There Was A Good Reason They Never Invited Their Boss To Drinks After Work
“There is a little bar next to our old office that we would go to sometimes on Friday after work to have a few pints. There was usually 4 or 5 of us. We never asked one of my bosses because no one ever wanted to be around him during work, so why would we want to be around him when we aren’t getting paid to do so and don’t have to?
One day, he finds out we are going and tags along. We get a table and he starts pounding drinks. We usually have 1 or 2 and then go home. He asks if any of us are hungry and we all tell him no, that we all have food waiting at home or plans with our SO’s to go get dinner. He proceeds to then order 6 different appetizers.
The food comes and he is the only one to eat any of it and then he gets up and tells everyone he’ll see us on Monday. We were stuck paying for all the food and his drinks. None of us even wanted to take any of the food home because he basically touched all of it while also sucking on his fingers to clean them off.
I still to this day think about how to get him back for this and it happened probably 10 years ago.”
“It Was The Most Tone-Deaf Moment Imaginable”
“It was this guy’s last day with the company, and the managers brought in a cake for everyone to share. A very nice farewell gesture.
Except he wasn’t moving to a new city or leaving the company for a new job. He had gotten fired. The managers literally fired this guy, then called everyone into the kitchen and said, ‘Okay, today is Steve’s last day with the company, let’s have some cake!’
Most oblivious, socially awkward, tone-deaf moment imaginable.”
His Interview Tactic Was Well-Intentioned, But So Cringe-Worthy
“In true Michael Scott fashion, my boss (owner of a small business) did the most cringe-worthy (but well-intentioned) thing when interviewing a candidate for an open position.
Because of the current political climate, my boss is worried about hiring a neo-nazi or someone who hates all immigrants, etc. so he decided to throw a curveball into the interviewing process to vet out any individuals who might have different political opinions than him.
So he’s at the tail end of interviewing this poor, innocent guy just looking for a job, when he suddenly says, ‘Well, it’s been a pleasure meeting you, and I look forward to speaking with you again, but I have to go because I’m gonna be late for this rally.’
‘Oh, really? Okay. What rally are you going to?’ asks the interviewee.
‘Oh I’m just heading over to the white power rally downtown… we’re meeting today to lobby for getting rid of all the foreigners in our city.’
To which the interviewee replies, ‘Ah. Okay. Well, it was nice meeting you!’ ……. he didn’t get the job.
And my boss still wonders why we’re having such difficulty hiring a replacement…”
“She’s Like The Malicious Michael Scott You See In The Early Episodes”
“She told me I could take a day off when I was dealing with some severe insomnia problems, then came running into my office 5 minutes later to say too many people had the day off already (two people, whose jobs didn’t overlap with mine). Turns out, it was because she wanted to take a half day and didn’t want the place to look unstaffed. The previous day, however, she did take the day off when multiple other people were out and left us with just two people (of six).
She has also brought in her soymilk maker into the office and kept talking about it. She was also using the lunchroom toaster oven to make cakes, but not for us. She also just last week started telling people all about her UTI, in particular in front of the brand new employee that was at that moment being introduced to her. She also buys food for her daughters using the company credit card when she is supposed to be out shopping for things for the company. So far she has not been caught.
Oh and most recently she asked a co-worker to try not to schedule her mother’s funeral anywhere within the 3-week span that she would be taking her vacation because that wouldn’t be convenient. She said it somewhat (but not completely) jokingly, but brought it up more than once.
I could go on…she’s like the more malicious version of Michael Scott you see in the earliest episodes.”
He Was One Word Away From An HR Complaint
“I had a job selling furniture. My boss was a tall lanky character. He was a white guy that had a head for sales but had some real disconnects when it came to other cultures. The conversation began when he walked up to a group of us and looked at the big black guy (named Rory) in the group and went, ‘you know, I’ve been taking some online college classes and one of the electives I’m taking is urban American culture.’ By his description, it was a study of how black culture developed from the slaves to the diverse group we have now. Rory rolled his eyes and I could tell he was peeved (my manager had a bad habit of laying the bullcrap on extra thick).
I looked at Rory and said, ‘come on man, let go move some tables.’
My manager said, ‘what’s that about Aesop’s Fables?’
Before I could get out what I said, Rory with a confused look on his face went, ‘What are those?’
I quickly tried to explain that they were short stories with a moral tied into them mainly for kids but as I was getting this out my manager goes on this full lesson about what they are. ‘Picture this Rory. A dog is waking in the forest with a big bone in his mouth. He goes to a lake with a massive bridge across it. As he’s crossing the bridge he notices another dog below him with a bone in his mouth. He really wanted that bone too. When he stopped the other dog stopped. He looked down over the side of the bridge and the other dog looked back at him. At that point he attempted to scare the other dog away to get his bone – he barked! But in the process, he lost his own bone and realized the other dog was just a reflection. That’s why you must always be thankful for what you have and not to be jealous of others.’
Rory had zoned out at this point. The poor guy was so confused on how we got from moving tables to this long story so he just looked at my manager and went… ‘what?!’
It was at this point that my manager said something I’ll never forget. ‘Ah, I see you don’t understand but thanks to my studies I’ll put it in a way you can understand: Picture this – Little Ray Ray is walking down the streets of the New York with his favorite chicken wing in his hand!…’
My eyes got huge and I clapped my hands and said, ‘Woah! Good story but we have to work. Come on Rory!’ As I’m pulling Rory away from the conversation my manager goes, ‘Wait, what are you doing?’
To which I replied, ‘Saving your job. Don’t go there, sir.’ And then continued to walk Rory to the opposite side of the store.”
“I’ve Never Seen Anything As Remotely Crazy As This”
“We were having an all-hands meeting where the CEO of a small company (50-ish employees) announced that he had just fired the CFO for ’embezzlement.’ We all knew he was full of crap and he fired the CFO because she disagreed with a decision.
Anyhow, right after he announced this, he offered $100 as a ‘morale booster’ to anyone who could sing the entire Tigger song from Winnie the Pooh. Yeah. So, one brave girl gets up and starts singing the whole song. She gets to the last line and messes up one word. The CEO says that it doesn’t count, pockets his own $100 bill, then proceeds to sing (and dance to) the whole song while we stand there, watching him, mouths agape. When he finishes, striking a maniacal pose with, ‘…and I’m the only ONE,’ we are all eerily silent. He then straightens up, unbuttons his suit jacket, and shows us the lyrics to the song have been embroidered on the inner lining.
I’m 40 years old and have been working as a professional for 22 years. I’ve seen some crap, but I’ve never seen anything remotely as crazy as this, and I pray that I never do again.
Some other crazy things he did were:
He’d come in while we were trying to work and challenge us to planking and squatting contests. No one ever took him up on the offer, but he’d still plank and squat just the same. Hard to focus on coding when the guy who signs your paycheck is 3 feet away from you, covered in sweat, grunting and groaning like he’s in labor.
After firing the CFO, he took it upon himself to handle all hirings and firings. We found out that this usually meant that he would Facebook creep the candidates and only bring in women of a certain ‘caliber.’ He rarely hired men unless they were on the dev team, like myself.
He was very into cycling and would often wear only his cycling outfit the entire day. Coupled with his lack of understanding of personal space, this resulted in highly awkward situations.
We once walked past his office when he was conducting one of his ‘hot girl’ interviews, only to see him on the ground, doing push-ups in front of her.
He highly encouraged us to join the gym, offering to let us wear our workout clothing if we exercised at lunch. But then he would give us men a hard time about it. It was clear he only had the policy to see the girls wear skimpy clothes, which they never did.
He would bring in a masseuse every few weeks. It was a male masseuse, so typically only women would sign up for it. Once, a female colleague canceled and offered her spot to me instead. When I got to the conference room that doubled as the massage parlor/changing area, I noticed that there was an active webcam hidden in a plant.
When I first started working he was kind of entertaining, just noticeably off his nut. But usually, he’d make up for his crazy behavior by doing nice things. After he fired the CFO he – as well as the company, itself – started getting really unstable. I discovered that the company had a huge software licensing issue and when I let him know, he publicly humiliated me. Full-on screaming at me, talking baby talk, scolding me like a bad dog. All this right in front of all of my colleagues. I should note that I did not approach him to discuss the licensing problems in front of everyone. He asked me what I was working on as I was writing up the report. I tried to be discrete about it, but he kept probing until I had no choice but to tell him everything I’d discovered.
I started looking for a new job right away. From what I understand, things got much worse after I left.”
To Say He Overhyped The Restaurant Is An Understatement
“Every year, representatives from my old company would attend the International Bridge Conference in Pittsburgh. The first year I went, my boss got me all hyped because there is apparently a restaurant in Pittsburgh that it was his tradition to go to every year when he was there for the conference. He kept saying how exciting it was that he could introduce me to the tradition so I figured it had to be some awesome unknown local gem or at the very least a Pittsburgh icon like Primanti Bros.
It was the Subway across from the convention center.”
When It Comes To Pettiness, She Gives Michael Scott A Run For His Money
“A co-worker asked me for some help with a personal errand. It was close to our break time, so we went out and got it done on our breaks.
On the way back to the office, we hit the drive-thru, and he bought me lunch. We get back to the office with our burgers. The boss looks up and goes, ‘Where’s mine?’
We apologize, say we didn’t think to bring one back for her. We then sit at our desks and eat out lunch.
The next day, at around the same time, the boss disappears for a bit. She comes back with a bag from the same fast food place we went to the day before, sits at her desk, and starts eating a burger. She occasionally yells out, ‘BOY O BOY! THIS IS SUCH A DELICIOUS BURGER! AND I ONLY GOT ONE FOR ME! CUZ WE’RE SELFISH LIKE THAT AROUND HERE, AREN’T WE?’
My co-worker just looks at me. ‘Is she seriously having a revenge burger?’
Yes. Yes, she was.
Also, we got her a card on her birthday. She tried to have us written up for not making a bigger fuss.”
Imagine Date Mike, But In Real Life
“My first job out of college was for a Michael Scott type of guy. For starters any time he would order lunch in for the office it would be sandwich platters or something for everyone, and a salad for the 300+ pound woman in the office.
Also, when hosting any events he would only ‘strategically’ invite only the attractive workers along. He also wore a huge cowboy hat when partying, despite being a city boy. The couple times I golfed with the guy he constantly thought the cart girls were falling in love with him. Saying things like, ‘You’d better talk to her next time she’s around, I can’t have my wife finding her number.’
He would get real ‘urban’ with any black person that was hired or came through the office, both in the way he talked and asking if they liked Obama or Lebron.
He would hook potential employees by saying the position was for a supervisor or team lead position, and then essentially say in the second interview that it was actually a coordinator or telemarketer role.
We were on a work trip and he talked over and over about this great local bar that he goes to every time he’s in the city. It ended up being Howl at the Moon. He had friends back home that told him to go there this particular year, due solely to there being a hot bartender there. She did her thing and flirted with him the first night and he went back there all three nights we were in town. The last night he invited her to Vegas for his guys trip. He went as far as to buy her ticket on his phone in front of her. He was 52 and she probably 22. He went to the bathroom after and she asked me if he was serious or joking, then wondered how I can work for him.”
He Thought He Was Funny, While Everyone Else Tried To Ignore Him
“Three things:
For a solid 3 months last winter, every time a female in the office would wear boots, he would say that they reminded him of ‘Hitler boots.’ He would then march in a circle around the office with a Nazi salute, high step, and screaming jibberish. This was typically followed by him giggling thinking he was funny while everyone in the office would cringe and/or try to ignore him.
We were very close to getting a very big client in an Asian country. We ended up losing the client because he did his racist Asian impression (very similar to Michael Scott’s ‘Ping’) to the guy over the phone without realizing that the guy was Asian himself.
There is a very large list of words that he always mispronounces. We actually have a notebook where we record his pronunciation of these words as well as a variety of super weird (boss’s name)-isms that he likes to use.”
He Even Admitted He Recognized Himself As Michael Scott
“He once said in a meeting that he started watching The Office, but it was hard to watch because he recognized himself as Michael.
Spoiler: he’s not as likable.
He has suits that are themed to holidays: a Christmas suit, a shamrock suit, a pink Valentines day suit, a patriotic independence day suit, and my favorite, his ‘birthday suit’ which is decorated like an ’80s wallpaper (think that restaurant from Saved By The Bell). Sometimes he’ll wear the same suit multiple times near a holiday to get maximum exposure of people who see him.
When he’s not feeling broke, his St. Patrick’s day suit has a gold pot accessory that he will fill up with gold coins and give them away to random* people. And by random, I mean girls/women that are too young and/or out of his league. I saw him run to intercept a woman he was obsessed with after seeing her on our group walks a few times.
For a very weird period of time, he was growing his hair out. He started telling people that he would get his hair cut when he finally got some action. Then kept repeatedly mentioning things like ‘meeting a new woman tonight, hope I get a haircut, har har.’
He wears a fedora. Once he asked me about it and I told him that it was actually impolite to wear a hat indoors according to the website I looked it up on, and he was very sad, but then later decided he didn’t care and kept wearing it. A black and grey pinstriped fedora. Often with dad jeans and a polo/short sleeve button down.
He dressed up as Santa for one of our holiday parties, then photoshopped himself into a pic with Santa where he was giving himself gotcha finger gestures.
He gets these Shutterfly photo books made with the cringiest captions and puts them in the break room for all to see. In one picture, he captioned it as ‘skinny dipping’ and the photo didn’t show anything inappropriate but was taken at an angle down his hip/leg.
He has a personal website with an awful resume. He does toastmasters and posts all his powerpoints on there, including ones that reference his ex-wife and their love life issues.
He once showed a video at an all-staff meeting where he was wearing his money suit (forgot one from earlier) and talking about Dave Ramsey’s financial peace university. This has nothing to do with our job and the video is soooo Michael Scott. He gets up at the end and reveals he is only wearing the suit top and boxers. The first line of the video is ‘Coming to you live from New York, I’m Johnny Cash and I’m here to talk to you about money! [holds up stack of bills. . . Awkward pause] Sure, those are just ones, and I’m really not Johnny Cash…’
He’s really a trip to work with. Smart guy, wants to be nice and liked, but so so freaking annoying. Not that great at his job, either.”
The ADA Meeting Was Less Than Productive
“I used to work for a Broadway theatre producer, and we were in a meeting about the ADA (the act that requires places of business to accommodate the disabled).
Like Michael Scott, our VP had come to his position through no merits of his own and had no idea what he was doing, let alone how to run a meeting. So he starts us off with, ‘Okay so we’re going to go around and I want us all to share if we know someone who’s disabled.’ It was just like when Ed Truck dies and he’s asking people to share stories of loved ones dying.
As people are awkwardly sharing, our boss is completely detached from the touchiness of the subject. Every time someone talks about their crippled granny or terminally ill cousin, he’s like ‘This is good! Really getting the juices flowing here!’
One of the senior managers said, “Well [boss], as you know my uncle had Parkinson’s’ to which my boss replies. ‘Oh great! Was he in a wheelchair?’
Then we watch the office industrial video the ADA puts out, specifically the scene on wheelchair-bound customers. As it finishes and we’re talking, the next chapter starts up on the projector. It’s midgets. Our boss stops the meeting and is like ‘OOH MIDGETS WE HAVE TO WATCH.’ So then we watched midgets.
It was not a productive meeting.”
It Was Like A Scene Out Of The Diversity Day Episode
“I worked a very corporate job at a branch of a big corporation. One February morning, we had a branch-wide meeting. All 45 people all crammed into a conference room so the branch manager can talk to us about what just came down from corporate.
The topic was ‘Celebrating Diversity.’ Instead of quickly going through the powerpoint that corporate provided, he decided to ‘wing it.’
He told all the white people in the room to find someone a ‘few shades darker’ and to ask them about their culture. He said, ‘It’s easy- just do like me: Hey Dwayne what’s your culture like? What do your people like to do?’
It was like watching a car crash in slow motion.”