I was a manager and resigned in less than a year. I was given a great severance because HR instructed the owners that I had a lawsuit if they didn’t give me hush money. Last I heard, they let go of all of the employees and bullied their walk-in clients if they got a bad review on Yelp. They are still ‘open,’ however, the owners destroyed their own company." —bexgee —A, 36 Sally didn’t like this. She told them I wasn’t allowed to take any time off and I had to go to rehearsal. She then sat in on the rehearsal to make sure I didn’t miss it. Luckily, the conductor was on my side and let me sneak off an hour early so I could get to my show in opera house two in time. All because Sally was feeling petty." —jsitdig16 It was also her personal joy to torment me. She would change how she wanted me to do things almost daily, and then berate me when I followed the new instructions. Ie: She’d tell me she wanted an email every time I saved a file, and then, she would call me into her office and berate me for ‘wasting time’ sending confirmation emails. She’d yell at me for the punctuation format I used for calendar appointments, the format she specifically told me to use (think colons and not dashes type stuff). I have a one-inch stack of printed emails of this type of toxic behavior because I had once considered engaging an attorney it was so bad. One day, she invited me to happy hour, and when we arrived, she said, ‘Oh, by the way, my husband is supposed to be attending an event upstairs, so we will get to say hi soon.’ In actuality, we were spying on him to see if we could catch him cheating. Some time passed, and it looked like the event was over, but no husband. She asked me if she should go upstairs, and I, of course, said yes because I wanted to see the aftermath. Well, she went upstairs and promptly came back down. He was with another woman, alone, at the upstairs bar, cuddled up. She was livid, and I felt like sweet justice had been served. I quit not long after that. In the end, I mostly felt sorry for her, but she never changed. Last I heard, she decided to hire someone with my same name so she didn’t have to learn another name. Her husband divorced her. And I never found out who won the pool in the IT department." —J, 35 —janes4c411b247 Once, her boss asked her to order a reprint of an old book. He wanted to give them out occasionally to dignitaries and speakers. She ordered 600. Three have been taken so far." —E, 33 We filmed a commercial (I got to be in it, which was fun). We published an online publication loosely related to the nonexistent product where we interviewed big-time celebrities. He threw a lavish party to ‘introduce’ ourselves, again with no product to promote. In general, Bob was all about appearance. Bob eventually ran out of money, but he tried to hide it. He stopped paying his software developers and other freelancers. He manipulated me into being his spokesperson, so I — at the young age of 23 — had to communicate with angry software developers and other freelancers. He eventually had me mail checks to each of them. I excitedly told everyone that their money was coming. To my surprise, each check only included HALF THE AMOUNT OWED. Bob had lied to me about the amount. Everyone was understandably livid, and I had to manage all of them. I was so stressed that I broke down crying in the middle of the office. Bob eventually shut down the company. He gave me one month’s severance and hit on me. I was disgusted, but I learned a valuable lesson." —C, 33 —S, 31 Basically, he just got rid of me because I wasn’t the puppet who would agree with everything my boss said and do everything the way he wanted, even though I almost always ended up being correct." —S, 38 —M, 37 Still never learned why he did it, but he never did it again. I quit a few months later." —afinallullaby She also is so obsessed with flat whites, no idea why, but she literally has fired someone on the spot over her ‘flat white test’ where she asks one of the baristas to make her a flat white. They failed." —J, 27 When I did go to HR, she made my life hell with passive aggression. I was fired a week later, told I had ‘ruined everything,’ and still have PTSD from my seven months there. I stayed because the pay was great, but in hindsight, not worth it at all." —E, 32 He left the company a majority of the time in the hands of someone who had no business running things. Life was horrible for a lot of people, and chaos reigned at that company for many years. From what I’ve heard, not a lot has changed since he left. I do know that before he left, he caused the demise of employment for 250 of his employees. That sadly was not the first time that happened." —B, 30
