I have a nice boss. She's never said anything off the hook at all.

But at my first job, I had one man tell me how nice I looked on my knees while I was attaching wires to the back of my computer. He asked me if I would do that to his computer which was located under his desk as well (he had to point that out!). This was of the days before "sexual harrassment". And to think I could have been a millionaire!

The day after Memorial Day, I was called into the conference room by my boss, (and owner of the company), to meet with her and our office psychologist. The psychologist is a nice gentleman who was paid a lot of money to tell us which Meyers-Briggs personality type we were (I'm an INTP) and how we could communicate more effectively with one another. The meeting began amicably enough, but rapidly turned into "we just can't communicate with you, Jennifer." "You're an INTP and I'm an ENFJ!" Needless to say, I was politely "laid off," although it was offered to me that I could continue to work there for the next three weeks, (full time, of course), and have free access to the office psycholigist while I looked for a job. The above offer would be mine, all mine, just so long as I didn't file for unemployment after the three weeks was up as the company just couldn't afford it. I should say this course of events was the best thing that ever happened to me, my career and my personal well-being.

I used to work for an inane, pretty and very lazy attorney at a mid-sized Chicago law firm. She used to think nothing of calling myself or the other paralegal I shared an office with from her own office, TWO DOORS DOWN THE HALL, to ask us really hard questions like, "Do you have a calculator? Good, ok - take $85,000. What's 10% of that?"

We now call being asked to perform a really stupid task "Being Debbed."

My work place was pretty casual so I didn't see a problem getting my tongue pierced. When my boss saw it, he said, "You know, I've been given blow jobs by girls with their tongues pierced and without and I've found that its more about technique than the piercing." I said that was none of his business and ended the conversation right there.

her: Why would I EVER use the Internet at home???
me (laughing): Luddite.
her: What's that??? What does that mean?
(I explain)
her, two weeks later, after getting broadband, to a coworker on dial-up: Oh, that's right. You're just on dial-up. Luddite.

or last Friday in during my presentation...
her: You need to take out that last part because of yak yak yak (for a minute)
me: Okay.
her: No, you need to take it out because yak yak yak...
me: okay.
Her: Because if it's in there yak yak yak...
Me: Okay. I get it.
her (very pissed): NO!!! You don't get it! Otherwise you wouldn't be arguing with me for the last five minutes!!!

(sadly, I could go on ad nauseam)

I've also had to take down my blog for writing about work :(

My brother, while, living in our house in Colorado for a short while after College, took an entry-level tele-sales job at one of the satellite TV companies based here. Here’s one of the sales lines they practiced, to be used when talking to women who say they’d like to talk with their husbands first before purchasing: “So, do you let your husband make ALL the decisions in your home.” They even specifically practiced saying it as condescendingly as possible to get a “better close rate.” No kidding. He quit shortly thereafter.

I've had one at almost every job.

#1) While in college = I worked at a pizza place. After work one time, I changed into shorts before leaving and my boss said (in front of customers and other employees), "I had NO idea you had such nice legs under those khaki pants!"

#2) First job out of college = worked for an older man who said to me in my interview "I don't think a college degree makes anyone smarter than anyone else". Obviously he didn't have a college degree...which is fine but then when asked by my soon to be new employer about my work, all he could come up with was that I looked really good in skirts. Glad I went to college for that!

#3) Job after the one above = in my interview, my soon to be manager asked me if I planned on getting married and pregnant any time soon. Um, no ma'am.

#4) Last job before the one I currently have = While working for a very upscale Investment Bank in the city, my boss (an older, been in the business at least 50 years, man) said that he thought all women should be required to have a body like mine if they're going to be in the workforce. This was said out loud in front of the entire Operations dept....all men.

These were all one time statements that I basically blew off as bad judgment on their part.

I was filling out an appliation for a chiropractor's office. The doctor was covering the main desk since his one and only receptionist had left, and he started chatting with a patient.

"So you're doing some hiring, eh?" says the innocent patient.

"Yeah, we've got to get a new Girl in here." (The G was totally capitalized)

He called me a few times wanting to schedule an interview and I never returned his messages.

this happened to a girl i work with, we work in a hospital...

her: "I can't come in today, I have pinkeye."
supervisor: "Well you can work with pinkeye, I have before."

Needless to say she came in and Employee Health made her leave.

Also my asshole co-worker who liked to take his scheduled work days off decided he wasn't coming in one day and informed our supervisor of that. She asked me if I would come in that day for him and I just happened to be off and just happened to be buying a car that day so I said "No I'm sorry I'm buying a car that day and I have other stuff to do."

Well the idiot keeps files on all of us (diaries i like to call them) and leaves the cabinet open, my co-worker who I wouldn't come in for was reading my folder and told the other girl that I had been written up for not coming in for him, which he thought was hilarious. So the next day I looked and sure enough she had written down "I asked Kasey to come in and she said no but she didn't really give a good answer." No shit. As if the fact that I was off and buying a car wasn't a good enough reason. I did buy the car and I actually asked her if she wanted to see my new car.

Oh, just remembered something that happened to a friend of mine. She was trying to apply at a Hot Topic (she had reached rock bottom finding a job, and decided to dig). The first time she showed up for her interview the manager asked with a smile "Why are you late?" Friend explains she had trouble finding parking. Manager says "Well you're 10 minutes late, we'll have to reschedule."

Second time Friend shows up for interview Manager again asks why she's late. Friend looks at her watch and said she's not late, she exactly on time, and she hauled ass to do so. Manager looks at the store clock and says "Well you're three minutes late, we'll have to reschedule."

I wonder if it was really a test, like how the Karate kid had to do tasks unrelated to training until he bitched about it and found out that he'd been learning all along.

I think the Manager was just a bitch.

let's just say i've had a few doozies - most notably my last employer (now, fortunately, i get to stay home and peel wet cheerios off my 7-month-old son's hindquarters). Previous Employer was an amalgam of most male chauvanist stories mentioned so far, with sexist/suggestive/rude comments so frequent they began to lose all impact whatsoever. bonus asshole points, however, for announcing we all have to take four-day weeks because 'business is slow, it's not my fault, it's the terrorists' fault' - then going on about how he's looking to build a real live cabin on his massive upstate property and 'get real goats and sheep and shit', all the while taking phone calls from helena christenson (they're neighbors in tribeca, of course). yes, we're all taking one for the team, buddy. oh, two examples of physical comedy - he once threw a chair across the room, breaking it in several small pieces, because he was mad. boo hoo. also amusingly, when frustrated with a client who wasn't paying his bills, he gleefully tore every page from all of client's books until he was buried in paper, then stuffed them in a box to mail to said client. did i mention this was in front of other clients? lovely indvidual, with a good head on his shoulders.
in any case - leta = gorgeous. you = frequently make my day. also, not a booger. thank you.

Arrogant asshole boss turns his back to second in command and puts his arms out forming a T. A.A.B. proceeds to fall backwards, hitting his head on coworker's desk and slamming his big butt into the floor.
A.A.B. to Second in Command: "I'll never trust you again!"
Confusion and Laughter ensued after A.A.B. stormed out of the room with his tail between his legs.

Conversation taking place in an insurance office, somewhere in that frightening lull between September 11th and the "liberation" of Iraq.

Him: I finally know what I want for my tattoo.
Me: oh yeah?
Him: Yeah...Well, um, starting up on my shoulder I want the hand of God, or the finger y'know, like, from the Sistine Chapel, but instead of the finger touching, y'know, that guy, I want...down on my arm...a big eagle, like, really big, but also behind it the American flag. And the flag'll be, like, kinda blowing. Y'know, behind the eagle. Because of, uh, the finger down from God.
Me: Wow.

I've worked with a lot of men over the years in the tech industry...many perfectly nice, some perfectly clueless, but far too many that were perfectly disgusting. I've suppressed a lot of the nastier remarks but one sticks out in my mind. A conversation in the cubicle next to me, a couple of years back, between two thirty-something married men, with daughters...about how hot the Olsen Twins were. When they looked over and saw my raised eyebrow they rephrased it to "how hot they were going to be". Ew.

I know I posted previously but how could I ever forget my boss adjusting his nuts right in front of me. Now when I say 'right in front of me' I mean I was sitting, he was standing right next to me at croch-to-eye-level. I'm still not over it.

Oh and I read the history of your job loss, I know how it feels to have some anon fuckweed mess up your life. While I didn't get fired, some fuckweed blogger "friend" decided to send my husband links to my blog that referenced an inside joke. Seeing that my husband was the outsider, the whole email made it look like I was having an affair. Needless to say I wasn't.

Revenge will be oh so sweet one day. :)

Anyway, after reading the comments left by others, man, bosses are sick and twisted weirdos. I still can't get over the whole "licking @sshole" comment/visual. *shudder*

I have a million stories, but the worst I've heard didn't involve me.

My supervisor had a miscarriage at 16 weeks. She returned to work after about a week. She and I were never close, and after offering my condolences, I didn't bring up the loss of the baby again.

About two months later, she was in the bathroom, crying. She told me she had her annual revue, and she was given a mark of "exceeds" instead of her usual "well exceeds". She was told it was because after the miscarriage she "wasn't her usual perky self."

She quit the next day.

This is a toss-up. Same boss, though. He was in his 50's, me in my 20's. First thing was when I visited him during a long illness. He asked me if I ever had a cornstarch massage, and how he'd like to massage my ass. The next time, he called me bright and early on a.m. to bail him out of jail. He had been caught stalking an ex-girlfriend. He was my supervisor at my COURTHOUSE job.

This is comment #334... jeebus you've got a lot of readers, Dooce!

Anyway... overheard whilst walking past the bosses office on a temp job.

"Yeah, I'd fuck her, too bad she's just a temp."

I left an hour later. I'd hate to think of what he's done to his permanent staff.

Five days after my Dad died relatively suddenly, I mentioned to my boss that I now understood what post-traumatic stress disorder is like. She said, "Oh, I wondered if it was still affecting you."

This happened when I was very obviously pregnant with my first child. My new boss had just started and came in my office to get to know me. After sitting down and glancing at the photo on my desk of my husband and I, he said "Is that the dude who knocked you up?" I had never had a conversation with him prior to this meeting. Why I didn't even consider suing him is beyond me...although I did enjoy the smugness of saying "You are disgusting. Get out of my office." I didn't lose my job and he got the idea, as he laid low for quite some time. I did leave shortly after...to pursue an enjoyable career of baby raising.

I used to work at a trendy girls clothing store. My boss was a psychotic bitch. She always had me up front as "greeter". The greeter's job is to harass everyone who comes into the store by bombarding them with talk of sales and such. We weren't even allowed to say hello, just "hey, just to let you know, jeans are on sale for only $20 [buy buy buy]". I'm rather shy and therefore wasn't so great at this harrassment. One night, a girl I knew and her mom came into the store, so I exchanged pleasantries with them and whatnot. My manager comes out from the back and starts screaming at me that the store isn't making any money and that it's my fault and that -other girl working that night- made such and such amount of money, etc, and that I need to be more outgoing and whatnot (if she knows I'm not that outgoing, WHY oh WHY stick me up in the front of the store). So, me being me, I just cried. Then my boyfriend came into the store, and I gave him a HUG because I was upset, and she flips out on me again. I took my break and tried to calm down. When I came back, my manager says to me something like "I don't know what your problem is tonight. I don't know if you're trying to make me mad just so that you can go home or what. But you can't go home; you're here tonight." I gave my two weeks notice the next day.

I volunteer at a small design school in down-town Philadelphia as a favor to the man who runs it.

"I brought the book in for you today Mr._____"
"I think you are lying! If you lie to me I am firing you and taking this week's pay as collateral."

Needless to say I just looked at him for a second and walked away in utter confusion and disbelief.

At the end of a particularly positive annual review, I made the mistake of asking if he had any suggestions on how to improve. (I've clearly learned from this mistake.) He thought for a minute, scratched his black and white houndstooth skids-esque pants that looked just lovely with his orange hawaiian shirt and green doc martins, stroked his fu man chu (sp?) and told me not to "wear pink to client meetings." as a way to improve my professionalism. I took a long look at this clown-cum-Mr. Blackwell's worst-dressed award winner and replied, "I always try to dress monochromatically in meetings."

Then I wore pink head-to-toe the rest of the week.

My boss told me that only sluts have their navels pierced. And she said "you know...when I was in college, I didn't do drugs."
me: "well, not all college kids do drugs!"
her: "oh...really?"
and yes, she was completely serious. Also, when I happen to be not doing something for two seconds, she'll say "Meredith, what's your function?" Like..."you are not doing something right now, so you must be disfunctional." ugh. she's a bitch.

This summer I worked for a crazy woman who appraised houses. She lived alone in the middle of the woods and took it upon herself to take care of all of the forest animals, everything from the bears she'd leave feed our for (and take picures of them feeding, name them, and tell stories about how she could tell them apart, etc, etc) to random birds that for some reason needed rehabilitation. She even had an entire room in her house converted into a birdcage, literally the whole room belonged to the birds, which she would name, talk to, and relay every little detail about to everyone who was unlucky enough to come to have to come to her house (the UPS guy, me, etc). One day she was freaking out about something and talking to herself and the birds, as usual, and she decided that she needed me to feed the birds so that she could do something else. She had me take a certain kind of cat food, grind it to a powder in a coffee grinder, and feed the birds. She made me do the grinding of the food part twice, though, because it wasn't the right consistency the first time.
She also had me decorate the folders for the houses she appraised with bunny/flower/etc stamps using pink, blue and purple ink, because they made the folders "less boring."
I guess that's probably true...but she was beyond nuts.

The GM of a hotel where I worked once told me, "You're very lucky to have Joe as your supervisor. He doesn't sexually harrass anybody."

Another boss said (of his polyester-clad office mavens), "Why don't you dress like them? Can't you put on some high heels and make-up?"

although i've have jobs, i would prefer to share the public high school equivalency of insane bossness:

senior year, i was the secretary of our student council, which was run by the school football coach who rigged the previous year's election so that the quarterback would win (despite never having served on student council before). for three weeks, i didn't attend meetings because of other extracurricular commitments - yes, i'm one of *those* kids - and emailed him, stopped by his office to tell him the situation. i only got a hold of him when i passed by his classroom on a bathroom break and - in front of his class - he yelled at me to "admit it, just admit it, you don't have what it takes to be secretary. you should just quit. just quit. we are so far ahead, you can't catch up. you don't deserve to be secretary. you can't handle the responsibility. and that's fine. we don't need you. just quit." i cried all day in public and private humiliation.

when i talked to the quarterback after lunch, he said that student council had done *absolutely* nothing.

i have other crazy teacher stories but this one still pisses me off.

In the summer before my senior year in college, I got sucked into a call center/cust. svc. rep position for a power company. They had a strangely strict dress code which required women to always wear hose w/dresses/skirts (strange b/c no one ever saw us). This is in Macon, GA - in the SUMMER, when the 7th level of hell looks to be a cool and refreshing oasis. Anyway, the managers would come by and make you *prove* that you were wearing hose...you had to pull them away from your legs so that they could verify. If you weren't, then you got sent home. About the third/fourth time this happened, I told the woman that there was no f'in way I was going to show her any part of my body. I grabbed my purse, left all of my stuff, and walked immediately out the door.

Another time, I worked for the domestic peace corps and was placed on suspension for some made up BS. I was told that I could not take any sick leave, vacation, or even LEAVE THE STATE for the next 4 weeks. I think I waited about, oh, 2 seconds before loosing it. I remembered to grab my stuff that time.

i had a boss who would leave to-do notes like this:

* water plants
* paint living room
* adopt baby (korean???)
* learn photoshop

she asked me to do A LOT of insane things, but mostly the insanity had to do with dealing with her. i did, however, meet my man through working for her, so i guess it was worth it.

i'm lucky to work in a very small (four people), casual company with people i adore, so there is lots of talk that would probably be considered inappropriate in a conventional workplace. but there was this one time... i brought a guy to a work event. it very early in our relationship. as we were talking innocently about movies or something, bossman suddenly said to dateman, "your balls must be really hairy." now, in his defense, because i love my boss, the two of them are actually friends and have known each other longer than i've known either of them. so it wasn't necessarily inappropriate between the two of them. but while i was there? not the kind of thing you say to your employee's date if you want her to come to work the next day. (i did go to work the next day, but i was a bit embarrassed.)

While in college, I worked in a predominately male department as a computer tech. There was only myself and one other girl, and although we were both competent, our male coworkers often treated us like airheaded bimbos, which our female boss actually encouraged by often sending one of the guys with us when we went on a call. This often ended with the guy physically taking the mouse away from me to "show" me how to do what I already knew how to do.
As if it weren't bad enough, the male faculty members treated us even worse! I had one older male prof, when I showed up to fix his computer, ask me if anyone else was available to fix his problem.
My female coworker received the absolute worst comment though. One of the newer male faculty members came in to address her about a problem he was noticing, and asked if he could talk to the girl that had been cleaning his computer a few days earlier. When she replied that it was she who had done the cleaning, he replied "Oh, I didn't recognize you when you weren't bent over my computer." Gah! He clearly failed to run that one through any mental censors!!

I was waiting tables at Denny's two summers ago: a 20 year old boy, unsure of himself and trying to keep the appearance of being self-confident. The manager, a married, dignified-looking hispanic man, kept making veiled passes at me. Needless to say, I was creeped out at work every time he stepped out of his office. As I said, I was quite lacking in self-confidence, so instead of giving him a generous helping of indignance pie, I just kind of felt violated and ashamed and blamed myself. It didn't help that another waiter had been hitting on me all summer, and this one particularly mean waitress had a habit of grabbing my ass just to watch me squeak and run off blushing.

Okay, so I can't remember any actual quotes of what he said to me. Like I said, it was always very veiled. But it always left me creeped out and unsettled.

ok, one more thing, potentional job interview, where the company (an insurance/investments company looking for someone in sales) contacted ME off of monster.com, the man interviewing me said, "Yeah, I basically think of resumes as toilet paper. Everybody lies on them and so, what's the point." Uh, hello and goodBYE!

After just a few days on a pizza place job in my early twenties, my boss asked me if I'd ever enjoyed nipple clamps. When I said no, he went into a very colorful description of how much fun he'd had with them. At one point he pushed aside a pile of pizza dough, and with floured hands, grabbed a pencil and actually drew me a picture of the kind of clamp he found most pleasurable.

My boss, the CEO of a Silicon Valley startup back in the days when we had way too much money and not enough time ... begged me to come to work to finish his presentation for the board of directors because the only part of Powerpoint he can operate is the "next" button. I was a single mom of a 5 year old at the time and he had the flu. My dear boss said "Can't he just sleep on a blanket in your office for a few hours?" So I brought a sleeping bag and the poor kid did great, drinking Sprite while I typed. I stepped out of the office for a moment to go to the printer, and the CEO opened the door to step in. JUST AT THAT MOMENT my dear wonderful son decided to come looking for me. The two met up at the door and my son both projectile vomited on the CEO's pants and had runny diahrrhea all over his expensive black shoes. I came back, plunked the finished presentations in the man's arms and said "I TOLD you he was sick." And left.

"Are you going to eat that?" Before waiting for my answer, my boss picked up my cookie and shoved it in her mouth ... gutter slut.

For a hilarious story about the true boss from hell, you really should read The Devil Wears Prada. I've had lots of mental rejects as bosses but never anyone as bad as the boss in that story.

I was working at a small community newspaper in western Canada when one of the reporters, a recent hire who had just completed her month-long internship with us and had just been hired full-time the previous week, was killed in a car accident. I went to the funeral along with the two other reporter and the editor. We were gone for about two and a half hours. All of us stayed for late into the wee hours that same day, finishing our work. The next morning, all four of us were hauled up on the rug by the deeply repressed, deeply evil twin owners of the paper and castigated for leaving the office without prior premission. "She only worked here a month...how attached could you have been?" One asked. when the editor responded that we attended out of respect for a co-worker and that some of us had in fact developed very close friendships with her, the other owner snorted "well, I still don't see how close a friendship you could have had in that time, but if she had been here longer we would have of course have closed down the office and attended the funeral together." Outraged and incredulous, the editor asked "and just how long would she have to have worked here before we could attend her funeral with your blessings?" The owners conferred a moment, and replied (in all seriousness) "I think it might have been appropriate after she successfully completed her three month probation period." The editor quit on the spot. I left that hell hole less than a week later. The paper went bankrupt a month after that. Good riddance.

I forgot to mention that we were all docked pay for the two and a half hours we were out of the office, attending the funeral.

On school vacations, I work at a factory where nearly everyone is a bitter, french-canadian, middle school dropout. My boss has the most repulsive hygene ever. She has this nasty long steel gray hair that always smells like... well, dirty hair. The smell just billows off her. Worse than that, oh yes, are her teeth. Gray, slimy, honest-to-god rotten. I once held my breath for approximately 10 minutes while she explained a project to me.
Plus she eats vienna sausages straight out of the can, with her fingers.

Face-to-Face Conversation:

Her: You ever hung out over at The Slide?

Me: No.

Her: It's OK. Only thing is, sometimes there's too many white people in there.

Me: ...

Her: Ohhh, I'm sorry. Sometimes I forget that you're white.

I took it as a compliment.

I wore a dress to a staff Christmas party and very loudly at this very fancy restaurant my boss says "Are those your thighs JJ? I was beginning to think you didn't have legs!"

I hadn't work a skirt since my first interview, I never wore one again either.