How many times have you left a job because of the boss?

Andrew_Ryan_89

The friend mentioned in my OP has now gone self-employed, probably for the better.

As others mentioned here, you have bosses that are idiots, annoying and hypocritical but most don't actually drive you to leave. My boss of a few years back, that drove me to leave, was terrible. I remember when I was in the process of moving to his branch everyone kept warning me about him, the fact he had 2 people previously put in transfers because of him. I decided to make my own judgement and boy did I.

Bullying is not the right way to describe but he was someone that would pass blame on to you, constantly not take responsibility for his own actions and at times blatantly lie in your face and behind your back. Being quite young and naive at the time, it got to a point where I was believing that maybe I was not good enough but then three incidents proved how much of an idiot he was.

1. When my sister suddenly passed away, I never showed up to work that day but managed to compose myself enough to give him a call around 2pm to let him know what had happened. I had two meetings that day. Less than two weeks later, I put in a holiday request for the funeral. As it was just one day he said to me just take the day off and declined the holiday. About a month later (after !!!!ing me off with some other stuff), I requested a meeting with himself and his line manager (one of the directors) to discuss our issues. During that meeting he brought up that I had two unauthorised absences and had a habit of being gone the entire day and I didn't tell him about the funeral! Felt like punching him.

2. The office is based in a business center with limited parking. Long story short, we had our parking privileges reduced to only 3 spaces and those were allocated to the 3 most senior people in the office which was the boss, another manager and I. We had a new person join (same role as me) who was a friend of the boss (who hired him personally). Not too long after, I get an email from the boss saying that I can no longer use the car park as we have had our spaces further reduced. Turned out he gave my space to the new guy and told him to park in a way I won't see it coming into the offices.

3. This was what reassured me that he was just an absolute idiot. He always told me that if I come across deals of a certain size, I should let him deal with it. I got a referral for a really big deal, literally would have been my years target. As instructed to I handed it over to my boss and when I asked for updates, I was always told it was being dealt with. One day I was working in the back (next door to my boss) when I got a call from an irate customer (my lead) saying how X has not given him a call, is ingoring messages etc. and how he has one last chance before he goes to someone else. Not even 10 seconds after I finished the call I went back to my boss (who was next door) and asked him for an update. Again, tells me it is all in hand and he had "just spoken to him". My boss looked flustered and obviously was lying.

Anyway, that deal was lost and a few weeks later his senior was coming to the office to do his review. I saw him scan his review papers, pick up his stuff and go into the meeting. The printer scans everything to a shared folder (this is deleted everyday) so I decided to be nosy and look at what he scanned. To my disbelief, throghout his review he was pinning his poor performance on me, saying how I lost the deal mentioned and he can't perform because he's too busy managing me. The cheek of it was outstanding.

Everything happens for a reason I guess. His behavior prompted me to accept another job offer which doubled my salary for half the work. It was also good to have the Managing Director call me and asking directly was it because of X while I was leaving and then to my satisfaction labeling him a "!!!!! that doesn't take responsibility for his own !!!! ups".

mattcanary

xapprenticex wrote: »

Never have.

Your friend needs to understand that he is there to do a job, not like the boss or be liked by the boss. If you become friends with the boss then great, but it wont always happen.

Your working life can be miserable if you don;t get on with your boss.
You are at work for too long each week, (if working full-time), to put up with this, if you able to find another suitable job.

Mrs_Ryan

Just the one. She was an utter cow and when she asked me outright if I was leaving because of her I told her to her face that yes I was. We had a good team until she arrived and in the space of a month three of us resigned.
I've had some absolutely terrible bosses- took one of them to the cleaners as he told me I was lying about my parents being disabled- my dad went to town on him. It was also well known where he went out drinking as he liked to think he was Mr Big Shot there but unfortunately my brother knew the doormen and got him permanently barred He was fired for gross misconduct not long afterward as he had been sacking people without authority :rotfl: A higher up manager rang me (I had moved away from the area by then, this was a little while later) apologised and said that it would say on my record I had left of my own accord.
Also my boss at the hospital who despite supposedly being a senior nurse told me to come back to work while I still had a partially open wound on my stomach after an operation that I was still taking antibiotics for after cellulitis. Luckily I had a great Occupational Health nurse who sent her a letter tearing her to shreds over it and called her when speaking to me 'a silly little girl'

Doshwaster

I don't think I have quit because of a specific manager but I have left because of bad management in general.

I had been with my last company for over 10 years and was happy there until we got acquired by a bigger business. Acquisitions and mergers are always difficult with a lot of changes happening but my manager, who was a very nice guy and approaching retirement, decided the best way for him to survive was to keep his head down and go with the flow. The whole team was then just ignored by management, and had our budgets cut.

I was hanging on for a redundancy payout but was becoming increasingly frustrated so I finally had enough. When I handed in my notice to him he said "I don't blame you. You should have done it months ago". HR made no effort to keep me as I think they were just happy to lose the redundancy liability.

Slinky

Andrew_Ryan_89 wrote: »

The friend mentioned in my OP has now gone self-employed, probably for the better.

Good luck to him, hopefully he won't have customers who are all a problem also.........

hutman

I've left because of micromanagement - and now for one reason or another I'm extremely careful before choosing to work for a woman as my manager.

This is interesting thread and seems a lot of people have brought up some troubling themes. I wonder if we have to look above and think about questions like - Why do we need hierachy? Why is there a massive productivity chasm in the UK?

cavework

It's very easy to blame someone else when a job doesn't suit you.
I can understand that some have literally felt that they can no longer stay because of the treatment they are receiving from someone in a higher position BUT there are also those that seem to think that they are the only person who requires special attention or consideration from someone who is trying to operate and manage a whole team.
Good managers /bosses should not make decisions based on the demands or needs of one employee, their first consideration should be how any decision they make for one individual will affect everyone else . Sometimes this might mean that the individual will feel that they have been unfairly treated .
No , I have never left a job due to a 'bad' manager or boss, had a couple but I have always just decided it's time to move on and used the experiences I have gained as another step up the ladder. I am now 'the boss' and believe me there have been times when I have had to risk being unpopular to ensure that my business continues to grow and that my employees jobs are secure.

annandale

I've left more than one job due to a bullying culture and horrendous management styles. And got out of that line of work entirely.