Horrible Bosses
Everyone has had at least one manager in their life that they haven’t gotten along with. Sometimes that can just be the result of personalities clashing; however, other times it can be entirely attributed to the manager. It turns out that some very undeserving people can stumble into leadership positions. Bad managers are a part of life. However, in some cases, they are so bad that something absolutely has to be done about them because they are an actual menace to the workplace.
The menace to the workplace in this story is named, “Tony.”
Most workplaces have a Tony. Unfortunately in our story, Tony was able to work his way up to manager.
Our friend, “Sarah,” had to deal with Tony on an almost daily basis working in a convenience store.
Sarah described Tony as misogynistic, offensive, creepy, and a bully. All qualities that lead to a great performance as a manager. Tony liked to assign impossible tasks to his employees and verbally berate them in front of customers when they failed to complete the task. Best of all, Tony sat in the office doing nothing rather than assisting his employees with anything.
There was one employee that seemed to be the subject of Tony’s bullying more than others, “Ginny.”
Sarah didn’t always get along with Ginny but she felt sympathetic towards her.
Ginny was a hardworking single mom that had been having a tough time at home with her three-month-old son. On top of having a tough time at home, it seemed like Tony felt the need to assign the majority of the impossible tasks to Ginny in order to make her time at work a struggle too. No one understood why Tony gave Ginny such a harder time than anyone else, but the rumor was that Ginny had been shutting down his advances since she interviewed at the store.
That didn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Despite being so misogynistic, Tony was routinely hitting on any woman that came near the store. Unfortunately, everyone had just decided to put up with Tony’s behavior because they didn’t think it was worth going through the trouble of going after him.
That was until Tony took things way too far with Ginny one day.
~
The Snow Storm
One day in the Winter, their town got heavy snow overnight. The snow knocked out the power in some areas of the town and snowplows were only slowly able to make their way around the town. Unfortunately, the convenience store still had power, and the roads surrounding it were some of the first to be cleared.
Tony, Sarah, and Ginny were the only employees scheduled to work that morning. Tony and Sarah were both able to get to work as their houses had power and the roads on their route to work were cleared. Unfortunately, Ginny called in and told Tony that her house was snowed in and without power.
Sarah didn’t believe Ginny because their houses weren’t far apart and she knew that the streets all around them had been plowed. However, Sarah figured that Ginny had probably had a long night with her three-month-old and didn’t blame her at all for calling into work whenever the opportunity presented itself. She also knew that the convenience store wouldn’t have a lot of customers that morning due to the hazardous conditions in most of the town.
Tony, on the other hand, couldn’t handle that. Despite the store being so empty that they were technically overstaffed with two employees, Tony ranted about how Ginny was a good-for-nothing freeloader looking for an easy opportunity to miss work. As usual, that was the least offensive that it got whenever Tony was referring to one of his female employees.
Sarah figured it was one of his usual rants and did her best to tune him out while working on the completely unnecessary task that Tony that assigned to her that morning.
That was until Tony said, “I’m going to show that ungrateful ‘you know what’ once and for all,” then stormed out of the store.
~
Gross Misconduct
Sarah was left abandoned at the store wondering what on earth Tony was going to do. She knew that Tony for sure wasn’t allowed to abandon the store during one of his shifts. That was without even taking into consideration that he was abandoning the store to go harass an employee that exercised her right to call into work.
Sarah was very concerned about what Tony was going to do because, by all accounts, he was a horrible person.
Would I be responsible for something happening to Ginny if I knew Tony was going over there and didn’t do anything to stop it, Sarah thought. Should I call the police?
Before she could decide what to do, Tony arrived back at the store with a menacing grin on his face that Sarah could see the moment he got out of his car.
He stormed into the store and announced to Sarah that Ginny had lied about being snowed in at her house without power.
No kidding, master detective, Sarah thought.
Out loud, Sarah asked, “How do you know that?”
Tony proudly responded, “Because I drove over to her house and took photos of her cleaned off car and driveway, snowplowed street, and the lights on in one of her windows.”
That’s completely out of line, Sarah thought.
Before she could get another word out, Tony said, “I’m going to have a long talk with her tomorrow about dishonesty and professionalism in the workplace.”
Someone should really have that talk with you.
The next morning, Tony called Ginny into the office as soon as she arrived at work. He proceeded to scream at her to the point that everyone in the store could hear.
Sarah heard clear as day that Tony didn’t want a dismissal on his quarterly record, but Ginny was going to have to do everything possible to prevent that from happening. That meant more unreasonable tasks for Ginny, who was already getting it the worst of any employee. She knew Tony would never actually fire her because the only things he truly cared about were trying to get with women and looking like a competent manager to his superiors.
So basically, he’s just being a prick to her for absolutely no reason.
Ginny walked out of the office in tears.
Sarah was infuriated and knew she had to get revenge on Tony for what he had done to Ginny and every female employee that had worked under him.
~
“Natural Male Hunger”
It had never occurred to Tony one of his female employees might have the desire to get revenge on him. Whether it was negligence or an overwhelmingly false sense of security, Tony thought he was untouchable. That was most apparent whenever Tony would brag about how often he cheated on his wife to his co-workers at their employee nights out.
He justified it as, “natural male hunger,” in a tone like he thought that would make him more attractive to his female employees. It didn’t.
As if Tony wasn’t enough of a scum bag, he had been married for eighteen years and had two teenage sons. He openly bragged about something that betrayed the trust of his two sons, who looked up to him, as well as his wife.
Tony bragged to everyone he would tell his wife that he got off work at eleven o’clock at night. However, he actually got off around nine o’clock and would make a stop at his sidepiece’s house on the way home from work. Tony thought his so-called wit would make him even more attractive to his female employees. It didn’t.
Unfortunately for Tony, Ginny was paying very close attention to all of his bragging.
One night, Ginny was off work and decided to leave her son at her mom’s house. She drove up to the convenience store and parked outside. She waited until nine o’clock when Tony got off work. It was more like eight-thirty because Tony liked to duck out early whenever possible, but Ginny had planned for that and parked outside with plenty of time to spare.
When Tony walked out of the store and got in his car, Ginny slowly followed him out of the parking lot. Of course, Tony drove straight to his sidepiece’s house.
When Tony parked in front of a house, Ginny made sure to park three houses down. Just far enough to where she wouldn’t be noticed but could still see exactly what was happening.
Tony’s sidepiece walked out of the house and greeted him at his car. They immediately began hugging and kissing on the driveway without a care in the world.
Ginny had her phone ready and began snapping photos of Tony and his sidepiece embracing on the driveway. She also captured photos of Tony and his sidepiece walking into the house and closing the front door. As soon as she was satisfied with her evidence, Ginny drove to her mom’s house to pick up her son and drove home for the night.
Sarah showed up at the store the next day and noticed Tony was missing. He was a horrible manager, but he always made sure to be present to subject his employees to whatever brutal treatment he had in store for them that day. Sarah knew something was wrong.
~
The Downfall of a Complete Prick
Sarah and Ginny were both working the morning shift.
Sarah asked Ginny if she had any idea where Tony might be.
Ginny responded, “I think his wife saw some photos of him and his sidepiece last night so he might not be coming into work for a while.”
Sarah said, “You didn’t.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ginny responded, smirking.
Tony didn’t show up to work for a week. When Tony returned to work he looked completely disheveled. He told everyone that his wife had kicked him out of the house, he had already been served with divorce paperwork, and both of his sons had blocked him and wanted nothing to do with him. Tony’s once obnoxious personality had completely been deflated.
Sarah was the only employee that Ginny had even hinted to about what she had done. Everyone in the store had a good idea that it was Ginny who had sent the pictures to Tony’s wife but there was absolutely no proof that she had done it. Tony never even mentioned it to Ginny and his terrible treatment of her stopped overnight.
Despite Tony’s behavior changing drastically, the entire experience had completely soured Sarah on the store. She quit after about a month and moved on to a different company. She blocked Tony on all social media platforms and thankfully, never had to hear from him again. Sarah bonded with Ginny over the entire experience and they kept in touch despite Sarah moving on from the store.
A couple of months later, Ginny got a recruiting job with a pharmaceutical company. Ginny was able to use her incredible work ethic to impress her new managers, who actually treated her well. She went on to be successful in her new position and was able to provide a comfortable life for her son without all of the unnecessary stress that came with working for Tony.
Tony’s behavior only remained changed for a short time after Sarah and Ginny left. Sarah found out through other employees that he ultimately took things too far and asked a female applicant about her favorite adult films in a job interview. The applicant quickly reported him and Tony was fired immediately. No one from the store knew what Tony did after he was fired and quite frankly, no one cared as long as they no longer had to deal with him.
~
Thoughts From The Author
The most infuriating part of this story was that it took literally one solid complaint about Tony to get him fired. Unfortunately, people like Tony are able to remain in power and terrorize workplaces for that exact reason. The majority of people would rather just not deal with it than go through the trouble of reporting it. Hopefully, this story served as a lesson that no one is untouchable in the workplace and that reporting harassment of any kind is always the right thing to do.
With that being said, if you’re going to take the approach of choosing violence, Ginny did that perfectly. If anyone deserved to have their life ruined in every single fascet, it was Tony. I know for a fact that Tony’s wife was looking for a reason to kick him to the curb because she kicked him out of the house and filed for divorce within a week of finding out he was cheating. That probably meant that he was a prick around the house too. I’m sure that comes as an absolute shock to no one.
I certainly don’t support people being obnoxious to fast food employees but hopefully Tony had to get a job managing a fast food restaurant with the worst customers in the entire world. RIP Bozo.
~