Boss fires manager for refusing to do his bidding, promotes a crony into the job who sinks the department: 'I stopped doing anything except what he told me to do'

Author image for Brad Dickson
Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Dec 7, 2024 12:00 PM EST

For every great boss in an organization, there must be a boss of equal and opposing terribleness. Sometimes, these bosses work together at the same level, or one above the other in the chain of command, or sometimes one will follow the other in the same position. It's uncanny the amount of times in your career that you'll have the most amazing and empowering boss only to have the worst boss you've ever experienced immediately after. With these bosses making you repeatedly question just how committed you are to your role.

These bosses will seek to "leave their mark" on the business by instating new policies for misguided and uninformed purposes or purely for the sake of it. They'll usually accomplish their goal but not leave the mark that they intended… This story is one of those times with an unqualified manager being promoted to replace a manager who was dismissed for standing up for their moral values, leading to a series of poor decisions that would unravel an entire department of the organization.

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    Cheezburger Image 10438347776
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    Image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Image is for illustration only and subjects are models.

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    Terrible manager collapses an entire department L I worked in an accounting department at a small business. My boss, Gary, was great and gave us lots of autonomy to get everything done. It was a small business, and over the years, as is common in small businesses, I
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    picked up a number of duties that weren't strictly in my job description but were pretty important. We also had a number of processes that were not well documented, but we were understaffed and not able to make any real changes. Things overall were pretty good, though, and our work flowed well and everyone was happy.
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    Not everyone, though: Gary's boss, Carl, recently had taken over as president of the company and wanted to slash costs. Gary was one of the highest paid employees, and Carl tried to get him to take a pay cut or a cut in hours. When Gary refused, Carl fired him and shortly replaced him with Matt, who was much less experienced and much less qualified.
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    Around this time, I used my leverage with Carl to get a solid raise. I knew Carl would be looking to replace me soon like he did Gary, but I was too essential to lose without Gary there either. I figured I had about 6 months, which lined up with about when I was planning to move out of state anyway. So,
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    knowing that when I did leave, my coworkers would be stuck picking up the slack of my job, particularly all the ancillary stuff I had picked up that was not documented at all, I started writing a detailed manual for my own job when I had time here and there. I didn't really care for Matt or Carl, but I figured it would save my coworkers a lot of stress.
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    Matt was a poor accountant and a worse manager. He was an awful micromanager with no concept of the "bigger picture." Pretty quickly, he noticed that I was spending time doing all these other duties not in my JD. He told me I was only to work on projects he assigned me directly. I tried to point out all the things that would not get done if I didn't do that. He was having none of it and told me not to worry about it, as it wasn't my job.
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    Sure thing, boss! I stopped doing anything except what he told me to do. And the department started falling apart: customer emails went unanswered, software stopped working with no one to support it, files weren't organized, etc. I normally took care of these and a hundred other things, but Matt was pretty clear I'm not to do any of it. I also stopped working on my manual.
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    After a few months of this, but sooner than I expected, I was laid off by Carl and Matt for "budgetary" reasons. (Of course, they listed my job on indeed that same day, for a laughably low salary.) I was given no warning, just sat down for a meeting with the two and walked out the door. Matt didn't allow me to take anything from my desk, access my computer, or say my goodbyes to my coworkers. He was also very clear I was not to retain any company documents or information. Sure thing, boss!
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    So I left, and I heard from coworkers still there that over the next few weeks, things took an even worse nosedive. They weren't able to fill my job, and nobody could cover most of my actual job duties or any of my ancillary duties. By this point, vendors weren't being paid, and payroll wasn't going out on time.
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    And then I got the call: Matt found the file I had left in a conspicuous spot on the network drive: JOB MANUAL AND PROCESSES.zip. It was encrypted. What's in it? Oh, just a draft of all my job duties and everything I was responsible for that I worked on during downtime. Why was it even encrypted? Well, it had a bunch of confidential data and passwords in it, boss! What's the password? Sorry boss, I don't know. I didn't retain it after leaving. But it's in my files!
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    In reality, since it wasn't finished, the manual wasn't going to be some panacea for all the company's problems, but I had padded it with a lot of images, so I imagine the file size was pretty attractive. And the password was indeed in my files. If Matt cared to look, he'd find an unlabeled sticky note with a nondescript string of letters and numbers in a random folder in one of my 2 dozen filing cabinets.
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    As an epilogue: about three months after I talked to Matt, Carl fired him after discovering what a disaster the department had become. My coworkers. both left around the same time for better opportunities. Carl's still been unable to fill any of these jobs (after almost 18 months), so the entire accounting department is staffed by contractors and consultants, who I am sure are costing the company a fortune. I hear the board is looking for a change in company presidents.
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    AnnoMMLXXVII • 1d ago I hear the board is looking for a change in company presidents You should apply. That would be epic
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    kfries. 1d ago I left a consulting job at a client site. The manager on site insisted I leave the laptop rather than mail it back to the home office 1500 miles away. About 6 months later he expected me to remember the password. As they insisted on a minimum of 16 characters, I couldn't recall it. I ended up hanging up on him.
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    . glenmarshall 1d ago This is an example of what happens when companies lay-off experienced people who, due to tenure, make a higher salary. Similar stories in my last employer, where high-tenured people were laid off with immediate effect. Much job-specific and industry knowledge exited with no turnover or onboarding of the remaining staff and any new hires. The business. went downhill.
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    . chaingun_sam... 1d ago. JOB MANUAL AND PROCESSES.zip. It would have read, "Whatever Matt assigns. me." And left it unencrypted.
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    Bobd1964 1d ago • Good job. I really dislike managers who have no clue what their employees do, much less are able to do their jobs.
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    mityman50 1d ago · • The idea of "not retaining" a password is hilarious to me. Sure if youre working with sensitive info you may have actually chosen a password that's not easy to remember, so it's not weird at all. But me in my job, it would be something trivial that I did remember, but oh wait, I retain nothing, I forgot
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    throwawayacc... 1d ago . How are they allowed to just fire people for no reason?
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