's a sharpie."

"Go ahead and laugh, retards always do!"

"I'll pay you overtime."

Hmm. A former boss -- female and childless -- said, "Well, you're past your first trimester, so you shouldn't be tired anymore." Heh. If I hadn't been so freakin' tired, I woulda educated her on the fact that women experience pregnancy differently...and kicked her teeny, hemorrhoid-less ass.

"Um, we'd really like you to not use IM on your lunch break," as the classic AIM chimes and a white box popped up on her computer screen.

she: did you use up all the jello?
me: yes.
she: good. never make jello again.

Both of these from the same editor: (I'm a reporter)

1. I was writing a story about a high school kid who, while robbing a gun store, killed the gun store owner with one of the firearms he was trying to steal. Crazy editor was on my ass all night to find schoolmates of this kid and "find out what he's all about." After entirely too much time reporting, I was able to find out the kid was in the high school band. Rather than being pleased with this bit of journalistic gold, Crazy Editor snapped, "Oh yea?! What instrument did he play!?"
"SHOTGUN," I snapped back.

2. On the night of the great northeast black out last year, we did NOT lose power here. Crazy Editor's breathless assignment to me was "Can it happen here?!?"
My response: "You mean could the power ever go out? I'm thinking yes."

Ha ha, these comments give me great material to use on my employees!

While on an internship at a kindergarten, my "boss" called us all together for a small meeting to talk about the current situation of a 3-year-old child and his parents. While talking, she suddenly went all "You! *pointing at me* What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be fingering yourself on the staff toilet or call your sugar daddy for some new vibrators?"

To this day I tried to supress what she said to me, but I honestly broke out in laughters. She never really talked to me again, and I was quite happy when my internship was over.

I've had bosses say SO many things to me. However, one from my nanny job in Berkeley takes the cake. I had walked in and shown her (remember, this is Berkeley) that I had just gotten my belly button pierced. She looks up, and says, loudly:

"Yeah, JUST WAIT TILL YOU GET YOUR CLIT PIERCED!"

i'll admit this wasn't said directly to me, but: i worked at a newspaper and there was a fire in the building. my boss came through the newsroom telling people to head outside. he said, "there's a fire, everyone needs to get out." then to those working on putting the pages together, "if you're on deadline, let your conscience be your guide." the same boss also once pulled his pants down in front of a circle of female employees to show us his little heart tattoo.

"You really need to make sure not to get your body cremated when you die, because you'll need it for the resurrection."
That's the best one I can think of atm. It's so totally awesome being the only non-Mormon in the office.

"You're not a very good value proposition." (this after completely changing my job role 180 degrees and expecting me to make the switch in 3 months)

I thankfully don't have anything so horrible that it really stands out, but a close close friend of mine once worked for well known fast food chain way back when she was in highschool. This friend had been burned in a fire as a baby and had scars on her face and hands.

When she realized everyone [but her] had been asked to work the cash registers she asked the manager what was going on. He replied, "Well i'm sorry, but if I put you out front where customers can see you they'll lose their appetite and never come back."

Yes there was a lawsuit. And yes, the big bad world dominating corporate fast food chain lost.

I over-hear my boss's wife say into the telephone, "Yes, is this Rick Perry's office? Well, I would just like to say that I am for prayer-in-school." When she hung up I asked her what she thought about all the non-religious, Jewish, Muslim, etc. kids in school that may not agree with the common school prayer they would be subjected to. She said, "Well, I don't care about all that. All I know is I'm a pro-Christian Texan."

This is the same place where I hand-washed everybody's coffee cups and was forced to wear heels with my jeans on Fridays.

(after working for 30 hours straight, a week after giving two week's notice.)

Boss: Where are you going?

Me: Home, to sleep.

Boss: You can't leave! Company meeting is in an hour, and it's against company policy to miss it!

I don't think I even laughed at him as I walked away.

I asked a supervisor a question and his answer was not clear. When I told him I didn't understand he replied "You do not have to understand you just have to obey my directives."

My best friend Kameron and I decided to take a job as waitresses at a high-class country club a couple summers ago.
One Friday, the club's manager asked me what I was doing the next weekend.
"Probably just hanging out with Kameron," I answered.
I am not exaggerating or paraphrasing his reply at all.
"What I wouldn't give for a night alone with her...Here's a little advice: get her in the jacuzzi with a bottle of champagne and strawberries, and she'll be putty in your hands."

We are both heterosexual, and were in fact dating other male members of the wait staff.

He was fired shortly after for sexual harassment, again, surprisingly unrelated to this incident.
He now works as a bus boy at a spagetti restaurant.

Once my manager walked up behind me at the hostess stand, just stared at me a sec and said "I'm a very well respected man in Peru"
We also used headphones and one night all the managers had them on and started asking what everyone's favorite 80's movie/teen horror flick/ etc was. This was after we'd been told by the trainer not to play around on the headsets.

"Me: "Thank you for calling, goodbye" (replaces phone receiver)
Boss: I need to speak to you. About your accent. On the phone. You need to modify it."

First job, on the phone to customers.
Place: Edinburgh.
Boss: Edinburgh native. Posh Edinburgh accent.
Me: Scottish Highlands native. "Normal" regional accent.
His problem: didn't like regional accents, even though I neved used dialectal words on the phone and was perfectly intelligible.
My problem: He was a complete and utter dickhead!
His problem: He didn't realise that surveys have been done in the UK and it's PROVEN that people like hearing Scottish accents on the phone!

"my newborn son would love you because you have big boobs"

not so much said, as did. i was working your typical teenager job: little caesars pizza! pizza! there i was, putting the little pepperoni's on the pizza for the customer. my boss liked working the "pizza dress" station (where i was working) and wanted to do that instead of whatever other pizza related job he was currently doing. how did i know he wanted my job, pizza dress station? because he physically picked me up and placed me in the pizza packaging section and proceeded to dress pizzas with pepperoni and the like. aahh. good times.

"if you're going to do any drugs, please do them outside."

(and)

"don't play nickelback ever again; you'll be fired. that's called breaking format." and when i protested that it was on the playlist...he screamed, "there are such a thing as paper spins!!"

"you can do that over the weekend, right?"

hey, lady, my weekend is MINE.

---------------------

and when this guy was standing in for our principal (he was doing his internship) he tried to tell me HOW to discpline students. these kids were alternative school kids who had been kicked out of the regular high school program, were on probation, on their second or third kid, or who never came to school because they were too busy getting high and arrested. he wanted me to put their name on the board and put a check next to it each time they did something wrong. yeah, okay, THAT would work.

Him: "We need these Flash galleries up in two days."
Me: "We don't have the Macromedia Flash software."
Him: "Can't you hand-code it?"

Recently: Sitting down for a perfomance appraisel/plea-for-a-raise with my boss, which I had to iniate. I detailed all the extra duties I had picked up in the last year, that the former manager never did. Boss to me, "well, that's not outside of the expectations of your job."

Noooooo....apparently they were just outside of the expectations of the former, better-paid manager.

Much less recently: When waiting tables at a high-end restaurant, I was standing, back to restaurant, in the wait station talking to the other waiters. A manager walks up behind me, and apparently really needing to talk to the waiters, decides to quiet me by putting an arm around my shoulders, to keep me from moving and a hand over my mouth. I get chills just thinking about it.

This falls into the witty comebacks category:

Jessica, wearing a monogrammed sweater, a la Laverne and Shirley style, is sitting at her desk.

Boss: "Does that J stand for Jew?"

Jess, not missing a beat: "No sir. You know I'm Catholic. The J is for Jesus."

A few weeks before my second sonw as born..my boss comes strolling by my desk telling me how excited he and his family was to be able to be in the birthing room when our son was born. Yes it was a total joke made up between him and my husband but hey carried it on for weeks. I cried and actually called my best friend telling her I was going to have to quit my job and divorce mu husband. The finally admitted it after weeks of talking about it. I still have to get Both of the back for thatone.

"Go find busy people and interview them."

or, my least personal favorite:

"You're pregnant? I figured that. You're still getting written up anyway."

"Fuck you, asshole!"

Nice way to motivate your employees, eh?

I was asked to go to an island to help open a new store. When my boss wanted me in at 3AM for opening day and the ferry didn't start running until 7AM they chose to put me in the company rented house on the island.
Boss: Just take a taxi to the house.
Me: what's the address?
Boss: I don't know
Me: Can you give me directions on how to get there?
Boss: Not to sure where it is. Why don't you flag down a police car and ask them where the (company name) House is? They get called out there all the time.

Needless to say he was staying back on the mainland in a hotel room. The bastard.

I for one am terrified of losing my job because of my blog.

Therefore, I almost never post about my work day, which is a shame because I would have a lot to post.

I have been reading your site since you were pregnant with leta, and i laughed my ass off on every pregnant post.

I just wanted to tell you something you already know, you have a beautiful daughter

and no i'm not kissing ass

I, at the tender age of 20, was fired because of my blog (I'll be 21 next month). Most of the things that boss said to me were insane, but what takes the cake is this one...
The restaurant where I was waitressing got new soda glasses that were bigger than the old ones. In a staff meeting, I remarked that they were "Beasty."
To this, my boss replied, "Beasty. I like that. It's what my wife calls me in bed."

"Oh, I didnt see you standing there until you turned sideways. You should stand sideways more often. You just look better that way."

What a pig!

While taking distress calls from senior citizens during an ice storm that lasted a week and knocked out power;

"So when the attention seekers start calling..."

in response to my calling in absent from work due to an impromptu hailstorm that closed down all major roadways:

"next time, remember your employee handbook: we need at least a day's notice if you won't be here." notice from whom, NATURE?
----
in response to my complaint that a co-worker was treating me like her personal secretary:

"she scares me, too. but i can't fire her because she's been here longer than i have."

I had just brought in the daily balance sheet and was placing it on the Boss's desk when I hit a pen and it fell to the floor. I bent over to pick it up, and placed in on the desk. He knocked the pen over again and said, "Would you bend over and pick it up again, I could almost see a nipple" He was old enough to be my father/grandfather---ewwww.

Many years ago, in a previous life as a bank teller, I dreaded/anticipated Friday evenings. My alcholic branch manager would return to the bank after three hours of snorkling at the local watering hole, extract a bullwhip from from his lower right hand desk drawer, and make it snap while demanding "Deposit those paychecks!" to the poor, terrified, underpaid workers waiting in line to cash their weekly paychecks. Unbelievably, He rose in the ranks. He stopped rising when he died.

Without going into too much detail, certain co-workers of mine are apt to dispense what we refer to as "Redneck Wisdom". Among these nuggets are that the French are involved in a conspiracy to promote mad cow disease in the US.

I would love to answer this question because I have some doozies, but I am going to take advantage of this opportunity to say: I HAVE SEEN ONE PICTURE OF LETA! ONE! What is wrong with the world? I know that you know and there is nothing that you can do, but these pictureless pictures are taunting me.

"We see the web as the first step toward interactive television. That's why we call our sections channels."

"Are you 'tech support' now?"

This was said to me because instead of bothering the techs with a 3-1/2 second call, I told the customer to turn off the PC, plug in the mouse, and turn it back on.

It worked...SURPRISE

I got a call two days later from the agency telling me that my temp assignment was concluded.

Setting: Company meeting.

Boss One to Boss Two: "You've been to the brothels in Costa Rica, right, Boss Two?"

Boss Two to The Group: "Yeah, and I don't think prostitution in Costa Rica is a problem. I think some women just choose to make their living that way. They like it"

Well I'm still in high school, and I haven't ever had a real job, but this happened one time when I was babysitting:

There was kind of a party at their house, so everyone was drunk already but they were moving to the bar which is why I was going to babysit. The dad says to the mom, very loudly (not to me, but I was in the room) "I'm so small, when we're having sex I'm sucking my own dink!" Everybody was laughing REALLY hard, but I was just sitting there in my shameful silence, so the dad walks by me and says "oh. Sorry!" And then the mom laughingly called him a jerk, and then they left, and then I couldn't look at him when they came home.

though I am a wedding coordinator, my current top boss is a charming dictator of a two-year-old who informed me from the backseat yesterday that...
H: Mama, Dr. Rush won't take baby Max out of your tummy.
me: Actually, he will, but not for awhile
H ponders this for awhile and then he says: Okay, but Baby Max won't come live at our house. See that nice house over there, Mama? He can live there, FAR AWAY.

Yikes.

This was followed by an announcement that when he was big he would be going to school, but not in a school bus. I said, "Oh no?" and he informed me he would be going by limo.

Working weddings, I get my ass smacked by site coordinators and hit on by drunk uncles/groomsmen to often to mention.

(This was last year around this time.)
The intelligence we received from the CIA is inherently faulty, but it is as good as it going to get. I'm about to go on the air during prime time and make the case for invasion. I know you and Rummy don't get along, but I'm going to ask you to tow the party line on this one.

just wanted to say i love your site and your humor:)

My boss once left me a note on the computer saying she owed me some money and wouldn't be in until later but "much love and lezzy kisses".

Whooo! Score! Sidenote: She's now one of my best friends. Go figure.

well, this seems dull, but i was working for minimum wage, the only "help" in the veterinarian's office on sundays...and he told me i had to punch out for lunch. okay, i was a kid, what did i know? so i am off the clock, nibbling lunch with one hand, filing patient records with the other, and the phone rings at the desk where he is parked, reading the newspaper....he glares at me across the room and says "AREN'T YOU GOING TO ANSWER THAT!?"

Upon being hired as sports bar "cocktail waitresses" (our actual job title) for the summer, my friends and I were told that if the manager EVER felt that any of us weren't wearing enough makeup, or if our hair looked ugly, he reserved the right to send us home so we could "fix [ourselves] up." Being 18, we took the job. One day, I was actually sent home at the start of my shift to CHANGE MY SPORTS BRA because it was GRAY and the tank top I was wearing over it was WHITE. I'm ashamed to say that I obliged.
I deserved everything I got for agreeing to work for such a revolting establishment, including all the money I made by robbing them blind.

My boss is the owner of the company, and makes no effort to hide his personal affluence. Last year he remodeled his 11,000 sq ft home, bought luxury car NUMBER THREE, had his property landscaped and bought another purebred dog. And, oh yeah, handed me a $500 bonus while mumbling "It wasn't the best year for us, financially."

We'd always had hints that our boss would drink while on the job, bottles, beer breath, drunken stumbling, etc., but being a small company, with mostly friends employed, no one cared. One morning when my boss was opening by himself until i got there at ten, i walked in to find him laying on the floor in the big walk-in cooler, a line of beer bottles longer than him, and three jugs of vodka, empty, surrounding him. When he realized i was there; he started screaming "WHO ARE YOU?! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE! GET OUT! NOW! BEFORE I SHOOT YOU! WHO ARE YOU?!!" then he got up and chased me to the front door, which was locked, waving the huge pizza cutting rocker knife. i unlocked the door, setting off the alarm, and ran terror-stricken down Tiny Little Midwest Town, Iowa, to the police station three blocks away.
Being 17, i was of course scared pee-less. that went down as the Scariest Moment Ever, until 2nd year of college.

Another one..but this is from my husband. Our dog had been stung by something and his head was all swollen. Well, my husband explained to his boss (note: he has only been on this job for three weeks now) that he has to leave early to take the dog to the vet. The boss says, and I quote, 'I know what can help your dog, a .45 between the eyes.' It makes me sick to even think about it.

I worked for a company run out of a guy's house that was ostensibly a non-cult, but the job was essentially taking orders for New Agey books about energies controlling your life forces, and sending out a fourteen-week course and booking seminars. Okay. Well. One week's course mentioned crystals in passing, which we do not sell, and one day a client called up in a panic, yelling to me that he needed the crystals to finish the lesson for that week! I told him to calm down, and then I said that while we don't sell them, there's probably a store in his local mall that does. He sounded relieved and hung up quickly--I guess to get to the mall.

When I related this to my boss, he grinned, shook his head, and said, "Takes all kinds."

"I watched last night's security tape and saw you changing clothes in the back room."

Totally false, as I would never be stupid enough to change my clothes in a room with a video camera in it.

What the hell?! They're taking away supersized fries?!?!?!? NO!

I think you should find the ratter's email and sign them up for massive amounts of porn. Yes.

Although it was never said to me, I was thrilled to discover that my former employer told the many designers who followed me into that ring of hell, that I was a lesbian with a cocaine problem. I was ok with the lesbian bit, even though I'm straight, I'm a bit butch. But she didn't pay me enough to afford a coke habit! That was just too insulting.

During my first week of teaching, the laminating film jammed while I was using the machine. I went to my principal to get help(he wouldn't allow anyone else to fix it), and he yelled at me "I would give just about anything to work in a school full of men. You women are so stupid." He is no longer my boss...it seems like he pissed many other people off, too.
(on a side note, I love reading your posts...I'm a west TN girl, too. Leta is a doll!)

"Now if the dolphin starts flipping his ding-dong at the guests, remind them that, though this is a family park, it is still the real deal. Simply ask them not to take pictures. We don't want people coming here for the dolphin wee-wee."

"One of our clients [with whom I had no direct contact] might figure out your name and look you up on Google and poke around your site and stumble on your personal essays and be offended, so you have to take down your entire web site right now. No, not just the essays, the entire web site."

I refused and was fired a few days later. The manager who made that stunningly twisted leap of logic was forced out a year later for unrelated reasons, and the company has since gone bankrupt. Fuckers.

i used to work for a guy whose main company was a hazardous waste management business. the paychecks often bounced, and he did things rather illegally. he was on the phone one day to one of his hazwaste employees and said "the fire dept is there? quick, hide in a closet". my job was to build websites for the other companies he wanted to start. one of which was like amazon.com, but all hardcoded in html with no database. when i pointed out that his prices were a lot higher than amazon's and that no one would buy from him he said the competition wouldn't hurt and not to worry about it. he also kept trying to get me to go over to his house to use his scanner for the product page images. and one day i got back from lunch to find him using my own personal laptop that he made me bring from home to use for the job.

On the day I got laid off, this past february 18th, my boss took me into a room and told me I was being laid off and it had nothing to do with my abilites as a worker, he said I was a great worker, and that by law he couldn't tell me the real reason.

A woman who was nominally my supervisor did a Google search for my name, found my site and proceeded to use what she found to harass me into unemployment and relocation over a period of several months.

Compared to that, the spreadsheet requests I currently get are a piece of cake. Although my favorite one is still the "You changed the background color to black on this chart!" when all I'd done was neglect to un-highlight the cell range when I saved it.

My direct supervisor to a co-worker, who happens to be originally from Mexico. --
Juan: "This hospital we're working with really isn't cooperating."
Boss: "What's wrong Juan? Do you need a taco?"
Yeesh.

"Can you drive by this address at lunch? My husband and his girlfriend would never recognize your car. I just want to see if he's there." Duh and if he is?

Man, this is all making me feel not so bad about my old boss, who used to jump up and down on the floor screaming in near-falsetto "WE NEVER DO THINGS MY WAY! WE NEVER DO THINGS MY WAY!"
There was also the complete lack of respect for personal space and the spitting on me and the weird passive-aggressive refusal to tell me what he actually wanted me to do, and his brother who kept trying to look up my skirt, and so on, but...

Well, what did I know? It was my first job out of college and I thought that was pretty bad. Obviously I have a lot to learn.... once my unemployment checks run out. I just never realized how mild and realistic Dilbert was...

Hrm. I was going to tell the story about how my boss doesn't know when MediCare is coming to our office this month, but it's somehow not a surprise....but that is positively pedestrian next to the shockers that have happened to other people. Curse my addled brain - I am shocked by these stories, yet I want something weird to happen to me at work, too, dang it. So that I can have a weird work story. Dang.

This happens over and over again when I'm at my desk slogging through tedious or mind-numbingly boring work:

Boss - This is fun right? (waits for answer)
Me - Nah, its pretty boring (boss walks away)

(time passes)

Boss - This is fun right? (waits for answer)
Me - Neagh (or some other non-committal sound followed by a shrug) (boss walks away)

(time passes)

Boss - This is fun right? (waits for answer)
Me - Yeah, its alright. (masking distain for the aforementioned tedious or mind-numbingly boring work with a smile) (boss walks away happy knowing he's brightened another employee's day)

(With time, this has become much more funny than annoying.)

Psychotic middle-manager imported from NY to CA is berating the slowdown in our department. The slowdown is due to the fact that the air condition system has our section of the building at about 40 degrees (I believe this is illegal in CA). This has been going on for days. We are all sick, dressed in heavy coats, lap robes and trying to type/mouse while wearing gloves to keep warm. In a meeting earlier in the day, as I honked repeatedly into soggy kleenex, he admonished me not to get 'germs' on him. Later on, I found myself getting warmer. This was not due to an improvement in our air temperature but the fact that my temperature was cresting 102.9. As he passed my desk towards the end of the day, I casually mentioned that since my condition was worsening, I would not be in the following day to which he replied that he 'didn't know I was sick' and that since we were so far behind, I'd best be at my desk come morning. Me: Oh I'm sick alright, and I will be home in bed until I recover, in fact, why don't you call me when you get some heat and I'll be right over. ...I was out for four days, two of which were spent in the hospital. Upon my return to work, crazed manager proceeded to scream at me at the top of his lungs in front of the entire department about dereliction of duty and insubordination and finished with 'you're fired.' At this point my note from my doctor and I went straight to the president's office where I was promptly re-instated and assigned to report to someone else while performing the exact same duties. Six months later I had the jerk's job and private office and each Christmas I took great pleasure in emailing him a photo of me reclining in his former chair with my feet on his former desk.

On the tour during my interview, in the cafeteria:

"You'll probably want to avoid the desserts if you want to keep that pretty little figure of yours."

Yes, I took the job. Because I am dumber than a box of rocks.

Well, there was this time:

BOSS: It's nothing personal. But we do feel like we're entitled to terminate you, because you don't seem to have made much progress toward finishing your doctoral dissertation.

ME: I've finished my doctoral dissertaion. It's that big heap of paper over there, see. Look - here's the first page, and here's the last page. Nobody ever asked.

BOSS: Oh. Heh.

It was the "heh" above all else that makes me think that this is worthy of inclusion.

"have you ever seen that ghostbusters movie where that actor is put on the stand and being cross-examined by the female da? she asks him some question and he says 'well kitten, that's rather technical territory you're getting into'. around here we give our interns nicknames, and kitten, if you come with me i can show you the way." i'm sorry, was the background information supposed to make that comment sound better?

he said lots of crazy stuff. usually he would just pick his nose in front of us and eat it.

Loathe to add to the heap, but couldn't resist:

After being unceremoniously dumped by who I thought was the love of my life, my lecherous male chauvinist boss said "Don't worry--I'm sure you'll find someone who is a good fit--no pun intended."

Yeah--he meant it *that* way. Gross.

My boss asked me to marry him.

No, we weren't dating. In fact, he knew I was dating someone else, someone not 20 years older than me. One day, the CTO came into my office and said, "Do you think our relationship is ever going to become anything more serious? Because if you do, then [this serious thing he was planning]." I was thinking, "A more serious friendship?" But that wasn't what he meant. I wasn't sure how to shake him without being intolerably rude, so I said, "well, I know you like kids, and I don't think I want any." He put aside doubts I had about what he meant when he said, "That's ok, as long as you don't mind being the stepmother to my 16 year old son."

Eh. I quit that job in a jiffy, telling the CEO I had to check out. When I told the CTO, he said, where are you going to work - can I follow you there? I said, "it's probably not going to be in the same field." he said, "oh, that doesn't matter."

I screened my calls for months after that and kept thinking, "oh dear... he knows where I live."

I become an RA in my college dormitories right at the time they decided to make the RA program more "proactive" and give it more "synergy."
Stupid me, I thought I knew what my dorm residents would want just because I had been a resident there for 3 years. Every Sunday night - the one meal that our cafeteria didn't serve - I would order a bunch of pizzas (I got a great special deal from the manager) and would show a movie in the hall lounge. However, I was told that my program did not "fulfill our program's spiritual mission."
BOSS: Why don't you take these weekly meetings and make them more meaningful? You could show a meaningful movie and have the guys discuss it!
OTHER COOL RA: Yeah, why don't you show American History X, that will get discussion going.
BOSS: Yeah!
ME: Okay...
(Look up some info on AHX, draft a flier warning the poor Baptist students that this movie contains some scenes there mommies might not want them to see.)
ME: Here's the flier.
BOSS: Uh... oh, wow, so, wow, this movie is that harsh? Maybe you should think of a different movie...
So he wanted a movie that would spark meaningful discussion, but was not in the least controversial! Of course. All this overlooking the fact that southern male freshman dormitory residents don't exactly go around trying to find meaningful discussions on serious subjects that they can be part of.

Project Manager: "I don't understand any of that stuff you just said [current project status and concerns]. But that's OK, I don't need to." Good way to do the job.

She Asked "get married?, You have such a great job here". uh, I have no Idea why she said this. She fired me a week later from Rob's may. Her name was Sunshine so what do you expect...
Congrads Heather, I have sent you some mail and I hope everything is going well with your bo..I means mother-loads.

SOOO many from a US investment bank but here's one - it's merely days after 9/11 and me and my best mate are in an investment bank in Frankfurt, on the 24th floor of a very very tall office building. A fire drill was arranged to see how long it would take us to get out of the building etc. Only problem was, we were leaving in about a month so, and I quote, "it's commpany policy to have the phones manned at all times, and seeing as we were leaving in a week, we probably wouldnt need to 'do' the drill". We went on to tell exactly that to everyone who phoned 3 stories of high level bankers over the next 2 hours. Bastards.

From a former boss who had just started taking her office laptop home overnight: "Are you taking my documents off the printer [at the office]?"
Me: "No, why?"
Her: "I go home at night and print all this stuff, but when I get back to the office the next day, it's never on the printer."

On Sept. 11 2001, I was working as a trainee accountant with Ernst & Young in London. We were in an intensive classroom environment: there were no TVs or anything, so we didn't know what was going on.

Around 2:30 we all started getting text messages from friends and family saying "The WTC has been attacked and they're evacuating London" or "Are you ok?" or various other things.

The instructor said, "I know that planes flying into buildings is a lot more exciting than management accounting, but let's get back to it."

I had to sit for three more hours wondering if my college roommate was dead, or if we were about to be attacked too. Hmm, I've just realized that this is more depressing than amusing.

I was the web developer in the Irish version of the Yellow Pages.

My boss called a meeting with our department and the marketing department to discuss the plans for our upcoming website redesign.

When it came time to give my part of the presentation, my boss said "So, Tom, take us through your nerdy shit".

The faces on everyone in the room were as shocked as mine.

It was after that, that I realised I had to quit the job, or go insane.

I quit. Nine months after I quit, my boss was sacked / left / was pushed out.

him: Do you run?
me: No?
him: I was watching you walk the other day. You're so smooth and graceful. I was wondering what you would look like running.

I wish I was making this up ...

a former boss told me 7 years ago: "you are a woman in the internetbusiness, you will never get any further or be respected".
he is unemplyed right now, i'm responsible for a team an 230 mil ads/month.
yeah.
girlpower

"I thought of windows even before Bill Gates." I just could not top that one and I couldnt stop laughing once I was out of my boss's room.

My boss once tried to correct me in the pronunciation of my own name.
Him: "But no, it's ****, I'm sure of it."
Me: "Um, it's MY name. I think I KNOW."

But he was actually a wonderful boss, very nice person, with many fun quirks about him: He occasionally closed the door to his office so he could practice his flute. A real flute, I mean it!! He also had a thing against brown M&Ms and wouldn't eat them. And MOST of the time, he got my name right.

I was reading down all the messages thinking what really bad things had I suffered from bosses - the one who made us put our hands up to go to the toilet? The one who spat at me? No... The one I have now. I'll call her J and the other partner here P. J called and asked me to get in touch with P asap. She'd already left a message on P's mobile, but could I manage to get her (presumably telepathically) to call J.

At least I doubt she's likely to read this. Or identify me if she does!

I thought about what you would look like with implants, but you really do have great tits and don't really need them.

I can think of several weird things my 52 year old boss has said to me but let me leave you with two:

"I swear that's the first time I've smoked pot in years! I didn't even know that he had that!"

"I see you're walking a bit funny today, you must've had a chance to try the Viagra I gave you."

I was the financial manager for a non-profit school for disabled children where the owner had decided not to pay payroll taxes for the previous five years (before I worked there). We were going into a meeting with our IRS case manager and he told me to, "take of your bra, these guys like your nipples to show." After I had made a deal with the guy for a payment plan and no penalties as long as paid on time every single month my boss ordered me to, "not pay those blood-thirsty cocksuckers a fucking dime."

Oops I came in late - Let me guess today's theme...

"Discarded plotlines for the never produced third season of THE OFFICE"?

These are friggin incredible.

There was the boss who always left porn mags in his daytimer, and then would call me up to ask me to check something in said daytimer. Or when he had his girlfriend (he was also married) play "receptionist" (my job) and left the Polaroids all over my desk. The best part was seeing him on the street after he fired me, carrying the new stereo I bought with the severance I got.
Another boss was charged with stealing a horse (we worked in advertising) and then for tax fraud.
The most insane one had to be the Internet guru/wannabe-sculptor, who cornered me in my office one night, closed the door, and pulled off his shirt to show me his tattoos, asking me to touch them.
Wow...I sure know how to pick 'em, eh? :)

happy anniversary!

mine:

boss: "one time in court, the judge called me a fat bitch as I was leaving. it got brutal and all, but really, you will LOVE the day when you fight your heart out at court and then YOU are called a fat bitch."

me: "i'm not fat."

boss: "oh, you will be."

My obnoxious CEO boss (who had already fired 4 employees within a 6 week period) said, "I'm sorry. I know it's bad timing," as he laid me off while I was 3 months pregnant. I had just left a stable job 3 months before to join his "fast growing company". Yeah, bad timing.

It's not any particular or certain thing with mine. It's the fact that he only ever talks about *himself*. Incessantly.

When we shared an office (something that ended when I went to the higher ups and threatened to quit if I had to listen to one more DAY of Navy stories), he would spend 90% of the day talking about himself - about his days as a Navy officer and his travels around the world. I have never in my life met someone that finds themselves so interesting.

It's so bad that other employees have often told me they have planned "escapes" if he pops into their office so that they can avoid an hour or two of his narcissism.

"You're so great, and thank GOD you're here. If I had to hire someone else, I'd have to pay them three times what I'm paying you."

*cough*

At my first job the boss goes to me: "Wow, you're parents must be really uneducated. I can tell by the way you talk."

It's not what my boss said, but rather what my boss did: He farted in my cubicle, albeit accidentally. And when I started to say, "Did you just--" his eyes opened up really big, then he covered his face and said, "YES!" as he ran away like a little bitch. It was hilarious.

I wrote a blog entry/tantrum about infertility, marked it private and asked for real-life people to not read it. Or at least pretend not to.

On Friday my (male) boss came in and wanted to know "how [my] ovaries were doing" Gah! Um. What?

My brain kinda misfired and I ended up having a 30 minute conversation about fertility pills and my menstrual cycle. If I ever do get pregnant? I'm gonna have morning sickness all over his shoes.

My boss wanted to go eat at The Black Eyed Pea for lunch. I take him to one close by in the gayborhood. After sitting down, he said, "I think some guys were looking at my ass. Do you think I have a good ass? You would be the best judge". He proceeds to stand up in the restaurant and show me his butt. Yes, he has a nice butt.

I'm still not over it.

I worked for an NYC publishing house whose starting salary was tied for the lowest in the industry. Editorial assistants were waiting tables, babysitting on weekends--anything to get by.

The CEO/editor-in-chief was one of the highest paid editors in the business. He was interviewed in a high-profile publication, and was quoted as saying, "No smart young people go into publishing anymore, because they think there's no money in it. Well, they're wrong--just look at me!"

There we were, trying to live in NYC on $15K/yr, while he raked it in and called us unintelligent in print. He might just have had a point there.

"I can see why your husband married you, you have really nice t*ts".

During my first-ever job interview, my soon-to-be boss asked "Do you date married men?" no less than three times. I was 16 years old. When I told my mom what he had said, she responded that I should have told him, "No, I don't date married men. Do you?"

Hmm. Come to think of it, that one interview (and that one idiot boss) is probably what turned me towards self-employment...

Not my boss, but my co-workers, as I had given my resignation. "Oooh, I hear Stephen is hiring a hottie this time". Ouch.

Oh, I did have a boss tell me I had to be taller to tell him off, that men do not like being told off by short women.

While sitting in an executive's office and then in a complete nonsequitur he shared the following: "You know back in the old IBM days managers were taught to keep a box of tissue on your desk whenever you had a meeting with a woman. Just so when they cried they would have it available. ha ha ha"

Uhm that is very interesting, sir, so back to the proposal...you neanderthalic throwback.

Weirdest thing my boss has said to me he walked up behind me while I was sitting and started rubbing my shoulders and said "You're young, so I'm sure you're never tense like an old man like me" Very awkward. He's no longer my boss lol.

I had an interview with the founder/chairman of the board of the company I work for. He asked all sorts of inappropriate questions - was I married, did I have kids, was I planning to have kids, was I dating anyone - when I said "no" he replied "good, we have at least a year then." WTF? I don't even know what that means!!

From my manager in a staff meeting:
"The last thing I want to have to do around here is manage you people."

"I'm not coming into work today. I'm having a psychotic episode. But don't worry, I'm not violent. You don't have to worry about me showing up at the office with a shotgun or anything."

within a matter of a minute, the same man said to me:

him: "brenda, do you have a boyfriend?"
me: "yes"
him: "well how do you have one if you don't know how to communicate?"

a few seconds later..

him: "you know brenda, people dull as doorknobs don't get anywhere in life"

While chomping on a cigar and staring at my breasts, "Yew shur look soft ta me."

I work at a newspaper too. We have a ton of computer related problems here. A couple months ago our tech guy was lobbying for one new iMac for the editorial department... we probably need 4. Anyway, when he went to the COO with the request she said, "Yeah, um, actually, we want to have a cost-free technology strategy. Can you work with that? We'll see how well that works when we all crash and burn on a production day. That's when I walk out.

Boss (pulling baggie of dope, bong, and lighter from under the driver's seat): "Take the wheel."

Me (driving the landscaping truck from the passenger seat at 70mph ): "uh, OK..."

Boss (handing fully packed bong over to me with one hand, while passing a CT state trooper): "Wanna party?"

Me (17 years old, first day of work, still driving the truck): "Er..."

Best/worst summer job ever.

The job I held before the one I have now was horrible. I was the office administrator for a small insurance office, working for a married couple. Never work for a married couple. There's no one to take your complaints to.

Anyway, the wife was the biggest dork of all. She used to bellow my name at the top of her voice. My office was just outside her office, but she didn't want to get up...she wanted me to come a-runnin'.

One time she was reading her mail and saw that we received the next year's vacation day schedule. As she stood there reading it, she wondered aloud, "Independence Day? What is that?" Her husband had to tell her it was July 4th. So stupid! She was assistant sales manager of this company and would say, "I seen a great movie over the weekend!" Okaaaaay.

After an especially bad show one day, my tv news director wanted to make sure no one would miss another deadline. He told the reporters, the next one to miss their slot, should not only get their stuff and head for the door, he'd HIT THEM on the way out.

Upon giving my two weeks notice, my boss called up my new company and screamed at one of the employees for "fucking poaching his fucking employees." Then he told me that I had to continue working for him for free, participating in at least one conference call per week with the client, because "they just want to see your pretty face." I said, "Um, they can't see my face over the phone."

Just one more...I had been working at this place for about 6 months and was learning how crazy the husband/wife team were. On the day of my wedding rehersal, with my parents and I just about to leave for the church, the phone rang. Thinking it was some wedding related call, I stopped to answer it. It was the wife boss wanting to know how to do something on the computer. Not only had I left her implicite instructions on paper, I had left her at least 6 phone numbers of people she could call for help. She called me. I told her we were on our way out the door for the rehersal. She said it would only take me a minute. I couldn't hang up on my boss, especially in front of my parents. What was supposed to take a minute ended up taking 30 and made us late for the rehersal. One other time, when I was a nanny, I was working for a couple originally from NYC. They now lived in rural Maryland. He was reluctant to give me the car to use even though that had been part of the contract. When I asked him why he was so reluctant, he said,..."How do I know that you are familiar with driving on paved roads and interstates? Aren't you from Wisconsin?" He is also the one who told me he couldn't believe a "big girl" like me could go rock climbing and hiking. I was maybe a size 18 at the time. One last one...this was not an employer, but my family doctor, at my very first PAP smear told me that I was very very small "down there" and boy was he glad he didn't have to be around on my honeymoon. I was 14 years old. When he asked me if I was sexually active and I said no, he said, "why not? It would certainly help stretch you out down there."

I had just returned to work after giving birth to my daughter.And I was walking into a meeting with snack size box of wheat thins and, my boss was walking in the meeting at the same time, and he said you know it's gonna take more than, eating wheat thins to lose weight.At the time he said that I wanted to kill him!!

One of my old bosses told me that he had been in love with me since I was sixteen. At the time that he told me this I was 20. He then proceeded to try and kiss me. It was the most disgusting thing I have ever experienced! It also didn't help that he was the father of one of my ex-boyfriends either.

My former boss, the owner of the restaurant I used to work in, liked to streak his own restaurant. Also, on Haloween he dressed up in a Teletubbies costume 5 sizes too small with the butt cut out. ...Also, he once wrapped up his genitals in a piece of pita with lettuce and tomato and paraded though the kitchen. But then, I think all of these are pretty fond memories for most of the people who were working there.

"You are a very untalented and mediocre journalist." She said this in a ridiculous email she sent me after she was fired because she was a bitch with everyone in the team and a bad editor at the same time. And by the way. I am (and was) not a journalist. :)

i accidentally gave my 65 year old boss a pot brownie. she had to go home early that day.

Boss: I called your cellphone 5 minutes ago, where were you?
Me: I was in the bathroom, I didn't take my phone with me. I'm sorry.
Boss: You know we pay for that cellphone and you should be carrying that everywhere. So if I call you in the bathroom, you should still pick it up.
Me: Uh, ok. But what if I'm busy.
Boss: Well, just hold it then.

My boss asked me to send her an email re: a project I was working on. I said 'I sent that to you yesterday.' She said 'Can you re-send it? I feng-shuied (deleted) all my email.'

When: The late 80's

I had just rebooted the company's server, which was running a Unix variant. My boss, standing in front of the console, says (seriously):
"When do I type WIN?"

"This is totally inappropriate, but, are you Mormon?"

and

"You're not only very attractive, but you're also actually quite pretty."

and

"Fuck you!"

my boss, bob, had an un-necessarily complicated spreadsheet he liked to call "the matrix". every time he had me make a minor change to it, he would have me print it out even though he and i were the only people who ever saw it. sometimes he would have me print it out two or three times a day and then yell across the office for me to come to his office to "go over the "the matrix." other than that he was a sweet guy.

about 2 years ago, my boss approached me with a legal-looking documanet:

Him: "can you scan this, then change these dates to reflect this quarter?"
me: "This is a Tax ID form. It's kinda illegal to forge this."
Him: "Oh, well, i've already contacted the IRS, and the new form is on the way, i just need to supply this to IBM, and they needed it like, a month ago."

I wish i could say i quit the next day. instead i continued to work for the king of all shadiness for another 2 years. oof.

Our office gave our volunteers Christmas gifts each year. This particular year, my boss insisted that she be the one to wrap and handle the cards... I was very suspicious at this point, because she usually never did anything. After handing out said gifts, I peeked at one of the cards, and sure enough, she had SIGNED them "Love, Amy" No mention of anyone else in the office. She was trying to Whore herself off as the ONE and ONLY gift giver. Funny thing was too, that just 3 days later while at lunch, she said, "Oh and by the way, I signed "with love from the Special O office." yeah sure... she knew I knew and for some reason I got fired one month later!

he was a pretty cool guy and we got along great. one time we were sitting around when he told me he used to be a male prostitute. at first i didn't believe him, of course. but then he went into great detail about some of his clients; stuff i know he wouldn't have been able to make up.

I recently did an analysis regarding a new instructor certification requirement (not actually necessary to do my job and only added so that the company could say that their employees were EXTRA qualified) for my (very) part-time job and found that paying for the new $300+ certification would reduce my net annual income from that job to $63. When I shared this interesting tidbit with my boss she emailed back "I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOUR POINT IS." and "I'M GLAD YOU MENTIONED IS NOT ABOUT THE MONEY BECAUSE... IT LOOKED LIKE THE ONLY THING THAT YOU WERE IN IT FOR WAS THE MONEY." Dude, I make $63 a year working for you. I wouldn't be working here if I was in it for the money.

The most insane thing asked of me by a boss occurred when creating a new website for the company I was working for at the time...

"Can you make that box... boxier?"

"An old man s*** all over the toilet and you need to clean it up."

The following however, may bring it more into perspective for you:
a) this was said at 4pm, 2 hours after my shift ended.
b) it was said whilst aforementioned boss was pounding on my locked bedroom door.
c) I cleaned bathrooms between 9 and 10am. They were clean that morning after I was done with them.
d) I no longer clean toilets in the Yukon. And for that, I am extremely thankful.

Yeeowch. I bet no onw will ever get down to his, but here goes:
1) When I first moved to DC I worked for a Democratic direct mail strategist. I was an indentured servant to him. I lived in his house, picked up his laundry and ran his office during the day while going on third shift press checks at night. He paid me about 1k a month, no benefits, while he blew tens of thousands on hookers, drugs and gambling and nickled and dimed vendors. After the electrions he went on big game safari's that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
2)Had a woman once who used to threaten me with physical violence and swear at me daily. Everything I did I checked twice becuase I was so afraid of her. "No, our story didn't run, the OJ verdict came back. Yes, I'm sure." * quaking *
3) Had a man who, when I gave him a press release said to me, "This is what I want you to give me every time...fellatio...on paper of course ...wink...wink."

When I was working tech support, during a performance review, my boss suggested I take fewer calls.

I'm still with the company (in a different dept.) and new techs still come over to my desk to find out if that story's really true.

Well, it wasn't so much said to me, but after I got back from my honeymoon, the company prez put a poster with all different kinds of contraceptives on it right in my office. Strangely, I was more struck by how sadly outdated the poster was (it still had sponges) rather than how grossly outrageous the act was. However, reading these other comments makes me realize I had it easy. I kept it for three years as a gag, and I swear, the week after I finally threw it away, I got pregnant!

i used to work in a candy store run by geriatrics. they would always play this sinatra cd that skipped and since nobody in the store could actually hear it, i had to listen to the same line in "witchcraft" for hours on end.
when i approached my boss about the skipping cd he yelled at me and told me: "YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT FRANK SINATRA IS SUPPOSED TO SOUND LIKE. SHUT UP!"
he couldn't even hear the cd himself!
hearing witchcraft still makes me crazy.

Me: So, I'm giving you my 2 weeks notice. Thanks for the 3 1/2 years of employment and everything.

Boss: Um, where are you going?

Me: XYZ Corp.

Boss: Uh. Ha ha! Well. I interview a lot of people from there, and they don't have too much good to say about it! But good luck, or whatever.

Me:

Oh...where to begin:

Email:

"Dear Staff- Please note that Europe has a different time zone then America. Please keep this in mind should you call us for any reason while we
are on vacation."

Ok, you have to picture this coming from a short, slightly overweight, vest-wearin', receding hairline having, long-haired, umbrella toting manager of a copy shop.--- "It's only life, Alison" (add a high pitched whiney voice to that list) He also coined the phrase "you have to be the copy machine"

My female ex-boss was a middle-aged nympho, who would tell me things about her sex life that I really didn't want to know. One morning, during a period of time while Ms. Piggy was having a fling with a co-worker in another department, the co-worker's ex-wife had some business to attend to in our office. As soon as she left, my disgusting boss felt the need to share this loveliness with me: "I wonder how she would feel if she knew that her husband's [um, liquid] was running down my legs right now." EWWW!!

I was working at a restaurant in college - the owner was a sleazy, middle-eastern womanizer type. No respect for women at all - he was always trying to get the waitresses to come back to his trailer to watch movies. Creepy. Anyway, one night, he asked why my tips weren't better, considering my "big, American breasts." No kidding. Ick. To this day, I can't eat baklava without thinking about it.

"isn't that funny - at 18 my daughter is working for the next mayor and YOU worked at a hardware store" - said my rich, blue-blooded, boss of her flagrant nepotism. my response: "well, i had to support myself and my mommy and daddy didn't know any mayors."