Reply #45: The 2 bosses who wound up in the looney bin

[LiberalEsto]

Over the years I had the bad luck twice to work for supervisors who turned out to be mentally ill.

The first time, in 1971, I was a waitress at a bakery bistro. The manager started acting a bit strange, giving irrational instructions and expecting us to follow them. When I timidly asked for an explanation on one order, he up and fired me out of the blue. I was very upset, never having been fired before. I thought it was my fault, though I'd done nothing wrong. Then he fired another person, and another, and another until the place was in chaos. He was eventually committed for treatment.

The second time, in 1977, I was a newspaper reporter on the night shift. There was an assistant night editor who was a nitpicking stickler and kept getting worse and worse. He insisted we write up every petty little piece of police news, whether it was newsworthy or not. He gave us a hard time when we came back from doing our rounds of local police stations without anything to write up. (What were we supposed to do -- go out and commit crimes ourselves?)His news judgment kept getting worse and worse, but he was the supervisor and we had to do what he told us, no matter how crazy it seemed. And he was nasty. We tried to complain, but senior editors refused to listen to us. I felt like I was growing an ulcer and was swigging Pepto Bismol every night.

One night, the guy didn't show up. We found out he'd flipped totally and decided to drive to Canada for whatever weird reason. I'm not sure if he got there, but his family got him hospitalized because he was absolutely batshit mentally ill. When he came back a few months later, he was very calm and altogether different.