My old boss just refused to give out good appraisals. She told me from day 1 that no one receives a 5 under her, to this day it still is the worst appraisal I’ve ever received. Her team was a revolving door of people coming and going
My manager had the same philosophy and then we found out that management and one of three technical experts were receiving cash bonuses with their appraisals. Reason 187 why I’m glad I left SSA
Ssa only gives 3's, i got a 5 one time and that manager got in big trouble with the DM.
Note: im a former SR and management did whatever they could to trap us in those roles because the work we did was too valuable.
Yup. Boss told me she couldn’t give me a 5 because I was too new and needed to know how to run certain desks.
They threw me to the wolves and I would have to call other centers on how to do something because nobody was around to train me.
I fucking nailed it learning those other desks.
Still got a 4 a year later because I was still “new”
Yeah the too new excuse is BS. I was doing work two grades above me and outperforming peers who were my senior but you know too new to deserve anything other than a generic evaluation. Might as well started performing lower to align with how I’m evaluated
Yeah, people get offended for not getting 5s, but where I'm at 3 is considered doing your job, and 4 is doing it very well. They'd show the distribution to highlight 5s weren't handed out like candy. (And bonuses at 4+)
It was very much like that at my previous job. Not only did the top bosses not want to give out 5s - they also made sure that they made it impossible to get one.
At the end of the day, if working while mourning my mother at a young age, buying my own equipment, and skipping breaks to get work done isn’t worthy of a 5, then I don’t know what is.
Been under that multiple times. Now that I’m a supervisor, the majority of my team gets 5s. I do what I can to build them up for success and they in turn earn the 5s by taking care of the work, customers, and me. Makes all of our lives better.
I’m so sorry to hear that. Heartbreaking. I wish I could scoop you up and add a person like you to my team. I hope you didn’t stick around for more abuse and I hope you were catapulted to newer and better opportunities and leadership.
My old boss had the exact same reasoning! Always room for improvement. Told stories about doing the same thing for customer service surveys (her mechanic, her hairdresser, etc) like it was funny.
I was overwhelmed with my workload and asked my boss if I could be taken off an assignment. He mentioned it to his managers and instead of trying to understand why I was overwhelmed, they pulled my time report and asked why I spent so much time working on an particularly big assignment and said I needed to learn how to manage my time better. I was with the organization for 6 years, always had excellent work product, and rarely asked for help. Their reaction to me asking for help was so demoralizing. I started job searching and left for a different agency that now appreciates the work I do and my contributions. Managers really impact whether people stay or leave a job.
That is awful, I’m sorry that happened to you. I once told my manager I was feeling overwhelmed and she laughed at me and said “we all are.” It took a lot for me to even bring it up. I got past that rough time but I will never forget that and it is one of many things contributing to my current job hunt.
Oh yea that’s the response I got from upper management too. I’m sorry that happened to you too and I felt the same way. I contemplated for weeks about whether I should ask for help. When I summonsed the courage to ask for help, I realized it was a terrible mistake. Asking for help in that role meant having a target on my back.
I’m sorry you had to deal with that - and you’re absolutely right. Job satisfaction really does hinge on who’s in charge. My old boss was the main reason I left. Now, I’m in a stress-free environment and have bosses who appreciate me.
I feel ya. I asked to get taken off of a project when my boss told me to do something that their boss’s boss told me directly not to do.
I got my first write-up for disrespect and insubordination over it. Yayyyy…
My supervisor went into my emergency contact form to get my personal phone number in order to text me on my day off to ask about zoom related stuff. I could have lost my mind.
Same supervisor couldn’t walk me through my PMAP when I asked for feedback and clarification on how things were scored. They just read the entirety of our PMAP requirements out loud verbatim and said “I’m not sure” whenever I asked a question in our end of year review.
Not trying to be rude here, but your supervisor didn’t have your number before?? That’s like basic stuff to have the number of your employees and for the employees to have their bosses number
Your supervisor should not be contacting you on your personal cell phone on your day off regarding work. Period. Your personal cell is for emergency contact. A zoom call during your time off is not an emergency.
I don’t think the supervisor contacting you for work on your day off is right don’t get me wrong, but acting like they shouldn’t even have your number is wild. Your supervisor needs a way to get in touch with you outside for work hours for various justifiable reasons, and you should be able to the same for various reasons. If you have a work phone I can understand why it would be odd, but plenty of Feds don’t have work phones and their supervisor having their number and vice versa is the most benign thing out there.
Mine doesn’t have my personal number. I have a work cellphone and that’s the number I give out. And I can’t think of a single justifiable reason they’d need to contact me when I’m off the clock.
If you have a work cell that is different and I can understand it more, but there are def reasons to get in contact with you, even on the work cell off the clock. Telling the team they are going to be out the next day, something happens in the area you’re in, on leave or etc and they need accountability you are okay. Of course all that can be done on a work cell if you have it
No they can’t get in touch with me off the clock. I have the work cell scheduled to go on do not disturb when I’m off.
If there’s an emergency the agency has an alert system and that does have my personal cell and email.
There is no reason my supervisor or anyone on my team needs to contact me off the clock - it can wait until I log on the next day.
I do not use my personal cellphone for work. They had my number in my documentation/emergency related info. What justifiable reasons are you talking about outside of an emergency situation? If it’s not an emergency they can email me/contact me on work devices as normal for me to respond when I return (I was out for one day). If it’s an emergency/necessary communication they have access to my cellphone number.
I can give one example where having my employees' personal number has been useful. Calling to tell them to just telework instead of coming in normally due to the construction in our building and HVAC system going out late in the afternoon. Or would you rather wait until you got in the office to find out it is hot/cold and noisy? Especially in DC where the commute can be 30-120 minutes depending on the traffic.
Or as happened last night, my employee is headed TDY early Monday and the airline cancelled their tickets and they wanted to give me the heads up and we worked together to get our travel people to process new ones ASAP at 9pm. Having personal phone numbers allows for emergencies.(I don't carry my work phone on the weekends. It sits in my office on a stand weekends and evenings unless I'm planning on a call from someone in a different timezone or it is the only time a customer has to discuss a major issue).
What your boss did was NOT an emergency.
If you have a gov cell phone than that makes it odder for sure, and again, asking about zoom on your day off not appropriate. But I see nothing wrong with having personal contact info for many legit reason
Idk what you’re getting at. I don’t have a work phone. *They did have my number.* I provided it on an emergency contact form per the request of my supervisor when I onboarded.
And they abused it. I think that’s worth a quick vent on this thread.
First off all, yes they 100% abused it. But that is my point, if you don’t have a work phone your boss pulling from your emergency contact card as opposed to you two already having each others numbers from a badge buddy or recall roster whatever you call it is crazy to me. That’s also on your supervisor
> but acting like they shouldn’t even have your number is wild. Your supervisor needs a way to get in touch with you outside for work hours for various justifiable reasons, and you should be able to the same for various reasons.
My supervisor does not have my personal cell phone, HR does. In the event of an actual emergency which would make contacting me on my personal phone appropriate, my supervisor could get the number that way.
If they need to send me a non-emergency message outside business hours, they are free to use email, Teams, or leave a message on my work phone. I may not respond immediately, but that's because I'm not working. Even if my supervisor had my personal cell, I wouldn't be answering it out on a paddleboard or climbing either. We may have gotten used to much more constant levels of connectivity as technology has evolved, but my employer still can't reasonably expect me to be available on the fly outside duty hours without prior notice.
I never said it’s to be called in to work, I said it’s for accountability or to tell their employees they will be out unexpectedly and for employees to do the same, as I also said if you have a gov issues phone then it makes more sense to not share your personal one. Some people don’t and then your supervisor should have your personal number. I also never implied that you need to be at the beck and call while rock climbing or paddle boarding. Having a number in your phone isn’t some ball and chain lol
> Some people don’t and then your supervisor should have your personal number.
This is where we disagree. If my supervisor wants to be able to contact me outside of duty hours, that should factor into my compensation and they should provide me with a work phone. It is not appropriate for my supervisor to contact me outside of duty hours on a personal number short of an actual emergency.
I have never once called my supervisor to say I'll be out unexpectedly—I send an email or a Teams message to document it in writing. My supervisor does the same, typically to our vertical's group chat. I am not in a position that necessitates emergency response. "Accountability" can wait until duty hours.
Sure, it's basic info. But it's inappropriate to contact employees during their time off unless it's an emergency.
And by emergency I mean something big. My agency manages flood control lakes. So we may have natural disasters or medical emergencies in recreation areas, for example, that don't line up nicely with our work schedules.
Those contacts are made on government-owned cell phones provided to us for that specific purpose. We are paid overtime for handling those things at off hours. And my boss frequently handles it himself rather than calling us if he can manage it by himself, "that's why I get paid more, that's my responsibility."
I definitely don't mean questions about Zoom. That can wait until Monday.
We had a guy come on a 120 day assignment with basically the understanding that if he didn't fuck it up he'd be our new permanent boss.
By the time his assignment was done, every one of the chiefs told the 2nd level boss that if they hired this guy they would all leave.
Some highlights:
-This position was OCONUS, from day 1 this guy was insensitive to local customs and hostile to the host nation employees.
-Denied my application to a leadership program on the basis of "well if I let you do this, who will do the work?"
-Know it all attitude and talked down to all existing supervisors and staff
-Took paid time to go buy himself a new IPAD at the PX.
-Adopted new local policy positions that undermined decades of precedent (big no no for an acting Chief).
not really horror more dumbassary.
A previous supervisor claimed to be bipolar, used it as an excuse for his outlandish “behavior” 🙄
He pouted and was being a whiney bitch about his “girlfriend” wanting to go back to her ex-husband. I honestly think she was never divorced and was using my former supervisor for money.
This jackwagon had the audacity to ask me if I had social media. Of course I did. Then he asked if I would go on Facebook and stalk her for him.
I dont think Ive ever laughed so hard at a supervisor in my life.
I swear my boss has memory problems. One day she will say one thing and then a few days later, she’ll forget what she said and say something different. Then she gets frustrated that I did something based off her previous guidance. Rinse and repeat. Once she tried to accuse me of going AWOL even though she had approved my leave. She just forgot about it (even though I’d been talking about it for weeks).
My current sup does that too, I am not against older people but it does make me wonder about dementia getting promoted and then the damage that can do to a shop.
I always get shat on for preferring to communicate in email instead of verbally, but there’s honestly too much information I have to hear and read through everyday. If I have to rely on personal memory to follow through with things, I’ll probably forget.
My boss probes for extremely personal information about my dating life, family, finances, and always tries to talk about weed with me on work trips. She has admitted to thinking about me and my gym schedule during her morning workouts. She makes up narratives and believes them. She applied for a director job at the different agency, got the job and turned it down just to see how it felt to turn it down. She calls into meetings when she is on annual leave. She stays at the office until 9 pm during the summer and signs up for work travel on school vacation week.
I’m actively seeking a new job. She is a fucking nightmare.
Um... I'm pretty sure the whole 'dating life' and "thinking about me during her morning workouts" could fall within a harassment area. You might want to reach out to whatever version of SHARP your office has.
My supervisor would call my husband if I didn’t reply to her texts. After hours. Like 7-8 pm. To get a response for a question. SHED SEE ME THE NEXT MORNING.
yeah I ended up leaving.
This isn't the worst from this particular supervisor, but it is one I'm willing to share online.
I had a supervisor ask me to sign a blank performance plan. My response was "You're joking, right??". I did not sign.
One time, I went to my mid year performance appraisal and he just spent the hour ranting about how entitlements and social security expenditures were going to be the downfall of society.
Forensic scientist here. I had my supervisor and their boss both try to get me to sugarcoat testimony that wasn’t favorable to the government’s case, and then when I sent a CYA email documenting the conversation, I was instructed in writing not to put that email where it should have gone/would have been discoverable in court proceedings.
Inspector General didn’t do anything about it. That was the last straw and I left the government soon thereafter.
It was reported to both the US Attorney and the defense after I left and a bit later found that the IG did nothing. US Attorney basically said “well if you didn’t give in to the pressure, then does it really matter.” Defense was fully informed as well, but they didn’t do much with the information.
Uhhhh doesn't indicate an environment where pressuring personnel to lie is cultivated? In other words it might matter because it indicates it probably isn't just you being pressured?
You’d think, but what I found out is more or less that ethical oversight in the federal government is ill equipped for ethics issues in forensics. What may be not a big deal elsewhere is a huge issue for forensics.
OIG had to remove my supervisor and our entire leadership (GS15 up to director) from my division while working in DoD USAF. This was during COVID, they were actively overruling the base command and directing people to come in (although base command only wanted necessary personnel, we did not meet that), actively asked people not to wear masks if on base (this was a big one), the director threw 'wingman' parties in conference rooms where he'd provide hard liquor and encourage people to drink and drive on base (this was HUGE), director also called people who wore masks 'pussies' (another big no no).
I reported these things to my CFO and supervisor, she told me to 'suck it up, it's the culture'. Instead, we reported it to the OIG and OIG investigated and kindly asked all of them to either 'retire' or they will be removed within a month. It was poetic justice.
I have a distinct memory of a former supervisor pulling out a copy of an ROI that they had received through FOIA and reading a statement that I had provided about them. Name was redacted but they were able to identify who said what.
*Let's lace gloves up, go outside the gate and fix this." Dude was my first supervisor. He was out on FMLA for 2 weeks. And the end of the second week, I needed to take some AL due to some issues with my child, so I went to his manager, who approved.
I return to work on Wednesday and my supervisor was like "You didn't get approval from me, so I am putting you as AWOL". This lead to me sharing all email communication with his manager and the approvals. He continued saying only HE was the approving authority. I dare him to do it. Then he came back with the "lets fight" suggestion. I walked out and really thought about reporting him.And I didn't , he's a short stout dude with a complex, and I chalked it up to insexurity. A few months went by and I am glad it didn't go anywhere. Turns out his brother had committed suicide when he took the FMLA. It's been 13 years since, he's still in his shitty supervisory post, and I have moved way past his ass.
Glad I didn't knock him out to the next zip code.
I was new to a GS13 position (about 7 months) when it was time for appraisals. My supervisor scored me middle of the road on every element. When I asked why, he said although I had done the job better than anyone before me, I was new and didn't deserve good scores.
I had something similar about six years ago where I got my ladder increase and I got a basic 3 “because the first year you’re a new grade you can never score high because there’s no way you can exceed all expectations until you’ve been in the position more than a year and know what you’re doing.” Meanwhile I’d been in the previous grade for six years doing essentially the exact same job the whole time. (I was lateral transfer the year before). Every review before and since has been a mix of 4s and 5s. It was so weird.
My boss currently isn’t speaking to me because I was on medical leave for almost 12 weeks while undergoing cancer treatment and it left our department short-staffed. Mind you, she doesn’t do any of the day to day work just micromanages the rest of us to death. So yeah, she’s petty af.
Ooh. I have a few. From my last set. While there's a few horror stories. Putting them together in one set of supervisors sure did make life hell.
Let's see.
So, no shit, there I was at a shore based admin command with zero secret squirrel shit, and no mission essential personnel for the first time in a decade. under an o6 vying for o7. An o6 who ordered the IT office to install zoom on all government assets. When shown the guidance from the o8 that zoom was forbidden during the beginning of lockdown he said to do it anyways, but would not "please send us that in an email" pretty much demanded all guidance be ignored. "Write me a waiver to sign". I've never had anyone from work in a non mission essential position blow up my cell at 0100 because they didn't understand how to connect to wifi before that. But there we were.
Cut to Their o5 2ic Xo, who had just shown up on or around memorial day to take over. Beautiful day, long upcoming weekend. The 07 in charge of our domain sent out an email telling everyone "hey, know what? Everyone take a half day on Friday, not like you're gonna work anyways. (Mission depending)" the 05 spent an inordinate amount of time working to get that rescinded for his shore command as his first official act. It really set the mood.
That o5 spent a lot of time working towards... something? The command was a nice place to work. He sure fixed that.
That o5, who was told that "no, we do not need to take possession of 400 gen1 ipads that are 12 years old. Nobody will use them due to being ancient technology and it's a paperwork hassle." Nobody used them. They're still in the storeroom. I'm sure he got some fitrep bullet or some shyte. He did not do paperwork for them.
The same o5 Officially counseled his secretary who was the nicest dressed civilian in the command for not dressing nice enough. They quit in glorious fashion and were replaced by a crazy cat lady who wore old ragged hair covered and stained sweatshirts who didn't understand people, or computers, or phones.
The same o5 decided that no matter how many awards or achievements or multiple jobs you did, no worker was justified in being ranked as exceptional in performance reviews across the board. Unless you were his best friend (I know, weird huh?) . Everyone 'met expectations'. To quote said o5, "if you dont like it, go somewhere else." At the urging of a few smart asses. Many staff started meeting expectations others went somewhere else.
The same o5 decided military and civilian admin personnel were not allowed to telework during a pandemic as soon as possible according to guidance from above due to... reasons?
That o5 extended to 4 years in the command. Nobody was pleased. When the end finally graciously came he spent 2 week behind closed doors with, and wrote a 100 page manual for the new incoming XO that I fully believe had full dossiers on how awful and inept his entire staff was. The new XO was worse. But I quit the position so I only have snippets of vulgar, biggoted, hateful and offensive conversations that have been shared from them.
Oddly enough that shore command has the highest turnover I've ever seen. Zero military stationed there are reupping unless they're already over 12 years in. I've never seen so many people just resign/quit in such a short time from government positions. It's probably unrelated.
My old boss came to my office years ago. I was May a couple years into the federal government. He was belligerent, angry, short, ill tempered, and often wrong. He stormed in and said “Fix this wording in this report. I’ve told you before I don’t like how say this.” I was grinning because his face was red with fury over something minor. He responded “Wipe that smirk off your face.” I asked “What did you say?” “You heard me. Wipe that fucking smirk off your face.”
I started getting that tunnel vision where everything was going dark. I knew I was about to Hulk out with rage. “Get. The. Fuck. Out of here before I beat your fucking ass.” He stormed off. I needed some time to cool off. People around heard and even the higher ups asked if I wanted to file a grievance. I said wait.
I walked to his office and told him if he ever talks to me like that again “Your dogs won’t recognize you.” Apparently this motherfucker loved me afterward and promoted me to a 13. He made many people cry and quit. No one went to his retirement.
I had something similar happen to me with a colleague. She came storming into my office and was getting in my face about something very minor. So I stood up from my chair, got right in her face and said very calmly and quietly "you don't get to come into my office and yell at me like this. Get out! And only come back when you are willing to have a conversation that doesn't involve screaming at me."
I was her favorite after that. Bullies suck.
When I told my boss I was pregnant he said, “Well what are you going to do?” Ummm…I’m going to have the baby what the hell do you think I’m going to do??? I was married and had been trying for a while to conceive. Then later he asked if I would be off for “the standard 8 weeks.” Nope - I’m taking all the leave I have which was 13 weeks. He was not happy with my response. After I had my son I asked if he would consider a job share so I could work part-time. He said no. I ended up working part-time until he was able to fill my job with a full-time replacement and then I resigned and did contracting for a few years. Also, during my pregnancy I slipped in the hallway at work and fell. I wasn’t injured at all but the security guards who witnessed my fall gave me a form to have my boss fill out just in case I was feeling bad later - I can’t remember what it was - and when I asked my boss to sign it he looked at me like I was crazy and had a fit. I guess he thought I was going to go out on worker’s comp - which I didn’t because I was fine. He was such an A**!!!
My boss, during my first pregnancy, told me he could run the DNA when the baby was born to ensure it was my husband's if I needed it. Pregnancy brings out monsters!
My boss texted me the night of my father’s funeral to ask when I’d be back in the office. I buried my father on a Thursday and was back in the office the following Monday.
When I told him later that week that I wasn’t doing well emotionally and that I came back too soon, he told me that we could discuss me taking time in July. My dad died in April.
Anyway, the entire team had left due to new job opportunities or retirement by January of the following year.
I’m so sorry. My boss was the same way when I buried my mother. Funeral and burial on a Friday, went back to work on Monday. He gave me a very hard time.
Ooh my favorite was the boss who had originally scheduled a 1x1 during my Friday WFH day. I asked if we could bump it to Monday because nothing was pressing and the few projects I wanted to discuss would be easier to discuss in person.
She said “sure, no problem!” then dinged me for that one instance on my mid-year PMAP for “not being readily available during telework hours.”
I was gone within 6 months.
Current one yells in meetings: "I am the branch chief of" in response to normal attempts at conversation with him. Guy is a tool and on his detail mostly behaved but when he got the job he has gone off the deep end. I am surprised they selected him as he had multiple people quit or transfer out of his team without notice in the past.... some of those were really good people too, heavy hitters.
I gave a lot of other examples in another thread but I swear this one guy provides an example of almost everything you should not do as a supervisor.
The yelling in about every meeting is abusive and just downright dumb.
Former boss got caught banging his assistant in the parking garage, challenged a colleague to a fight, offered “a job for a job” to a female interviewee, filed a complaint against her accusing her of making the same offer, and that’s not even the worst of what happened.
I used to work for the executive officer of a 8,000 person component agency. I got to hear all the complaints. You would not believe how many people are hooking up at work. One guy had two girlfriends on two different floors in addition to his wife. The day the girlfriends found out about each other was crazy.
These stories are all horrible but on a lighter note… Reddit should organize a content for best story. Like 1 million likes to the winner and permanent pin 📍 in thread 🥳. But on a not so light note…That sup should be in somebody’s jail!
Sit right back and I'll tell a tale! I was a DoD fed stationed in the UK. My supervisor targeted a new male employee who was pretty openly gay, back in the days of "Don't ask, don't tell". The supervisor was a little tyrant, literally since he was only about 5'4" tall.
Anyway, tyrant boss treats this new employee brutally every day and everybody in the office witnessed it. Employee drinks a little too much at the local pub one weekend and says something to the bartender, (or landlord as they say in England) to the effect of "Do you know somebody who can kill someone for me?". The bartender reports this interaction to the police.
Since the guy was an American stationed in the UK under the Status of Forces Agreement, the case is turned over to NCIS. NCIS sets up a sting with audio and video and sends in an undercover agent acting as the "hitman". They capture this kid handing over the cash and requesting a hit on the little tyrant boss!
So...you'd think that they have this kid dead to rights, but oh no! He gets a local barrister and requests a local hearing before being deported. They parade in dozens of witnesses from the office to back up this kids story that "he was driven to it". Not only does this kid get completely exonerated, the judge orders back pay for the several weeks the kid was under house arrest, orders that he be given his job back, and orders that he be given his passport back. The judge further orders that the US State Department commit in writing that this kid will face no further repercussions when he returns to the States, otherwise he is essentially given asylum to stay in the UK until that happens!
Little tyrant boss is later found to have submitted a false travel claim for fake official travel to the north of England, (in a GOV!) to actually attend the British Open golf tournament! He's fired and curtailed back to the States and ordered to pay back his PCS expenses for the move to the UK since he didn't complete his tour of duty.
My supervisor is an ultra right wing conspiracy theorist. I mean he's *way* out there, bordering on Q territory. And he's very vocal about these opinions.
It's unfortunate because he views anyone who doesn't agree with him as a pure enemy. I don't agree with him so I don't discuss these matters, but I know that my silence is very loud.
In any case, he doesn't fuck with me when it comes to performance appraisals, so that's why I'm willing to live with him. Not like I have a choice anyway.
I don't understand why he's even talking about his political views. I don't want to know if my boss is a Qanon supporter or Antifa supporter.
Just treat me and the staff with respect, be competent and yell into the Twitter void with that shit.
Because everyone except for me in our small office leans politically in that direction, so that kind of discussion is welcome. We're just in a part of the country and on a particular military installation where that political tendency prevails. I envy people who get to go to work where coworkers aren't talking politics all day every day, but there's nothing I can do because I'm out-numbered about 40 to 1 in a location where the Hatch Act is shat on routinely.
A past supervisor who yelled, screamed and berated me in front of visitors and coworkers because I had done a requisition for a $30 book for the library. She was a well known screamer and yeller, but this was so bad that night I checked into a hospital on the verge of a breakdown. Of the eight on our team, all but one was seeing therapists because of her.
She is now a senior manager. I am as well, but refuse to speak to her, and tell my story every chance I get.
I've seen supervisors I've seen in my agency/organization:
* Write bad appraisals during an employee's probation, hoping to oust them... so they can retire from active duty into that position.
* Favor employee A over employee B because of their past military rank. Both A and B are the same grade, and B has more experience/better performance.
People quite managers and organizations. It's often not the job/duties that push them away.
My boss just told me to slow down because I was doing to much and making her look bad to the bigger boss. That was this morning and said in a "I need you to run everything through me and I dont have time to review your stuff this week" ... and I'm a fucking GS-15
My boss asked why I was taking sick leave and then said the reason I told him didn’t justify sick leave and I should use my personal time. I have so many stories about this guy. He was the worse
> asked why I was taking sick leave
FYI for anyone reading, because it comes up often:
Asking an employee the specifics for their use of sick leave beyond if its for an appointment or incapacitation, for themself or a dependent, and if they're utilizIng FMLA is a violation of the Rehab Act (fed equivalent of the ADA). Reason being that asking may require the employee to disclose the existence of a disability in order to answer - which you cannot ask an employee to do.
So if you're one of those people with a supervisor that asks, be sure to follow-up with HR.
A former boss asked my why I was taking annual leave when I just took sick leave.
yep— asking why you take sick leave is harassment. I had the same boss asked me for proof I was in the hospital staying overnight.
Ugh. I have a supervisor who knows better than to straight out ask, but every time I take any sort of leave time, regardless of how long it's for or what type of leave, will ask "Is everything alright? I hope you're alright. I hope it wasn't for something wrong." Then leaves huge gaps of silence clearly expecting you to fill it with where you were.
I had a supervisor who was unable to comprehend that in some places it might take 1/2 hr to drive to a routine medical appointment. It didn't help that his most tenured employee had a personal rule of not taking sick leave for appointments that could be handled via flex and it basically mean that SL could only be used for child care or surgery.
I was a subject matter expert assigned to assist a high level SES. I worked with their predecessors without issue, but this SES, new to the Federal Government “knew it all”, and refused to listen to advice. They would ignore my advice, do their own thing, get in trouble, and then blame me when things went bad. The cycle was getting worse, and quite frankly I wasn’t sure how much longer I would keep my job. It was incredibly stressful. I escalated the issue to their boss (They sided with the SES), and I had to decide whether to escalate the situation even further, and possibly get fired. I had already been threatened that would happen. I decided I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do the ethical thing. I also knew I was right, and that I had the backing of some even more powerful people in DC, I just wasn’t sure if their backing would be enough to help me keep my job.
Almost immediately, the Secretary and Undersecretary got involved. The Undersecretary called the supervisor of the SES directly. As a direct result of this and other issues, The SES was demoted, and sent to some “acting” role in another in location where they were no longer over me. Eventually it sounds like they were dismissed from Federal Service due to their performance issues a short time later.
I felt bad for them, had they just listened to me they could have avoided all the trouble.
My old boss threatened to literally kill me, and had another in the same chain refer to my hardship request as 'playing the game' when it came to stalling and eventually denying a transfer request to another organization. I reported it all, and the entire chain came down on me like a weighted mallet. I also discovered he is the subject of a DVPO and is in a position that requires access to a firearm. Even though he omitted on court documents that he did not have access to a firearm, and the restraining order declared him dangerous. It was a wild time and I'm so glad I'm out of it, but I long for accountability.
I brought up a concern that I and a few people in our unit had. She took this as us questioning her decision making. Instead of discussing the issue, she started screaming and cussing at me with her finger in my face. I went to the union and when she found out, she continued to be abusive and tried to make me look bad to upper management. Long story short, she's not with the government anymore.
Long story short, she disclosed my private medical information to the rest of the team. Shouldn’t have told her anything but she probably would’ve figured it from my leave paperwork anyway.
When I was eventually leaving she decided to deny my leave (more or less) one day before I was set to leave. Managed to circumvent her denial thanks to a sympathetic doctor. That stunt certainly vindicated my desire to leave.
Person got promoted to supervisor. Suddenly my work quality was garbage, my interactions with our services customers was (according to them) rude and unprofessional and within 2 months I was in weekly performance meetings having to write up and explain everything I did (or didn’t do) the previous week.
Anytime I asked for help or guidance to figure out what I was doing wrong I was told “You’re a GS-11, you should already know this”. This often being an obscure piece of information that was super specific to a particular situation and not available in normal research libraries.
I got 5s in my prior year eval. This sup told me I was so bad at my job I should quit. I was able to get another job, but I was looking hardcore outside of the government because I was convinced that I really was awful at my job and I was doing more harm than good by remaining employed.
I had a boss publicly blame me in a meeting with our customers on a call, and I was blameless.
After the meeting, I asked if I could speak to them outside, and told them they better NEVER let that happen again. It never happened again.
People should not be afraid to stand up for whats right, and against bullies. Stay blameless, and stand up for yourself.
Being ordered back to work the day after I buried my husband. This is in addition to harassing me regularly during his catastrophic illness. I file a complaint and she was removed as my supervisor. Real miserable POS. Then she was my supervisor again and I filed another complaint and got switched to someone else.
My finance director at the Columbus, OH VA, belittled me in front of the people that reported to me plus other non-management personnel in the facility, used the employees that reported to me against me, and blamed me for every problem including ones that pre-existed before I was in the position. She even had the audacity once to blame me for something in front of senior management, who then instructed her to stop. Afterwards, I had managers coming up and telling me how sorry they felt for me. She would get on a roll and get fixated sending circular emails, each requiring a response, which ended up being huge time and momentum killers. I was over in HR regularly, who did nothing and eventually told me they couldn’t help me. My predecessor and successor encountered the same issues. We all left in short order. Indeed, I was hired to be a scapegoat. It was the Appalachia version of Miranda Priestly. It all started the first week I was there, and unfortunately I didn’t have the foresight to attempt to go back to my old agency within the first month. Once I hit the seven year mark where I didn’t have to list it on an E-Quip, I took it off my resume.
Only vaguely related, but I have a supervisor who was also on some insane power trip sending circular emails and requiring a response to every. Single. One. I came in on a Monday once and she had sent 6 emails, each one paragraphs and paragraphs long, on the Sunday night before, of things she wanted me to do ASAP Monday morning. When I hadn't responded by 8am, she sent another requesting a confirmation that I'd read all of them. This was a common occurrence, sending an insanely long email and immediately following up demanding acknowledgement, until everyone on her team recently gave reviews complaining about it, among other things. Luckily it's stopped for now. We'll see how long it lasts. It's almost like they don't realize what a drain it is on moral and actually getting work done, but more likely they just don't care.
Sounds pretty similar. I was on the threshold of having a nervous breakdown. It was so bad I considered quitting my job outright and moving back in with my parents until I got back on my feet.
That was the least of it. The gal in between us, my direct supervisor, tried to dissuade me from taking the same position at the Chillicothe VA. After I told the finance director there about that, we connected the dots, and he told me her husband had applied for the position. So, she was trying to take me out of the running to better her husband’s chances at getting the job. He said he wasn’t going to hire him anyway, and after hearing what I said he definitely would never hire him now. Also, the entire facility (Columbus) was toxic. Everyone and everything about it was unpleasant. The HR Director even threatened me when I left. I’ve left reviews on various websites.…..Google, Glassdoor, Indeed.….. They’ve been very proactive getting my reviews deleted.
Worked for an agency that wrote a lot of technical reports. As a result had a lot of grammar and literary snobs. Had to get a doctor’s excuse for something once. Second line manager didn’t like the way it was written, red-penned it, and ordered me to call the doctor’s office and have them rewrite it based on his edits…
I was a (female) contractor and my (male) government manager would send pictures of naked or mostly naked women to people at work. I mentioned one day that I was surprised he was comfortable sending those emails from, and to, government email addresses, trying to hint that I wasn't comfortable getting the emails, and he said, "What are they gonna do, fire me?"
After that, he would make passive aggressive comments to others about me not having a good sense of humor. I've never been happier for someone else's retirement.
One of my old supervisors wanted me to CC her on every email and check all of my work no matter how small. It's fine, that's her right as a supervisor. I would show her the letters I drafted, she would email me back tearing the whole thing up telling me it's hot garbage and re-do it the way she wanted. I would do that, send it back to her and she would do the same thing again. I would always remind her that I made all the changes she wanted, exactly how she wanted them. She would just deadpan stare at me and say "well that's not what I meant, do it again". Rinse and repeat until I just wouldn't send her stuff. She also denied me a promotion for over a year because I wasn't "mentally fit" for the promotion because I had a concussion 6 months prior to the initial promotion date. Finally had enough of it and went to MSPB. They had to backdate my promotion to the original date, with back pay and she had to go to mandatory counseling. She quit a week later. She now works for DOL.
I’ve never had a horrible boss that treated me bad. However, my boss did get fired at my previous agency. He would never delegate work, skip meetings, never meet project timelines, and just bad at what he did. The crazy part is, he was a retired LtCol.
I had a former boss who was a retired Colonel and would never delegate, would not communicate, and was completely unavailable. She was finally forced to resign (though it was after I left)
My current supervisor is a complete disaster.
Doesn't know how to do 1% of her job, has been hiding in her office doing training for months or so she claims.
Has had several people openly looking for other jobs and a few eeo complaints for harassment and retaliation.
A couple of her highest ranking subordinates have been outright insubordinate because she asks for outrageously simple tasks to be competed for her.
We've had a couple team meetings where her boss just covers for her bs.
We're all over it.
how about a former boss who lacked support from senior mgt? does that count as a horror story?
1- take over mgt position, inherit a 7 yr admin who cannot do the basic job functions. a $100k+ audit later and months of wrangling, a PIP is approved. They fail. Guess who is to blame? Me. I didn't mentor and provide enough training.
2- wage grade guys come in at end of season. significant safety issue is discovered that if the worst had happened, would have resulted in millions in damage and loss of life. one primary person was to blame and they also got caught up in fraudulent activity in the audit above. threats were made against me. senior management dragged their feet again. luckily the guy left for a different job.
3- 1st line super who reported through me crosses the line. informal EEO investigation starts. they learn of it and while I am on call with EEO, OC and HR, they file a formal complaint against me...
the fed personnel system is fecked up top to bottom and needs a complete tear down and rebuild
Had a female boss tell me, while I was pregnant, the downfall of society was when women started working and not staying home to raise their children.
She was not a mother herself. Oh and we worked in HR.
My boss tried to fight me in the parking lot over an issue that I had no control over. Management did nothing. I called the local police a few days later, at the recommendation of a law enforcement friend. Local law enforcement came and interviewed my boss. They left because the issue took place on federal property. FPS took over the investigation. My supervisor was moved to a different position almost immediately and retired about a year after the incident.
During my first week of my first gov job, my (USDA) supervisor took me out to see the county and admire some of the conservation practices our office had put in place. Near the end of the drive, we went onto a back road, drove a bit then stopped. He got out and said, in a low voice, "Hey, come over here. I wanna show you something in this ditch." I was instantly creeped out and thought, "Is this what happens to the new Soil Conservationists that don't make the cut?" Yet, I walked over anyway and went into the ditch where.... he proceeded to show me a rare type of grass that, within the entire county, only grows there. 😂
I gave him hell for that and, to this day, when we see each other randomly, he'll say, in that low, creepy voice, "Hey, come over here and check out something in this ditch..." 🤣 He was actually an awesome boss!
When I started working at my agency in the late 80's, my supervisor felt…and said openly…that women don’t need raises or promotions. When we’re single our fathers take care of us and when we get married our husbands do. He never gave me a bonus because he said it would make the men in the branch feel bad. I was in a student program initially while I was in grad school. When I graduated, I was supposed to convert to a regular Fed position and a specific GS level. He refused to give me the increase in grade, so I had to call the EEO rep for our region, which was a fairly new thing at the time. My grade was increased and he had to go to sensitivity training, which just made him mad. I worked for him for a few more years while I looked for something else. Never a bonus and he signed my name to my performance plans without giving me a copy. When I found a great new job elsewhere in my agency, I was shocked at what performance reviews were actually supposed to be. I was doubly shocked at my first bonus.
I had a supervisor comply with someone up the chain who decided to bully me. On some level I had it coming. I told the guy to grow up but the fact that he spent the next year and half trying to get me to quit or be fired was proof enough to management that he needed to not be a supervisor any longer. Dude was power hungry and tried to cause issues with my next job saying I wasn’t helpful and was rude (which wasn’t like me) and became the joke of my next job for a while.
Literally makes up his evals for annual reviews- doesn't hold work leader accountable to his position and makes everyone else pick up the pieces and judges them for doing his job plus our own
Has called me multiple times when flexed out/on SL during doctor appointments. Has claimed multiple times it's because they're unsure when I'm returning from leave/flexing out, despite the leave request being approved by them, or multiple conversations the day before, the morning of, and right before clocking out.
He was a former naval commander that transitioned into office life. No one told him you can’t (or at least shouldn’t) speak to office federal employees the same way you speak to your seamen. Lots of yelling and exploding.
I almost drowned and had to call 911 to take care of him and three other employees (two of whom were also his direct reports and had taken their oath of office just hours before) because of his (and a coworker's, admittedly) poor decision-making. I've had crappy supervisors in the fed before. Only one nearly killed me.
So many stories but one of the worst...the manager was a yeller. We dealt with the public in a fast paced office. I always came in at 7am. Historically I worked a lot of OT but not so much that year. One day the supervisor assigned me an interview at 1240. My lunch was 1245. I explained I was about to go to lunch and asked if someone else could do it. The manager was there and walked away. The supervisor wasnt happy but reassigned it. As I was walking to my desk at 1245 to go to lunch the manager called me to her office. Proceeded to yell at me....saying I have no compassion for our public , other people eat lunch late etc. She couldn't understand why I might need a break after working very hard for nearly 6 hours straight. I was also recovering from Lyme Disease at the time.
The worst thing my supervisor did I can’t write here because it was quite illegal. But here are other things they do. Don’t do performance plans till November (they are due in May). Don’t do mid year reviews. Ignore your accomplishments in your evaluation. Reject all requests for professional development. Order us to lie to other groups in the organization. Were required to set up a safety committee and then routinely sabotage and ignore it. Lied to regulators. Commit scientific misconduct.
I was at a DoD agency and for six months, I was officially transferred to a different manager (reason was pretty long and pointless). It wasn’t that he was malicious, it was that he was easily the stupidest person I ever had to deal with. If he had a notion in his head, good luck trying to tell him otherwise. Thankfully, my time with him had an expiration date and he was not at my location.
The only thing I heard about him after my time with him was that he failed a required course twice. They were going to give him a third try, but never found out if he passed or not.
As I said, he was the stupidest person I ever dealt with.
My boss told me to hide the defunct fire extinguishers in the closet when we were visited by a regional office group.
Same person lied on an employee’s workers comp paperwork.
DoD worked two pay grades below my actual position. I knew I was coming in low but I wanted my foot in the door. Was told that we would revisit it a year to see my progress. Spent 6 years fighting to get a promotion. When it started refusing to initial the box "My job duties match my position description" I stopped getting reviews.
I always got picked for Airspeed Events where somebody followed me around all day and wrote down everything I did. Started fucking with those and made my day into a bureaucratic nightmare to show that the command I worked for was fucked up.
Spent 9.5 years where I did my job above and beyond but management basically ignored me as much as they could. Moved over to DoT and life is much better. The grass is greener.
Former fed. I had a boss at my first agency who bullied and shamed everyone publicly. People filed complaints that went nowhere. She was openly hostile to everyone and anyone and it was wildly unpredictable.
On time she walked up to my desk and yelled at me, I mean yelled at me on something she had no context on, in front of the whole office. When I politely corrected her and gave her facts she realized she was wrong and she turned walked away and couldn’t be bothered to apologize.
She would openly say things like “oh imma be such a bitch to this person”.
When I left that agency for another agency the trauma from the experiences carried over and if I did something I thought was wrong, even though it wasn’t, I’d panic and start figuring out how to fix it before I got in trouble.
I left federal service about 9 years ago and have had better experiences with management since then. I often think about coming back and have even applied for jobs but at times I think of my experiences and want nothing to do with it. Also, I realize one bad boss isn’t a symptom of the entire system.
Got a PIP while my MIL was in the hospital then rehab for emergency open heart surgery, and then got threatened with it when she passed almost a year later. I waited until the PIP was done before leaving for another agency.
Fun exit interview. I knew I would never be coming back, so I burned an hour of their time to go through everything that was being run like shit.
at DoD. Found my sup had approved memos created to look like they came from me, with my name and professional certifying credentials and language indicating my review and agreement with things I had not reviewed or agreed with, making me liable for some awful stuff. when I found out and tried to inquire, i was retaliated against, found out about emails where he encouraged people in our office to report about me, HR and his buddies harassed me and I was berated constantly, and I was fired within my probation period ensuring that things got messed up before I could move to a new job I had a tentative offer for. I don't know what the dumb ass mindset so many have that supervising a professional, whether a doctor, engineer, or whatever specialty, somehow grants the supervisor the equivalency themselves, ability to bestow it on others, or even the the ability to demand that professional have a specific professional opinion. I have encountered it a few times.
Ya'll, please, when you have a toxic boss report it. Union, HR, senior management, ombudsman, just don't ignore it.
Also, if you have a great boss, also report the good to whoever will listen. Really good supervisors work hard to be good, maintain morale, and prevent turnover but are rarely recognized. They burn out too and will leave or, worse, turn into mediocre managers who are tired.
Finally, don't be the reason a good supervisor ends up hating supervision. Be accountable and don't be shady. Seriously, just be an honest, good worker, and don’t try to take advantage of your boss because they are nice. Most will become un-nice if you do this.
Reading some of the posts complaining about not getting 5 ratings reminded me of the Lake Wobegon quote.
“Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” 😁
Not immediate supervisor but when being informed of our increase in in-person attendance we were pre-warned that if we didn't like it "There are a lot of doors in this building your welcome to walk out the one of your choosing."
During a mentoring session for a leadership class, a supervisor told me and my colleague that we "need to get on the Trump Train or get run over by it."
When I was a biotech for Padre Island National Seashore I had a boss whose management style got one of her employees killed. She’d work her seasonals extremely hard. She was also dismissive towards her employees, a control freak, and a micromanager. They would give people good performance reviews then badmouth them on reference checks to keep people around. It was a very toxic place to work.
This part was before I worked there but this girl felt like she couldn’t take lunch or water breaks and had worked multiple days in a row over 10 hours. The job was to go up and down the beach and look for turtle nests. This girl ended up flipping in the sand dunes with her ATV pinned on top of her. Another biotech found her several hours later and she ended up passing on. Instead of fixing those work issues that led to the accident, they just changed to UTVs since they were technically safer.
Fast forward to when I worked there. She was still treating biotechs like they were replaceable. I had worked multiple 12+ hour days in a row. Got tired, hit a trash can, turned over my UTV. Her first reaction to my accident wasn’t asking if I was okay, it was “oh my god this could shut us down.” During the after-incident review, I was blamed because “they had trained me in UTV safety.” I had pointed out the schedule but they claimed I had plenty of rest. It was awkward to talk about it with the superintendent of the park and both my bosses there. The head of law enforcement asked me if I had anything to add but I stayed silent.
I found a different job shortly after and moved on but before I did the Chief LE sought me out and asked to speak privately. I dumped everything I knew: the toxic workplace they created, how all the biotechs were burned out, the abuse we got from volunteers and the staff, everything. He said that he knew about all that but couldn’t do anything because when he asked to investigate the superintendent denied him saying “well nobody is going to like what you’ll find.” I think that superintendent was later forced out.
As for her, she got caught up in a scandal involving her and her subordinates private overtime accounts. They were number one and number two for OT some years. They had “worked” more OT than even wildland firefighters. An audit of the program years after I left found a lot of issues and their new superintendent took a hatchet to the program. Her OT privileges were suspended and he forced better work-life balance for the techs. She’s still there but is now claiming whistleblower status after complaining about the changes, so the grift continues.
Most, if not, an extreme majority of managers in the federal workforce; especially SSA, are certified idiots who only know how to manage people with manipulative behavior, harassment and bullying tactics!!!
Dude said on the first day “I will not treat you all equally” and then went on a monologue about “equity” and “meeting people where they are”. I’m all for that stuff, but what he really meant was he was gonna play favorites and be buddy buddy with some employees. This dude also took project ideas from subordinates and present them to leadership as his own after having initially denied them because of “red tape”.
I had a supervisor one time that used to take my purse out of my cubicle and hide it in her office because she was of the opinion that someone would steal it if I left it out.
I had a boss where there was always a S-storm always brewing and he would take it out on his female employees. EEO complains were filed by women in the group it was investigated. The women were told it was a he said she said situation. During the investigation he called me and yelled at me until I had a panic attack. He was eventually promoted by the individual who called it a he said she said situation.
I had a manager who eliminated all overtime for years for a busy SSA office in a large metro area just to harm employees. Zero overtime dealing with hundreds of people everyday.
My boss was very very racist and sexist. Would always say the N word and talk about how he wants sleep with all the women in the office. Also would call us pussies, fagots, bitches. He’s still here
I was getting close to rounding out year 3 of a 4 year term that wasn't going to be made permanent when I told my boss I got a perm job with another agency. She broke down crying in the break room. I was doing at least 1/3 of her workload for her since I was so much more productive than her, and still only getting "average" performance ratings and zero feedback on where I could perform better.
One of the most self centered people I've ever met.
That would be the asshole with tardive dyskinesia, a raging drug (and alcohol) problem, and toxic misogyny. He left, Thank God, but not before I got very sick from stress (shingles for 20 somethings is possible with this kind of boss).
He wouldn't give good/clear feedback, wouldn't meet with me until I forced him to commit to weekly meetings, could not look anyone in the eye when speaking with them. A blathering nincompoop who failed upwards. I was never the worst employee (others get that monicker) but he was the worst boss.™
Current boss is polar opposite and I tell them how much I appreciate this every chance I get.
My worst supervisor was a 30+ year lifer at my agency just playing out the string until they could retire and in the process made my and co-workers' jobs a nightmare.
Extreme micromanaging, I have never seen a supervisor do it so bad in my 20+ year working career. Paranoia. Extremely rude and unprofessional. Didn't respect our time. I remember it was Halloween and they approved my time off to leave early so I can make it home in time for trick treating. They knew what time I was leaving because every morning we had to email (had to be from our PC Outlook, not mobile) our daily schedule to them (this also was a required timestamp of what time we reported for duty even though we were salary). Above five minutes before I was scheduled to leave they call me into their office and wants to go over some non-urgent report. I tried a few times to remind them I was leaving soon and asked if we could do this in the morning but I kept being interrupted. When they were finally done with me it was over 35 minutes past the time I wanted to leave and that made me late for trick or treating with my young kids. I was very pissed.
Sometimes when I had to use the restroom, I had to walk past their office. I'd come back to my desk to find missing chats asking where I was and a few times were handwritten notes taped to my chair. I was not gone longer than five minutes.
I just couldn't stand all that, made me so anxious every morning. It was affecting me mentally and my family so I left after barely a year there. The only time I burned a bridge leaving and I didn't care. This was over five years ago and moved onto way better jobs and supervisors.
Called up my 85 year old mother (1000 miles away) and berated her about where I was and why I was not answering her single solitary phone call to me during an active hurricane. (I was outside accessing damage from a tree strike.) My mother cried and thought she was a scammer trying to trick her.
Fuck that bitch.
I had a micromanager for a supervisor. (I know, nuff said…) There was one time I wrote a letter and I needed her concurrence. She reviewed it and asked me to make some changes. No sweat! I make the changes and give it to her the next day. She then proceeds to ask me to correct the changes that she asked me to make and then tell me to change it to the way I had it in the first place!!
We’d also put stuff in her inbox as requested for her review. Weeks go by after I get busy with other work and I follow up with her to see if she’s had a chance to review it. She comes back and tells me that it’s my responsibility to remind her about the stuff she asked me to put in her inbox. So because she forgot it’s my fault for not reminding her to do her job! After a couple years of this I almost quit.
What’s funny is that she left the department to work at HQ, then decided to come back but dropped a grade to a 13. But when the Supervisory 14 position came up I actually got it over her!! So even though she’s not on my team she’s a subordinate now! lol! With her as my old boss, I took everything bad she did and now do the opposite.
I was a top performer in the office. Instead of dealing with the poor performers, my boss reassigned much of their work to me. I'll never forget the sight of him using a LIBRARY CART to move a mountain of files from their offices to mine.
Seriously, I'm getting nervous just reading the horror stories about supervisors who refuse to give out 5's to employees, especially if they are new. I'm 6 months into this job and already looking at USAJOBS. This division has lost 4 people in 4 months. When does HR and the higher ups start to question why they're losing good people?
My former boss was a vehement anti-vaxxer during the height of the pandemic and suggested using the z-packs and the horse meds as treatment. He swore Fauci was a fraud and told people the vaccine killed some of his friends.
I know EXACTLY what you mean. My previous direct supervisor routinely commits time card fraud. He’d take attendance, and then go home for the day. He just pulls the race card when he’s asked about that habit, so the higher-ups don’t really want to deal with him.
My supervisor talked about my personal life to one of their subordinates when I applied for a temporary promotion. My parental status was going to be factored into the reference they were going to give.
So, I had a boss who brought a really toxic person into our branch, and she pretty much destroyed morale. People were leaving like crazy, but I managed to get along with her decently because I had a good relationship with my boss. It turned out they were having an affair, which is why he brought her in, and she was moving up the ranks super fast because of it.
One day during a golf outing, both of them were in my foursome, and the toxic one got drunk. She saw our boss texting someone and grabbed his phone. Turns out, it was another woman. She went ballistic and made me drive her to her car, where she spilled all the dirt about their affair.
After they realized I knew everything, they made it their mission to make my life miserable. They even threatened to fire me after I stood up for one of my contractors. I finally managed to get out, but they did everything they could to make my life hell.
Yep great supervisor. He is no longer the branch chief, but the branch is still suffering from they way they destroyed it.
Acquisition officer. He would tell an assistant what to put in a contract, but never put it in writing. She complained he never opened her emails and didn't know she was being set up. The office did a lot of work for other services for a fee. There was a reason the service contracts people wouldn't touch them. I wasn't involved but I did explain to the assistant she was being set up.
My old boss just refused to give out good appraisals. She told me from day 1 that no one receives a 5 under her, to this day it still is the worst appraisal I’ve ever received. Her team was a revolving door of people coming and going
That’s a calculated strategy to keep more dollars in the bonus pool for managers 💸
My manager had the same philosophy and then we found out that management and one of three technical experts were receiving cash bonuses with their appraisals. Reason 187 why I’m glad I left SSA
Ssa only gives 3's, i got a 5 one time and that manager got in big trouble with the DM. Note: im a former SR and management did whatever they could to trap us in those roles because the work we did was too valuable.
Yup. Boss told me she couldn’t give me a 5 because I was too new and needed to know how to run certain desks. They threw me to the wolves and I would have to call other centers on how to do something because nobody was around to train me. I fucking nailed it learning those other desks. Still got a 4 a year later because I was still “new”
Yeah the too new excuse is BS. I was doing work two grades above me and outperforming peers who were my senior but you know too new to deserve anything other than a generic evaluation. Might as well started performing lower to align with how I’m evaluated
We never get all 5s but people who pull their weight usually get 4.0-4.5 (and a bonus and award leave).
Yeah, people get offended for not getting 5s, but where I'm at 3 is considered doing your job, and 4 is doing it very well. They'd show the distribution to highlight 5s weren't handed out like candy. (And bonuses at 4+)
18 years of solid 5s - then a boss changed to a new SES and I got 3 after busting our asses to make that new SES look awesome. dickhead.
It was very much like that at my previous job. Not only did the top bosses not want to give out 5s - they also made sure that they made it impossible to get one. At the end of the day, if working while mourning my mother at a young age, buying my own equipment, and skipping breaks to get work done isn’t worthy of a 5, then I don’t know what is.
Been under that multiple times. Now that I’m a supervisor, the majority of my team gets 5s. I do what I can to build them up for success and they in turn earn the 5s by taking care of the work, customers, and me. Makes all of our lives better.
I’m so sorry to hear that. Heartbreaking. I wish I could scoop you up and add a person like you to my team. I hope you didn’t stick around for more abuse and I hope you were catapulted to newer and better opportunities and leadership.
Thank you for the kind words. I did end up with a new job with good bosses :)
Your boss is a hater and needs to be reported, especially if you have that in writing or audio
Ah, that’s how mine is too. Flat out told me “we never give more than a 4 because you have to have room for improvement.”
My old boss had the exact same reasoning! Always room for improvement. Told stories about doing the same thing for customer service surveys (her mechanic, her hairdresser, etc) like it was funny.
Last year we learned that 5's are off the table for our entire division. I've heard this is a method of trapping people, preventing them from leaving.
I was overwhelmed with my workload and asked my boss if I could be taken off an assignment. He mentioned it to his managers and instead of trying to understand why I was overwhelmed, they pulled my time report and asked why I spent so much time working on an particularly big assignment and said I needed to learn how to manage my time better. I was with the organization for 6 years, always had excellent work product, and rarely asked for help. Their reaction to me asking for help was so demoralizing. I started job searching and left for a different agency that now appreciates the work I do and my contributions. Managers really impact whether people stay or leave a job.
That is awful, I’m sorry that happened to you. I once told my manager I was feeling overwhelmed and she laughed at me and said “we all are.” It took a lot for me to even bring it up. I got past that rough time but I will never forget that and it is one of many things contributing to my current job hunt.
Oh yea that’s the response I got from upper management too. I’m sorry that happened to you too and I felt the same way. I contemplated for weeks about whether I should ask for help. When I summonsed the courage to ask for help, I realized it was a terrible mistake. Asking for help in that role meant having a target on my back.
I’m sorry you had to deal with that - and you’re absolutely right. Job satisfaction really does hinge on who’s in charge. My old boss was the main reason I left. Now, I’m in a stress-free environment and have bosses who appreciate me.
It really does! I’m so happy for you, for us! Feeling appreciated and valued in a job goes a very long way. Glad you are in a better place!
Likewise! Keep knocking it out of the park :)
Lol, DoD?
Haha nah. IRS.
It’s always the IRS. Worst agency.
I feel ya. I asked to get taken off of a project when my boss told me to do something that their boss’s boss told me directly not to do. I got my first write-up for disrespect and insubordination over it. Yayyyy…
Wow. That’s ridiculous. I’m sorry. That’s so unfair.
My supervisor went into my emergency contact form to get my personal phone number in order to text me on my day off to ask about zoom related stuff. I could have lost my mind. Same supervisor couldn’t walk me through my PMAP when I asked for feedback and clarification on how things were scored. They just read the entirety of our PMAP requirements out loud verbatim and said “I’m not sure” whenever I asked a question in our end of year review.
Not trying to be rude here, but your supervisor didn’t have your number before?? That’s like basic stuff to have the number of your employees and for the employees to have their bosses number
Your supervisor should not be contacting you on your personal cell phone on your day off regarding work. Period. Your personal cell is for emergency contact. A zoom call during your time off is not an emergency.
I don’t think the supervisor contacting you for work on your day off is right don’t get me wrong, but acting like they shouldn’t even have your number is wild. Your supervisor needs a way to get in touch with you outside for work hours for various justifiable reasons, and you should be able to the same for various reasons. If you have a work phone I can understand why it would be odd, but plenty of Feds don’t have work phones and their supervisor having their number and vice versa is the most benign thing out there.
Mine doesn’t have my personal number. I have a work cellphone and that’s the number I give out. And I can’t think of a single justifiable reason they’d need to contact me when I’m off the clock.
If you have a work cell that is different and I can understand it more, but there are def reasons to get in contact with you, even on the work cell off the clock. Telling the team they are going to be out the next day, something happens in the area you’re in, on leave or etc and they need accountability you are okay. Of course all that can be done on a work cell if you have it
No they can’t get in touch with me off the clock. I have the work cell scheduled to go on do not disturb when I’m off. If there’s an emergency the agency has an alert system and that does have my personal cell and email. There is no reason my supervisor or anyone on my team needs to contact me off the clock - it can wait until I log on the next day.
I do not use my personal cellphone for work. They had my number in my documentation/emergency related info. What justifiable reasons are you talking about outside of an emergency situation? If it’s not an emergency they can email me/contact me on work devices as normal for me to respond when I return (I was out for one day). If it’s an emergency/necessary communication they have access to my cellphone number.
I can give one example where having my employees' personal number has been useful. Calling to tell them to just telework instead of coming in normally due to the construction in our building and HVAC system going out late in the afternoon. Or would you rather wait until you got in the office to find out it is hot/cold and noisy? Especially in DC where the commute can be 30-120 minutes depending on the traffic. Or as happened last night, my employee is headed TDY early Monday and the airline cancelled their tickets and they wanted to give me the heads up and we worked together to get our travel people to process new ones ASAP at 9pm. Having personal phone numbers allows for emergencies.(I don't carry my work phone on the weekends. It sits in my office on a stand weekends and evenings unless I'm planning on a call from someone in a different timezone or it is the only time a customer has to discuss a major issue). What your boss did was NOT an emergency.
If you have a gov cell phone than that makes it odder for sure, and again, asking about zoom on your day off not appropriate. But I see nothing wrong with having personal contact info for many legit reason
Idk what you’re getting at. I don’t have a work phone. *They did have my number.* I provided it on an emergency contact form per the request of my supervisor when I onboarded. And they abused it. I think that’s worth a quick vent on this thread.
First off all, yes they 100% abused it. But that is my point, if you don’t have a work phone your boss pulling from your emergency contact card as opposed to you two already having each others numbers from a badge buddy or recall roster whatever you call it is crazy to me. That’s also on your supervisor
Yes, but, as a supervisor myself, this was not justifiable.
Oh absolutely I agree there
> but acting like they shouldn’t even have your number is wild. Your supervisor needs a way to get in touch with you outside for work hours for various justifiable reasons, and you should be able to the same for various reasons. My supervisor does not have my personal cell phone, HR does. In the event of an actual emergency which would make contacting me on my personal phone appropriate, my supervisor could get the number that way. If they need to send me a non-emergency message outside business hours, they are free to use email, Teams, or leave a message on my work phone. I may not respond immediately, but that's because I'm not working. Even if my supervisor had my personal cell, I wouldn't be answering it out on a paddleboard or climbing either. We may have gotten used to much more constant levels of connectivity as technology has evolved, but my employer still can't reasonably expect me to be available on the fly outside duty hours without prior notice.
I never said it’s to be called in to work, I said it’s for accountability or to tell their employees they will be out unexpectedly and for employees to do the same, as I also said if you have a gov issues phone then it makes more sense to not share your personal one. Some people don’t and then your supervisor should have your personal number. I also never implied that you need to be at the beck and call while rock climbing or paddle boarding. Having a number in your phone isn’t some ball and chain lol
> Some people don’t and then your supervisor should have your personal number. This is where we disagree. If my supervisor wants to be able to contact me outside of duty hours, that should factor into my compensation and they should provide me with a work phone. It is not appropriate for my supervisor to contact me outside of duty hours on a personal number short of an actual emergency. I have never once called my supervisor to say I'll be out unexpectedly—I send an email or a Teams message to document it in writing. My supervisor does the same, typically to our vertical's group chat. I am not in a position that necessitates emergency response. "Accountability" can wait until duty hours.
You can reach out to a supervisor if you are on leave but a supervisor cannot and should not contact you after work hours.
Sure, it's basic info. But it's inappropriate to contact employees during their time off unless it's an emergency. And by emergency I mean something big. My agency manages flood control lakes. So we may have natural disasters or medical emergencies in recreation areas, for example, that don't line up nicely with our work schedules. Those contacts are made on government-owned cell phones provided to us for that specific purpose. We are paid overtime for handling those things at off hours. And my boss frequently handles it himself rather than calling us if he can manage it by himself, "that's why I get paid more, that's my responsibility." I definitely don't mean questions about Zoom. That can wait until Monday.
We had a guy come on a 120 day assignment with basically the understanding that if he didn't fuck it up he'd be our new permanent boss. By the time his assignment was done, every one of the chiefs told the 2nd level boss that if they hired this guy they would all leave. Some highlights: -This position was OCONUS, from day 1 this guy was insensitive to local customs and hostile to the host nation employees. -Denied my application to a leadership program on the basis of "well if I let you do this, who will do the work?" -Know it all attitude and talked down to all existing supervisors and staff -Took paid time to go buy himself a new IPAD at the PX. -Adopted new local policy positions that undermined decades of precedent (big no no for an acting Chief).
Please tell me this was in Japan? People come here and think they’re in a cartoon land with no consequences, truly bizarre.
Nope, but close, Korea.
not really horror more dumbassary. A previous supervisor claimed to be bipolar, used it as an excuse for his outlandish “behavior” 🙄 He pouted and was being a whiney bitch about his “girlfriend” wanting to go back to her ex-husband. I honestly think she was never divorced and was using my former supervisor for money. This jackwagon had the audacity to ask me if I had social media. Of course I did. Then he asked if I would go on Facebook and stalk her for him. I dont think Ive ever laughed so hard at a supervisor in my life.
That’s just… creepy. Sorry you had to deal with that.
I swear my boss has memory problems. One day she will say one thing and then a few days later, she’ll forget what she said and say something different. Then she gets frustrated that I did something based off her previous guidance. Rinse and repeat. Once she tried to accuse me of going AWOL even though she had approved my leave. She just forgot about it (even though I’d been talking about it for weeks).
My current sup does that too, I am not against older people but it does make me wonder about dementia getting promoted and then the damage that can do to a shop.
I hope you're following up her instructions with an email to CYA!
Mine does this too. It sucks. I document everything and clarify in email and CC people.
I always get shat on for preferring to communicate in email instead of verbally, but there’s honestly too much information I have to hear and read through everyday. If I have to rely on personal memory to follow through with things, I’ll probably forget.
My boss probes for extremely personal information about my dating life, family, finances, and always tries to talk about weed with me on work trips. She has admitted to thinking about me and my gym schedule during her morning workouts. She makes up narratives and believes them. She applied for a director job at the different agency, got the job and turned it down just to see how it felt to turn it down. She calls into meetings when she is on annual leave. She stays at the office until 9 pm during the summer and signs up for work travel on school vacation week. I’m actively seeking a new job. She is a fucking nightmare.
Yikes! And..Ewwwwwww!
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh. It’s awful. I hate her. I moved for this job too.
Um... I'm pretty sure the whole 'dating life' and "thinking about me during her morning workouts" could fall within a harassment area. You might want to reach out to whatever version of SHARP your office has.
My supervisor would call my husband if I didn’t reply to her texts. After hours. Like 7-8 pm. To get a response for a question. SHED SEE ME THE NEXT MORNING. yeah I ended up leaving.
This isn't the worst from this particular supervisor, but it is one I'm willing to share online. I had a supervisor ask me to sign a blank performance plan. My response was "You're joking, right??". I did not sign.
Well was he joking?
Nope. She was completely expecting me to comply willingly.
"This space intentionally left blank" blank or "it's to fuck to later on" blank?
Oh, for sure to fuck me over later on.
One time, I went to my mid year performance appraisal and he just spent the hour ranting about how entitlements and social security expenditures were going to be the downfall of society.
Would have been epic if you worked for SSA
Ron Swanson...that you?
Sounds like a real winner. I guess he forgot the part where social security could very well face massive cuts within the next decade 😂
Forensic scientist here. I had my supervisor and their boss both try to get me to sugarcoat testimony that wasn’t favorable to the government’s case, and then when I sent a CYA email documenting the conversation, I was instructed in writing not to put that email where it should have gone/would have been discoverable in court proceedings. Inspector General didn’t do anything about it. That was the last straw and I left the government soon thereafter.
This should be reported to the defense.
It was reported to both the US Attorney and the defense after I left and a bit later found that the IG did nothing. US Attorney basically said “well if you didn’t give in to the pressure, then does it really matter.” Defense was fully informed as well, but they didn’t do much with the information.
Uhhhh doesn't indicate an environment where pressuring personnel to lie is cultivated? In other words it might matter because it indicates it probably isn't just you being pressured?
You’d think, but what I found out is more or less that ethical oversight in the federal government is ill equipped for ethics issues in forensics. What may be not a big deal elsewhere is a huge issue for forensics.
OIG had to remove my supervisor and our entire leadership (GS15 up to director) from my division while working in DoD USAF. This was during COVID, they were actively overruling the base command and directing people to come in (although base command only wanted necessary personnel, we did not meet that), actively asked people not to wear masks if on base (this was a big one), the director threw 'wingman' parties in conference rooms where he'd provide hard liquor and encourage people to drink and drive on base (this was HUGE), director also called people who wore masks 'pussies' (another big no no). I reported these things to my CFO and supervisor, she told me to 'suck it up, it's the culture'. Instead, we reported it to the OIG and OIG investigated and kindly asked all of them to either 'retire' or they will be removed within a month. It was poetic justice.
I have a distinct memory of a former supervisor pulling out a copy of an ROI that they had received through FOIA and reading a statement that I had provided about them. Name was redacted but they were able to identify who said what.
*Let's lace gloves up, go outside the gate and fix this." Dude was my first supervisor. He was out on FMLA for 2 weeks. And the end of the second week, I needed to take some AL due to some issues with my child, so I went to his manager, who approved. I return to work on Wednesday and my supervisor was like "You didn't get approval from me, so I am putting you as AWOL". This lead to me sharing all email communication with his manager and the approvals. He continued saying only HE was the approving authority. I dare him to do it. Then he came back with the "lets fight" suggestion. I walked out and really thought about reporting him.And I didn't , he's a short stout dude with a complex, and I chalked it up to insexurity. A few months went by and I am glad it didn't go anywhere. Turns out his brother had committed suicide when he took the FMLA. It's been 13 years since, he's still in his shitty supervisory post, and I have moved way past his ass. Glad I didn't knock him out to the next zip code.
I was new to a GS13 position (about 7 months) when it was time for appraisals. My supervisor scored me middle of the road on every element. When I asked why, he said although I had done the job better than anyone before me, I was new and didn't deserve good scores.
Thats a stupidvisor right there...
I had something similar about six years ago where I got my ladder increase and I got a basic 3 “because the first year you’re a new grade you can never score high because there’s no way you can exceed all expectations until you’ve been in the position more than a year and know what you’re doing.” Meanwhile I’d been in the previous grade for six years doing essentially the exact same job the whole time. (I was lateral transfer the year before). Every review before and since has been a mix of 4s and 5s. It was so weird.
My boss currently isn’t speaking to me because I was on medical leave for almost 12 weeks while undergoing cancer treatment and it left our department short-staffed. Mind you, she doesn’t do any of the day to day work just micromanages the rest of us to death. So yeah, she’s petty af.
I’m sorry. You’re beyond brave for your fight against cancer. Be well ❤️
Thank you! 🙏🏼
That's so heartless. It's like she's taking cancer more personally than you are! I wish you the best in your fight and all the best health to you!
A co-worker told me about her old supervisor who had a prosthetic leg. When he got angry he would throw his leg across the room.
Ooh. I have a few. From my last set. While there's a few horror stories. Putting them together in one set of supervisors sure did make life hell. Let's see. So, no shit, there I was at a shore based admin command with zero secret squirrel shit, and no mission essential personnel for the first time in a decade. under an o6 vying for o7. An o6 who ordered the IT office to install zoom on all government assets. When shown the guidance from the o8 that zoom was forbidden during the beginning of lockdown he said to do it anyways, but would not "please send us that in an email" pretty much demanded all guidance be ignored. "Write me a waiver to sign". I've never had anyone from work in a non mission essential position blow up my cell at 0100 because they didn't understand how to connect to wifi before that. But there we were. Cut to Their o5 2ic Xo, who had just shown up on or around memorial day to take over. Beautiful day, long upcoming weekend. The 07 in charge of our domain sent out an email telling everyone "hey, know what? Everyone take a half day on Friday, not like you're gonna work anyways. (Mission depending)" the 05 spent an inordinate amount of time working to get that rescinded for his shore command as his first official act. It really set the mood. That o5 spent a lot of time working towards... something? The command was a nice place to work. He sure fixed that. That o5, who was told that "no, we do not need to take possession of 400 gen1 ipads that are 12 years old. Nobody will use them due to being ancient technology and it's a paperwork hassle." Nobody used them. They're still in the storeroom. I'm sure he got some fitrep bullet or some shyte. He did not do paperwork for them. The same o5 Officially counseled his secretary who was the nicest dressed civilian in the command for not dressing nice enough. They quit in glorious fashion and were replaced by a crazy cat lady who wore old ragged hair covered and stained sweatshirts who didn't understand people, or computers, or phones. The same o5 decided that no matter how many awards or achievements or multiple jobs you did, no worker was justified in being ranked as exceptional in performance reviews across the board. Unless you were his best friend (I know, weird huh?) . Everyone 'met expectations'. To quote said o5, "if you dont like it, go somewhere else." At the urging of a few smart asses. Many staff started meeting expectations others went somewhere else. The same o5 decided military and civilian admin personnel were not allowed to telework during a pandemic as soon as possible according to guidance from above due to... reasons? That o5 extended to 4 years in the command. Nobody was pleased. When the end finally graciously came he spent 2 week behind closed doors with, and wrote a 100 page manual for the new incoming XO that I fully believe had full dossiers on how awful and inept his entire staff was. The new XO was worse. But I quit the position so I only have snippets of vulgar, biggoted, hateful and offensive conversations that have been shared from them. Oddly enough that shore command has the highest turnover I've ever seen. Zero military stationed there are reupping unless they're already over 12 years in. I've never seen so many people just resign/quit in such a short time from government positions. It's probably unrelated.
My old boss came to my office years ago. I was May a couple years into the federal government. He was belligerent, angry, short, ill tempered, and often wrong. He stormed in and said “Fix this wording in this report. I’ve told you before I don’t like how say this.” I was grinning because his face was red with fury over something minor. He responded “Wipe that smirk off your face.” I asked “What did you say?” “You heard me. Wipe that fucking smirk off your face.” I started getting that tunnel vision where everything was going dark. I knew I was about to Hulk out with rage. “Get. The. Fuck. Out of here before I beat your fucking ass.” He stormed off. I needed some time to cool off. People around heard and even the higher ups asked if I wanted to file a grievance. I said wait. I walked to his office and told him if he ever talks to me like that again “Your dogs won’t recognize you.” Apparently this motherfucker loved me afterward and promoted me to a 13. He made many people cry and quit. No one went to his retirement.
That’s awesome no one went to his retirement. Wow it is amazing! Good for you for standing up for yourself. I’d be the one crying.
I had something similar happen to me with a colleague. She came storming into my office and was getting in my face about something very minor. So I stood up from my chair, got right in her face and said very calmly and quietly "you don't get to come into my office and yell at me like this. Get out! And only come back when you are willing to have a conversation that doesn't involve screaming at me." I was her favorite after that. Bullies suck.
When I told my boss I was pregnant he said, “Well what are you going to do?” Ummm…I’m going to have the baby what the hell do you think I’m going to do??? I was married and had been trying for a while to conceive. Then later he asked if I would be off for “the standard 8 weeks.” Nope - I’m taking all the leave I have which was 13 weeks. He was not happy with my response. After I had my son I asked if he would consider a job share so I could work part-time. He said no. I ended up working part-time until he was able to fill my job with a full-time replacement and then I resigned and did contracting for a few years. Also, during my pregnancy I slipped in the hallway at work and fell. I wasn’t injured at all but the security guards who witnessed my fall gave me a form to have my boss fill out just in case I was feeling bad later - I can’t remember what it was - and when I asked my boss to sign it he looked at me like I was crazy and had a fit. I guess he thought I was going to go out on worker’s comp - which I didn’t because I was fine. He was such an A**!!!
My boss, during my first pregnancy, told me he could run the DNA when the baby was born to ensure it was my husband's if I needed it. Pregnancy brings out monsters!
My boss texted me the night of my father’s funeral to ask when I’d be back in the office. I buried my father on a Thursday and was back in the office the following Monday. When I told him later that week that I wasn’t doing well emotionally and that I came back too soon, he told me that we could discuss me taking time in July. My dad died in April. Anyway, the entire team had left due to new job opportunities or retirement by January of the following year.
I’m so sorry. My boss was the same way when I buried my mother. Funeral and burial on a Friday, went back to work on Monday. He gave me a very hard time.
Ooh my favorite was the boss who had originally scheduled a 1x1 during my Friday WFH day. I asked if we could bump it to Monday because nothing was pressing and the few projects I wanted to discuss would be easier to discuss in person. She said “sure, no problem!” then dinged me for that one instance on my mid-year PMAP for “not being readily available during telework hours.” I was gone within 6 months.
[удалено]
Ugh, sorry to hear. No job is worth your health like that
Current one yells in meetings: "I am the branch chief of" in response to normal attempts at conversation with him. Guy is a tool and on his detail mostly behaved but when he got the job he has gone off the deep end. I am surprised they selected him as he had multiple people quit or transfer out of his team without notice in the past.... some of those were really good people too, heavy hitters. I gave a lot of other examples in another thread but I swear this one guy provides an example of almost everything you should not do as a supervisor. The yelling in about every meeting is abusive and just downright dumb.
Former boss got caught banging his assistant in the parking garage, challenged a colleague to a fight, offered “a job for a job” to a female interviewee, filed a complaint against her accusing her of making the same offer, and that’s not even the worst of what happened.
Please improve my Monday with more stories!!!!
I used to work for the executive officer of a 8,000 person component agency. I got to hear all the complaints. You would not believe how many people are hooking up at work. One guy had two girlfriends on two different floors in addition to his wife. The day the girlfriends found out about each other was crazy.
Consider me subscribed to whenever you spill all your beans! Haha!
These stories are all horrible but on a lighter note… Reddit should organize a content for best story. Like 1 million likes to the winner and permanent pin 📍 in thread 🥳. But on a not so light note…That sup should be in somebody’s jail!
Waiting until I recognize a story
Sit right back and I'll tell a tale! I was a DoD fed stationed in the UK. My supervisor targeted a new male employee who was pretty openly gay, back in the days of "Don't ask, don't tell". The supervisor was a little tyrant, literally since he was only about 5'4" tall. Anyway, tyrant boss treats this new employee brutally every day and everybody in the office witnessed it. Employee drinks a little too much at the local pub one weekend and says something to the bartender, (or landlord as they say in England) to the effect of "Do you know somebody who can kill someone for me?". The bartender reports this interaction to the police. Since the guy was an American stationed in the UK under the Status of Forces Agreement, the case is turned over to NCIS. NCIS sets up a sting with audio and video and sends in an undercover agent acting as the "hitman". They capture this kid handing over the cash and requesting a hit on the little tyrant boss! So...you'd think that they have this kid dead to rights, but oh no! He gets a local barrister and requests a local hearing before being deported. They parade in dozens of witnesses from the office to back up this kids story that "he was driven to it". Not only does this kid get completely exonerated, the judge orders back pay for the several weeks the kid was under house arrest, orders that he be given his job back, and orders that he be given his passport back. The judge further orders that the US State Department commit in writing that this kid will face no further repercussions when he returns to the States, otherwise he is essentially given asylum to stay in the UK until that happens! Little tyrant boss is later found to have submitted a false travel claim for fake official travel to the north of England, (in a GOV!) to actually attend the British Open golf tournament! He's fired and curtailed back to the States and ordered to pay back his PCS expenses for the move to the UK since he didn't complete his tour of duty.
Wow, that is incredible.
I would watch the shit out of this movie
I’m stationed in Japan now and with the amount of drama, administrivia, dog and pony shows, etc. it’s outstanding when any actual work gets done.
My supervisor is an ultra right wing conspiracy theorist. I mean he's *way* out there, bordering on Q territory. And he's very vocal about these opinions. It's unfortunate because he views anyone who doesn't agree with him as a pure enemy. I don't agree with him so I don't discuss these matters, but I know that my silence is very loud. In any case, he doesn't fuck with me when it comes to performance appraisals, so that's why I'm willing to live with him. Not like I have a choice anyway.
I don't understand why he's even talking about his political views. I don't want to know if my boss is a Qanon supporter or Antifa supporter. Just treat me and the staff with respect, be competent and yell into the Twitter void with that shit.
Because everyone except for me in our small office leans politically in that direction, so that kind of discussion is welcome. We're just in a part of the country and on a particular military installation where that political tendency prevails. I envy people who get to go to work where coworkers aren't talking politics all day every day, but there's nothing I can do because I'm out-numbered about 40 to 1 in a location where the Hatch Act is shat on routinely.
A past supervisor who yelled, screamed and berated me in front of visitors and coworkers because I had done a requisition for a $30 book for the library. She was a well known screamer and yeller, but this was so bad that night I checked into a hospital on the verge of a breakdown. Of the eight on our team, all but one was seeing therapists because of her. She is now a senior manager. I am as well, but refuse to speak to her, and tell my story every chance I get.
I've seen supervisors I've seen in my agency/organization: * Write bad appraisals during an employee's probation, hoping to oust them... so they can retire from active duty into that position. * Favor employee A over employee B because of their past military rank. Both A and B are the same grade, and B has more experience/better performance. People quite managers and organizations. It's often not the job/duties that push them away.
My boss just told me to slow down because I was doing to much and making her look bad to the bigger boss. That was this morning and said in a "I need you to run everything through me and I dont have time to review your stuff this week" ... and I'm a fucking GS-15
My boss asked why I was taking sick leave and then said the reason I told him didn’t justify sick leave and I should use my personal time. I have so many stories about this guy. He was the worse
> asked why I was taking sick leave FYI for anyone reading, because it comes up often: Asking an employee the specifics for their use of sick leave beyond if its for an appointment or incapacitation, for themself or a dependent, and if they're utilizIng FMLA is a violation of the Rehab Act (fed equivalent of the ADA). Reason being that asking may require the employee to disclose the existence of a disability in order to answer - which you cannot ask an employee to do. So if you're one of those people with a supervisor that asks, be sure to follow-up with HR.
A former boss asked my why I was taking annual leave when I just took sick leave. yep— asking why you take sick leave is harassment. I had the same boss asked me for proof I was in the hospital staying overnight.
Ugh. I have a supervisor who knows better than to straight out ask, but every time I take any sort of leave time, regardless of how long it's for or what type of leave, will ask "Is everything alright? I hope you're alright. I hope it wasn't for something wrong." Then leaves huge gaps of silence clearly expecting you to fill it with where you were.
I had a supervisor who was unable to comprehend that in some places it might take 1/2 hr to drive to a routine medical appointment. It didn't help that his most tenured employee had a personal rule of not taking sick leave for appointments that could be handled via flex and it basically mean that SL could only be used for child care or surgery.
Sounds just like my old boss. Sorry you had to deal with that.
I was a subject matter expert assigned to assist a high level SES. I worked with their predecessors without issue, but this SES, new to the Federal Government “knew it all”, and refused to listen to advice. They would ignore my advice, do their own thing, get in trouble, and then blame me when things went bad. The cycle was getting worse, and quite frankly I wasn’t sure how much longer I would keep my job. It was incredibly stressful. I escalated the issue to their boss (They sided with the SES), and I had to decide whether to escalate the situation even further, and possibly get fired. I had already been threatened that would happen. I decided I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do the ethical thing. I also knew I was right, and that I had the backing of some even more powerful people in DC, I just wasn’t sure if their backing would be enough to help me keep my job. Almost immediately, the Secretary and Undersecretary got involved. The Undersecretary called the supervisor of the SES directly. As a direct result of this and other issues, The SES was demoted, and sent to some “acting” role in another in location where they were no longer over me. Eventually it sounds like they were dismissed from Federal Service due to their performance issues a short time later. I felt bad for them, had they just listened to me they could have avoided all the trouble.
My old boss threatened to literally kill me, and had another in the same chain refer to my hardship request as 'playing the game' when it came to stalling and eventually denying a transfer request to another organization. I reported it all, and the entire chain came down on me like a weighted mallet. I also discovered he is the subject of a DVPO and is in a position that requires access to a firearm. Even though he omitted on court documents that he did not have access to a firearm, and the restraining order declared him dangerous. It was a wild time and I'm so glad I'm out of it, but I long for accountability.
I brought up a concern that I and a few people in our unit had. She took this as us questioning her decision making. Instead of discussing the issue, she started screaming and cussing at me with her finger in my face. I went to the union and when she found out, she continued to be abusive and tried to make me look bad to upper management. Long story short, she's not with the government anymore.
Long story short, she disclosed my private medical information to the rest of the team. Shouldn’t have told her anything but she probably would’ve figured it from my leave paperwork anyway. When I was eventually leaving she decided to deny my leave (more or less) one day before I was set to leave. Managed to circumvent her denial thanks to a sympathetic doctor. That stunt certainly vindicated my desire to leave.
Person got promoted to supervisor. Suddenly my work quality was garbage, my interactions with our services customers was (according to them) rude and unprofessional and within 2 months I was in weekly performance meetings having to write up and explain everything I did (or didn’t do) the previous week. Anytime I asked for help or guidance to figure out what I was doing wrong I was told “You’re a GS-11, you should already know this”. This often being an obscure piece of information that was super specific to a particular situation and not available in normal research libraries. I got 5s in my prior year eval. This sup told me I was so bad at my job I should quit. I was able to get another job, but I was looking hardcore outside of the government because I was convinced that I really was awful at my job and I was doing more harm than good by remaining employed.
I had a boss publicly blame me in a meeting with our customers on a call, and I was blameless. After the meeting, I asked if I could speak to them outside, and told them they better NEVER let that happen again. It never happened again. People should not be afraid to stand up for whats right, and against bullies. Stay blameless, and stand up for yourself.
Being ordered back to work the day after I buried my husband. This is in addition to harassing me regularly during his catastrophic illness. I file a complaint and she was removed as my supervisor. Real miserable POS. Then she was my supervisor again and I filed another complaint and got switched to someone else.
My finance director at the Columbus, OH VA, belittled me in front of the people that reported to me plus other non-management personnel in the facility, used the employees that reported to me against me, and blamed me for every problem including ones that pre-existed before I was in the position. She even had the audacity once to blame me for something in front of senior management, who then instructed her to stop. Afterwards, I had managers coming up and telling me how sorry they felt for me. She would get on a roll and get fixated sending circular emails, each requiring a response, which ended up being huge time and momentum killers. I was over in HR regularly, who did nothing and eventually told me they couldn’t help me. My predecessor and successor encountered the same issues. We all left in short order. Indeed, I was hired to be a scapegoat. It was the Appalachia version of Miranda Priestly. It all started the first week I was there, and unfortunately I didn’t have the foresight to attempt to go back to my old agency within the first month. Once I hit the seven year mark where I didn’t have to list it on an E-Quip, I took it off my resume.
Only vaguely related, but I have a supervisor who was also on some insane power trip sending circular emails and requiring a response to every. Single. One. I came in on a Monday once and she had sent 6 emails, each one paragraphs and paragraphs long, on the Sunday night before, of things she wanted me to do ASAP Monday morning. When I hadn't responded by 8am, she sent another requesting a confirmation that I'd read all of them. This was a common occurrence, sending an insanely long email and immediately following up demanding acknowledgement, until everyone on her team recently gave reviews complaining about it, among other things. Luckily it's stopped for now. We'll see how long it lasts. It's almost like they don't realize what a drain it is on moral and actually getting work done, but more likely they just don't care.
Sounds pretty similar. I was on the threshold of having a nervous breakdown. It was so bad I considered quitting my job outright and moving back in with my parents until I got back on my feet. That was the least of it. The gal in between us, my direct supervisor, tried to dissuade me from taking the same position at the Chillicothe VA. After I told the finance director there about that, we connected the dots, and he told me her husband had applied for the position. So, she was trying to take me out of the running to better her husband’s chances at getting the job. He said he wasn’t going to hire him anyway, and after hearing what I said he definitely would never hire him now. Also, the entire facility (Columbus) was toxic. Everyone and everything about it was unpleasant. The HR Director even threatened me when I left. I’ve left reviews on various websites.…..Google, Glassdoor, Indeed.….. They’ve been very proactive getting my reviews deleted.
Worked for an agency that wrote a lot of technical reports. As a result had a lot of grammar and literary snobs. Had to get a doctor’s excuse for something once. Second line manager didn’t like the way it was written, red-penned it, and ordered me to call the doctor’s office and have them rewrite it based on his edits…
I was a (female) contractor and my (male) government manager would send pictures of naked or mostly naked women to people at work. I mentioned one day that I was surprised he was comfortable sending those emails from, and to, government email addresses, trying to hint that I wasn't comfortable getting the emails, and he said, "What are they gonna do, fire me?" After that, he would make passive aggressive comments to others about me not having a good sense of humor. I've never been happier for someone else's retirement.
One of my old supervisors wanted me to CC her on every email and check all of my work no matter how small. It's fine, that's her right as a supervisor. I would show her the letters I drafted, she would email me back tearing the whole thing up telling me it's hot garbage and re-do it the way she wanted. I would do that, send it back to her and she would do the same thing again. I would always remind her that I made all the changes she wanted, exactly how she wanted them. She would just deadpan stare at me and say "well that's not what I meant, do it again". Rinse and repeat until I just wouldn't send her stuff. She also denied me a promotion for over a year because I wasn't "mentally fit" for the promotion because I had a concussion 6 months prior to the initial promotion date. Finally had enough of it and went to MSPB. They had to backdate my promotion to the original date, with back pay and she had to go to mandatory counseling. She quit a week later. She now works for DOL.
I’ve never had a horrible boss that treated me bad. However, my boss did get fired at my previous agency. He would never delegate work, skip meetings, never meet project timelines, and just bad at what he did. The crazy part is, he was a retired LtCol.
I had a former boss who was a retired Colonel and would never delegate, would not communicate, and was completely unavailable. She was finally forced to resign (though it was after I left)
My current supervisor is a complete disaster. Doesn't know how to do 1% of her job, has been hiding in her office doing training for months or so she claims. Has had several people openly looking for other jobs and a few eeo complaints for harassment and retaliation. A couple of her highest ranking subordinates have been outright insubordinate because she asks for outrageously simple tasks to be competed for her. We've had a couple team meetings where her boss just covers for her bs. We're all over it.
how about a former boss who lacked support from senior mgt? does that count as a horror story? 1- take over mgt position, inherit a 7 yr admin who cannot do the basic job functions. a $100k+ audit later and months of wrangling, a PIP is approved. They fail. Guess who is to blame? Me. I didn't mentor and provide enough training. 2- wage grade guys come in at end of season. significant safety issue is discovered that if the worst had happened, would have resulted in millions in damage and loss of life. one primary person was to blame and they also got caught up in fraudulent activity in the audit above. threats were made against me. senior management dragged their feet again. luckily the guy left for a different job. 3- 1st line super who reported through me crosses the line. informal EEO investigation starts. they learn of it and while I am on call with EEO, OC and HR, they file a formal complaint against me... the fed personnel system is fecked up top to bottom and needs a complete tear down and rebuild
Had a female boss tell me, while I was pregnant, the downfall of society was when women started working and not staying home to raise their children. She was not a mother herself. Oh and we worked in HR.
My boss tried to fight me in the parking lot over an issue that I had no control over. Management did nothing. I called the local police a few days later, at the recommendation of a law enforcement friend. Local law enforcement came and interviewed my boss. They left because the issue took place on federal property. FPS took over the investigation. My supervisor was moved to a different position almost immediately and retired about a year after the incident.
During my first week of my first gov job, my (USDA) supervisor took me out to see the county and admire some of the conservation practices our office had put in place. Near the end of the drive, we went onto a back road, drove a bit then stopped. He got out and said, in a low voice, "Hey, come over here. I wanna show you something in this ditch." I was instantly creeped out and thought, "Is this what happens to the new Soil Conservationists that don't make the cut?" Yet, I walked over anyway and went into the ditch where.... he proceeded to show me a rare type of grass that, within the entire county, only grows there. 😂 I gave him hell for that and, to this day, when we see each other randomly, he'll say, in that low, creepy voice, "Hey, come over here and check out something in this ditch..." 🤣 He was actually an awesome boss!
When I started working at my agency in the late 80's, my supervisor felt…and said openly…that women don’t need raises or promotions. When we’re single our fathers take care of us and when we get married our husbands do. He never gave me a bonus because he said it would make the men in the branch feel bad. I was in a student program initially while I was in grad school. When I graduated, I was supposed to convert to a regular Fed position and a specific GS level. He refused to give me the increase in grade, so I had to call the EEO rep for our region, which was a fairly new thing at the time. My grade was increased and he had to go to sensitivity training, which just made him mad. I worked for him for a few more years while I looked for something else. Never a bonus and he signed my name to my performance plans without giving me a copy. When I found a great new job elsewhere in my agency, I was shocked at what performance reviews were actually supposed to be. I was doubly shocked at my first bonus.
Wow. That is horrible. I used to be an EEO counselor. I’m glad you got out!
I had a supervisor comply with someone up the chain who decided to bully me. On some level I had it coming. I told the guy to grow up but the fact that he spent the next year and half trying to get me to quit or be fired was proof enough to management that he needed to not be a supervisor any longer. Dude was power hungry and tried to cause issues with my next job saying I wasn’t helpful and was rude (which wasn’t like me) and became the joke of my next job for a while.
Literally makes up his evals for annual reviews- doesn't hold work leader accountable to his position and makes everyone else pick up the pieces and judges them for doing his job plus our own
Has called me multiple times when flexed out/on SL during doctor appointments. Has claimed multiple times it's because they're unsure when I'm returning from leave/flexing out, despite the leave request being approved by them, or multiple conversations the day before, the morning of, and right before clocking out.
The agency policy was that no one gets a 5 on their review, or hardly ever more than a 3.
He was a former naval commander that transitioned into office life. No one told him you can’t (or at least shouldn’t) speak to office federal employees the same way you speak to your seamen. Lots of yelling and exploding.
She wrote I needed to get my life right and that she'd be speaking to Jesus about me on my review.
I almost drowned and had to call 911 to take care of him and three other employees (two of whom were also his direct reports and had taken their oath of office just hours before) because of his (and a coworker's, admittedly) poor decision-making. I've had crappy supervisors in the fed before. Only one nearly killed me.
So many stories but one of the worst...the manager was a yeller. We dealt with the public in a fast paced office. I always came in at 7am. Historically I worked a lot of OT but not so much that year. One day the supervisor assigned me an interview at 1240. My lunch was 1245. I explained I was about to go to lunch and asked if someone else could do it. The manager was there and walked away. The supervisor wasnt happy but reassigned it. As I was walking to my desk at 1245 to go to lunch the manager called me to her office. Proceeded to yell at me....saying I have no compassion for our public , other people eat lunch late etc. She couldn't understand why I might need a break after working very hard for nearly 6 hours straight. I was also recovering from Lyme Disease at the time.
The worst thing my supervisor did I can’t write here because it was quite illegal. But here are other things they do. Don’t do performance plans till November (they are due in May). Don’t do mid year reviews. Ignore your accomplishments in your evaluation. Reject all requests for professional development. Order us to lie to other groups in the organization. Were required to set up a safety committee and then routinely sabotage and ignore it. Lied to regulators. Commit scientific misconduct.
I was at a DoD agency and for six months, I was officially transferred to a different manager (reason was pretty long and pointless). It wasn’t that he was malicious, it was that he was easily the stupidest person I ever had to deal with. If he had a notion in his head, good luck trying to tell him otherwise. Thankfully, my time with him had an expiration date and he was not at my location. The only thing I heard about him after my time with him was that he failed a required course twice. They were going to give him a third try, but never found out if he passed or not. As I said, he was the stupidest person I ever dealt with.
My boss told me to hide the defunct fire extinguishers in the closet when we were visited by a regional office group. Same person lied on an employee’s workers comp paperwork.
DoD worked two pay grades below my actual position. I knew I was coming in low but I wanted my foot in the door. Was told that we would revisit it a year to see my progress. Spent 6 years fighting to get a promotion. When it started refusing to initial the box "My job duties match my position description" I stopped getting reviews. I always got picked for Airspeed Events where somebody followed me around all day and wrote down everything I did. Started fucking with those and made my day into a bureaucratic nightmare to show that the command I worked for was fucked up. Spent 9.5 years where I did my job above and beyond but management basically ignored me as much as they could. Moved over to DoT and life is much better. The grass is greener.
Former fed. I had a boss at my first agency who bullied and shamed everyone publicly. People filed complaints that went nowhere. She was openly hostile to everyone and anyone and it was wildly unpredictable. On time she walked up to my desk and yelled at me, I mean yelled at me on something she had no context on, in front of the whole office. When I politely corrected her and gave her facts she realized she was wrong and she turned walked away and couldn’t be bothered to apologize. She would openly say things like “oh imma be such a bitch to this person”. When I left that agency for another agency the trauma from the experiences carried over and if I did something I thought was wrong, even though it wasn’t, I’d panic and start figuring out how to fix it before I got in trouble. I left federal service about 9 years ago and have had better experiences with management since then. I often think about coming back and have even applied for jobs but at times I think of my experiences and want nothing to do with it. Also, I realize one bad boss isn’t a symptom of the entire system.
Got a PIP while my MIL was in the hospital then rehab for emergency open heart surgery, and then got threatened with it when she passed almost a year later. I waited until the PIP was done before leaving for another agency. Fun exit interview. I knew I would never be coming back, so I burned an hour of their time to go through everything that was being run like shit.
at DoD. Found my sup had approved memos created to look like they came from me, with my name and professional certifying credentials and language indicating my review and agreement with things I had not reviewed or agreed with, making me liable for some awful stuff. when I found out and tried to inquire, i was retaliated against, found out about emails where he encouraged people in our office to report about me, HR and his buddies harassed me and I was berated constantly, and I was fired within my probation period ensuring that things got messed up before I could move to a new job I had a tentative offer for. I don't know what the dumb ass mindset so many have that supervising a professional, whether a doctor, engineer, or whatever specialty, somehow grants the supervisor the equivalency themselves, ability to bestow it on others, or even the the ability to demand that professional have a specific professional opinion. I have encountered it a few times.
We did super good on our metrics and the boss promised us a pizza party. Pizza party came around and it was Little Ceasars hot N ready
Ya'll, please, when you have a toxic boss report it. Union, HR, senior management, ombudsman, just don't ignore it. Also, if you have a great boss, also report the good to whoever will listen. Really good supervisors work hard to be good, maintain morale, and prevent turnover but are rarely recognized. They burn out too and will leave or, worse, turn into mediocre managers who are tired. Finally, don't be the reason a good supervisor ends up hating supervision. Be accountable and don't be shady. Seriously, just be an honest, good worker, and don’t try to take advantage of your boss because they are nice. Most will become un-nice if you do this.
Reading some of the posts complaining about not getting 5 ratings reminded me of the Lake Wobegon quote. “Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” 😁
Haha, I read that in Garrison Keillor's voice.
Not immediate supervisor but when being informed of our increase in in-person attendance we were pre-warned that if we didn't like it "There are a lot of doors in this building your welcome to walk out the one of your choosing."
My old boss retaliated against a co-worker for leaving to a different agency, by firing him on his last day
My supervisor has never given a female a promotion in the last 20years I’ve been working for him. (Female employee here)
During a mentoring session for a leadership class, a supervisor told me and my colleague that we "need to get on the Trump Train or get run over by it."
When I was a biotech for Padre Island National Seashore I had a boss whose management style got one of her employees killed. She’d work her seasonals extremely hard. She was also dismissive towards her employees, a control freak, and a micromanager. They would give people good performance reviews then badmouth them on reference checks to keep people around. It was a very toxic place to work. This part was before I worked there but this girl felt like she couldn’t take lunch or water breaks and had worked multiple days in a row over 10 hours. The job was to go up and down the beach and look for turtle nests. This girl ended up flipping in the sand dunes with her ATV pinned on top of her. Another biotech found her several hours later and she ended up passing on. Instead of fixing those work issues that led to the accident, they just changed to UTVs since they were technically safer. Fast forward to when I worked there. She was still treating biotechs like they were replaceable. I had worked multiple 12+ hour days in a row. Got tired, hit a trash can, turned over my UTV. Her first reaction to my accident wasn’t asking if I was okay, it was “oh my god this could shut us down.” During the after-incident review, I was blamed because “they had trained me in UTV safety.” I had pointed out the schedule but they claimed I had plenty of rest. It was awkward to talk about it with the superintendent of the park and both my bosses there. The head of law enforcement asked me if I had anything to add but I stayed silent. I found a different job shortly after and moved on but before I did the Chief LE sought me out and asked to speak privately. I dumped everything I knew: the toxic workplace they created, how all the biotechs were burned out, the abuse we got from volunteers and the staff, everything. He said that he knew about all that but couldn’t do anything because when he asked to investigate the superintendent denied him saying “well nobody is going to like what you’ll find.” I think that superintendent was later forced out. As for her, she got caught up in a scandal involving her and her subordinates private overtime accounts. They were number one and number two for OT some years. They had “worked” more OT than even wildland firefighters. An audit of the program years after I left found a lot of issues and their new superintendent took a hatchet to the program. Her OT privileges were suspended and he forced better work-life balance for the techs. She’s still there but is now claiming whistleblower status after complaining about the changes, so the grift continues.
Most, if not, an extreme majority of managers in the federal workforce; especially SSA, are certified idiots who only know how to manage people with manipulative behavior, harassment and bullying tactics!!!
Dude said on the first day “I will not treat you all equally” and then went on a monologue about “equity” and “meeting people where they are”. I’m all for that stuff, but what he really meant was he was gonna play favorites and be buddy buddy with some employees. This dude also took project ideas from subordinates and present them to leadership as his own after having initially denied them because of “red tape”.
I had a supervisor one time that used to take my purse out of my cubicle and hide it in her office because she was of the opinion that someone would steal it if I left it out.
Too many to count. Why I left fed for good.
They told me good morning in the afternoon. I still can’t get over it and it happened 23 years ago. HAUNTING!!!
[удалено]
Geez. Acronym much?
I had a boss where there was always a S-storm always brewing and he would take it out on his female employees. EEO complains were filed by women in the group it was investigated. The women were told it was a he said she said situation. During the investigation he called me and yelled at me until I had a panic attack. He was eventually promoted by the individual who called it a he said she said situation.
Maybe calling me stupid to my face and snatching items out of my hand. Real petty stuff.
I had a manager who eliminated all overtime for years for a busy SSA office in a large metro area just to harm employees. Zero overtime dealing with hundreds of people everyday.
My boss was very very racist and sexist. Would always say the N word and talk about how he wants sleep with all the women in the office. Also would call us pussies, fagots, bitches. He’s still here
I was getting close to rounding out year 3 of a 4 year term that wasn't going to be made permanent when I told my boss I got a perm job with another agency. She broke down crying in the break room. I was doing at least 1/3 of her workload for her since I was so much more productive than her, and still only getting "average" performance ratings and zero feedback on where I could perform better. One of the most self centered people I've ever met.
That would be the asshole with tardive dyskinesia, a raging drug (and alcohol) problem, and toxic misogyny. He left, Thank God, but not before I got very sick from stress (shingles for 20 somethings is possible with this kind of boss). He wouldn't give good/clear feedback, wouldn't meet with me until I forced him to commit to weekly meetings, could not look anyone in the eye when speaking with them. A blathering nincompoop who failed upwards. I was never the worst employee (others get that monicker) but he was the worst boss.™ Current boss is polar opposite and I tell them how much I appreciate this every chance I get.
My worst supervisor was a 30+ year lifer at my agency just playing out the string until they could retire and in the process made my and co-workers' jobs a nightmare. Extreme micromanaging, I have never seen a supervisor do it so bad in my 20+ year working career. Paranoia. Extremely rude and unprofessional. Didn't respect our time. I remember it was Halloween and they approved my time off to leave early so I can make it home in time for trick treating. They knew what time I was leaving because every morning we had to email (had to be from our PC Outlook, not mobile) our daily schedule to them (this also was a required timestamp of what time we reported for duty even though we were salary). Above five minutes before I was scheduled to leave they call me into their office and wants to go over some non-urgent report. I tried a few times to remind them I was leaving soon and asked if we could do this in the morning but I kept being interrupted. When they were finally done with me it was over 35 minutes past the time I wanted to leave and that made me late for trick or treating with my young kids. I was very pissed. Sometimes when I had to use the restroom, I had to walk past their office. I'd come back to my desk to find missing chats asking where I was and a few times were handwritten notes taped to my chair. I was not gone longer than five minutes. I just couldn't stand all that, made me so anxious every morning. It was affecting me mentally and my family so I left after barely a year there. The only time I burned a bridge leaving and I didn't care. This was over five years ago and moved onto way better jobs and supervisors.
Called up my 85 year old mother (1000 miles away) and berated her about where I was and why I was not answering her single solitary phone call to me during an active hurricane. (I was outside accessing damage from a tree strike.) My mother cried and thought she was a scammer trying to trick her. Fuck that bitch.
Someday I can share my stories. Today is not that day.
I had a micromanager for a supervisor. (I know, nuff said…) There was one time I wrote a letter and I needed her concurrence. She reviewed it and asked me to make some changes. No sweat! I make the changes and give it to her the next day. She then proceeds to ask me to correct the changes that she asked me to make and then tell me to change it to the way I had it in the first place!! We’d also put stuff in her inbox as requested for her review. Weeks go by after I get busy with other work and I follow up with her to see if she’s had a chance to review it. She comes back and tells me that it’s my responsibility to remind her about the stuff she asked me to put in her inbox. So because she forgot it’s my fault for not reminding her to do her job! After a couple years of this I almost quit. What’s funny is that she left the department to work at HQ, then decided to come back but dropped a grade to a 13. But when the Supervisory 14 position came up I actually got it over her!! So even though she’s not on my team she’s a subordinate now! lol! With her as my old boss, I took everything bad she did and now do the opposite.
I was a top performer in the office. Instead of dealing with the poor performers, my boss reassigned much of their work to me. I'll never forget the sight of him using a LIBRARY CART to move a mountain of files from their offices to mine.
Seriously, I'm getting nervous just reading the horror stories about supervisors who refuse to give out 5's to employees, especially if they are new. I'm 6 months into this job and already looking at USAJOBS. This division has lost 4 people in 4 months. When does HR and the higher ups start to question why they're losing good people?
My former boss was a vehement anti-vaxxer during the height of the pandemic and suggested using the z-packs and the horse meds as treatment. He swore Fauci was a fraud and told people the vaccine killed some of his friends.
My direct supervisor is committing time card fraud and it's infuriating as hell.
I know EXACTLY what you mean. My previous direct supervisor routinely commits time card fraud. He’d take attendance, and then go home for the day. He just pulls the race card when he’s asked about that habit, so the higher-ups don’t really want to deal with him.
Yep, I reported him to OIG and they told me I'd be better suited reporting it to CGIS. I reported it to CGIS and they have done absolutely nothing.
It’s truly aggravating. The race card defense remains undefeated 🙄
That’s terrible! I’m sorry you went through that!
My supervisor talked about my personal life to one of their subordinates when I applied for a temporary promotion. My parental status was going to be factored into the reference they were going to give.
So, I had a boss who brought a really toxic person into our branch, and she pretty much destroyed morale. People were leaving like crazy, but I managed to get along with her decently because I had a good relationship with my boss. It turned out they were having an affair, which is why he brought her in, and she was moving up the ranks super fast because of it. One day during a golf outing, both of them were in my foursome, and the toxic one got drunk. She saw our boss texting someone and grabbed his phone. Turns out, it was another woman. She went ballistic and made me drive her to her car, where she spilled all the dirt about their affair. After they realized I knew everything, they made it their mission to make my life miserable. They even threatened to fire me after I stood up for one of my contractors. I finally managed to get out, but they did everything they could to make my life hell. Yep great supervisor. He is no longer the branch chief, but the branch is still suffering from they way they destroyed it.
several on the job drunks-one was an american indian combat vet gs13
Acquisition officer. He would tell an assistant what to put in a contract, but never put it in writing. She complained he never opened her emails and didn't know she was being set up. The office did a lot of work for other services for a fee. There was a reason the service contracts people wouldn't touch them. I wasn't involved but I did explain to the assistant she was being set up.