'She just lied to us all to try to keep us all on her good side': 10 Employees who worked for toxic bosses

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
May 13, 2025 11:00 AM EDT

Have you ever sat in your car before a shift at work, wondering if your least-favorite manager is about to ruin your day? Maybe you've been here before: seated in your car with 15 minutes before your shift starts, you don't know which bosses you'll be dealing with today, and you have to mentally prepare. Is it going to be the manager who's your bestie, who lets you hang out with them in the break room and avoid work? Or will it be that one manager who you can literally never be pleased, which just makes them difficult to work for. They ask you to help a customer, then complain that you didn't smile enough during the interaction. Or they tell you you can go on break, then chide you for being a single minute late. It can be totally exhausting to work with a boss like this, regardless of the industry you're in, and toxicity like this can get tiresome to employees. 

Next up, read about some employees who made colossal mistakes on the job, like one person who was horrified that they "dropped a $2,650 ice sculpture… minutes before its unveiling." 

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  • 01
    anthson I had just promoted to sergeant at the prison I worked. They assigned me to night shift, which I wasn't entirely happy about. I went in to introduce myself to my two lieutenants who ran my new shift, expecting a hearty welcome and exchange of expectations. They pretty much ignored me and blew me off, and I felt a bit stupid. Oh well.
    via u/anthson
  • 02
    Shift begins in four days. Gonna do my best. These proceeded to make my life h I for the next year. They'd understaff my areas, then expect me to be able to get cell moves and property transfers done without a utility officer and without taking a staff member from an assigned housing area. My only option was to leave my area of supervision and conduct the
    via u/anthson
  • 03
    moves and property transfers myself. While I was away, they'd run unannounced "drills" in my area and force me to literally run to respond to a staff assault or inmate fight or whatever they dreamed up. All I heard was a call on the radio for a serious incident. I found out later they were trying to make my life h I hoping I would quit. They heard I was a "straight
    via u/anthson
  • 04
    player" and didn't want someone on their shift who wouldn't lie and cover up a bad use of force or any other ab e of power. They eventually scrubbed out and quit because their lazy I couldn't handle the responsibility of running a shift, but boy did they make my life h I before anyone figured that out.
    via u/anthson
  • 05
    [deleted] I was working in construction. I was using a sledgehammer to pound in a t-post when a rookie on his first day bumps in the back of me mid-swing causing me to swing forward. The top of the t-post and my index finger collided causing it to snap. My finger was
    via u/[deleted]
  • 06
    visibly crooked once I took my glove off. It was 4:00pm My immediate boss said, "well we have to stay and finish the job on site because we are two hours away from town." We did. I worked through the pain using only my good hand. We decide to drive back around 7:00pm. We get back to the yard around 9:00pm my finger is now too
    via u/[deleted]
  • 07
    swollen to tell it was crooked. I am 100% positive it is broken but my crew members are skeptical now. Upon arrival at the yard My boss said, "just go home it's just sprained" I demanded to speak to the division manager. We walked over to the division managers office luckily he frequently worked
    via u/[deleted]
  • 08
    late. I insisted my finger was broken. Division manager insists that it is only sprained but I'm refusing that bulls and demanding a visit to urgent care. The division manager said, "sigh fine. pulls out 500 dollars cash and hands it to me the things I do for my employees. shakes head just tell the urgent care it
    via u/[deleted]
  • 09
    happened off the clock" I told the urgent care it happened on the clock and filled out injury paperwork myself. It had multiple breaks and required 3 surgeries including titanium pins. I milked the physical therapy and had constant yelling matches with my boss because of it. F that company in it's sh ah le.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 10

    This boss seems 100% useless

    SirSplodingSpud So I used to be a labourer at a small building company, and the boss isn't too bright. So one day he deciders he needs the hose, seeing as I'm closer he says "SirSplodingSpud, pass me the hose." Simple enough, says I, so reach down to pick it up, only to discover a bucker of water sitting on the other,
    via u/SirSplodingSpud
  • 11
    tangled end, about 3 metres away. I give the hose a tug or two, but nought happens. As it turns out the bucket was filled with water. So I put my end of the hose down and walk towards the bucket. Then my boss yells "SirSplodingSpud, I said pass me the hose!!!" "I just need to move the bucket," I reply.
    via u/SirSplodingSpud
  • 12
    "Forget the bucket SirSploding Spud, I said pass me the hose!" So I move away from the bucket and pick up the end of the hose. He yells angrily "Never mind, you're taking too long, I'll do it." He picks up the hose and yanks angrily, trying to dislodge the almighty bucket, to no avail.
    via u/SirSplodingSpud
  • 13
    "SirSplodingSpud! Move that screams. bucket!" He This is the point where he realises the hose is not attached to the tap. He walks over, not half a metre away from where the bucket sat, to plug the hose in and turn it on, all the while muttering that I'm a bad worker.
    via u/SirSplodingSpud
  • 14
    This is just one of many incidents that happened with all employees there. I was fired this morning, unlawfully.
    via u/SirSplodingSpud
  • 15
    Arrow156 Worked at a hotel that was in the process of being sold to a new owner. We were pretty jazzed about it since they seemed like they really wanted to fix the the place up. Found out a few days before Christmas that we wouldn't have jobs after the new year. Didn't find out from our boss (the previous owner), found out from the re-modellers the new
    via u/Arrow156
  • 16
    owners hired when they came to do measurements. They told us that they were closing down the whole building down so they could basically gut the place and it would take at least 4 -6 months. They had no idea
    via u/Arrow156
  • 17
    that we had no idea, if it wasn't for them we would have found out when tried to go to work and found the doors locked. Last I heard she had fled the country back to South Africa with her adult son.
    via u/Arrow156
  • 18
    'The boss said, "I don't listen to feedback from others, I just do what I like"
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 19
    bigfootscousin Alright so I have been working for the same shopping company for about 4 years. A little over 2 years ago my boss got diagnosed with cancer and took a less stressful position. His replacement was a part timer who had his 2 weeks notice a week before the posting. We all thought he would be a great boss. He saw everything that was
    via u/bigfootscousin
  • 20
    wrong and needed fixed while he was part time and was in a position to fix it. We were wrong. People would call off 3-4 times their first month. Some of them wouldn't do anything at all. The boss knew and did nothing. Would go to his office and tell him one of his supervisors was passed out stalling my job only to be shown a video of monster trucks. Most people would be happy with a lenient boss
    via u/bigfootscousin
  • 21
    however when your employees can litterally call you a b to your face and walk out it's time to fire somebody. We have deg addicts who are falling over next to him and he sends them home for the day. He conatantly lets the other shift push more of their work into ours. A supervisor from the other shift tells him to so something and he listens.
    via u/bigfootscousin
  • 22
    He tells us we should be thankful for the hours. 12 hour shifts in below 0 wheather is a little excessive for me to be thankful over. All in all my boss is a last b Thank you for reading my rant.
    via u/bigfootscousin
  • 23

    She's the worst boss for treating employees like this

    Catty_Pake That would be my boss, the GM of a hotel I worked at years ago. She was nice to your face, but was a huge phony. She would ONLY work 8-4 M-F, no evenings, no weekends, no holidays, never work the desk or any other area if someone called off. The majority of the "heavy lifting" fell on the AGM, who only made a dollar more per hour than us
    via u/Catty_Pake
  • 24
    regular front deskers. She would get annoyed if anyone asked for the manager. She would hide in her office all day and expect everyone else to just take care of any issues. She made fun of employees and talked sh behind their backs. Spread gossip and personal information around, pitting employees against each other but then acting annoyed when there were
    via u/Catty_Pake
  • 25
    inevitably issues between them. She was obsessed with looking and acting rich, always talking about her new house she just bought and had expensive clothes and vehicle, yet one year for my birthday she gave me an obviously regifted bath set, and one Christmas she gave me a used Crockpot that still had the $4 garage sale pricetag on it. She would constantly lie to employees and tell them what they
    via u/Catty_Pake
  • 26
    wanted to hear, then if employees would compare notes, we'd discover she just lied to us all to try to keep us all on her good side. She would hire new people at a higher pay rate, yet would skimp on raises for older employees. She only cared about making money for the hotel, f everything and everyone else. She finally left my hotel to go manage another one,
    via u/Catty_Pake
  • 27
    promising everyone that she would take them with her. Lies. I did get a call from her new AGM to come apply over there, I never responded. F that b
    via u/Catty_Pake
  • 28
    sackofmangoes Had a boss who was a addicted gambler. He lost his house and owe countless debt to loan sharks this way. About a dozen times, our boss would sometimes hide in the restroom and twice squeezed himself into a storage drawer when loan shark enforcers would show up at our office to look for him. Eventually once day, the boss just stopped
    via u/sackofmangoes
  • 29
    showing up. Never seen him since for my duration I worked there. The company had 2 bosses, so the other boss ended up taking over the entire company.
    via u/sackofmangoes
  • 30
    changeneverhapp... wouldn't come i to work until the day was almost over and then would work through the night so she was impossible to get a hold of. She liked to write toxic novels of emails that put individual people on blast and sent scathing emails to individuals while ccing all the admin on it (shes the ceo- its not like she was ccing her boss)
    via u/changeneverhappens
  • 31
    I was in her line of sight for a while and would get giant emails listing all the things I wasnt doing. She would cc all admin, even those not over me, like IT, and then totally ignore my responses. where I outlined how I was doing all of it and then some. She even wrote me up for not meeting goals that were literally impossible for me to achieve because she refused to pay for the materials needed. She liked
    via u/changeneverhappens
  • 32
    to send POs back to us all scribbled out with demands to do them a different way and when we followed her instructions she would send the revised POs back asking why didn't follow the listed PO protocol. I still dont know why the ceo of a multimillion dollar npo needed to sign POs for 600bucks since she has VPs for that, but she is literally the reason that org is going under. I'm so glad I got out.
    via u/changeneverhappens
  • 33
    ih8bagels Worked full time in retail (back end and front, usually the front) and my part time colleague and I had to record our breaks. Right down to when we had to pee so that the boss could save some cents. I was supposed to be a concept designer for the store so when I asked for feedback about the site
    via u/ih8bagels
  • 34
    (retail/clothing) and relayed it to her, boss said "I don't listen to feedback from others, I just do what I like, look at my (other non- related business) doing so well" ok so what did you hire me for Also after I left I heard that my part time colleague was asked to remove a door. What the f , b was crazy
    via u/ih8bagels
  • 35
    conurecrazy My previous boss had gone on to greener pastures and in her place another was brought, this one was super friendly but a little spacey. She always messed up the books and couldn't do simple math -and I ended up fixing it all for her or else our records would be in the extreme reds every time. One time I'd come back from vacation and caught a
    via u/conurecrazy
  • 36
    cold, I worked the first day and then called in sick the next. Where I live is very close to where I work -as well as where the supermarket is. So being that I had been away there was no fresh food in my kitchen and no soup, so I went out to the supermarket and bought a crop ton of soup and crackers. I live alone and don't drive so I had to walk there and back.
    via u/conurecrazy
  • 37
    In that time either the new manager or a staff member saw me. Manager tried to write me up for not being sick and "going out shopping". The Executive called me into the office and said that it was BS, since I'd never done that kind of thing before and (her words) "wasn't the type". Luckily manager got called in just as i was showing her the receipt which had a
    via u/conurecrazy
  • 38
    dozen "general soup brand" entries. Best part? Manager was written up for false accusations -turns out SHE'D been the one who "saw me shopping" not a coworker as she'd claimed
    via u/conurecrazy

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Tags

boss workplace-stories toxic-workplace workplace Horrible Bosses toxic-work-environment
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