The Boss

[Harold Bishop Killer]

Mine is up her own arse, mid-30’s Aussie female who loves never better than do patronise me. The one thing I hate most in a personality. The way she conducts herself and speaks to me feels like I am back in infant school when you had to have her hand held to cross the road and they give you blunt scissors. I feel like I did when I first started working life at 17. After 4 years at Lloyds Insurance I kind of know what I am doing – especially moving from such a giant company to one that only employs 60 staff. At Lloyds I had a great manager. He would always be there if you needed help but above all if you knew what you were doing he would leave you to it. He would always be flexible if he could be and above all else he treated you like an adult. But no according to this manager I don’t know my arse from my elbow. She is probably quite surprised I don’t come in drooling, bashing the PC around before falling asleep.

What is it everyone else hate about managers from their past or present?

 

[OldBlueLady]

Oh I think GlasgowSUFC might be tempted out of retirement on this one!

 

[Desert Shrimper]

Mine is up her own arse, mid-30’s Aussie female who loves never better than do patronise me. The one thing I hate most in a personality. The way she conducts herself and speaks to me feels like I am back in infant school when you had to have her hand held to cross the road and they give you blunt scissors. I feel like I did when I first started working life at 17. After 4 years at Lloyds Insurance I kind of know what I am doing – especially moving from such a giant company to one that only employs 60 staff. At Lloyds I had a great manager. He would always be there if you needed help but above all if you knew what you were doing he would leave you to it. He would always be flexible if he could be and above all else he treated you like an adult. But no according to this manager I don’t know my arse from my elbow. She is probably quite surprised I don’t come in drooling, bashing the PC around before falling asleep.

What is it everyone else hate about managers from their past or present?

Why not have a "straightener" and settle it in the ring?

 

[Vange Shrimper]

What is it everyone else hate about managers from their past or present?

Telling me that I needed to go to elocution (sic) lessons because I couldnt speak proper English and she hated my accent (this was in Cheltenham btw). She was a complete biatch anyway.

I could have got her done for racism (sounds silly, but it's true).

 

[SUFC-punks]

my old boss was a **** **** ****. never around when u needed help as he'd be trying to chat up the fit bird in our department and always calling meetings just before a break (which would always overrun) because he knew he'd just be wandering around afterwards whilst we had to go back to work. one day i snapped after a particularly flippant refusal when i asked for some help and decided to point out that he was a c**t and everyone thought so, to my chargrin i was given my marching orders which i found to be a bit of a dicotomy as our team motto was honesty at all times, but i have found solace in the fact that i've been doin "the sex" with the fit bird he was after ever since!!! GET HOLD OF THAT U FAT GELATENOUS B*****D!!!................................and calm

 

[OldBlueLady]

I've been unfortunate to have a couple of bad bosses - both female. When I worked for Midland Bank (before the HSBC takeover), I had quite a good friend who was senior to me, however, I got promoted 2 grades which seriously put her nose out of joint. The reason behind this was our chief cashier left, and I was the only other person able to do the role and she recommended me for it before she left. A year or so down the line, the first one went through promotion herself so we were at least equal. We were both part of a drinking group and got on fine, she came on my hen do and to our wedding and stuff - all well and good. After I fell pregnant and took my maternity leave, I was appalled at the treatment I got when I cam back. She'd had another promotion and was now very junior management, I was still top of the "plebs" scale, however, I was treated as if I was 3 grades lower. Suddenly all my work had to be physically checked to make sure I'd not made mistakes, I was told to go and help out on the lowest of the low jobs, I had no slack cut for trying to leave on the dot to catch a train to get home to pick my son up (bearing in mind I was in half an hour early every day) and she just made these awful cutting remarks to me the whole time. Tried to get to the bottom of things - jealousy was the conclusion, her husband had gone off with someone else - her boss backed her up, but I was having none of it and went to the senior manager, fortunately despite having been a really good friend of hers, was entirely on my side. I mean how can you go from being one of the most trusted people - safe key or door key holder every day, branch manager on Saturdays, handling thousands and thousands of pounds to having to have every docket, every file input checked just because you've been on maternity leave? Not long after, I fell pregnant again and took a career break at the end of it - never seen her since and hope I never will, horrible Scouse Tranmere supporting woman.

Second one was more recent, at preschool, our deputy manager bought out the owner, and I spent 4 months redoing all her paper work in preparation for a "new owner/manager" Ofsted visit. Reviewed and rewrote all our policies, our Operational Plan, our copy letters, updated all our children's files. Didn't get paid for it, just a token hour a week. At the end of it, she told me she needed to cut my hours and I'd have to drop a session. Thanks for that, that's when I walked from there.

 

[Firestorm]

I have little tolerance with bosses who operate a "Do as I say not as I do" policy. Personally I like to lead by example. If you are first in last out as a Manager you hold a bit more sway when it comes to picking up poor time keeping for example.
To two big run ins with FD's I have had (I ended up leaving the department in one case and the Company in another) have both been with Managers who asked me to do something which , when I asked how, as I was unsure, they both said they didn't know and I should just get on with it. in one case I was going on a weeks break (it was take the time off or lose the holiday as I couldn't carry it forward any more and I was already writing off 4 days !) it was 6.30 on my last day (we finished at 5) when he called me into his office. I left his office at 7.30 with a list of things to do before I left ! At 9.30 I got kicked out by security staff , so I left it on his desk with a note about finishing the report / spreadsheets. I got a phone call at home at 9.15 on the Monday asking why I hadn't finished it and how to do it !

 

[SARF]

Mine is up her own arse, mid-30’s Aussie female who loves never better than do patronise me. The one thing I hate most in a personality. The way she conducts herself and speaks to me feels like I am back in infant school when you had to have her hand held to cross the road and they give you blunt scissors. I feel like I did when I first started working life at 17. .

Up untill here I thought you were moaning about your wife!

 

[Mad Cyril]

I only ever hear women complaining about colleagues/superiors on the train.

Perhaps men do their complaining down the pub?

 

[The Flying Scotsman]

I always take a view to never ask someone to do something you wouldn't/couldn't/haven't done yourself.

 

[The Flying Scotsman]

After I fell pregnant and took my maternity leave, I was appalled at the treatment I got when I cam back. She'd had another promotion and was now very junior management, I was still top of the "plebs" scale, however, I was treated as if I was 3 grades lower. Suddenly all my work had to be physically checked to make sure I'd not made mistakes, I was told to go and help out on the lowest of the low jobs, I had no slack cut for trying to leave on the dot to catch a train to get home to pick my son up (bearing in mind I was in half an hour early every day) and she just made these awful cutting remarks to me the whole time.

To be fair, I've had some experience with pregnant women, a) my wife twice and b) two women on my team here.

In all cases they were affected by "pregnancy brain" as I like to call it. I believe this is a result of hormones flying around all over the place and mind on other more important matters. However the levels of forgetfullness increases and their ability to produce the same quality of work does diminish. The same goes for afterwards - whereas the focus used to be on the job it is now split between family and work and as such the results show it.

All this crap about maternity leave also gets on my tits. All very well letting the women have a whole bloody year off, but if you're a bloke you're only entitled to 2 weeks at £100 a week - does anyone actually know a bloke who took statuatory pay, most seem to take time off as holiday. Also on my team of 11, I'm resigned to losing 2 of them within a fortnight of each other in the next month because they're due. We can't replace them with permanent positions so we're going to have to make do with temps and the rest of us having to work harder to cover for them. I told the rest of the women on my team to keep their legs shut, and lets just say I agree with Alan Sugar when it comes to recruitment in the meantime.

Just read this again and I don't mean this to be a rant against OBL, just not best pleased with work at the mo! Obviously I must hide how annoyed I am from the team!

 

[Mad Cyril]

I got two weeks paternity leave on full pay for both my kids.

Out of interest if you got 26 women pregnant at two week intervals could you take a whole year off?

 

[Red Rum Revell]

if you're a bloke you're only entitled to 2 weeks at £100 a week - does anyone actually know a bloke who took statuatory pay, most seem to take time off as holiday.

I did and I know of a couple of other new Dads who have done too!
Take your 2 weeks statutory after the birth, then save your paid holiday for a few weeks later when it's really needed (e.g. sleep deprevation kicks in, or your fighting to stop the Mrs getting post-natal depression)!

 

[Napster]

I got two weeks paternity leave on full pay for both my kids.

Same here, except for my kid, not yours.

 

[Southend_Lady]

I work for a law firm who as a lot of other law firms do too - offer up to 10 weeks paid paternity leave as part of "perks of the job" and the benefits package. See article below that was sent round this morning:

Real men put their careers on hold for babies. At some of the most profitable and hard-driving law firms in the nation, paid paternity leave for new dads, ranging from two to 10 weeks, is now the norm, a perk as basic as a shiny BlackBerry.

More striking is that men under 40 — even those with partnership aspirations — aren’t hesitating to take the leave, according to interviews with lawyers at nearly a dozen firms. At Kirkland & Ellis, 78 men at the 1,300-lawyer firm took paternity leave in 2007...

Though paid maternity leave has been a big-firm staple since women started entering the law in significant numbers in the 1980s, paid paternity leave is a relatively recent invention at Am Law 100 firms. For example, White & Case started offering paid leave for fathers six years ago, while MoFo launched it eight years ago.

Men taking time off to help care for newborns say they are no longer stigmatised. “Being a father is the single most important aspect of life,” says White & Case litigation associate Brian Bank, who recently returned from a five-week leave (four weeks’ paid paternity, plus one week of vacation). Once he found out that he and his wife were expecting twins, he says he didn’t hesitate to take time off. “It is part of our compensation and benefits,” he says matter-of-factly....

Some male lawyers are even taking primary caretaker leave on top of paternity leave. Malick Ghachem, a fifth-year litigation associate at Weil Gotshal’s Boston office, made company history last autumn when he took an additional six-week leave to stay at home with his second child while his wife worked on a book. In all, he garnered 10 weeks of paid leave. “My first thought was, ‘I couldn’t do this because I am a man’,” recalls Ghachem, “and men are not usually the primary caretaker.” But he says his supervisors “understood it is firm policy and supported it”. The firm says that three male associates have taken the full 10-week leave...

 

[Red Rum Revell]

while MoFo launched it eight years ago.

Does this firm specialise in looking after the litigation requirements of Gansgsta Rappers? ;)

 

[The Flying Scotsman]

I did and I know of a couple of other new Dads who have done too!
Take your 2 weeks statutory after the birth, then save your paid holiday for a few weeks later when it's really needed (e.g. sleep deprevation kicks in, or your fighting to stop the Mrs getting post-natal depression)!

Its all very well saying take statutory but its a hell of a drop in pay for those 2 weeks and not worth it, hence why I took holiday. Obviously every firm is different and fair play to companies that offer extra.

 

[Red Rum Revell]

Its all very well saying take statutory but its a hell of a drop in pay for those 2 weeks and not worth it, hence why I took holiday. Obviously every firm is different and fair play to companies that offer extra.

But you do have 9 months(ish) warning to stash away some spare funds to cover the shortfall though!

 

[The Flying Scotsman]

Nice idea in theory

 

[Matt the Shrimp]

I work for a law firm who as a lot of other law firms do too - offer up to 10 weeks paid paternity leave as part of "perks of the job" and the benefits package. See article below that was sent round this morning:

Interestingly, Sam, all of those mentioned in the aritcle are US firms - although I shouldn't moan, I'm entitled to two weeks' paid paternity leave at Herbies...

Matt