Bad Barista.

The contest, sponsored by Working America, asked workers to submit their bad boss stories for a chance to win the use of a vacation condo for a week and $1,000.

After reading Bad Barista’s story, we think she deserved the grand prize win (selected by website votes.) The California coffee shop worker who’d recently had heart surgery was back at work when she started having chest pains.  Given her history of heart surgery, it seems natural that she would call an ambulance and have it checked out. Natural to everyone but her boss who called her ailing employee repeatedly WHILE SHE WAS IN THE AMBULANCE ON THE WAY TO THE HOSPITAL. The boss felt that the ambulance ride was the best time to tell her employee that her health problems were causing scheduling problems for the business. How inconvenient.

Download Me, chosen by Working America staff, captured the grand prize for a boss who, after sales staff did not double revenues in a single month, took away staff chairs, making them stand at their desks.

Download Me and Bad Barista won, if you can call being saddled with bosses like that winning, but some of the runner-ups were pretty awful too.

There was the city manager who lowered an employee’s pay by $5,000 in one year. The employee found out about the pay cut while listening to the radio.

Then there was the doctor who had a habit of leaving her underwear. Around the office. On purpose? Either way…gross.

*Sighs* I guess no matter how bad you have it, someone out there always has it a little worse.?!

Read more about Working America’s contest here.

While many highly competent job seekers, out of work through no fault of their own, hit the pavement each day looking for jobs that will pay them even a fraction of what they used to earn, the individuals below made colossal errors in judgment and mismanaged companies into the red, yet they bounced back, landing jobs or severance packages that paid them far more than what their previous performance suggested they were worth.

Here’s a look at some  of  the execs who managed to land on their feet, and our heads…

• As head of global markets and investment for Merrill Lynch, Dow Kim oversaw the increase in the amount of collateral debt obligations that eventually led to the company being the number 1 Wall Street issuer of the instrument most closely linked to the catastrophic mortgage crisis we’re all still dealing with. The derivatives led to billions of losses that weakened the firm.  Kim left Lynch in 2007, before anyone had a handle on just how bad things would become, and maybe that’s why he was able to walk away with more than $35 million.

• Remember the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf? Trust me its residents still do. Tony Hayward, BPs CEO at the time, received a year’s salary when he left, about $1.7 million and stocks valued at much more.

• Speaking of disasters…The March 2010 explosion at Massey Energy’s Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia left 29 miners dead and resulted in Massey posting a $167 million loss in 2010. However former Massey CEO Don Blankenship received a $14.4 million severance package, a $7 million pension and $32.1 million in deferred compensation.

Apparently it pays to fail BIG.

Click here to check out the Yahoo! Finance list of 11 corporate titans who profited after failure.