One of my faves from August and one of the best ways to quit I’ve seen in a while – This one isn’t quite as dramatic as the flight attendant who flew the coop, or Arnetta the Moodsetta‘s on air meltdown, but if it’s real, it’s pretty clever.

Jenny works, correction worked, for a jerk. Apparently she’s had enough, and decided to quit with the assistance of  messages on a dry erase board.  Here’s how Jenny quit her jerk of a bad boss. P.S. She emailed it to the entire office! (Images via thechive.com)

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See the rest of Jenny’s dry erase board resignation here…

What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

• Forbes covers bully bosses, providing tips for both employees and HR personnel. Check out part two here.

• Are some of the worst bosses in the hospitality industry? Ironic, isn’t it?

• When a bad boss becomes a creature feature.

• Get past the automated voices and you’ll find the dialogue in this clever cartoon about a bad boss and the waste of time annual review process, pretty witty and spot on. I think I’ve actually had this conversation.

On Monday I introduced you to a reader who’s being bullied into turning a blind eye to on-the-job violations. Furthermore, the boss is telling everyone in the office that this employee reports every mistake they make, turning him into the office pariah. Today I share part two of his story, including his ability to find a bright spot and his appeal to others to help them find theirs.

She gives me assignments that require the use of certain programs that are installed on only a few computers in the company, and then does not allow me to work on those computers. She also gives me busy work, and work that involves materials that she knows I am allergic to. She advised me that my job title is dead and told me to start looking for a job elsewhere.

A bright spot in all of this the fact that I won a company people’s choice award for an outstanding job. Normally anonymous nominations are not allowed, but the officials in the contest knew enough about the tensions that they saw our service area would have had no award if they did not allow employees to speak anonymously. The award was signed by the manager two steps above my boss, but I was not present to receive it, because I thought I was not welcome at the banquet.

I am writing this to try to make another bright spot. I know I have untapped creativity and talent that is going to waste 40 hours a week. I have tried taking classes in the evening but I am too distracted by anger from work to concentrate. I am looking for collaborators to learn more about computer programming, web development, making PowerPoint presentations, or comedy writing. We could start out our sessions commiserating about our bad boss and then be able to focus on the project we have chosen. If we make money, we can split it, but my main goal is to improve skills and restore sanity.

If you’re interested in sharing your thoughts, ideas and skills with Andee, please email him at andeeharris44(@)hotmail.com (remove parenthesis.)*

Please note, my inclusion of Andee’s contact information is not an endorsement. Andee is independent of Reallybadboss.com and operates as such. Any affiliation or association developed via this post is independent of Reallybadboss.com.

Over the course of my career I’ve been asked to do an array of questionable things. Most were just plain stupid, some were sexist, but none were outright illegal. So what do you do when your job description requires you to report violations but your boss wants you to cover them up? Here’s part one of a true-to-life, really bad boss story submitted by a reader who’s facing this dilemma.

My boss required me to go to compliance training. The compliance training stated that I was required to report violations or else I would be committing a violation myself. The violations I reported were committed by my boss (and she escaped punishment by lying), and now I am on her hit list.

She is currently in the process of isolating me. She is telling everyone that I report every mistake that they make and some refuse to speak to me because of it. (Of course, mistakes and violations of the law are two entirely different things, but this is lost on my boss.) She has had another employee ask me “as a favor” to do something that is violation of privacy policies and I have refused. She assigned me to a task (through the employee who normally performs this function) that would have required I stretch the truth to satisfy the customer (who was a different employee in my department). I did not stretch the truth, then my boss redid the assignment with the truth stretched. This employee was very upset with me and had special favor with my boss for a few days, but, now that she is over her anger, she is no longer my boss’s favorite.

My boss has promoted the office gossip because she knows of sneaky ways to irritate people, including tampering with my phone and computer. I have two people I can confide in at work, one my boss knows about and one she is trying to flush out. The one my boss knows about has told me that the last person who confided in her about my boss got fired, and she does not want that to happen to me, so she is backing away.

Not only is this guy faced with an a** of a boss but one who’s bullying him into breaking the law. Any thoughts on the best way to handle this situation? Share your thoughts in the comment section.

Wednesday: Part Two – Finding a bright spot

This week most Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving in the traditional way, with turkey, football and family, reflecting on the things they’re most grateful for. Here at Reallybadboss.com we’ve got a lot to be thankful for too. Specifically we’re thankful that the jerks in the stories we’ll be sharing this week aren’t our bosses. These stories remind the rest of us that as bad as we have it, it could be worse. I thought I’d ring in the season with a few of my own bad boss stories, starting with my very first really bad boss.

For years I wasted entire Sundays absolutely dreading Monday mornings.   The uneasy feeling would start to creep in on Saturday night, and by Sunday evening, I was a basket case.  For many of us Monday spells the end of the weekend, the start of the work week and a return to a real tool of a boss.  For two years I endured a verbally abusive boss (I fondly refer to him now as the Reprobate) who ran around cursing at the top of his lungs and leering at the women in the office.

The company made beauty aids, including a “bikini bump” soother. Once he asked one of the young women in the office to be the “bikini bump” product model. Of course she knew this meant wearing a bikini to the photo shoot. She didn’t realize it entailed wearing one to the office and having The Reprobate and his spawn ogle her while she “gave them an idea” of what the shoot would look like. She did it. We all were there and none of us protested. We didn’t talk to HR – because there was none. And we certainly didn’t contact the EEOC. We put up with it and we stayed. I stayed because it was my first job out of college and, fresh out of school, I wasn’t aware of my rights. The other women in the office probably felt the same way – afraid of losing their jobs.

So I put up with it.  And while putting up with it, I learned some really valuable lessons. I learned I was stronger and smarter than I had given myself credit for. The Reprobate sent me from city to city to check on products without a plan or clearly defined purpose. He would bark out a command that I go visit a drug chain in some remote city out west, and I’d be gone on literally, a wing and a prayer. In those pre-GPS days, I would get off the plane, rent a car, get a map and sometimes 10 hours later end up back at my hotel room, tired and angry, but done. I told myself every day, “this is the worst job I’ll ever have”, and I meant it. I’ve never again put up with that type of abuse and I’ve turned every bad boss situation I’ve had since then into a learning experience.

Wednesday: Another real-life, really bad boss tale

What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

• Are the new TSA pat-downs more like rub-downs?

• Need a boss personality type manual? Check this out at The Sydney Morning Herald.

• Does your boss display Jekyll and Hyde tendencies? Yes? Read on.

• My favorite bad boss post title ever in the history of bad boss post titles: Bitchslapping Narcissus: 9 keys to surviving a bad boss. And the post is pretty great too.

• And check out our own real life, really bad boss tale from a reader here.

The absolutely true tales of my efforts to return to the 9-5.

When last we met, I was poised to re-enter the workforce. Armed with positive vibes, great credentials and a clearance COACH bag full of enthusiasm, I began sending off inspired cover letters and resumes tweaked to within an inch of their lives. As of this writing, I’ve been contacted by a former employer who I’m certain was the inspiration for the expression, “A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.”

I’ve been negotiating with him for over a week now to agree on my rates and the amount of hours his project would require each month. Talking to this man is like talking to a bag of flour – useful if you’re making biscuits but not so much if you want intelligent conversation. We’ll call him Bob.

Bob was supposed to call me on Monday night to finalize my project hours for the week. This was after having a circular conversation with him on Monday which consisted of him asking “So, you can’t come in today?” and me responding “No, Bob, I can’t come in today.” I proceeded to explain in detail that I was working on several other projects and that Bob couldn’t expect me to drop everything at a moment’s notice. At the end of my five minute explanation, Bob says, “So, you can’t come in today?” *Sigh* We ended the conversation with Bob promising to call me Monday when he’d pinned down my schedule and agreed to my rates.

The next time I heard from Bob was at 7:08 this morning (Wednesday). He called and left a message on my cell phone marked “urgent.” Bob was “calling to confirm that you’ll be in the office at 9:00am this morning.”  *Sighs*

God help me.

I’ve decided to communicate with Bob in writing. That way there’s less chance of misunderstandings, right? Right? *Long sigh*