Managers

[Briefcase]

Having been active in the 'Why Don't You Get A Job Thread' there has been quite a few comments about shit managers, good managers (pay rises every month - @SpursRiot2012) and probably a mixture of both.

So this gave me the idea to start a thread about managers, I myself have had some amazing managers who in all honesty have told me to sort my life out and to stop acting like a dick and others who have been terrible in a way where you wouldn't want to work for them at all, some you often wonder how & why they got the job in the first place.

So this thread is about sharing good and bad stories with managers you have worked with/for.  I am guessing this may be a combination of the Jobs & Office thread.

My best - Probably my first, always had a laugh but if you were in the wrong he would bust your balls, he was the sort of manager that would go with you (and the team) to the pub on a Friday lunchtime, let you get pissed because its Friday but if you made a mistake when you got back to work for those last 2-3 hours in the afternoon then he would crucify you, those 2-3 hours every Friday afternoon after pub lunch would be like living on a knife edge knowing that your pissed when you probably shouldn't be in a 'this is funny, but please do not cock up' way.

The Worst - Have had quite a few but when I worked in a restaurant there was a manager who shy'd away from everything, if a table complained he would tell me he spoke to them when in fact he didn't bother at all, this happened quite a few times until one day when he got caught out when it was a mystery shopper doing a random question/test, its safe to say he didn't last very long. 

[BomberPat]

The best is probably my current line manager. I work in the Higher Education department of what is predominantly a Further Education college, and my boss is the head of HE. He's a great teacher, and has a real clear vision for what higher education in this context should look like, and he's completely open about his faults and failings, and not afraid to own up to when things are his fault, or when he wants help with something, which is a whole new experience for me in management. Very understanding of mental health issues and personal issues and so on - previous bosses would be distrusting or annoyed if I called in sick, he's always concerned that, if anything, I don't take enough time, and on more than one occasion has seen me in the office after my usual finishing time and told me to go home, that work can wait. He also responded to me showing up to work with my undercut freshly done, hair tied up for the first time, "you look like the Kurgan", then doing the "I've got something to say...it's better to burn out, than to fade away" bit from Highlander, complete with awkward spin, while I was talking to a group of confused students. One of the few bosses I've had where I'm genuinely happy to have a pint with him, don't just do it begrudgingly. 

 

The worst...a bloke I worked for in two capacities; he was manager of a petrol station, and ran a local rock/metal night that I attended. I started DJing for him when I was probably about 20/21, because I was mostly doing my own nights that, while fun in terms of having full freedom over what I played, weren't earning me any money, as everything I made was going back into the kitty to run subsequent shows. His gigs, back then, were a guaranteed paid gig, that I could reliably take away £70-£100, for two hours' work. Easy stuff. By the time he stopped running those nights, some seven or eight years later, I was lucky if I made enough money to pay my taxi fare home.

He was never good at running a gig - no one was really sure what he did, aside from take credit, as he never DJ'd, never (to my knowledge) did anything on the night other than very occasionally putting in a shift behind the bar. But he would always take a cut of the takings - not to go into a central pot to put toward future gigs, he'd take payment himself, even if he hadn't made enough to pay everyone else, he'd always make sure he got his share. Now, when I promoted, I had an order of priority for who needed paying - it began with whoever I had taking tickets/money on the door, because their job was necessary but unglamorous, and usually meant they missed most of the show, followed by any other "support staff", then bands, then DJs, then me. If anyone loses money, it's the promoter, not anyone else, because it's the promoter's job to make sure that money comes in.

In the early days, he'd put up posters, and hand out flyers to a few pubs and cafes. It was hardly comprehensive - he'd basically put them up in places that were on his way to work, or in businesses run by his mates, rather than actually putting in the work to traipse around everywhere he could, but it was better than nothing. Years later, he decided that posters were a waste of money, and stopped printing them - never once putting two and two together and blaming the dwindling number of attendees on the fact that he'd stopped paying for advertising. In its stead, he decided he'd use Facebook, but had no idea how to. Admittedly, this started before "Events" on Facebook, but he had a Facebook Group, and would post in there to say there was a Rock Night, but only once, and sometimes only a day or two beforehand. So it was easily missed, easily forgettable, and only reaching the people who were already members of the group. Most of whom were people who had been going for years and were getting older, settling down, having kids, and less likely to keep going anyway - whereas the potential audience of new gig-goers (i.e., people just turning 18) were missed out for a good five years, yet he'd never even think that was a problem. Nothing could ever be his fault. He tried to talk people (including myself, on occasion) out of holding gigs on the same day as his, as if he had exclusive rights to play rock music, and I kept pointing out to him that there were only two nights in a weekend, and only so many weekends in a year, so he was always going to clash with something else going. I'd be at the venue, DJing to an empty room, and he'd walk over and complain that some other gig was on and everyone would be at that, or - many times - that a specific, named person was having a house party, and therefore listing a bunch of regulars who wouldn't attend. For a start, if you can justify why no one's attending because specific people aren't there, you're not nearly enough of a draw, but more than that, the best thing I ever learned as a promoter was "your job is to promote the event. If people would rather be somewhere else, you haven't done your job". But, again, nothing could ever be his fault. I still see him at gigs, and he still speaks that way, as if the target audience is a select few people he knows, and not a potential unknowable audience of thousands that you haven't reached yet. Utterly fucking clueless.

I also worked for him, when he was manager of a petrol station (since closed). I dropped out of college, needed a job, and he offered me on there. It was an utter shithole. Slightly off the beaten track, knackered old pumps and equipment that clearly nobody was ever going to pay to have improved. Because the pump readings weren't connected to the tills, it wasn't self service, a forecourt attendant had to come out and pump petrol for you. That was my job. There was no shop to speak of - we only sold oil, paycards (a Jersey parking peculiarity), sponges, a few other basic car essentials, so 99% of my time was spent waiting for customers, then pumping their petrol. Only one person was on shift at a time. 

My shift was, almost always, 7.00am til lunchtime. I couldn't leave until someone else arrived to take over from me, and both the manager and the only other employee were always late. The manager would complain about the other guy always being late to take over from him, having turned up half an hour late to take over from me, and fail to recognise the hypocrisy. He would (rarely) show up early, and announce that he was using the hours he owed me, and sending me home early - because you never got paid for the extras you worked, he just turned it into "hours owed" and diddled the books to make it all add up. He'd phone from home to tell me was running late, and then show up with a bag of shopping and a takeaway coffee. And not just five or ten minutes, reliably anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes late, sometimes more than an hour. But because I did the opening shift, I could never be late - it always my job to be there and open for business on time. Apart from Mondays, which was my one closing shift - because that was the night he played darts, so he changed the rota to get off work. When he was at work, he was so miserable that regular customers would ask to know my rota, so they could come in and be served by me instead of him. He was dreadful.

What's worse is that, when he did show up, invariably he'd try and keep you there talking to him. Which was even worse if it was you taking over from him, as he'd just hang around, and you couldn't make your excuses and go anywhere else - and because he'd had the whole day to think about something that he was going to now insist on telling you at great length.

And that something, usually, was wrestling. And usually fantasy booking. Fantasy booking from someone who has been watching wrestling for 30+ years, yet somehow understands nothing of how it works. From someone who takes everything he read in Powerslam as gospel. Imagine a sentient Bullet Club T-shirt, and you're somehow not even halfway there yet. Invariably, his idea involved either a callback to an angle that no one else remembered, the reforming of a stable, or - the Dem Wans Special - half the WWE roster dropping their gimmick to revert to what they were called on the indies/in OVW, and a developmental call-up being thrown straight into the main event. His big one was always a stable of second or third generation stars, that managed to hit almost all of those boxes every time, and was always terrible. He'd spell out how this angle would go, in excruciating detail. Forever. 

[SuperBacon]

My current manager can't say specific. She says Pacific. The fucking idiot.

[chokeout]

When I was 16 I got a job in a hardware store/ garden centre and the assistant manager, a guy called Chris used to turn up on a Sunday, grab about £30 worth of plants and lock himself in the office to make hanging baskets for literally 4 hours. He’d then sell that hanging basket for about £15 and brag about how popular they were, oblivious to the fact that they were being sold for a massive loss.  We found out later that the reason he took so long to make them was because he’d stashed rolled up porn mags into the coat in the office and was wanking himself silly in the office every Sunday morning, surrounded by bedding plants. 

[ColinBollocks]

At my first job my boss used our little office as his personal shagging dojo, at night. Thankfully my table was always left untouched, but a colleague would always find the front of his desk rearranged, with the keyboard and what not cleared to create a U shape. We also later found out his feckless Assistant would occasionally stay on at night, come to our battered office and wank himself dry over the same Holiday photo set on some girl's Facebook (he didn't clear his history - feckless).

My Mum had some business awards ceremony ages ago, so of course she hired a limo. I got talking to the driver on a piss stop and it later came to pass that he had driven said boss a few times and the night always ended with the driver looking on as the boss fingered some young lass in front of his wife, while she looked on. Normally you'd maybe call bullshit, but it's definitely something he'd be into. This is a man that had an Amazon Wishlist similar to the sex shop in Bottom.

That boss would also see someone had a bottle of juice on their desk and would just grab it and take a drink out of it, without asking.

He's now in politics. Go figure.