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I'll give out 2 CAH's to each of the best stories (voted on by fellow simmers) on Christmas Day. Please submit your stories here by December 23rd- noon Sim time.
Who was your Scroogiest Boss and how?
I'll start with the story of my recently former company (and no, I can't win ) and the inspiration for this contest...
The company I used to work for (I left October 12) was getting progressively "slimey" over the past year. In the spring, they fired an officefull of people in the San Francisco office by email (giving 2 weeks notice). When called to task on a systemwide conference call the next day, the employee that called the company to task about that was 1) cut off and 2) fired for "tardiness" minutes after the call was over. We were all told it was a budget and staffing issue, "but we are not considering this for any other office". Which I really didn't believe, which is one of the reasons I started looking for a job.
On December 14th at the San Antonio office that I just left, one of the company VP's was "visiting", and at 4PM she called everyone in for a meeting. She told them to clean out their desks effective immediately - the office was closed. Those on contract would receive the payment as required by their contracts, those hourly employees - too bad, so sad.
My story will take the cake. I am at work now (ironically), but when I get home I'll be telling part of my story. Actually, it was so god awful that my mom said I should write a book about it, and rename all of the people/horses in it. For example, our filly's name is Three Mile Creek, and my boyfriend said that I should rename her Two Foot Lake (hence her one foal in the game). Victory Prospector was going to be Prospect For Victory. But that's besides the point... I literally can't tell some of the stuff that happened on a public forum, but I adore telling the full story in private. I'll be glad to tell parts of it on here though, especially to have the chance for a CAH!
My worst boss was when I worked for Churchill Downs. He asked me to change his expense reports so that they included items for his home, he would call me in for "special meetings" where he would stare at my chest openly, and he fired me when I said I might have to go home to help my boyfriend and family evacuate from a fire. He said I didn't have my priorities straight and that work was ALWAYS more important than family.
He got fired a few months after he fired me, and now that department is full of awesome people and I kind of wish I was one of them!
"There's no secret to training a good horse. It's a matter of being fortunate enough to get one."
"Funny how you often regret the stuff you didn't do more than the stuff you did do" - GG
My boss is most definitely a Scrooge. I'll start at the beginning.
I started working for the Alvin Miller stables in April of 06. When he hired me he said $7 an hour, 6 days a week. He said to paddock horses it would be $50. All summer I worked. I had to keep track of my own hours and give him an invoice at the end of each week. At first everything was fine, he would pay me when I handed him an invoice, but as time went on he started getting later and later on payments. And when I would paddock horses (and mind you this is Standardbreds, so your not just paddocking one, your taking care of the whole crew) and invoice him for it he would subtract it from my total and not give me paddock. That was I started refusing to go. Well anyways, I still work for Alvin Miller, sadly. Since hiring me, he as hired on other people to work in different barns and do the same thing I do and he pays them $8 an hour. He also only gives me a $50 Christmas Bonus and gives everyone else $100. I turned in hours Thursday of last week...Its now Wednesday and I still haven't got paid. I have even asked and he always makes up excuses as to why he cant pay me. Its ridiculous!
Because I am younger, no job, I would like to tell a tale about my teacher because I feel school is my job and teachers are my bosses. Last year I has this teacher for spanish. She was short, round, and old. She came in school 3 months late and the school hired a new teacher because they thought she was not going to return. The new teacher was real nice and taught us well and when she came back she told him how much of a bad teacher he was and the guy cried in front of us all. Anyways, when we did not complete homework correctly she minused one point off are AVG! She would give packets and when you didnt do the packet 20 points was taken off your avg! The teacher had diabeties and she fell in the parking lot and sued the school and thats her excuses for not getting out of her chair, being absent so much, and eating 5 packs of skittiles! She wouldn't teach us and she always yelled at us for doing stuff wrong. So basically she was the worst because she was plan old mean, a bad teacher, and just too lazy to be anything!
I worked for a retail camera company for well over a year, was one of their most seasoned and knowledgeable employees, their second-ranked seller at my home store (behind the general manager), a laboratory technician, worked as opening and closing shift leader at *five* different stores, was reliable and never late (and if I would be late, I always called ahead of time), and had more regular customers who come to see me weekly then anyone else I've ever worked with. One morning, the machines at my home store went down and it didn't look like we would get them going again until the evening. There were two internet orders in the queue waiting to be printed that we couldn't print, so I picked up the phone right away and called the customers. The first guy I called went APE. He started screaming in my ear about how he will sue me and the company if he didn't have his pictures NOW, how he was one his way at that moment and he needed those pictures to use in court. Now, it's not *my* fault that he was a lazy * and didn't send his pictures in to be printed until the last minute, but I apologized and said there was nothing I could do, the machines are broken, they will not print. I was calm, professional, and polite despite the fire inside me that shook me to tears. He would not stop screaming about suing the company for not printing his pictures. Finally he hung up on me, and after I went in back and cried, I got my manager to call him back and talk to him, who got talked into sending the pictures to get printed at another store. I volunteer to go 'cause I needed to get out and vent. So I go to the other store... who by the way doesn't even have their laboratory up and working yet...I open their lab for the poor girl who was there alone because the other employee is so far a no show, print the pictures and leave them there for the guy to pick up, and go back to my store. I spent the rest of the day trying to fix our own lab with the district laboratory technician and cleaning the store. I had the next day off. The following day, I get fired by my boss's boss because that customer complained to corporate, my first and only customer complaint. It was two weeks before Christmas.
And just to add a little sob to the story. Every year we hung stockings and decorations for all the employees and everyone filled them. The morning I had to call the customer, I had gone and bought all kinds of stuff for my employees and stuffed their already bulging stockings. Then I squeezed my own in excitement...only to find it empty.
Oh, and the "no show" at the other store still works for them, and he does that stuff often.
~ Mandy ~ Click here to visit The Stallions of Lakeside! Last updated: Year 26, Break - Wow, it's been awhile, I need to get on that, lol
Wow guys, some of those stories really suck. :/ Ijust had to add mine in here!
I work for a law firm in Australia as a legal assistant. I've worked here for 4 years. We only represent Aboriginal (indigenous people of Australia) clients and work kinda like a Legal Aid firm - a lot of pro-bono work and we receive Government grants to get it done with.
I work in the Family Law section, so when people call me they are VERY emotional and upset. A lot of the time when I speak to people I end up getting abused, sometimes because I'm not a lawyer, sometimes because I'm a white person and sometimes because they just plain need someone to take their anger/frustration out on and I seem like a good candidate. I've had people spit on me when I have been sitting at reception, people throwing glass bottles at my head, people ram my car in the parking lot and people calling me from the prison to leave threatening or sexually suggestive messages on my answering machine. All of this I have put up with (not to mention office politics - which are so involved I won't go into them LOL) if it weren't for my boss.
My manager is an elderly woman who is short and plump, a bit like Mike's teacher LOL. She started in out office at the beginning of the year, just as I was heading off for two weeks leave to get married. The first thing she did when introduced to me was explain that not having me here for her settling in period was inconvenient, and that SHE didn't need two weeks to plan her (failed) marriage. Needless to say I wasn't looking forward to getting back.
It was (and still is) blatantly obvious she doesn't like me and wants to get rid of me. She watches my in/out time, reads my emails when I'm not in the office (she has been taken to task for this) gives out my personal details to clients and is generally nasty. The other legal assistant (who works part-time while I'm full-time) mentioned one day that we had finished our work for the day. My boss' reply was 'Maybe we need to re-evaluate if we actually NEED a full-time assistant then!'
She also told me that there had been complaints I wasn't answering my phone, when I am normally the only person available in the BUILDING after 4 any day and after 2 on Fridays. Then she accused me of having the ring volume turned down on my phone and informed me that she wanted it turned up so she could hear if it rang and then could make note of whether or not I answered it. My phone turned out to be FAULTY and I asked management to strike the complaint from my record as it seemed it was a faulty phone and no deficiency of mine. Management know NOTHING of any complaints against me.
More recently, we have to work the morning of Monday 24 December and finish at 1. I put in leave for that morning so I didn't have to come in to work that day, as I live ages away from the office. Then management declared that we would ALL be given the opportunity to take off work from 1pm yesterday, today or tomorrow (Friday) to do Christmas Shopping. I did the right thing and asked her which day would suit her needs best, as I knew I was already having Monday off. She got snotty and told me that no one else in the department was taking off for SHOPPING, that only lazy people haven't done their shopping yet (I haven't even started LOL) and that she didn't see that I needed to take off another half-day. In the end she realised I was just going to go over her head if she didn't approve it, so she gave me Friday arvo off. LOL
She's SUCH a cow, and she has made it very very clear that she doesn't like me and wants to get rid of me, so I'm saving her the hassle by job hunting early in the New Year.
Wow, you could not have picked a better day to come up with this topic.
I work at a Thoroughbred Farm in KY, where there are only two people working. Myself, and my boss. Because of this, I don't get to go home to California for the holidays. I knew this would be the case all along, so I came to terms with it relatively soon. However, it doesn't mean that I am not crazy lonely. All of my friends that I have made here aren't from KY, either, and the last one left today to go home. So, I am officially very much alone.
A couple of weeks ago I had asked my boss if I could have the morning after Christmas off so I could spend Christmas night with my cousin and his wife in Cincinnati. He said, no. That we had too much work to do and he just couldn't give me the time. I let it go, but have gotten progressively more and more depressed about it. He told me, "you can go to Cincinnati Christmas evening as long as you're at work the next morning at 7." That's all fine and dandy, except where they live is no less than an hour and half away. So, let's do the math:
-I get off work no earlier than 4pm.
-I'm home by 4:30 and out of the shower by 5pm.
-If I'm already packed, I have the cats fed and watered and the apartment prepped for a night of being empty no earlier than 5:30.
-I get to Cincinnati by 7pm. Unless it's snowing or has snowed, in which case this California bred drives 20mph the whole way there.
-We eat a late dinner and I open the presents my mother shipped to them (because she knew I'd open them early otherwise!) before his very pregnant wife is too exhausted to stay awake. It's now... Hmmm, 9ish.
-I shouldn't stay too late because I have to work the next morning, so I leave by 9:30.
Tell me, how is that worth it? Two and a half hours of family on Christmas!? How is that fair?
But it's the horse business, so I was dealing with it. Because that's how it is in this industry.
Until yesterday, when he told me that on Christmas Eve we'd leave our empty mares outside for the night. After all, it's Christmas and they can handle not being under lights for one night. That way, he says, we can have an easy morning on Christmas and just feed outside.
This is where I caulk my head to the side and the wheels start turning in my head about how he won't, then, need me. If all he's going to do is feed outside, his 11-year old daughter can do it. And that girl loves being at the farm. Whereas, this girl wants nothing more than to not be there on the biggest holiday of the year.
He also mentions Saturday as my continuing day off. Which means, um, that he's still capable of doing the job on his own. My head is now completely perpendicular to my neck, it's so sideways with confusion. What's the difference between Saturday and Tuesday to the horses? NOTHING.
But I say nothing yesterday. Then, I talked with a few people who fired me up. My cousin told me he wouldn't be okay with me staying two hours and that it was ridiculous. My mom offered to pay January rent if I had to threaten to quit or was fired. My friends all told me he was being a complete agg!
So, this morning, I was in a foul mood. I wasn't talking much and was generally pretty unpleasant to be around. Which is very much unlike me. Anyone who knows me, knows I'm a pretty happy person to be around. But not this morning. He finally called me on it just before lunch and asked why I was "so blue."
I said, "because you won't let me go to Cincinnati on Christmas." He said, "I never said you couldn't go." I explained the whole time dilemma and how it wasn't worth the gas money to go if I didn't have the next morning off. He started going off on me how this is what I signed up for and I knew from the beginning this is how it would be. He was downright yelling at me, and we were only a truck bench seat away from one another. I tried to tell him how it didn't really seem like he absolutely needed me, or else I wouldn't even ask.
So, he gets even angrier and yells at me that "Fine! GO! I'll figure it out! I'll work it out and it'll be fine!"
By this time, I'm crying, and all I can manage to say is, "I have nobody! You have a wife and kids! You have your brother and his family! You have all your cousins! I have nobody!" He tried to BS me that he was my family and I just looked at him and sobbed some more.
I sat and cried through lunch, and he never missed a step. He sat across the table from me and ate his burrito while I cried. In public.
Ali LaDuke wrote: This is where I caulk my head to the side and the wheels start turning in my head about how he won't, then, need me. If all he's going to do is feed outside, his 11-year old daughter can do it. And that girl loves being at the farm. Whereas, this girl wants nothing more than to not be there on the biggest holiday of the year.
Go to the girl and talk her into begging him to let her feed the horses. Also make sure that she knows not to give it away that it was your idea.
But yeah, what an *. No job is worth that.
~ Mandy ~ Click here to visit The Stallions of Lakeside! Last updated: Year 26, Break - Wow, it's been awhile, I need to get on that, lol
I'm 50 and really ive only had two bosses my entire life--my grandfather who was fantastic, and my editor now, who is twice as fantastic. SO I don't have a bad boss story, but i just wanted to say that the one about the pictures (Sorry, i forgot who submitted it), and the one who's the legal assistant are by far the best. If I were both of you, I wouldn't just leave. I would make her life miserable, and then leave. You always feel so much better that way, I'm told. I don't know, I really don't understand why people who are bosses have to lord it over people and abuse them. Everyone knows that the nicer you treat most people the more productive they are. Of course, some people will take advantage of kindness, but it doesn't sound to me like you two have to worry about your bosses being kind anytime soon. Start looking for another job.
It's pointless to become am emotional wreck over a job that pays less than a million dollars a year, and even then I'm not quite sure it's worth it.
Anyway, I don't have a bad boss story, but I just feel really sorry for people who do and wanted to say so. So don't put me in the contest. It's just that this thing really hits a nerve with me, because i hear about people getting abused all the time at work, and at jobs with very little pay. It's just soooooooooo ridiculous.
Well since I have a bunch of time right now (there are people at my apartment fixing a whole bunch of things), I might as well make a valiant attempt to tell my story. Take note that this occurred over a period of many years, so I am going to have to leave many things out.
I used to want to be a racehorse trainer, so when I was a senior in high school, I was part of a program where I was at school for half the day, and an intern at the racetrack for the other half. There, I met another girl who turned out to be a trainer (she was also working as a groom for a bigger name trainer). She took me under her wing, and I ended up working for her after the internship was over...if you would call not being paid as work. I just took it as a learning experience.
Eventually, my parents decided to buy some racehorses, so that I could learn off of them. From that point on, it all went downhill. The trainer started leaning on me to be the relay between her and my parents, instead of leaving me out of the picture. Soon, she realized that my parents are some of the few good people in the business who pay within 30 days, and after only 10-15 days from the first of the month, she would start bothering ME to have them pay her.
It got worse once I went away to Kentucky for school. It got to be that once I heard her ringtone on my phone, my stomach would drop. I often let it go right to voicemail, but I knew that she would never call my parents. It was always me, me, me.
I finally came back to Pennsylvania about two years after I started at Kentucky. This was just for the summer, and since I knew I would be home for only a short while, I tried to take advantage of as much time as I could with my horses. I absolutely adored one of them, Victory Prospector. His nickname was Puppy around the barn, and he was what kept me going back out there. I honestly did not look forward to seeing the trainer, I just wanted to see my horse.
Eventually, though, the trainer started realizing that she could take advantage of me in even more ways. She began treating me like a friend, and every time I went out to the track (it was two hours away from where I lived, as she had moved tracks since I was an intern for her), she let me stay with her. That was probably the biggest mistake I could have made. That summer, she started using me as an excuse to go out at night and cheat on her boyfriend. She would say that she was taking me out, go to a bar (keep in mind that I was only 20 at the time), and force me to stay in the car until it was time to leave. Unfortunately, I fell for it, thinking she was truly a friend (I've always been really shy, so the fact that I had somebody I felt I could trust really distorted what should have been obvious...she was using me).
When I went back to school, she called me at least three times a day, making it clear that she wanted me to come back. I fell for it hook, line and sinker. Within two weeks, her father "miraculously" showed up on my doorstep, ready to help me move my stuff back up to Pennsylvania. Of course, I moved into her house, intent on making my way into the training business. She even told me that she wanted to help me get my trainer's license (mainly because she had a positive drug test on one of her horses and was going to get suspended, so she needed another trainer, and who better than me, who she was already taking advantage of?).
By this point, her boyfriend had left her, so she was going out every night, bringing me with her and trying to get me into bars. If I didn't get in, she would again make me sit in the car for hours. Then she would come out and tell me about how a certain guy that I liked had spent the time making out with other girls.
This sounds like a high school drama, doesn't it? Surprisingly, she was about 26-27 at the time!
Now this may sound like it's more of a social problem than a job-oriented one. Don't forget that I was working for her, and my parents still owned horses with her. Now that I was living with her, it made it even easier to ignore the fact that my parents owned the horses, NOT ME. Sometimes she would not even mail out the bill, she would give it to me to hand to my parents on the few days that I went home, and ask that I bring back a check that night. Crazy, huh?
Then there's the fact that I was still working for her as an employee. By this time, she realized that she could ask me for rent. The problem was that I had no source of income. What better way to handle that than to start saying that I would work for her in order to cover the rent! Brilliant! Basically, I was a slave. As she partied more at night, she stopped coming into the barn in the morning, and I started having to take care of every horse at the racetrack, as well as at the farm. That was about 15-20 horses. I also started going back to school, so I was at the track in the morning, went to school for the afternoon, came back to the track to feed, and it we had to run horses, that was my job, too! No extra money ever came my way, of course. I never got win pictures, I never got stakes, I never got anything.
Finally I started to realize that I was terribly unhappy, and she blamed that on my boyfriend (who absolutely hates her). When I started dating him, he pointed things out that I had been blind to before. Even my parents had hated her for a long time (since I lived in Kentucky), but had stuck by her because she had "helped" me when I first started as a hotwalker. If they'd had their way, when she moved tracks, they would have taken the horses and moved them to another trainer so that they could still watch the horses race. They were not going to drive two hours to go see the horses run!
When I complained about not having money, she asked her father to start paying me. He was working at a stud farm, and for awhile he was great. I got paid $200 a week (yep, sadly). However, after a few months, he started getting late. At one point he owed me more than $600. It turns out he'd gotten back hooked on drugs, and didn't care about paying me.
Finally the trainer realized what was going on, and came up with a "brilliant!" idea that would "save" me money. I owed her some money from a horse I bought, so she said that she would take another $100 out of my "paycheck" and deduct it every week from the money I owed her. So I then started getting paid $100 a week, and couldn't do anything about it. It was absolutely ridiculous.
At some point during all this mess, she decided that I had to get rid of my precious dog Eli. I adored him; he had been through everything with me, from Kentucky right on through to the mess up there. The day I gave him up, I bawled my eyes out for the entire two hour ride to his new home. The only consolation is that his new home is absolutely outstanding. He has a bed in every room, and he is the most spoiled rotten dog I've ever seen.
I don't even know how to fit this in here, but the trainer started calling me horrific things, saying that "the truth hurts", but that knowing them would make me a better person. I was called everything from a spoiled rotten b----- to a *. Anyone who knows me can imagine how well I took those words. I have a form of depression which causes me to have panic attacks, so it seemed like I was constantly crying. And it wasn't like I could get away from her, since I lived in the same house!
I remember one time that I went into the feed room, and found her bag of medication and needles (yes, that's illegal, but she did it), and stabbed myself in the finger with one of the needles. That's the one and only time that I actually went far enough to do something awful. I quickly realized what I was doing and stopped, but that didn't stop me from leaving a scar. I still have a tiny pinprick on that finger, and every time I see it, I shudder at the memory.
Everything finally came to a traumatic conclusion when my parents asked my boyfriend to help them sell the horses. Even though I loved our two horses, especially Puppy, I was to the point that selling them was the only way that I thought I could get away from the trainer. When my boyfriend finally found someone to take the horses, it was like the end of the world. I knew what was going to happen almost immediately, so I took a deep breath, and called the trainer (I was on my way to school at the time). The second I told her, she completely BLEW UP. Every name in the book came out of her mouth, and it got to the point that I actually hung up the phone on her. I'd NEVER EVER done that before, and it felt awesome. She called me back and left a TOTALLY nasty message on there. She threatened to go give the horses EPO (which she had) so that they would get positive tests, and also raced to the racing offices and stole the horses' papers so that they couldn't run.
I didn't know what to do, so I called the police (I had another dog at her house, my boyfriend had his cat, and all of our belongings were there). I obviously did not feel safe going to get my stuff, so we spent all day long trying to get into the place. We had to pay for a constable, and when we got there, the trainer was being her typical self. She was on the phone the entire time with "friends", badmouthing me, my boyfriend and my parents.
My dad took control of the situation, and demanded that she return the horses' papers. She refused to give the papers back until they paid her the money, which turned out to be a huge mistake, because once the horses got to their new owners, they were in HORRIBLE shape. Puppy had a hundred chips in his knee, and he'd compensated for the pain by leaning on his other leg. He then had a hairline fracture in his other leg. Three Mile Creek was "two days away from dying". She had been treated by the trainer, not the vet, and I had actually watched this happen... She tied the filly to the wall, tried to insert the needle, and missed. After about the tenth try and missing, she kept the needle IN her skin, and kicked her hard in the belly. Of course, the filly jumped, and the needle moved. That ended up causing a serious infection in her neck, which nearly killed her. There was a lump on her neck that was the size of a grapefruit. I have pictures to prove it, too.
Afterwards, I realized that I had forgotten about my tack which was at the farm. I tried for weeks to get in there, and eventually realized that the trainer had stolen about $600-700 worth of tack. Knowing her, she probably sold it to pay for one of her many strange things that she liked to buy.
Also, she almost would not let me take my horse back (I'd been training him as a pony, so he was in her barn...). I still owed her about $1000 on him, and she told my father that I could not take him until she had the money. So, my parents paid her, and once I sold the horse I gave them the money for him. I found out later that she had tried to literally sell my own horse (who I had paid more than $1500 already for in deductions) right out from under me. Other people told me that she had called around trying to sell him! Then when I came with a trailer to get him, she had stolen my halter, and since I did not have a halter with me, I had to wrap a shank around his neck and pray that he was a good boy. Surprisingly, he was AWESOME; it was like he understood the entire situation. I was successfully able to load him onto a trailer with nothing more than a rope!
I had to deal with seeing her off and on until I finally came back to my hometown. Recently, I had a comment on one of my pictures (I post my pictures online) where she informed me that if I did not remove a picture of MY OWN HORSE (Creek) that she would go after me legally. I ignored her, and deleted the comment. It was made anonymously, but there's no doubt in my mind that it was her.
Anyway, that's just grazing over everything (I left out TONS of parts which have no business on a public message board), but I hope that this makes everyone with bad bosses think...at least it wasn't THAT bad!
"John Slotman and <name redacted> are always sooooo amazingly generous with new and struggling players- I think we all thank you!" - April Eddy, 3/6/2012
J Slotman wrote: These are some serious stories for a CAH!
I've had bad bosses, but nothing compares to some of this. I'm just enjoying reading these stories.
I could tell you all about the boss that told me to go door-to-door canvassing in a lightning storm. But, let's just say I quit that job before I got the worst of her craziness.
Well I wasn't going to enter, but I just had a really rotten day at work so I feel like venting.
I work in the accounting and billing department for a small, family-owned business and in our department we normally have at least three people, usually more, working on year end preparation in the final months of the year. This winter, though, we are going with just two people which makes this season a living hell as anyone who works in corporate finance will know. There have been several nights in the past month where I have literally worked from 7 am to 11 pm at night, but that's just part of the job sometimes and I was content in the knowledge that I would be compensated for all my hard work.
Well in October, I fell ill and stayed that way for weeks. While I was sick I missed some work, as will happen, but even on the days I tried to stay home I ended up answering fifteen hundred phone calls and normally had to go in to the office for a few hours anyway. During this whole fiasco there were several days where I tried to take the morning off from work and go to the doctor, but every time I tried my boss found a way to keep us both at the office all day long, so I was never able to go. It was far more prudent, I suppose, to make me suffer through a mountain of paperwork at reduced productivity than to allow me one day to go to the doctor and actually get well.
So, naturally, without being able to rest properly I stayed sick for ages and only eventually got over my cold. When I was well again I worked my tush off to bring us current, and thanks to my efforts we're now easily on track for a reduced tax season come January 1st. Hurrah for me, right? Well, you'd think so. But the other day we had our corporate Christmas dinner and everyone received their winter bonuses, which I was really looking forward to because I'm terribly in debt after a few huge repairs to my car (which my boss knows all about because I took out a loan from the company briefly to pay for them.) I was excited that my Christmas bonus might help me afford nicer gifts than I had been anticipating for my large family, which made all of the hard work I had put in more worthwhile.
When we were outside of the restaurant I was chatting with the young man who answers phones at the office as he bragged about his bonus and fancying that I must have made a great deal more than he did just by virtue of my job. I waited until I got home and ripped into my card with fervor... only to see that I made HALF of what he made for his bonus. I was shocked, not to mention furious and a little hurt. When I asked why my bonus wasn't larger, my boss replied that it was because, "I got so far behind during the month of October, and other people had to pick up my slack." The fact that I was incredibly ill and had never been allowed a full day off to go see a doctor, or that I had accomplished miracles since October, or that we wouldn't have been behind at all (and I might not have been sick!) if we weren't radically understaffed, all went ignored.
And what makes this whole thing worse? That little corporation I work for is my family's business, the guy who answers the phones is my little brother, and my Scrooge boss? SHE'S MY MOTHER.
Merry Christmas to you, too, Mom. Here's your lump of coal.
) and the inspiration for this contest...
I was shocked, not to mention furious and a little hurt. When I asked why my bonus wasn't larger, my boss replied that it was because, "I got so far behind during the month of October, and other people had to pick up my slack." The fact that I was incredibly ill and had never been allowed a full day off to go see a doctor, or that I had accomplished miracles since October, or that we wouldn't have been behind at all (and I might not have been sick!) if we weren't radically understaffed, all went ignored.