Reply #47: Not exactly my boss,

[wickerwoman]

but a middle manager I worked next to.

1.) Slept at his desk at least 1-2 hours a day after lunch. Every day. Then fired one of his employees on the spot for napping in the sound room. Once.

2.) Was one of those "let's think of the company, not ourselves" cheerleaders who, because he came in at ten or eleven and slept after lunch, would often work until nine or ten pm (and expect his team to stay that late too without warning). Would schedule meetings at the last second at 9:00pm regardless of whether or not anyone had plans. They would be non-essential "team-building" meetings like watching a documentary on Donald Trump. If you didn't go, you weren't a "team player" and it would be reflected on your employee evaluations. Would deliberately schedule most meetings as unpaid overtime in order to test company loyalty.

3.) Could not be pinned down for actually important meetings that other people scheduled. I caught him several times sneaking out just before meetings that I had told him about repeatedly.

4.) Delegated *everything*. Spent all day surfing online planning his next vacation and blasting music in our office when I was trying to actually work. Did not really know what he was doing, so tried to fake it by convening a "committee" to decide everything and then presented other peoples' ideas as his own in upper management meetings.

5.) Regularly took off on vacation with no plan in place for continuity of production. Or would assign someone completely inappropriate to fill in (e.g. was supposed to make a hiring decision before going on vacation. Didn't. Left it in charge of one of the people who was passed over for internal promotion to the same position and was deeply bitter about it and determined not to find anyone else qualified.)

6.) Would not fix anything. Took it personally if you pointed out problems in anything coming from his department but would be the first one to assign blame if he could lay it on someone else. Once tried to argue that the buggy software coming from his team was actually another team's fault because they didn't catch it in time. And then refused to fix it while at the same time complaining that his team had nothing to do that week.

7.) Was completely tactless. After managing to fire a girl (who was well-intentioned but not very talented) he went into a department meeting full of her friends and said: "Now that we've finally managed to get rid of ..." Also told a new kid right out of college, "I didn't want to hire you and I don't think you'll succeed. You'll have to work very hard to convince me you deserve to be here." Put tons of pressure on his team and freaked out at the idea that any of them might not be busting their asses for a second, but as stated above, slept, slacked off and smoked his way through every day.