General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: 67 year old woman here..long and varied work history...Most of my female bosses were horrid. [View all]happybird
(4,587 posts)My worst boss was a man and a fucking pig. He kept propositioning me and making lewd comments. His wife worked in the shop and his kids helped out on the weekends. It was horrifying. I was in my early 20's and hadn't yet learned to stand up for myself. I did the "mannerly" thing I had been taught and simply laughed and moved far away from him or changed subjects. Sigh. When I quit, the female manager's face fell and she said, "Oh, shit. Has Bruce been saying stuff to you?" Apparently they couldn't keep anyone in that position and he would only hire young women for it.
The manager was a tough biker chick in her 40's, so the pig left her alone. She offered to talk to him and tell him to cut it out, but I just wanted to cut my losses and get the heck out of there.
At least it was a life lesson. I never let anyone get away with that kind of bs again.
I've had one awesome female boss and two horrible ones. One was promoted while I worked there. She was fine before the promotion. I think she wanted to be great in her new position, to prove herself to her superiors, to be seen as super confident and commanding. To be viewed "as competent and boss-like as any man could be." Unfortunately, she thought the way to do that was to be a total, raging bitch. She also tried to get employees to gossip about each other and backstab. Ugh.
The second one just wasn't boss material. The alcoholism was probably why. Sooo much drama.
I've had several bad male bosses. I think it's usually one of three things: either they hate their job and will make everyone else as miserable as they are, or they are an example of the Peter Principle, or they are just a shite human being.
Some are a combo, or even all three. Yay.