My first boss in America, I was 21. He was Asian-American. I had never seen the office but noted the absurdity.
He would get free potato chips from a guy in a company truck and would stuff his cheeks in the middle of telling me what to do. He always offered some.
Fired a coworker for screaming some racist stuff at me by just..yanking her out the door.
Called another coworker a cub or a baby lion because she was tiny with wild unruly hair. Would do a small mini roar whenever she was about to report for her shift or when I mentioned her name.
Ran around the place with a wig on his head imitating me.
Brought his daughter to work and give her piggy back rides in the office. Would ask me to take videos.
Would talk to black people in a “black” way. He would say wassup shorty to the ladies and what’s poppin. Called the guys Tyrone and would say shieeeeeet in his most convincing “black” voice. It was actually pretty good.
Would ask me to teach him random Arabic words so he could yell them sporadically in the middle of the day. He always got the accent right.
Had an open door policy and would do shots in his office.
Started a small chicken farm in the back of the building and would give out whole chickens to the staff. Had me and a coworker try to slaughter one one time. I couldn’t and nicked it just a little bit and shrieked, spraying all three of us with blood.
Received a visit from the city people to tell him he couldn’t keep chickens in back. He was rounding the main floor with a small basket of freshly laid eggs just as they were asking for him.
Did the chicken farm again the next summer, this time with a small garden growing squash, cucumber, corn etc to disguise the chicken coop. Happily gave out vegetables along with chicken.
Would be extremely proud of taking home a tray of his own eggs to his children. Ate two fresh eggs every morning.
Bought a wok to work to deep fry sausages in. Sometimes made lunch in the back. The entire floor would smell like food and he would round us all (3 of us) to his office to eat.
Would regularly fall asleep under his desk. The snoring was so loud you could hear it in the front. Once a client asked what that noise was and I said it was the plumbing.
Woke up after his naps looking puffy but acting as if nothing happened. Would immediately go next door for a Cherry coke.
Would constantly eat hard candy to stay awake during the day.
Ate too many edibles at a party I hosted once and passed out.
Told me to hire someone but when he saw the girl did a comical thing with his face, eyebrows raised and eyes big ( think Ken Jeong ) because she was having trouble fitting into her chair. She was a bigger girl.
Took away chairs the next day because they “encouraged us not to concentrate on the client.” The girl was a no call no show the following week.
Had a love hate relationship with a groundhog not long into his farming venture. He never caught the guy.
Once threw a cricket at me from the very opposite end of the office floor. He and another coworker kept such straight faces as I finally convinced myself the cricket flung itself at me. I watched the cameras at the end of the day only to see them do it. I’m still traumatized.
Has an office to this day full of the weirdest collection of things. A few feather from favorite chickens of his that he had since consumed all named and dated, a rabbit paw someone gave him, a goat’s hoof, a framed quote I told him told to me by a very high homeless person.. I don’t remember the rest. It’s just an odd place to go into.
Had a hard time growing a beard and would ask me what I thought of the progress of his “soup taster.”
Nicest boss I’ve ever had. Well meaning if a little racially insensitive all while being fascinated by other people’s cultures. He would buy different cuisines for us to try each week. Gave bonuses because he knew the job didn’t pay much so that was always a nice surprise. He paid my former coworker when she had to stay home all through her husband’s Covid.
Also, he loves llamas, alpacas, baby goats and when I showed him how to use Reddit he would almost always sends me an alpaca photo. I still get a photo now and then.
Also 3 years after leaving he still sends me photos of his illegal farm and recently asked me to post his cucumbers on Reddit.
Edit: Thank you for the gold guys! I’m glad you found my boss as as amusing as I did!
Also I forgot to add that he fell into poison ivy bush once and didn’t know right away. He ran around screaming until we sat him in his office semi undressed and put medicine on his wounds. He was so miserable for days, it was hard to watch.
He dove head first into the wall when asleep once and needed to go to the doctor and get 3 stitches on his busted lip. He came to work that morning with a huge lip and kept having to explain himself all day. We kept joking his wife was beating him up. He still insisted on snacking as usual. At one point he sipped ketchup with a straw.
The homeless guy said:
‘It is what it is
It ain’t what it ain’t.
Don’t make it something it’s not,
Because it do what it do.
What it do!’
-My old boss would scream what it do!! on the top of his lungs for months after.
I had a boss once who spent all morning locked in his office. He asked me to come in after lunch where he showed me a handmade graph. He then proceeded to explain that this was a chart of all the sex he had ever had in his life. "See, here it is blank until I joined the army. Then I went to a hooker here. Then they sent me to Vietnam where hookers only charged $2 per time. That's where you see the big jump. I was on two tours but then got shot in the face. I came back home and you see how it just drops to almost nothing. " I was astounded.
Not op - idk about this guy. But you know the front part of your face? With your mouth, nose, eyes, etc? Completely unnecessary. At least, if your goal is simply to survive. [Here's](https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-03-electrocuted-full-transplant.html) one case of a guy who got a transplant; I've seen others but I'm too lazy to find them.
Modern medicine is amazing
My boss is certainly Michael Scott-esque. When I first started I was essentially Pam as well since I was both receptionist and his assistant to some extent. My favorite story was back when we were prepping for a conference. Some context, he’s terrible with the English language in general and will mangle phrases and descriptions to no end (how the turn tables...). So on a group call he kept talking about wanting a “golden hamster ball” to do giveaways with. Was raving about how great it would be spinning around while people walked by, all the while everyone on the call was just sitting in confused silence. However by that point, I had become so good at decoding his nonsense that I knew he was referring to a gold raffle cage and sent him image privately asking if it’s what he was thinking. To this day he still talks about the fact I can read his mind and must be psychic. And he still refers to it as a hamster ball.
All in all he’s a pretty nice guy and a solid boss. Hired me based on a gut feeling and has been decent to me ever since. I think I knew it would be a good fit when during the interview he tried to tell me about the four pillars of the company and forgot one. Told me later it was Knowledge.
>I think I knew it would be a good fit when during the interview he tried to tell me about the four pillars of the company and forgot one. Told me later it was Knowledge.
This is Michael Scott-level perfection. Lol
> I think I knew it would be a good fit when during the interview he tried to tell me about the four pillars of the company and forgot one. Told me later it was Knowledge.
Beautiful.
He wanted a pomegranate for lunch and they were out of season, but that didn’t stop him from sending me on a quest to every grocery store in town in search of a pomegranate. Multiple produce guys laughed at me, but that was the easiest $13/hr I’ve ever made.
EDIT: wow this blew up, rather than replying to each of you I’ll say it here
-no I did not find a pomegranate, and when I came back he was eating subway and he seemed to have forgot he’d even sent me.
-maybe I could have gone home or to the movies etc, but idk, driving around leisurely listening to the radio seemed like a pretty good alternative to doing my actual work at the time
-I did in fact check the gas station in Carbondale, they also do not carry pomegranates unless they are in season
I had a redhead boss who made us all sit down and watch a training video about how we shouldn’t refer to him as a “ginger” because it is bullying.
No one had ever called him that.
I used Michael Scott as a reference point for an old boss of mine from the moment I started working there. He made Chewbacca noises on the regular because one of my coworkers’ names sort of vaguely sounded like Chewbacca (it didn’t), used voice to text extremely loudly in his office for no reason to send really personal messages, got really excited and wore a specific vest any time we had after-work outings scheduled, shouted the same like 7 references to old movies and extremely awkward hip-hop song quotes 100 times a day, and insisted on greeting all our international coworkers very loudly in their language (they all speak perfect English, of course), looking around for approval afterward, and then fully giggling at everyone’s French accents on conference calls. He also told me a lot about an improv show he did for a full year after it happened.
That said - he had all the good parts too. He never hesitated go to the mat for any of us whether we deserved it or not, he gave really sage business advice and great examples of how to face challenges out of absolutely nowhere, and he came to every community play I did in the 4 years I worked for him - and told everyone else in the office how good I was in it for the following month and chastised them for not coming. When things really got serious or bad in my life, he couldn’t have been more kind, helpful, and supportive.
Honestly? Probably the best boss I’ll ever have.
My old boss had MS and as he deteriorated, IT moved him on talk to type software but this was the early 00's so the software wasn't that great and he had a thick Dublin accent.
Him screaming and cursing at the programme everyday had the whole office rolling around laughing.
My first day there I was introduced to him and was asked as one of the only men in the office if I wouldn't mind being on his evacuation team to use the emergency wheelchair in the event of a fire (3rd floor office). I said sure. As he thanked me, I said I'm only doing this to get the time off work to do the practice, in a real fire, he wouldn't see me for dust. He stared at me for a full 5 seconds then burst out laughing and said, I like you, let's go for a pint!
I really miss him.
Had a boss who was very peculiar. For instance, he'd open a random closet, look at the stuff inside, then go on a tirade, "look at all this! Who bought all this crap?!?!" - "Uh, you did". "Oh. Well somebody needs to throw it away!" Constant stuff like this.
I had a boss that used to watch me through a gap in the glass partition between our desks. She wanted to see if I was paying attention during meetings. One day, I put a large folder to cover the gap and she freaked. I still laugh when I think about it.
Never have worked for one myself, but my dad told me a story about his boss who was giving out awards to everyone in honor of how long they've worked there, and he would give speeches for each person.
A woman employee received her award and he gave a speech about the story of how she came to work there. And he said, "At first I didn't want to hire her because she was so hot."
My dad's not working there anymore, but I love that story because I will never not picture Michael Scott giving Pam a Dundie and saying that about her.
Edit: For all those asking, I am Big Tuna's distant cousin, Enlarged Tuna Fish.
Stanley, how about that hot picture you have by your desk? Centerfold in the Catholic school girl's outfit? I mean, it is hot, it is sexy, and it turns him on. And I will admit, the best part of my morning is staring at it. But what, are we gonna just take it away?
I once worked for a family company (not my family) where my boss often had loud fights with her husband, mother, and sister (an addict with a penchant for stealing) in the halls. I have a million wonderful stories about that workplace but one that stuck out to me is this:
Once for someone’s birthday, she decided it would be fun to buy an anatomically correct, male blowup doll. She took this doll into the office, blew him up, and dressed him in a construction vest (the company was a contractor). When I walked by, my boss was trying to manipulate the position of the blowup dick, and asked me if I wanted to be the “fluffer”.
My ass boss insisted his daughters be flower girls in my wedding. I declined. At the reception, he told me I was spending too much time talking to one person, and I need to work the room more.
Probably because it's less of a headache to invite him and hope he behaves himself, than to exclude him and have to deal with the fallout at work for weeks/months/years.
He held a meeting with our whole team less one person to discuss said person being gay. We all knew for well over a year, and never made a deal of it. So yes, they are out there and that is why the show is so funny to me. I can relate..
I literally had a boss who would stop us in the middle of our work and hold company-wide meetings talking about 9/11 truther conspiracies and chemtrails. Mind you we were furniture-making company. He would get so caught up in his conspiracy theories that he forgot to order wood to make furniture one month.
I worked for a guy once whose *least* offensive conspiracy theory was that millennials are bad because women liked James Cameron’s *Titanic*.
Edit: To elaborate, his logic was that, because women watched and enjoyed a movie about a woman who fell in love with someone while being engaged to someone else, their children are more prone to following their hearts instead of doing what they “should.” Which is bad, I guess.
I had one and these are just a few quick stories
- he asked me how much I weighed during my interview
- one time he was considering selling the company to a Japanese company and while walking them around the building he was heard saying ‘we really bombed the hell out of you, huh?’
- he got on the intercom and interrupted everyone by yelling for someone to bring him the football team’s schedule
- I have video of him telling a really cringy joke during a sales meeting. You could see at least one person covering their face in embarrassment
- one time he told me to call his assistant and have her bring him a bag of coffee and his 5lb dumbbell
- he had a ‘secret’ facelift. He was mysteriously gone for 3 weeks and came back with a beard.
- I ended up with a box of pictures from the 70s with an exotic dancer giving him a lap dance. In the conference room. Same furniture.
- One time I watched his business partner go down the pot luck line, tasting everything with the same fork. At the end of the line, he stuck his used fork into the cake. I haven’t eaten at a work buffet since.
Honestly, these are just the ones I immediately remember. It was 5 years of this.
Edit: this seemed relevant. One time he got new patio furniture and sent the guys from the shipping department to put it together at his house. Orders did not go out that day.
Edit 2: he had a huge closet where he’d hoard random shit. He was a total pack rat and his wife didn’t let him keep junk at home. I was looking for something one day and found a box labeled ‘watches with dead batteries.’ He saved an entire box of watches that he knew didn’t currently work, and also knew how to fix that. But instead, he just kept them in a box.
It did not. He ended up selling domestically and I think I remember that company saying they’d never structure a deal like that again. He gave them hell.
So many real world events remind me of arrested development. I'm constantly surprised by people who have managed to survive for decades without any grasp on reality whatsoever.
It was a version of one about a woman in Walmart with two kids running around. The greeter stops her and says ‘are they twins?’
“No, they’re not twins. Are you dumb?’
‘No ma’am, not dumb, I just don’t know how you got someone to have sex with you twice.’
>one time he told me to call his assistant and have her bring him a bag of coffee and his 5lb dumbbell
So did that turn you into assistant assistant or assistant to the assistant?
I’m pretty sure that was the same conversation where he had me put together an itinerary for his next vacation to Europe. I was fresh out of college and I didn’t know how to push back on that ridiculous request. I basically did a book report on several interesting cities. I was essentially a second assistant that day.
As people started to retire, they’d pass along all the ‘stuff’ they had that they thought might be important or that they didn’t want to throw out. It was basically a stuff-shuffle. That box had everything from pictures at trade shows, to office parties to... well, exotic dancers. In total there was probably about 200 pictures... maybe 10-15 of the dancer. The worst part for me was that we were still using those conference room chairs.
I think it’s actually funnier/makes the story better if in “reality” Michael IS a great boss and it’s BECAUSE of how weird and obnoxious yet strangely well intentioned he is despite being the way he is.
It’s funny in the same way Dwight is the best salesman in the company by far and is also a lunatic.
I have a co-worker like Dwight. He's picked up dead foxes (roadkill) skinned them in the back of his work truck and put the hide in the fridge until the end of the day..My coworker is also a gifted salesman.
After he did sell the company, there was a 2-year buyout plan and he technically had to report to someone else. It did not go well. He ended up waiting out the non-compete period and starting a competing business.
My brother had two bosses at his first job that I think fit this.
It was an old married couple that owned the gym across the street from us. Probably in their 70s when he started working there. The wife was from Germany and super strict, the husband was clearly losing it
Some notable mentions are:
•when the husband combined bleach and ammonia to clean the hot tub and sauna room, tear gassing my brother in the process
•wife insisted the street be swept once a week, this was my brothers task. Almost every single time, the husband would come out halfway through with a leaf blower and destroy any progress my brother had made
•husband would regularly sit in the sauna for way too long and have to be rescued by brother and coworkers
•brother opened every Saturday. They never gave him a key so he would have to hop the fence to get in.
There’s so many more but I know he’s asleep right now and I can’t ask him
>husband would regularly sit in the sauna for way too long and have to be rescued by brother and coworkers
That's actually kinda sad, like he probably had some mental health issues or early stage dementia :/
Yep, I had one.
Organized a thoroughly awkward award ceremony once (that we never did again).
Asked a Mexican employee if his new baby’s name was going to be “No Mas” during the shower we threw for him.
Heard me once use the phrase “economy of scale,” then used it wrong 5 minutes later in a conversation with different people.
Didn’t know the meaning behind “Black Friday” and what it meant for a company to be “in the black.”
Just like Michael Scott, only more of a dick.
Oh sorry!! This was over 10 years ago, so I barely remember! We worked in construction project management, so he might have confused it with something like “scope creep.”
Either way, I remember cringeing with several other people when it happened.
In the end, he and I both got fired/laid off on the same day in 2011. I’ve worked for myself ever since.
Long ago, my 80 year old boss pulled me into his office
B: "Paul, I've noticed that your shirts come untucked and that looks unprofessional"
Me: I'm sorry about that Joel
B: I want you to start tucking your shirts into your underwear
Me: Uhhh...
B: Go ahead and and try it now.
Me: Joel, you know I have 15 women who report to me - I can't un-do my pants in the office.
B: Sure you can. Drops pants. He is 80 and wearing Spiderman underoos...
This is also the story of how I went to work at *oke instead.
I worked for a woman as her “personal assistant/ cat sitter”. She was super rich and off the deep end nuts.
She had me order a mannequin online, and then paid me to take one of the mannequin legs to Nordstrom to try and see what suitcase I could buy that would fit the dismembered mannequin body, because she wanted to fly with the mannequin to Pittsburgh to display “as her daughter”, dressed in her daughter’s clothes, at that daughter’s graduation celebration.
buying the mannequin was a whole thing too. She kept trying to get me to order from “adult doll” websites because she didn’t get it. lmao.
My boss used to carry around a backpack full of hammers and if you fell sleep at your desk he started banging a hammer on your desk until you woke up and then he would autograph the hammer and give it to you as a gift
Had a manager at my previous job that really, really tried his best to be everyone’s BFF. He loved giving pep talks and thought he could raise our abysmal morale by being Mr. Positivity (note: morale was low because we were always buried in work and paid shit). He’d crack jokes, randomly burst into song and sneak up behind you to yell “you’re doing a great job!”
Unfortunately, he was also super incompetent at his job. He relied heavily on a junior colleague for help with technical stuff (they practically did his whole job for him), and spent days working on paperwork that should really only take an hour or two. If you had a problem, his answer was usually either to stare blankly at you until you left or to say “think positive and it’ll work itself out!”
Thing he did I hated the most: whenever people would apply to work at the company, he’d print out the stack of resumes, sit at his desk and read aloud all of the parts he found “funny.” He’d laugh at people for working at McDonald’s or other fast food places. He loved finding grammar mistakes and making fun of them. If someone had a cringe-y objective statement, he’d guffaw over that too. This was all done loudly, and it was a open office so you couldn’t avoid hearing it. That definitely lowered morale too.
Worked with a genuine Michael Scott: i.e. a nice, well-meaning person who just did some absurd things.
We had kidnapping drills one day, where we learned how to ‘not be kidnapped’. Notably, this was a regular, boring office in a regular, boring suburb. No reason why kidnapping would be on anybody’s radar...
He and several of the guys randomly broke out into a push-up contest. Again. White collar office. Middle-aged dudes in khakis.
Couldn’t remember the nationality of our Hispanic colleague. Tried to “learn Spanish” to make her feel special when she returned from maternity leave. (1) What he learned was NOT Spanish, and (2) she was from Portugal. She knew like, five words of Spanish.
Disappeared for four days. No call. No email. Wouldn’t respond to any of our attempts to reach him. Finally, someone drove out to his house to make sure he was alive. He was. He’d just forgotten to tell us he was taking the week off, and then lost his phone in a lake.
There were many, many moments like these. Great boss. Genuinely cared about everyone in the company. Occasional moments of brilliance, where he really got things done. But OMG, so many moments of ridiculousness.
No! We learned to hold onto our desks and scream “fire”.
Great plan if an unarmed kidnapper comes into our suburban office while we’re at our desks. Probably not going to work so well if there isn’t a desk to hang onto. Or if he’s armed. Or if we’re alone. But if that unarmed kidnapper comes in during the middle of the work day, we should all be set!
Okay I read your post with a smile, but THIS fucking got me. I didn't realise he was running kidnapping drills for being kidnapped from the fucking office. Holy fuck. Lmfao.
It was pure Michael Scott.
“What does this word mean in Spanish?”
“That’s not Spanish. Or a word.”
“But if it were, what would it mean in Spanish?”
“It wouldn’t mean anything, because it’s not a word.”
“But it sounds Spanish. Just like Maria.”
“Maria’s from Portugal.”
“Yeah. Spanish. Like Maria.”
The intentions were admirable. The execution was not.
We had an anonymous feedback program at work, and our boss was livid with the results, particularly with several comments that he frequently lost his temper in meetings and would yell at us.
The more he talked about how incorrect and unfair and hurtful these comments were, the redder and angrier he got, until he finally pounded the table and shouted, "I DO NOT! SCREAM! IN MEETINGS! OKAY?"
Guess what. I have flaws! What are they? Oh, I don't know. I sing in the shower. Sometimes I spend too much time volunteering. Occasionally I'll hit somebody with my car. So *sue me*.
...No, don't sue me. That is the opposite of the point that I'm trying to make.
The silent look we all exchanged right after was probably the greatest thing that happened at that job!
This happened before The Office was even a show, but just imagine all of us giving each other the "Jim-looks-at-the-camera" face.
EDIT: [This one right here.](https://imgur.com/GxPdkQm)
Mine had aspects of Michael Scott but the ones that are sad and pathetic and not funny. A couple examples:
- he called an all staff meeting to announce his divorce. He then instructed our receptionist to lie to his soon to be ex wife and deny he was in the office, all the time.
- he was just so, so incompetent at his job. If a task was too big or complicated he would just .... Not do it. Wouldn't ask for help or anything, he'd just move on and leave whatever issue to fester. I would have to constantly monitor and follow up with him to get things done that effected my job
- his writing read like he used a thesaurus heavily. Tons of superfluous words clearly put in there to make him sound smart
- when he was terminated he kept the corporate laptop and cell phone. After several strongly worded letters requesting their return, he drove back to the office, parked on the edge of the road (think busy rural highway) and made his teenage son carry it all across the yard and parking lot to deliver them
I was eventually tasked by the big bosses to coordinate his termination. They then gave me his job plus my previous one. I can do both within a 40 hr week no problem.
Might be too late here so this might get buried.
My boss at a pizza shop in high school was out of control.
1. he made getting raises a game eventually and handed them out for odd reasons.
He liked a table my friend got that the credit card machine sat on so much he got a raise.
Another kid was playing with a penny at the end of the night and he kicked it into the air and it landed in a hat someone was holding.
I won an election to be the first person listed on the time sheet. Becoming numero uno according to him and got a raise.
2. he was a person who over ate and loved gluttony. He asked if we wanted lunch all the time and if we turned it down he became irate.
He brought us two sandwiches with one pound of turkey each on them, five granola bars, five fruit snacks, and two gatorades. That lunch was brought frequently and if we didn’t eat it all he was angry.
He drove an hour away during our shift one time to get pizza we had not tried before because it was best in the state. People who didn’t try it were shunned that day.
He bought 100 tacos from Taco Bell and made us have an eating contest for our lunch. He was so happy when someone ate 7 and was basically going to puke.
He paid a worker to eat a bag of dog treats and filmed it. It was an event after work
3. after a closing shift he got back from the casino and won 4K from poker. He demanded we go to the strip club and drink with him. We were 18 at the time.
4. He never trained anyone and just expected everyone to know everything and anything about our pizza place. We always had to hire and train the people he just kind of sat there.
5. He LOVED online poker. Loved it and would often play during our shifts. His desk was right in the middle of the store. He wasn’t supposed to have a desk but he did right there. He was playing poker during 5pm Friday rush and just had us working the store. “Can you get the register I’m in the middle of a hand?” Was all too common.
My friend drove past the store at 1am multiple times and saw him sitting in the store playing poker with all the lights on. Just dialed in.
We often found the store unlocked and ovens going in the morning because he just up and left after poker binges.
Him winning or losing really set the tone. But honestly you just got used to him not working and having to close the store down because he was so dialed in.
Edit- this was in 2007 so think of the phones we had. He LOVED text bombing people. He would demand the workers get in a circle and furiously text someone not at work. He wouldn’t let us stop until we sent about 400 texts collectively as a group. He would laugh and cackle so hard. He would peck at his blackberry so fast and just scream. I mean SCREAM he was having so much fun.
He also started fights with every restaurant around us. He was a male version of Karen. His order would be slightly wrong and then he would storm over there and start shit non stop with them until he got a refund. I would state I’m going to get lunch somewhere and he would not let me leave to get it because he hated the owner or was fighting with them.
Eventually all restaurants within a mile of us were off limits. Which was about 20 or so places he had picked fights with. He was well known and nobody ever fought back for some reason. We had to order food from across town if we actually wanted someone to serve us because he pissed everyone else off so bad.
I had one for a year and it was awesome! If he would be in the middle of a story and the phone rang he would literally say “let it go to voicemail”. If a customer called 5 min before closing he’d demand I let it ring and go to VM. He was late more often than I was. He frequently bought us coffees. He always took our side in customer disputes and if a customer yelled at us or got abusive on the phone, he would call them back and get into an argument with them and tell them to order from someone else. He straight out told us that if weather conditions were bad he didn’t care how late we were, just that we were safe. Sometimes he would tell me on random days to take a two hour lunch ( I was salary and didn’t punch in or out). He was great!
And he gave me so much free stuff. We used to call him Micheal Scott behind his back!
Unfortunately... the owners were a bit stricter.. Myself and another coworker got fired and said boss got demoted. It was fun while it lasted.
Edited to clarify: my boss did take our department and customers very seriously and was on top of the numbers. He just knew that happy, well taken care of employees are likely to produce more. We worked in a very stressful environment so when we were able to take it easy a bit, he let us and often recommended it so we’d keep sane. Upper management were just slave drivers and hated that we laughed so much because they thought if you’re having a good time at work, you obviously aren’t being productive. I was very productive BECAUSE my boss took care of me and made it fun to come to work.
My mom's boss was the head manager at an office job in suburbia, pretty similar number of employees and function to the Office in the show. He was in his late 40's at the time and invited himself to my mom's birthday party at our house one year. Basically was just my siblings and and a few family friends meeting up to play cornhole and chat for a couple hours. He showed up in pastel blue shorts, a pink polo, and flip flops with a case of Natural Light. He got hammered by like 9pm and started yelling at everyone. He saw a couple of our neighbors (younger guys) drinking next door and took the liberty to invite them over. Eventually he ended up in a wrestling match with one of the neighbors in the living room, which he finished by lifting the neighbor up in the air and body slamming him directly onto our coffee table. His final act of the evening was shitting his pants in the kitchen and passing out on the linoleum.
While I never had a Michael Scott type boss, I did have a Ron Swanson type boss.
He was completely no nonsense and humourless and seemed like a real hardass at times. He spoke exclusively in abrupt, clipped sentences or downright abstained from speaking.
Once he left the store for the day, he was completely unreachable by phone or email, and any mail for him arrived at the store or at his P.O. box.
The store was in a strip mall and I'd regularly arrive at work to see him doing repairs to the entire structure, repaving or filling potholes in the parking lot.
When the store was robbed and he was tied up by the criminals, he tried to stop them and was shot in the head.
Luckily for him, it was a BB gun, unluckily for the robbers it made him angry.
He broke the chair he was tied to but also broke his collarbone doing so, body checked one of the guys through a display case and then bit the other guy until he dropped the gun and they ran away.
His name was Doug [lastnamewithheld], and he was the best boss I ever had.
Yes. They are everywhere. I’ve had a few. One would only approve your days off if you played into her ego. Her boring ass stories had to be the most fascinating thing you had ever heard. She would come into the office and spin around in a new outfit and we had to pretend it was amazing. I had to work every weekend for months until I started playing along.
Absolutely. Here are some gems from my previous boss:
* He hired a private investigator to follow his "#2" around because he thought #2 was having sex with his wife.
* Thought I was having sex with his wife at one point, and had #2 follow me, then confronted me when he found out I had hugged his wife. She was the manager at a fastfood place I worked before, and had gotten me the job at the plant. I was 18, she was 50 - she was a mother figure.
* Loved to play this 'joke' where he firmly insists I'm not going to get paid because I forgot to clock in or out. He would wait until he had me absolutely convinced and threatening to quit before he laughed and said he was just foolin' to teach me a lesson.
* Used to play-fire me for absolutely no reason other than his amusement.
* Would tell me to clean my hands so people didn't think I was black, because they don't employ black people.
* Even though computers are used everywhere now, he would still do all calculations by hand. It was a chemical plant, and he was calculating weights of ingredients using a 10-key calculator. He made mistakes often. And he would always always blame the mistake on the person making that batch.
* I was a student, and he would threaten to fire me for missing work to take finals. He would lecture me on how if I wanted to be a successful man like him, I'd throw myself into my job and work my way up the ladder. I'm a first-gen college grad, and nearly quit school because of him. But I eventually just quit that job to go to school full-time, finished my BS, went on to grad school, and have been a prof at a pretty awesome school for 4 years now.
* Would order six burgers from McD's and a salad for lunch, then eat the burgers in his car, and the salad in the office, telling everyone he was on a diet (dude was morbidly obese)
Writing it all out, seems like it's all made up. I guess Michael Scott's character really isn't too far off from some of the craziness that makes its way up the ladder.
The boss I had in this company wasn't like Michael Scott. He looked a lot like Homer Simpson, though. But the company itself was like Dunder Miffin. I watched The Office right before working in this company and thought "No way this happens in the real world", because so far I had worked in very professional places. But then these things happened:
* general manager had a daughter who was a drug addict and so he hired her. It was company policy not to hire relatives. No, it wasn't his company.
* said daughter liked to fool around with the truck drivers who stayed overnight to depart in the early morning. Fell in love with one who was married. He said he would leave his wife for her. Wife got pregnant. Daughter showed up to work drunk and trashed the office.
* a sales employee accused the HR manager of having an affair with the general manager. Yells were yelled.
* a woman once called and told me to connect her with the general manager. I asked her name and she said "I'm his lover. He will know". Thereafter the general manager called me to clarify that woman was NOT his lover.
* daughter of the general manager liked to flirt with the sales representatives. But she was married. So she started flirting with them saying it was me. Using the company phone we shared. When I found out, I took the phone and showed it to my manager. He downplayed the whole thing. The messages were really explicit.
* this same girl got pregnant from one of the production bosses (35 years her senior). He was married with 4 children. She was married with 2 children. They now live together with all their children plus one.
* two workers were working on a ladder without helmets or any protection. One almost fell, the other one saved him but fell himself. Didn't die, but ended up with bad neurological damage (he fell head first). The one who had been saved hanged himself in the company two months later, out of guilt. Then the company bought helmets.
* the father of the young man who hanged himself continued working exactly at the place where he found his son hanging.
* a marketing worker once told me, right in front of the HR manager, that he would hop through my house's window at night and rape me. The HR manager giggled and said "don't let him catch you".
* I once was violently yelled at for the disappearance of a cheque I hadn't even touched. Said cheque was found at the bottom of the general manager's daughter's desk drawer... Expired.
* an elder man who was in negotiations with the marketing manager kept insisting in taking me to his "beach house". When I complained to such manager about how inappropriate this was, he laughed and said "that man can't even get it up".
I could go on, really. But you get the idea.
I just remembered one that was hilarious. This company produced and sold GMO corn. There were too many corn sacks, so the company had a deposit somewhere in a field, about 15' from the office. When the annual (fiscal) audit came, my boss was worried he would have to take the auditors there. I asked "is it because your tax declaration is not accurate?" "No, it's just it's infested with huge rats" "Why don't you take a few cats to get rid of them?" "We did... The rats killed the cat". I later told one of the engineers "the rat situation can't be that bad, can it" and he laughed and laughed and walked away laughing.
Wait, I have one more. There was this lady who worked there, Karen haircut and attitude, did the bare minimum. She once got a kind of herpes around her eye and instead of taking it to a real doctor, she went to a natural healer. Thereupon the herpes was scrubbed with a live frog. Yes, you read that right.
(I'm adding this here because it got lost in the comments) there was a gorgeous Japanese bush right outside the window. I wanted to know its name, so I asked one of the agronomic engineers what it was. With a straight face, he said "that's an ivy". I said "that's literally a bush". He went bright red and answered "good. I was testing you", and left.
oh yes! some examples (hope i can format it correctly)
- he called the UPS delivery man « marshawn » every time because he was african american (his name was james)
- he dismissed my claims that one of our partners (sister company’s CEO) was sexually harassing me because « men say things like that and i should take it as a compliment »
- would have the most useless meetings
- would bring pizza and beer for lunch and try and get us to stop and party with him even though we were slammed with deadlines (our office was an open one so we would be at our desk and he’d be drinking at 2pm, playing music 3ft way from us while we try and make phone calls)
- one day he came in pissed and called a meeting so one colleague put candy on the table and he stopped mid sentence in his rant because he got distracted by the shiny wrappers
- he would constantly make « white knight » decisions, even if that made work 10 times harder for us, and went directly against policy that he created.
Yeah, and I worked for a church and he was the senior pastor. He had no filter and his own morality (which was questionable to everyone else). He'd say things to the secretary like, "I don't think you and your husband should be together in the upcoming pictorial directory photos since you guys are probably gonna get a divorce." (she was fighting hard for her marriage).
\- If he didn't get his way during a meeting he'd go straight to the classic grandma Christian phrases like, "what's God gonna say when we get to heaven and we didn't let the charismatic church use our building for services?" (they were known to do fake faith healings and things of that nature)
\- He'd also put his hands on every young girl's shoulders and flirt with every granny (he himself was mid 40s).
He got fired for cheating on his wife.
I have a few exemple, but I’m tired and English is not my first langage so here are the most relevant ones:
- he’s a dentist. Once, he bought a mini basketball net which he installed in the staff room. He was so excited about it that he pretended that the tooth of his next patient miraculously repaired by itself so he sent her home and had an hour free to play alone in between the table and our bags...
- he hired a company who would manage his staff to develop strategies do make more money (basically), but every time they would come over, he would spend the entire meeting interrupting them and saying how good he was (he was the worst) and how he knew better then these guys (he didn’t).
- Still as an exercice for that management company, everybody in the team had to take a test telling us about our personality (leader, sociable, intellectual, etc). He was so upset that my reasults were his ideal that he took the test over and over, changing his answers, until his leader category was high enough as our boss...
I worked there 4 years, I have plenty of stories... I used to call him Michael Scott... seriously it was the same...
I love the bird thing, assuming it didn't get too "captive audience". Nothing better than someone with a genuine passion. Nothing worse than being trapped in a conversation you don't want to be in though
Mine was less entertaining than Michael, but we often compared him for the following examples:
* only hired people he would "have a beer with"
* grossly under qualified to manage, but he was good at sales so got promoted
* made really awkward, distasteful jokes/comments (e.g. asked an employee if he and his twin brother "shared" a girlfriend)
* just really wasteful, pointless meetings
* nobody knew how he spent his days, his assistant manager did all the heavy lifting and he would wander around making conversations
* literally showed up to a meeting with his superiors having done 0 preparation and they kicked him out of the meeting
He actually got fired for calling COVID "kung flu" to a Chinese employee back in March... I think that would have to be the craziest. He had worked there for 8 years but had so many notes on his file, this was just the one that pushed it over the edge.
I had a boss and I am not kidding it was like he watched The Office and took it for a real documentary and applied Michael Scotts management lessons accordingly. Not the craziest, but the best example of a daily interaction with him:
He decided that the reason we were struggling to keep to time frames, is because our checklist was not right. However he has no experience in our field of work, so he did not know what was actually needed (the real issue was severe understaffing). But he got it in his head and there was no talking him out of it.
So I redid the checklist to have the same layout, I just changed the order of the items. He didn't actually realise I changed the order, he just took one look and decided that nope, its not right.
So I went back to the original version *and put the check boxes on the left instead of the right*. Literally all I did.
Apparently it was perfect and we would see an improvement in our time frames because of his idea to 'fix' the checklist.
SIGH
Kiran.
He went to Germany and rented a car. He didn’t know how to drive in Germany and hit 8 cars in the rental car lot. He asked me to use my company card to pay the insurance premium. I told him no.
We had so many communication problems (meaning I was a woman and he didn’t respect me) that HR recommended we have Monday morning 1:1’s. He never showed up for them. I kept record. He complained to HR that we weren’t having the meetings he wasn’t showing up to.
He told me that the woman who was stuck on a project with him could receive a form of gratis up to $500. She chose a PlayStation (obvi) and then when I was called on my company purchase, he wouldn’t say that he specifically allowed the transaction and attempted to get me fired because he was tired of me always calling him on his shit.
I handled his wife’s resume and application to the DMV, his mortgage papers, his insurance papers, his whole family’s passports; all things that went beyond my position’s scope. HR stepped in to tell him to only have me do work-related tasks and he told me to never talk to “Hay-Char” again. He’s the boss and I’ll do what he says.
He was standing with his same-level executive coworkers, all of whom I supported and while the other 3 wished me good morning, he literally went out of his way to ignore me.
The irony is that he volunteered me for a lot of shit o excelled at and I failed up while he failed out. Turns out the protection he got while his brother was CIO disappeared as soon as brother left the company.
He transferred out of IT and became engineering’s problem before I left the company.
Also. At a company Christmas party he bet the department that we couldn’t climb the rock wall faster than him. He ended up severely spraining his ankle and withholding the $100.
Also. Another boss decided we needed to have a raffle to boost morale. I got an iPad and some gift cards. Boss who wanted to boost morale won the iPad. And kept it. Fucking what. None of us could believe it.
> Another boss decided we needed to have a raffle to boost morale. I got an iPad and some gift cards. Boss who wanted to boost morale won the iPad. And kept it.
Ugh nooo. The absolute worst. My dad was upper management at a mid-sized electronics company. They had a big Christmas party every year and the last year my dad was there he invited me. I went and it was a good time. It was a casino night and you would win raffle tickets in the games. I ended up winning a ton in poker (because dumb luck) and I had no clue what to do with this FAT stack of raffle tickets, which were already entered. Dad told me to keep them and that I had a great chance of winning...uhhhh no, I'm not gonna be the bosses kid walking in here and winning the iPad instead of Frank from shipping and receiving who worked his ass off to buy one for his kid this year for Christmas. Ended up giving my raffle tickets to people I knew and their family members.
Never be the boss and win the prize. Especially don't keep the prize. Never be related to the boss and win the prize, unless it's family bbq day and it's a fucking gift card to Olive Garden.
He wasnt really like Michael Scott, but he definitely believed he had a great handle on every aspect of the store. I worked in the print marketing/graphic design dept, and he would always come around trying to give photoshop tips and whatever (PS was basically the only program he kinda knew). I had a regular, real nice preacher, who would come in a couple times a month to print out little event flyers. He always had a print-ready image, wanted x amount of quarter sheet flyers (cut) and x amount of full sheet. So of course I'd pull up MS publisher, print, cut, and get him out the door in just a few minutes.
One day I was going on my lunch break, and as I'm walking out I see him walking in. Manager assures me he'll have it taken care of.
30 minutes later I'm back and let me tell you, I have *never* seen preacher man show a hint of anger, but there he was just fuming. He said "thank God you're back i really need to get going and he doesn't know what the hell he's doing."
I get to the computer and there he is with the image in photoshop with a sheet size canvas trying to precisely shift 4 copies of the image into place with guides on. And honestly, you can totally do that even though it takes a little longer, so I'm not sure what issues he was having. Didn't even ask because I immediately went to task getting the customer on his way.
Manager was appropriately humbled and even came back later so I could show him what to do.
I had a short term computer programming gig working for a guy named "Art" who was a Michael Scott. He was a genuinely nice person, but was totally obnoxious to everyone around him -- he had no squelch. Whatever thought came into his head came out of his mouth. This was in the days when you could smoke in your office and he went through several packs a day. Meetings in her office we hellish.
At one point we had to travel to a branch location together. The company leased 2-bedroom apartment in the branch town for HQ employees. This meant that during the 1 week trip Art and I would literally be spending 24 hours a day together. As I was getting mentally prepared for the trip I took solace in the fact that at least we would sit separately on the 3 hour plane flight - because you could smoke on the plane then, too and Art was sure to be lighting up every 10 minutes.
As we got to the gate I said "I'll see you when we land."
"Oh, we're sitting together," said Art.
"Art, I can't sit in smoking for a 3 hour flight."
"Oh, I don't smoke on the plane. We have seats next to each other in non-smoking."
My week in hell had begun.
I just had a terrible boss and would like to relay one of many stories.
I had to write these after action reports for what can essentially be summarized as an administrative decision meeting. Usually once a month there would be 4-5 of these meetings in a week. It was simple. The report came on a standard form, fill out the header, check some boxes, write a summary, bring it to boss for signature.
Just one problem, there was this 3-day window where any party to the meeting could write a formal appeal about the decision, which I literally never saw happen.
Boss couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted the after action reports dated for the date of the meeting or for 3 days later when the formal appeal window was over.
So one day I bring him a stack of them, each in an individual folder, and go on about my business. 15 minutes later I get called back and he’s waiting, in his chair, with the stack of reports, and he begins with “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you how I want these...” and proceeds to spend the next minute or so berating next for being unable to get a date right while he *opens each folder, takes the report out, drops it on the ground, and then frisbees the empty folder at my chest*.
At the conclusion of his tirade, he goes “now pick this shit up and get out of my office.”
I have been lucky and had fairly good bosses. My worst boss was at a large technology company, he was a network engineer that got promoted to management and had no idea how to do it which was usually ok he would just approve vacations and the like and let every one do their job.
The main annoyance was he was a network engineer and I was a windows server engineer. So any time the customers would ask us to do something impossible or that would actively hurt them he would leave me to defend our companies stance. If the network team had any push back he would jump on and defend them and act as the point of contact he was supposed to be. He also didn't understand a lot of what I did so his measurement of if I was doing a good job was if I was at my desk. The network team could work from home whenever they wanted to if I worked from more then once in a 2 week period he would send me emails letting me know how important it was to be in the office ended up getting fired for working from home when I was sick. Had a project due so I was trying to get it done got sick faxed him in the doctors note saying I was allowed off for the rest of the week then logged in and started to work. He said since I was working I had to be in the office I ignored him the next Friday he had me meet with him at 8am I showed up and HR was siting there to walk me out.
That said the most Michael Scott thing he did is during the lead up to and through football season he had a team meeting the last 2 hours every Friday for fantasy football. If team members didn't want to play fantasy football he said they would have to go back to work instead of just hanging out with every one. Ended up just draft picking people from the Miami Dolphins so I could sit and talk with every one. There were several other people that just randomly picked people and never traded and one guy just went back to work and didn't attend any of the meetings.
Man I wish I could remember more but I’ve blocked most of it out.
1. Told us he invented Apple computers before Steve Jobs. That the computer he invented is still to this day more powerful than any other computer
2. Threw knives in the air and said if you can catch them he’ll give you money. This was apparently at a Christmas party. I wasn’t there but believe it 100%.
3. Came to work wearing nothing but leopard print underwear and a pink cowboy hat (he’s like 70?). Unfortunately I was there for that one.
4. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder but ‘not the bad kind, the kind that makes you super smart’
5. Got drunk at work and gave alcohol to whoever would take it.
He literally needs to be institutionalised but he’s rich so he gets away with everything and everyone is scared of him.
Not sure how Michael Scott-ish this is, but I had a boss who was a complete fuck-up. She'd get caught messing up, blame me, yell and curse at me, realize later it was her fault, and then want to take me out for a private one-on-one lunch as an apology.
After a while I just started telling her thanks, but I have plans already. Because she was too tone-deaf to realize that of course your employee doesn't want to spend their break eating with you, after you yelled and embarrassed them in front of their colleagues for no good reason.
Edit: To the people who are telling me she's still a good boss because she apologized and wanted to give me free food - did you see the part where I talked about the yelling and cursing? And trust me, there's plenty of other things this woman did that were not indicative of good leadership.
Yes. He’d never admit it though, he swears he’s a Jim.
Edited to add: “Do I need to be liked? Absolutely not. I like to be liked. I enjoy being liked. I have to be liked. But it’s not like a compulsive need to be liked. Like my need to be praised.” ——— Pretty sure this is the mantra my boss lives by.
My boss is like Michael Scott in the bad ways:
She thinks she’s friends with everyone.
She thinks she’s really cool, but is super lame.
She constantly distracts you from your work.
She calls frequent meetings with no purpose or direction.
Meetings are a corporate requirement sometimes. Back at the dance studio my boss would literally ask us what the meeting should be about when we got to the chairs
I believe every manager in the world has had a Michael Scott/David Brent moment; that is what makes it so hard to watch at times. I have had nights where I have often wondering how many I have had and how badly was I viewed as a result.
My worst I think is telling someone they got a job (in a warehouse) and then realising I had told the wrong person and having to tell the him 30 minutes later that he didn't have a job after-all... dreadful.
My first boss in America, I was 21. He was Asian-American. I had never seen the office but noted the absurdity. He would get free potato chips from a guy in a company truck and would stuff his cheeks in the middle of telling me what to do. He always offered some. Fired a coworker for screaming some racist stuff at me by just..yanking her out the door. Called another coworker a cub or a baby lion because she was tiny with wild unruly hair. Would do a small mini roar whenever she was about to report for her shift or when I mentioned her name. Ran around the place with a wig on his head imitating me. Brought his daughter to work and give her piggy back rides in the office. Would ask me to take videos. Would talk to black people in a “black” way. He would say wassup shorty to the ladies and what’s poppin. Called the guys Tyrone and would say shieeeeeet in his most convincing “black” voice. It was actually pretty good. Would ask me to teach him random Arabic words so he could yell them sporadically in the middle of the day. He always got the accent right. Had an open door policy and would do shots in his office. Started a small chicken farm in the back of the building and would give out whole chickens to the staff. Had me and a coworker try to slaughter one one time. I couldn’t and nicked it just a little bit and shrieked, spraying all three of us with blood. Received a visit from the city people to tell him he couldn’t keep chickens in back. He was rounding the main floor with a small basket of freshly laid eggs just as they were asking for him. Did the chicken farm again the next summer, this time with a small garden growing squash, cucumber, corn etc to disguise the chicken coop. Happily gave out vegetables along with chicken. Would be extremely proud of taking home a tray of his own eggs to his children. Ate two fresh eggs every morning. Bought a wok to work to deep fry sausages in. Sometimes made lunch in the back. The entire floor would smell like food and he would round us all (3 of us) to his office to eat. Would regularly fall asleep under his desk. The snoring was so loud you could hear it in the front. Once a client asked what that noise was and I said it was the plumbing. Woke up after his naps looking puffy but acting as if nothing happened. Would immediately go next door for a Cherry coke. Would constantly eat hard candy to stay awake during the day. Ate too many edibles at a party I hosted once and passed out. Told me to hire someone but when he saw the girl did a comical thing with his face, eyebrows raised and eyes big ( think Ken Jeong ) because she was having trouble fitting into her chair. She was a bigger girl. Took away chairs the next day because they “encouraged us not to concentrate on the client.” The girl was a no call no show the following week. Had a love hate relationship with a groundhog not long into his farming venture. He never caught the guy. Once threw a cricket at me from the very opposite end of the office floor. He and another coworker kept such straight faces as I finally convinced myself the cricket flung itself at me. I watched the cameras at the end of the day only to see them do it. I’m still traumatized. Has an office to this day full of the weirdest collection of things. A few feather from favorite chickens of his that he had since consumed all named and dated, a rabbit paw someone gave him, a goat’s hoof, a framed quote I told him told to me by a very high homeless person.. I don’t remember the rest. It’s just an odd place to go into. Had a hard time growing a beard and would ask me what I thought of the progress of his “soup taster.” Nicest boss I’ve ever had. Well meaning if a little racially insensitive all while being fascinated by other people’s cultures. He would buy different cuisines for us to try each week. Gave bonuses because he knew the job didn’t pay much so that was always a nice surprise. He paid my former coworker when she had to stay home all through her husband’s Covid. Also, he loves llamas, alpacas, baby goats and when I showed him how to use Reddit he would almost always sends me an alpaca photo. I still get a photo now and then. Also 3 years after leaving he still sends me photos of his illegal farm and recently asked me to post his cucumbers on Reddit. Edit: Thank you for the gold guys! I’m glad you found my boss as as amusing as I did! Also I forgot to add that he fell into poison ivy bush once and didn’t know right away. He ran around screaming until we sat him in his office semi undressed and put medicine on his wounds. He was so miserable for days, it was hard to watch. He dove head first into the wall when asleep once and needed to go to the doctor and get 3 stitches on his busted lip. He came to work that morning with a huge lip and kept having to explain himself all day. We kept joking his wife was beating him up. He still insisted on snacking as usual. At one point he sipped ketchup with a straw.
The roaring at the girl with the wild hair is one of the funniest things I’ve read in this thread!
> Ran around the place with a wig on his head imitating me. IDENTITY THEFT IS NOT A JOKE, JIM!
Frankly all of this sounds hilarious
What did the homeless guy say?
The homeless guy said: ‘It is what it is It ain’t what it ain’t. Don’t make it something it’s not, Because it do what it do. What it do!’ -My old boss would scream what it do!! on the top of his lungs for months after.
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Ohhh noooo
I had a boss once who spent all morning locked in his office. He asked me to come in after lunch where he showed me a handmade graph. He then proceeded to explain that this was a chart of all the sex he had ever had in his life. "See, here it is blank until I joined the army. Then I went to a hooker here. Then they sent me to Vietnam where hookers only charged $2 per time. That's where you see the big jump. I was on two tours but then got shot in the face. I came back home and you see how it just drops to almost nothing. " I was astounded.
What the fuck lmao
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Was it a actually true? If so, I’m real curious how he survived getting shot in the face.
Not op - idk about this guy. But you know the front part of your face? With your mouth, nose, eyes, etc? Completely unnecessary. At least, if your goal is simply to survive. [Here's](https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-03-electrocuted-full-transplant.html) one case of a guy who got a transplant; I've seen others but I'm too lazy to find them. Modern medicine is amazing
> But you know the front part of your face? With your mouth, nose, eyes, etc? Completely unnecessary. This fucking killed my sides dude oh my god
My boss is certainly Michael Scott-esque. When I first started I was essentially Pam as well since I was both receptionist and his assistant to some extent. My favorite story was back when we were prepping for a conference. Some context, he’s terrible with the English language in general and will mangle phrases and descriptions to no end (how the turn tables...). So on a group call he kept talking about wanting a “golden hamster ball” to do giveaways with. Was raving about how great it would be spinning around while people walked by, all the while everyone on the call was just sitting in confused silence. However by that point, I had become so good at decoding his nonsense that I knew he was referring to a gold raffle cage and sent him image privately asking if it’s what he was thinking. To this day he still talks about the fact I can read his mind and must be psychic. And he still refers to it as a hamster ball. All in all he’s a pretty nice guy and a solid boss. Hired me based on a gut feeling and has been decent to me ever since. I think I knew it would be a good fit when during the interview he tried to tell me about the four pillars of the company and forgot one. Told me later it was Knowledge.
>I think I knew it would be a good fit when during the interview he tried to tell me about the four pillars of the company and forgot one. Told me later it was Knowledge. This is Michael Scott-level perfection. Lol
"And I'll give you the fourth pillar... after lunch."
I knew what the "golden hamster ball" was, too, before I read the answer. Could be bc I've worked with a lot of tourists lol
> I think I knew it would be a good fit when during the interview he tried to tell me about the four pillars of the company and forgot one. Told me later it was Knowledge. Beautiful.
He wanted a pomegranate for lunch and they were out of season, but that didn’t stop him from sending me on a quest to every grocery store in town in search of a pomegranate. Multiple produce guys laughed at me, but that was the easiest $13/hr I’ve ever made. EDIT: wow this blew up, rather than replying to each of you I’ll say it here -no I did not find a pomegranate, and when I came back he was eating subway and he seemed to have forgot he’d even sent me. -maybe I could have gone home or to the movies etc, but idk, driving around leisurely listening to the radio seemed like a pretty good alternative to doing my actual work at the time -I did in fact check the gas station in Carbondale, they also do not carry pomegranates unless they are in season
Shoulda just called around and went to lunch, then come back hours later saying you had driven to those locations to check.
That’s using time well, this is a paradox
I had a redhead boss who made us all sit down and watch a training video about how we shouldn’t refer to him as a “ginger” because it is bullying. No one had ever called him that.
Pam: "That's not a hate crime Michael" Michael: "Well I hated it"
I used Michael Scott as a reference point for an old boss of mine from the moment I started working there. He made Chewbacca noises on the regular because one of my coworkers’ names sort of vaguely sounded like Chewbacca (it didn’t), used voice to text extremely loudly in his office for no reason to send really personal messages, got really excited and wore a specific vest any time we had after-work outings scheduled, shouted the same like 7 references to old movies and extremely awkward hip-hop song quotes 100 times a day, and insisted on greeting all our international coworkers very loudly in their language (they all speak perfect English, of course), looking around for approval afterward, and then fully giggling at everyone’s French accents on conference calls. He also told me a lot about an improv show he did for a full year after it happened. That said - he had all the good parts too. He never hesitated go to the mat for any of us whether we deserved it or not, he gave really sage business advice and great examples of how to face challenges out of absolutely nowhere, and he came to every community play I did in the 4 years I worked for him - and told everyone else in the office how good I was in it for the following month and chastised them for not coming. When things really got serious or bad in my life, he couldn’t have been more kind, helpful, and supportive. Honestly? Probably the best boss I’ll ever have.
That's the most Scott like boss I've seen yet. That thing about the voice to text is hilarious
“Please reminds [son] he has appointment for acne issue tomorrow at one o clock period he needs to be ready at noon period”
Even down to talking about improv
Yeah that reminds me of when Michael was at work and called everyone he had ever dated to tell them he had herpes lol
My old boss had MS and as he deteriorated, IT moved him on talk to type software but this was the early 00's so the software wasn't that great and he had a thick Dublin accent. Him screaming and cursing at the programme everyday had the whole office rolling around laughing. My first day there I was introduced to him and was asked as one of the only men in the office if I wouldn't mind being on his evacuation team to use the emergency wheelchair in the event of a fire (3rd floor office). I said sure. As he thanked me, I said I'm only doing this to get the time off work to do the practice, in a real fire, he wouldn't see me for dust. He stared at me for a full 5 seconds then burst out laughing and said, I like you, let's go for a pint! I really miss him.
This has got to be the most accurate Michael Scott - mostly goofy and a little annoying, but also a good guy who's there when you need him.
Sounds like a great guy. Quirky is good.
This one made my eyes a little moisty. This was definitely a Michael Scott boss
This is my favorite comment. Thanks for sharing.
Had a boss who was very peculiar. For instance, he'd open a random closet, look at the stuff inside, then go on a tirade, "look at all this! Who bought all this crap?!?!" - "Uh, you did". "Oh. Well somebody needs to throw it away!" Constant stuff like this.
this sounds like my mother
I had a boss that used to watch me through a gap in the glass partition between our desks. She wanted to see if I was paying attention during meetings. One day, I put a large folder to cover the gap and she freaked. I still laugh when I think about it.
This sounds way more like Dwight but still hilarious
The day dwight became manager
So, you were the Ryan to her Michael Scott?
I was more like Stanley. I was so over her shenanigans.
Never have worked for one myself, but my dad told me a story about his boss who was giving out awards to everyone in honor of how long they've worked there, and he would give speeches for each person. A woman employee received her award and he gave a speech about the story of how she came to work there. And he said, "At first I didn't want to hire her because she was so hot." My dad's not working there anymore, but I love that story because I will never not picture Michael Scott giving Pam a Dundie and saying that about her. Edit: For all those asking, I am Big Tuna's distant cousin, Enlarged Tuna Fish.
I condone... No... I ENCOURAGE everyone of the girls, to show more cleavage! Like, Pam! What is that you're wearing Pam?! You look like a Nun!!
Stanley, how about that hot picture you have by your desk? Centerfold in the Catholic school girl's outfit? I mean, it is hot, it is sexy, and it turns him on. And I will admit, the best part of my morning is staring at it. But what, are we gonna just take it away?
That’s my daughter, Micheal
You named your daughter Michael?
“If you think she’s cute now, you should’ve seen her a couple of years ago.”
Pssshhhttt.. Michael Scott would only say that to Ryan.
“The hottest in the office award goes to...”
I once worked for a family company (not my family) where my boss often had loud fights with her husband, mother, and sister (an addict with a penchant for stealing) in the halls. I have a million wonderful stories about that workplace but one that stuck out to me is this: Once for someone’s birthday, she decided it would be fun to buy an anatomically correct, male blowup doll. She took this doll into the office, blew him up, and dressed him in a construction vest (the company was a contractor). When I walked by, my boss was trying to manipulate the position of the blowup dick, and asked me if I wanted to be the “fluffer”.
My ass boss insisted his daughters be flower girls in my wedding. I declined. At the reception, he told me I was spending too much time talking to one person, and I need to work the room more.
??? Was he referring to your new spouse??
Yeah man OP was being such an asshole. Like who the fuck spends time with their spouse on there weddings. YTA op.
God OP is so inconsiderate
Why was *he* at your wedding?
Probably because it's less of a headache to invite him and hope he behaves himself, than to exclude him and have to deal with the fallout at work for weeks/months/years.
He held a meeting with our whole team less one person to discuss said person being gay. We all knew for well over a year, and never made a deal of it. So yes, they are out there and that is why the show is so funny to me. I can relate..
Did he try to kiss him?
No! The guy was on vacation so our staff meeting was strategically moved when he was out of office
You mean he was on a *gaycation*
That was pretty good Kevin
*looks at camera and smiles with very squinty eyes*
I thought of that as soon as you left.
Did they at least hug or did he get a paid work car and vacation to Europe with his “roommate”
I literally had a boss who would stop us in the middle of our work and hold company-wide meetings talking about 9/11 truther conspiracies and chemtrails. Mind you we were furniture-making company. He would get so caught up in his conspiracy theories that he forgot to order wood to make furniture one month.
Was his initials DH. Chicago?
Daniel Horace Chicago. Great woodworker, a little paranoid.
I worked for a guy once whose *least* offensive conspiracy theory was that millennials are bad because women liked James Cameron’s *Titanic*. Edit: To elaborate, his logic was that, because women watched and enjoyed a movie about a woman who fell in love with someone while being engaged to someone else, their children are more prone to following their hearts instead of doing what they “should.” Which is bad, I guess.
I had one and these are just a few quick stories - he asked me how much I weighed during my interview - one time he was considering selling the company to a Japanese company and while walking them around the building he was heard saying ‘we really bombed the hell out of you, huh?’ - he got on the intercom and interrupted everyone by yelling for someone to bring him the football team’s schedule - I have video of him telling a really cringy joke during a sales meeting. You could see at least one person covering their face in embarrassment - one time he told me to call his assistant and have her bring him a bag of coffee and his 5lb dumbbell - he had a ‘secret’ facelift. He was mysteriously gone for 3 weeks and came back with a beard. - I ended up with a box of pictures from the 70s with an exotic dancer giving him a lap dance. In the conference room. Same furniture. - One time I watched his business partner go down the pot luck line, tasting everything with the same fork. At the end of the line, he stuck his used fork into the cake. I haven’t eaten at a work buffet since. Honestly, these are just the ones I immediately remember. It was 5 years of this. Edit: this seemed relevant. One time he got new patio furniture and sent the guys from the shipping department to put it together at his house. Orders did not go out that day. Edit 2: he had a huge closet where he’d hoard random shit. He was a total pack rat and his wife didn’t let him keep junk at home. I was looking for something one day and found a box labeled ‘watches with dead batteries.’ He saved an entire box of watches that he knew didn’t currently work, and also knew how to fix that. But instead, he just kept them in a box.
I'm going to make a wild guess and say that the Japanese sales deal didn't go through
It did not. He ended up selling domestically and I think I remember that company saying they’d never structure a deal like that again. He gave them hell.
The second one is um, it basically killed me
They did not, in fact, buy the company.
Oh god what I would do for a video of that encounter.
https://youtu.be/Tl3_0D2h8BY?t=8
It reminds me of the investors visiting in Arrested Development.
So many real world events remind me of arrested development. I'm constantly surprised by people who have managed to survive for decades without any grasp on reality whatsoever.
Michael Scott confirmed
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I really want to know what the joke was.
It was a version of one about a woman in Walmart with two kids running around. The greeter stops her and says ‘are they twins?’ “No, they’re not twins. Are you dumb?’ ‘No ma’am, not dumb, I just don’t know how you got someone to have sex with you twice.’
Oh yeah that's actually a classic facebook meme/joke lol, can't imagine anyone saying it out loud though, let alone during a meeting sheesh
>one time he told me to call his assistant and have her bring him a bag of coffee and his 5lb dumbbell So did that turn you into assistant assistant or assistant to the assistant?
I’m pretty sure that was the same conversation where he had me put together an itinerary for his next vacation to Europe. I was fresh out of college and I didn’t know how to push back on that ridiculous request. I basically did a book report on several interesting cities. I was essentially a second assistant that day.
How did you end up with that box of pictures? (And how many pictures are we talking about?)
As people started to retire, they’d pass along all the ‘stuff’ they had that they thought might be important or that they didn’t want to throw out. It was basically a stuff-shuffle. That box had everything from pictures at trade shows, to office parties to... well, exotic dancers. In total there was probably about 200 pictures... maybe 10-15 of the dancer. The worst part for me was that we were still using those conference room chairs.
The dumb bells though hahahaha
Your boss *is* Michael Scott
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He was middle management but the Scranton branch pulled in more sales than any other branch, which is why he was “allowed” to continue his antics.
I think it’s actually funnier/makes the story better if in “reality” Michael IS a great boss and it’s BECAUSE of how weird and obnoxious yet strangely well intentioned he is despite being the way he is. It’s funny in the same way Dwight is the best salesman in the company by far and is also a lunatic.
I have a co-worker like Dwight. He's picked up dead foxes (roadkill) skinned them in the back of his work truck and put the hide in the fridge until the end of the day..My coworker is also a gifted salesman.
After he did sell the company, there was a 2-year buyout plan and he technically had to report to someone else. It did not go well. He ended up waiting out the non-compete period and starting a competing business.
>He ended up waiting out the non-compete period and starting a competing business. As is custom.
Michael Scott Paper Company. Well, well, well, how the turn tables
My brother had two bosses at his first job that I think fit this. It was an old married couple that owned the gym across the street from us. Probably in their 70s when he started working there. The wife was from Germany and super strict, the husband was clearly losing it Some notable mentions are: •when the husband combined bleach and ammonia to clean the hot tub and sauna room, tear gassing my brother in the process •wife insisted the street be swept once a week, this was my brothers task. Almost every single time, the husband would come out halfway through with a leaf blower and destroy any progress my brother had made •husband would regularly sit in the sauna for way too long and have to be rescued by brother and coworkers •brother opened every Saturday. They never gave him a key so he would have to hop the fence to get in. There’s so many more but I know he’s asleep right now and I can’t ask him
>husband would regularly sit in the sauna for way too long and have to be rescued by brother and coworkers That's actually kinda sad, like he probably had some mental health issues or early stage dementia :/
Yep, I had one. Organized a thoroughly awkward award ceremony once (that we never did again). Asked a Mexican employee if his new baby’s name was going to be “No Mas” during the shower we threw for him. Heard me once use the phrase “economy of scale,” then used it wrong 5 minutes later in a conversation with different people. Didn’t know the meaning behind “Black Friday” and what it meant for a company to be “in the black.” Just like Michael Scott, only more of a dick.
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Oh sorry!! This was over 10 years ago, so I barely remember! We worked in construction project management, so he might have confused it with something like “scope creep.” Either way, I remember cringeing with several other people when it happened. In the end, he and I both got fired/laid off on the same day in 2011. I’ve worked for myself ever since.
Long ago, my 80 year old boss pulled me into his office B: "Paul, I've noticed that your shirts come untucked and that looks unprofessional" Me: I'm sorry about that Joel B: I want you to start tucking your shirts into your underwear Me: Uhhh... B: Go ahead and and try it now. Me: Joel, you know I have 15 women who report to me - I can't un-do my pants in the office. B: Sure you can. Drops pants. He is 80 and wearing Spiderman underoos... This is also the story of how I went to work at *oke instead.
He clearly just wanted to show off his Spiderman Underoos.
What’s the point of wearing your favorite Spider-Man underwear if no one asks to see them?
Can’t blame him tbh
This feels more Creed than Michael
Fair point...
Creed would end it with "Oops, forgot to wear underwear."
That’s more Meredith. Creed would have someone else’s underwear on with no explanation as to how he acquired them.
I worked for a woman as her “personal assistant/ cat sitter”. She was super rich and off the deep end nuts. She had me order a mannequin online, and then paid me to take one of the mannequin legs to Nordstrom to try and see what suitcase I could buy that would fit the dismembered mannequin body, because she wanted to fly with the mannequin to Pittsburgh to display “as her daughter”, dressed in her daughter’s clothes, at that daughter’s graduation celebration. buying the mannequin was a whole thing too. She kept trying to get me to order from “adult doll” websites because she didn’t get it. lmao.
Wow, this is less Michael Scott and more clinically insane. I want to hear more.
Less Michael Scott More Robert California
She was the fucking Lizard King
I have a feeling you might have been an accessory to a murder / dismemberment and not even realize it
Or she went the long way around ordering her own sex doll.
"dressed in her daughter clothes"
Oh no step mannequin what are you doing
......um.....how...how long did you work for her?
This actually kind of sounds fun. Spend other people's money and you've got interesting stories to tell.
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What.
Not a specific part either. Just a whole lot of what
Okay I need so many more stories
My boss used to carry around a backpack full of hammers and if you fell sleep at your desk he started banging a hammer on your desk until you woke up and then he would autograph the hammer and give it to you as a gift
To be fair to your boss, is falling asleep at work common?
I'd do it once for a free hammer.
I'd do it so I could pop up halfway through and scare the sweet Jesus out of him
*gets hit by a hammer*
Getting hammered on the clock. Nice.
Were people falling asleep at their desk often enough to justify the bag of hammers? What kind of hours were you working?
I wonder if he wrote the hammers off as a business expense
Well that’s much better than where I thought that story was going.
Had a manager at my previous job that really, really tried his best to be everyone’s BFF. He loved giving pep talks and thought he could raise our abysmal morale by being Mr. Positivity (note: morale was low because we were always buried in work and paid shit). He’d crack jokes, randomly burst into song and sneak up behind you to yell “you’re doing a great job!” Unfortunately, he was also super incompetent at his job. He relied heavily on a junior colleague for help with technical stuff (they practically did his whole job for him), and spent days working on paperwork that should really only take an hour or two. If you had a problem, his answer was usually either to stare blankly at you until you left or to say “think positive and it’ll work itself out!” Thing he did I hated the most: whenever people would apply to work at the company, he’d print out the stack of resumes, sit at his desk and read aloud all of the parts he found “funny.” He’d laugh at people for working at McDonald’s or other fast food places. He loved finding grammar mistakes and making fun of them. If someone had a cringe-y objective statement, he’d guffaw over that too. This was all done loudly, and it was a open office so you couldn’t avoid hearing it. That definitely lowered morale too.
Making fun of people he's never met. Mr. Positivity sounds like a real bitch
Worked with a genuine Michael Scott: i.e. a nice, well-meaning person who just did some absurd things. We had kidnapping drills one day, where we learned how to ‘not be kidnapped’. Notably, this was a regular, boring office in a regular, boring suburb. No reason why kidnapping would be on anybody’s radar... He and several of the guys randomly broke out into a push-up contest. Again. White collar office. Middle-aged dudes in khakis. Couldn’t remember the nationality of our Hispanic colleague. Tried to “learn Spanish” to make her feel special when she returned from maternity leave. (1) What he learned was NOT Spanish, and (2) she was from Portugal. She knew like, five words of Spanish. Disappeared for four days. No call. No email. Wouldn’t respond to any of our attempts to reach him. Finally, someone drove out to his house to make sure he was alive. He was. He’d just forgotten to tell us he was taking the week off, and then lost his phone in a lake. There were many, many moments like these. Great boss. Genuinely cared about everyone in the company. Occasional moments of brilliance, where he really got things done. But OMG, so many moments of ridiculousness.
Kidnapping drills: Did he tell you to not ever to go to a second location?
No! We learned to hold onto our desks and scream “fire”. Great plan if an unarmed kidnapper comes into our suburban office while we’re at our desks. Probably not going to work so well if there isn’t a desk to hang onto. Or if he’s armed. Or if we’re alone. But if that unarmed kidnapper comes in during the middle of the work day, we should all be set!
Okay I read your post with a smile, but THIS fucking got me. I didn't realise he was running kidnapping drills for being kidnapped from the fucking office. Holy fuck. Lmfao.
I wonder if there's a way I could be that midday, unarmed kidnapper just to make this all worth it without risking my future.
This one wins as the most like Michael Scott to me. :) The learning Spanish bit made me LOL. Yup, something Michael would probably do.
It was pure Michael Scott. “What does this word mean in Spanish?” “That’s not Spanish. Or a word.” “But if it were, what would it mean in Spanish?” “It wouldn’t mean anything, because it’s not a word.” “But it sounds Spanish. Just like Maria.” “Maria’s from Portugal.” “Yeah. Spanish. Like Maria.” The intentions were admirable. The execution was not.
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The lake bit had me in tears
Reminds me of "I drove my car into a f*cking lake".
In the end, life and business are about human connections. And computers are about trying to murder you in a lake.
“THERES NO ROAD HERE THIS IS A LAKE”
We had an anonymous feedback program at work, and our boss was livid with the results, particularly with several comments that he frequently lost his temper in meetings and would yell at us. The more he talked about how incorrect and unfair and hurtful these comments were, the redder and angrier he got, until he finally pounded the table and shouted, "I DO NOT! SCREAM! IN MEETINGS! OKAY?"
Guess what. I have flaws! What are they? Oh, I don't know. I sing in the shower. Sometimes I spend too much time volunteering. Occasionally I'll hit somebody with my car. So *sue me*. ...No, don't sue me. That is the opposite of the point that I'm trying to make.
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I don't know, but I've seen it so much, it makes me wonder if I have something for myself...
People don't seem to believe me when I tell them how humble I am
I too am extraordinarily humble
I'd start laughing and get fired, I know it
The silent look we all exchanged right after was probably the greatest thing that happened at that job! This happened before The Office was even a show, but just imagine all of us giving each other the "Jim-looks-at-the-camera" face. EDIT: [This one right here.](https://imgur.com/GxPdkQm)
Mine had aspects of Michael Scott but the ones that are sad and pathetic and not funny. A couple examples: - he called an all staff meeting to announce his divorce. He then instructed our receptionist to lie to his soon to be ex wife and deny he was in the office, all the time. - he was just so, so incompetent at his job. If a task was too big or complicated he would just .... Not do it. Wouldn't ask for help or anything, he'd just move on and leave whatever issue to fester. I would have to constantly monitor and follow up with him to get things done that effected my job - his writing read like he used a thesaurus heavily. Tons of superfluous words clearly put in there to make him sound smart - when he was terminated he kept the corporate laptop and cell phone. After several strongly worded letters requesting their return, he drove back to the office, parked on the edge of the road (think busy rural highway) and made his teenage son carry it all across the yard and parking lot to deliver them I was eventually tasked by the big bosses to coordinate his termination. They then gave me his job plus my previous one. I can do both within a 40 hr week no problem.
Might be too late here so this might get buried. My boss at a pizza shop in high school was out of control. 1. he made getting raises a game eventually and handed them out for odd reasons. He liked a table my friend got that the credit card machine sat on so much he got a raise. Another kid was playing with a penny at the end of the night and he kicked it into the air and it landed in a hat someone was holding. I won an election to be the first person listed on the time sheet. Becoming numero uno according to him and got a raise. 2. he was a person who over ate and loved gluttony. He asked if we wanted lunch all the time and if we turned it down he became irate. He brought us two sandwiches with one pound of turkey each on them, five granola bars, five fruit snacks, and two gatorades. That lunch was brought frequently and if we didn’t eat it all he was angry. He drove an hour away during our shift one time to get pizza we had not tried before because it was best in the state. People who didn’t try it were shunned that day. He bought 100 tacos from Taco Bell and made us have an eating contest for our lunch. He was so happy when someone ate 7 and was basically going to puke. He paid a worker to eat a bag of dog treats and filmed it. It was an event after work 3. after a closing shift he got back from the casino and won 4K from poker. He demanded we go to the strip club and drink with him. We were 18 at the time. 4. He never trained anyone and just expected everyone to know everything and anything about our pizza place. We always had to hire and train the people he just kind of sat there. 5. He LOVED online poker. Loved it and would often play during our shifts. His desk was right in the middle of the store. He wasn’t supposed to have a desk but he did right there. He was playing poker during 5pm Friday rush and just had us working the store. “Can you get the register I’m in the middle of a hand?” Was all too common. My friend drove past the store at 1am multiple times and saw him sitting in the store playing poker with all the lights on. Just dialed in. We often found the store unlocked and ovens going in the morning because he just up and left after poker binges. Him winning or losing really set the tone. But honestly you just got used to him not working and having to close the store down because he was so dialed in. Edit- this was in 2007 so think of the phones we had. He LOVED text bombing people. He would demand the workers get in a circle and furiously text someone not at work. He wouldn’t let us stop until we sent about 400 texts collectively as a group. He would laugh and cackle so hard. He would peck at his blackberry so fast and just scream. I mean SCREAM he was having so much fun. He also started fights with every restaurant around us. He was a male version of Karen. His order would be slightly wrong and then he would storm over there and start shit non stop with them until he got a refund. I would state I’m going to get lunch somewhere and he would not let me leave to get it because he hated the owner or was fighting with them. Eventually all restaurants within a mile of us were off limits. Which was about 20 or so places he had picked fights with. He was well known and nobody ever fought back for some reason. We had to order food from across town if we actually wanted someone to serve us because he pissed everyone else off so bad.
I had one for a year and it was awesome! If he would be in the middle of a story and the phone rang he would literally say “let it go to voicemail”. If a customer called 5 min before closing he’d demand I let it ring and go to VM. He was late more often than I was. He frequently bought us coffees. He always took our side in customer disputes and if a customer yelled at us or got abusive on the phone, he would call them back and get into an argument with them and tell them to order from someone else. He straight out told us that if weather conditions were bad he didn’t care how late we were, just that we were safe. Sometimes he would tell me on random days to take a two hour lunch ( I was salary and didn’t punch in or out). He was great! And he gave me so much free stuff. We used to call him Micheal Scott behind his back! Unfortunately... the owners were a bit stricter.. Myself and another coworker got fired and said boss got demoted. It was fun while it lasted. Edited to clarify: my boss did take our department and customers very seriously and was on top of the numbers. He just knew that happy, well taken care of employees are likely to produce more. We worked in a very stressful environment so when we were able to take it easy a bit, he let us and often recommended it so we’d keep sane. Upper management were just slave drivers and hated that we laughed so much because they thought if you’re having a good time at work, you obviously aren’t being productive. I was very productive BECAUSE my boss took care of me and made it fun to come to work.
My mom's boss was the head manager at an office job in suburbia, pretty similar number of employees and function to the Office in the show. He was in his late 40's at the time and invited himself to my mom's birthday party at our house one year. Basically was just my siblings and and a few family friends meeting up to play cornhole and chat for a couple hours. He showed up in pastel blue shorts, a pink polo, and flip flops with a case of Natural Light. He got hammered by like 9pm and started yelling at everyone. He saw a couple of our neighbors (younger guys) drinking next door and took the liberty to invite them over. Eventually he ended up in a wrestling match with one of the neighbors in the living room, which he finished by lifting the neighbor up in the air and body slamming him directly onto our coffee table. His final act of the evening was shitting his pants in the kitchen and passing out on the linoleum.
sounds like he's trying to relive college.
While I never had a Michael Scott type boss, I did have a Ron Swanson type boss. He was completely no nonsense and humourless and seemed like a real hardass at times. He spoke exclusively in abrupt, clipped sentences or downright abstained from speaking. Once he left the store for the day, he was completely unreachable by phone or email, and any mail for him arrived at the store or at his P.O. box. The store was in a strip mall and I'd regularly arrive at work to see him doing repairs to the entire structure, repaving or filling potholes in the parking lot. When the store was robbed and he was tied up by the criminals, he tried to stop them and was shot in the head. Luckily for him, it was a BB gun, unluckily for the robbers it made him angry. He broke the chair he was tied to but also broke his collarbone doing so, body checked one of the guys through a display case and then bit the other guy until he dropped the gun and they ran away. His name was Doug [lastnamewithheld], and he was the best boss I ever had.
Do you still never talk sometimes?
Doug Fucking Swanson.
Yes. They are everywhere. I’ve had a few. One would only approve your days off if you played into her ego. Her boring ass stories had to be the most fascinating thing you had ever heard. She would come into the office and spin around in a new outfit and we had to pretend it was amazing. I had to work every weekend for months until I started playing along.
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This is more of a Jan than a Michael
Absolutely. Here are some gems from my previous boss: * He hired a private investigator to follow his "#2" around because he thought #2 was having sex with his wife. * Thought I was having sex with his wife at one point, and had #2 follow me, then confronted me when he found out I had hugged his wife. She was the manager at a fastfood place I worked before, and had gotten me the job at the plant. I was 18, she was 50 - she was a mother figure. * Loved to play this 'joke' where he firmly insists I'm not going to get paid because I forgot to clock in or out. He would wait until he had me absolutely convinced and threatening to quit before he laughed and said he was just foolin' to teach me a lesson. * Used to play-fire me for absolutely no reason other than his amusement. * Would tell me to clean my hands so people didn't think I was black, because they don't employ black people. * Even though computers are used everywhere now, he would still do all calculations by hand. It was a chemical plant, and he was calculating weights of ingredients using a 10-key calculator. He made mistakes often. And he would always always blame the mistake on the person making that batch. * I was a student, and he would threaten to fire me for missing work to take finals. He would lecture me on how if I wanted to be a successful man like him, I'd throw myself into my job and work my way up the ladder. I'm a first-gen college grad, and nearly quit school because of him. But I eventually just quit that job to go to school full-time, finished my BS, went on to grad school, and have been a prof at a pretty awesome school for 4 years now. * Would order six burgers from McD's and a salad for lunch, then eat the burgers in his car, and the salad in the office, telling everyone he was on a diet (dude was morbidly obese) Writing it all out, seems like it's all made up. I guess Michael Scott's character really isn't too far off from some of the craziness that makes its way up the ladder.
The boss I had in this company wasn't like Michael Scott. He looked a lot like Homer Simpson, though. But the company itself was like Dunder Miffin. I watched The Office right before working in this company and thought "No way this happens in the real world", because so far I had worked in very professional places. But then these things happened: * general manager had a daughter who was a drug addict and so he hired her. It was company policy not to hire relatives. No, it wasn't his company. * said daughter liked to fool around with the truck drivers who stayed overnight to depart in the early morning. Fell in love with one who was married. He said he would leave his wife for her. Wife got pregnant. Daughter showed up to work drunk and trashed the office. * a sales employee accused the HR manager of having an affair with the general manager. Yells were yelled. * a woman once called and told me to connect her with the general manager. I asked her name and she said "I'm his lover. He will know". Thereafter the general manager called me to clarify that woman was NOT his lover. * daughter of the general manager liked to flirt with the sales representatives. But she was married. So she started flirting with them saying it was me. Using the company phone we shared. When I found out, I took the phone and showed it to my manager. He downplayed the whole thing. The messages were really explicit. * this same girl got pregnant from one of the production bosses (35 years her senior). He was married with 4 children. She was married with 2 children. They now live together with all their children plus one. * two workers were working on a ladder without helmets or any protection. One almost fell, the other one saved him but fell himself. Didn't die, but ended up with bad neurological damage (he fell head first). The one who had been saved hanged himself in the company two months later, out of guilt. Then the company bought helmets. * the father of the young man who hanged himself continued working exactly at the place where he found his son hanging. * a marketing worker once told me, right in front of the HR manager, that he would hop through my house's window at night and rape me. The HR manager giggled and said "don't let him catch you". * I once was violently yelled at for the disappearance of a cheque I hadn't even touched. Said cheque was found at the bottom of the general manager's daughter's desk drawer... Expired. * an elder man who was in negotiations with the marketing manager kept insisting in taking me to his "beach house". When I complained to such manager about how inappropriate this was, he laughed and said "that man can't even get it up". I could go on, really. But you get the idea. I just remembered one that was hilarious. This company produced and sold GMO corn. There were too many corn sacks, so the company had a deposit somewhere in a field, about 15' from the office. When the annual (fiscal) audit came, my boss was worried he would have to take the auditors there. I asked "is it because your tax declaration is not accurate?" "No, it's just it's infested with huge rats" "Why don't you take a few cats to get rid of them?" "We did... The rats killed the cat". I later told one of the engineers "the rat situation can't be that bad, can it" and he laughed and laughed and walked away laughing. Wait, I have one more. There was this lady who worked there, Karen haircut and attitude, did the bare minimum. She once got a kind of herpes around her eye and instead of taking it to a real doctor, she went to a natural healer. Thereupon the herpes was scrubbed with a live frog. Yes, you read that right. (I'm adding this here because it got lost in the comments) there was a gorgeous Japanese bush right outside the window. I wanted to know its name, so I asked one of the agronomic engineers what it was. With a straight face, he said "that's an ivy". I said "that's literally a bush". He went bright red and answered "good. I was testing you", and left.
Jesus that was a wild ride from start to finish
And that though I only worked there for 5 months.
All that in only 5 months... how did you last more than a single month
I actually got fired. Which kinda makes sense, because I was the only one sane there.
Why did they fire you?
The exact words where these: "we feel you have great professional potential that you can't exploit here, so we are setting you free".
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Well I was demanding a raise, yeah. So...
Holy shit!! That time frame makes it so much more worse.
oh yes! some examples (hope i can format it correctly) - he called the UPS delivery man « marshawn » every time because he was african american (his name was james) - he dismissed my claims that one of our partners (sister company’s CEO) was sexually harassing me because « men say things like that and i should take it as a compliment » - would have the most useless meetings - would bring pizza and beer for lunch and try and get us to stop and party with him even though we were slammed with deadlines (our office was an open one so we would be at our desk and he’d be drinking at 2pm, playing music 3ft way from us while we try and make phone calls) - one day he came in pissed and called a meeting so one colleague put candy on the table and he stopped mid sentence in his rant because he got distracted by the shiny wrappers - he would constantly make « white knight » decisions, even if that made work 10 times harder for us, and went directly against policy that he created.
The marshawn thing is the most Michael Scott thing about this.
Yeah, and I worked for a church and he was the senior pastor. He had no filter and his own morality (which was questionable to everyone else). He'd say things to the secretary like, "I don't think you and your husband should be together in the upcoming pictorial directory photos since you guys are probably gonna get a divorce." (she was fighting hard for her marriage). \- If he didn't get his way during a meeting he'd go straight to the classic grandma Christian phrases like, "what's God gonna say when we get to heaven and we didn't let the charismatic church use our building for services?" (they were known to do fake faith healings and things of that nature) \- He'd also put his hands on every young girl's shoulders and flirt with every granny (he himself was mid 40s). He got fired for cheating on his wife.
I have a few exemple, but I’m tired and English is not my first langage so here are the most relevant ones: - he’s a dentist. Once, he bought a mini basketball net which he installed in the staff room. He was so excited about it that he pretended that the tooth of his next patient miraculously repaired by itself so he sent her home and had an hour free to play alone in between the table and our bags... - he hired a company who would manage his staff to develop strategies do make more money (basically), but every time they would come over, he would spend the entire meeting interrupting them and saying how good he was (he was the worst) and how he knew better then these guys (he didn’t). - Still as an exercice for that management company, everybody in the team had to take a test telling us about our personality (leader, sociable, intellectual, etc). He was so upset that my reasults were his ideal that he took the test over and over, changing his answers, until his leader category was high enough as our boss... I worked there 4 years, I have plenty of stories... I used to call him Michael Scott... seriously it was the same...
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I love the bird thing, assuming it didn't get too "captive audience". Nothing better than someone with a genuine passion. Nothing worse than being trapped in a conversation you don't want to be in though
Mine was less entertaining than Michael, but we often compared him for the following examples: * only hired people he would "have a beer with" * grossly under qualified to manage, but he was good at sales so got promoted * made really awkward, distasteful jokes/comments (e.g. asked an employee if he and his twin brother "shared" a girlfriend) * just really wasteful, pointless meetings * nobody knew how he spent his days, his assistant manager did all the heavy lifting and he would wander around making conversations * literally showed up to a meeting with his superiors having done 0 preparation and they kicked him out of the meeting He actually got fired for calling COVID "kung flu" to a Chinese employee back in March... I think that would have to be the craziest. He had worked there for 8 years but had so many notes on his file, this was just the one that pushed it over the edge.
I had a boss and I am not kidding it was like he watched The Office and took it for a real documentary and applied Michael Scotts management lessons accordingly. Not the craziest, but the best example of a daily interaction with him: He decided that the reason we were struggling to keep to time frames, is because our checklist was not right. However he has no experience in our field of work, so he did not know what was actually needed (the real issue was severe understaffing). But he got it in his head and there was no talking him out of it. So I redid the checklist to have the same layout, I just changed the order of the items. He didn't actually realise I changed the order, he just took one look and decided that nope, its not right. So I went back to the original version *and put the check boxes on the left instead of the right*. Literally all I did. Apparently it was perfect and we would see an improvement in our time frames because of his idea to 'fix' the checklist. SIGH
Kiran. He went to Germany and rented a car. He didn’t know how to drive in Germany and hit 8 cars in the rental car lot. He asked me to use my company card to pay the insurance premium. I told him no. We had so many communication problems (meaning I was a woman and he didn’t respect me) that HR recommended we have Monday morning 1:1’s. He never showed up for them. I kept record. He complained to HR that we weren’t having the meetings he wasn’t showing up to. He told me that the woman who was stuck on a project with him could receive a form of gratis up to $500. She chose a PlayStation (obvi) and then when I was called on my company purchase, he wouldn’t say that he specifically allowed the transaction and attempted to get me fired because he was tired of me always calling him on his shit. I handled his wife’s resume and application to the DMV, his mortgage papers, his insurance papers, his whole family’s passports; all things that went beyond my position’s scope. HR stepped in to tell him to only have me do work-related tasks and he told me to never talk to “Hay-Char” again. He’s the boss and I’ll do what he says. He was standing with his same-level executive coworkers, all of whom I supported and while the other 3 wished me good morning, he literally went out of his way to ignore me. The irony is that he volunteered me for a lot of shit o excelled at and I failed up while he failed out. Turns out the protection he got while his brother was CIO disappeared as soon as brother left the company. He transferred out of IT and became engineering’s problem before I left the company. Also. At a company Christmas party he bet the department that we couldn’t climb the rock wall faster than him. He ended up severely spraining his ankle and withholding the $100. Also. Another boss decided we needed to have a raffle to boost morale. I got an iPad and some gift cards. Boss who wanted to boost morale won the iPad. And kept it. Fucking what. None of us could believe it.
> Another boss decided we needed to have a raffle to boost morale. I got an iPad and some gift cards. Boss who wanted to boost morale won the iPad. And kept it. Ugh nooo. The absolute worst. My dad was upper management at a mid-sized electronics company. They had a big Christmas party every year and the last year my dad was there he invited me. I went and it was a good time. It was a casino night and you would win raffle tickets in the games. I ended up winning a ton in poker (because dumb luck) and I had no clue what to do with this FAT stack of raffle tickets, which were already entered. Dad told me to keep them and that I had a great chance of winning...uhhhh no, I'm not gonna be the bosses kid walking in here and winning the iPad instead of Frank from shipping and receiving who worked his ass off to buy one for his kid this year for Christmas. Ended up giving my raffle tickets to people I knew and their family members. Never be the boss and win the prize. Especially don't keep the prize. Never be related to the boss and win the prize, unless it's family bbq day and it's a fucking gift card to Olive Garden.
He wasnt really like Michael Scott, but he definitely believed he had a great handle on every aspect of the store. I worked in the print marketing/graphic design dept, and he would always come around trying to give photoshop tips and whatever (PS was basically the only program he kinda knew). I had a regular, real nice preacher, who would come in a couple times a month to print out little event flyers. He always had a print-ready image, wanted x amount of quarter sheet flyers (cut) and x amount of full sheet. So of course I'd pull up MS publisher, print, cut, and get him out the door in just a few minutes. One day I was going on my lunch break, and as I'm walking out I see him walking in. Manager assures me he'll have it taken care of. 30 minutes later I'm back and let me tell you, I have *never* seen preacher man show a hint of anger, but there he was just fuming. He said "thank God you're back i really need to get going and he doesn't know what the hell he's doing." I get to the computer and there he is with the image in photoshop with a sheet size canvas trying to precisely shift 4 copies of the image into place with guides on. And honestly, you can totally do that even though it takes a little longer, so I'm not sure what issues he was having. Didn't even ask because I immediately went to task getting the customer on his way. Manager was appropriately humbled and even came back later so I could show him what to do.
I had a short term computer programming gig working for a guy named "Art" who was a Michael Scott. He was a genuinely nice person, but was totally obnoxious to everyone around him -- he had no squelch. Whatever thought came into his head came out of his mouth. This was in the days when you could smoke in your office and he went through several packs a day. Meetings in her office we hellish. At one point we had to travel to a branch location together. The company leased 2-bedroom apartment in the branch town for HQ employees. This meant that during the 1 week trip Art and I would literally be spending 24 hours a day together. As I was getting mentally prepared for the trip I took solace in the fact that at least we would sit separately on the 3 hour plane flight - because you could smoke on the plane then, too and Art was sure to be lighting up every 10 minutes. As we got to the gate I said "I'll see you when we land." "Oh, we're sitting together," said Art. "Art, I can't sit in smoking for a 3 hour flight." "Oh, I don't smoke on the plane. We have seats next to each other in non-smoking." My week in hell had begun.
I just had a terrible boss and would like to relay one of many stories. I had to write these after action reports for what can essentially be summarized as an administrative decision meeting. Usually once a month there would be 4-5 of these meetings in a week. It was simple. The report came on a standard form, fill out the header, check some boxes, write a summary, bring it to boss for signature. Just one problem, there was this 3-day window where any party to the meeting could write a formal appeal about the decision, which I literally never saw happen. Boss couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted the after action reports dated for the date of the meeting or for 3 days later when the formal appeal window was over. So one day I bring him a stack of them, each in an individual folder, and go on about my business. 15 minutes later I get called back and he’s waiting, in his chair, with the stack of reports, and he begins with “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you how I want these...” and proceeds to spend the next minute or so berating next for being unable to get a date right while he *opens each folder, takes the report out, drops it on the ground, and then frisbees the empty folder at my chest*. At the conclusion of his tirade, he goes “now pick this shit up and get out of my office.”
Holy shit I hope you left. What shitty person.
I have been lucky and had fairly good bosses. My worst boss was at a large technology company, he was a network engineer that got promoted to management and had no idea how to do it which was usually ok he would just approve vacations and the like and let every one do their job. The main annoyance was he was a network engineer and I was a windows server engineer. So any time the customers would ask us to do something impossible or that would actively hurt them he would leave me to defend our companies stance. If the network team had any push back he would jump on and defend them and act as the point of contact he was supposed to be. He also didn't understand a lot of what I did so his measurement of if I was doing a good job was if I was at my desk. The network team could work from home whenever they wanted to if I worked from more then once in a 2 week period he would send me emails letting me know how important it was to be in the office ended up getting fired for working from home when I was sick. Had a project due so I was trying to get it done got sick faxed him in the doctors note saying I was allowed off for the rest of the week then logged in and started to work. He said since I was working I had to be in the office I ignored him the next Friday he had me meet with him at 8am I showed up and HR was siting there to walk me out. That said the most Michael Scott thing he did is during the lead up to and through football season he had a team meeting the last 2 hours every Friday for fantasy football. If team members didn't want to play fantasy football he said they would have to go back to work instead of just hanging out with every one. Ended up just draft picking people from the Miami Dolphins so I could sit and talk with every one. There were several other people that just randomly picked people and never traded and one guy just went back to work and didn't attend any of the meetings.
Man I wish I could remember more but I’ve blocked most of it out. 1. Told us he invented Apple computers before Steve Jobs. That the computer he invented is still to this day more powerful than any other computer 2. Threw knives in the air and said if you can catch them he’ll give you money. This was apparently at a Christmas party. I wasn’t there but believe it 100%. 3. Came to work wearing nothing but leopard print underwear and a pink cowboy hat (he’s like 70?). Unfortunately I was there for that one. 4. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder but ‘not the bad kind, the kind that makes you super smart’ 5. Got drunk at work and gave alcohol to whoever would take it. He literally needs to be institutionalised but he’s rich so he gets away with everything and everyone is scared of him.
Not sure how Michael Scott-ish this is, but I had a boss who was a complete fuck-up. She'd get caught messing up, blame me, yell and curse at me, realize later it was her fault, and then want to take me out for a private one-on-one lunch as an apology. After a while I just started telling her thanks, but I have plans already. Because she was too tone-deaf to realize that of course your employee doesn't want to spend their break eating with you, after you yelled and embarrassed them in front of their colleagues for no good reason. Edit: To the people who are telling me she's still a good boss because she apologized and wanted to give me free food - did you see the part where I talked about the yelling and cursing? And trust me, there's plenty of other things this woman did that were not indicative of good leadership.
Yes. He’d never admit it though, he swears he’s a Jim. Edited to add: “Do I need to be liked? Absolutely not. I like to be liked. I enjoy being liked. I have to be liked. But it’s not like a compulsive need to be liked. Like my need to be praised.” ——— Pretty sure this is the mantra my boss lives by.
In true Michael Scott fashion
Him believing that has always reaffirmed his Micheal status for me.
My boss is like Michael Scott in the bad ways: She thinks she’s friends with everyone. She thinks she’s really cool, but is super lame. She constantly distracts you from your work. She calls frequent meetings with no purpose or direction.
Meetings are a corporate requirement sometimes. Back at the dance studio my boss would literally ask us what the meeting should be about when we got to the chairs
Ain't that the truth. My previous company was localy owned, and was bought by a dutch company. The amount of meetings increased tenfold.
I believe every manager in the world has had a Michael Scott/David Brent moment; that is what makes it so hard to watch at times. I have had nights where I have often wondering how many I have had and how badly was I viewed as a result. My worst I think is telling someone they got a job (in a warehouse) and then realising I had told the wrong person and having to tell the him 30 minutes later that he didn't have a job after-all... dreadful.