Do you 2 have a tale about Horrible Bosses?

/ December 8, 2014

(From syracusenewtimes.com)

(From syracusenewtimes.com)

As I regrouped after watching the comedy “Horrible Bosses 2” for my film blog review for the Syracuse New Times site this morning, I thought again about the bosses of my lifetime.

I didn’t have to go past my first job, junior year of high school on Long Island. My friend Jim had talked his boss at the nearby bakery into hiring me to clean the baking area, the kitchen so to speak, behind the friendly room where everybody bought the donuts and cakes and bread and rolls.

I reported after school for my first real job ever, veteran of babysitting and mowing lawns, but not knowing what to expect in the workplace.

Fade to Setauket, N.Y., 1974 …

The baker stood there in a white apron. It was the proper choice of attire. He was covered in flour. And sweat. He pointed at the tipping tower of baking pans in the industrial-sized sink and said, simply, “Wash them. Hot water.” He pointed to the floor, caked with even more flour than his apron, and a shovel and dustpan in the corner. “Scrape it, clean.”

Off he went to the front of the store.

I started on the stack of pans, piling them all even higher on one side so I could use one side to fill with water to wash. The baker walked back in, stuck his hand in the water, and gave me the stink eye. “Not hot enough.”

I made it hotter. And scrubbed.

In he marched. In went his hand. “Hotter.”

No cold water at all allowed, I surmised.

After the stack of pans were washed, my scalded red hands scraped the entire floor. The baker came into the back looked around. He pointed toward a small bag of donuts he’d placed on a table by the back door.

“Day-old. Take home,” he said.

My parents and sisters loved my new job. Me, not so much.

The routine continued exactly for the rest of my first first week until the last day. Then a new sentence was added. “Don’t come back next week.”

Back to 2014.

I really worked in a bakery for my first job. I really scalded my hands. I really worked there for just one week. And that’s how I imagine I would have fashioned the scene for a movie called “Horrible Bosses.”

So OK, “Horrible Bosses 2,” was a lot funnier than that, what with Jason Bateman, Jason Sudekis and Charlie Day working so well together.

If you’d like to read my review of “Horrible Bosses 2” on the Syracuse New Times site, click the link below.

http://www.syracusenewtimes.com/horrible-bosses-2/

Do you have a “Horrible Bosses” story you think you could make movie-worthy with a bit of work? If so, please share the details below.

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63 thoughts on “Do you 2 have a tale about Horrible Bosses?”

  1. Had a principal once who thought she was not doing their job unless she had everyone in fear and miserable including staff and students. Then the next one felt he was doing his job by doing it his way only or not doing anything.

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  2. So did you quit after one week or get fired? Didn’t they even provide you with rubber gloves? 😦 Poor Mark! Poor Mark’s hands! 😦 My “bad boss story” (okay, I have several, but this is the worst one) is not much of a story, but my boss, the attorney, was mad because a trial got continued, so he threw a stapler at my head. (Attorneys can be very temperamental!) The following week, he got mad over something else. (The truth was, he was mad because his wife was leaving him.) That week, he threw a chair at me! I quit the next day.

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  6. I had babysitting parents I liked and my first boss had a son who was inappropriate to my then 15 year old self. My Mom went in and told the boss about his son, which helped me to get fired. Oh well, no loss for me! I think the movie will be fun to watch on DVD someday… not high on my list, Mark. Thanks for your time taken to listen to all of our first job stories! smiles.

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    • Oh, need to tell you, so sorry for the hot, scalding water! The baker should have given you rubber gloves, Mark! Also, I would have loved the leftover donuts but would have been sad to have myself fired so quickly. My story has my getting fired. Funny, how while young it doesn’t really bother you much, right? You think another job is always around the corner… smiles!

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      • There was. Right after that, I got a job at a shoe store, Robin, and I liked that a lot better. And the boss there liked me and made me Grateful Dead cassette tapes! 🙂

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  7. I guess me ‘worst’ was the guy who owned the family fast food place. I had a $13 dollar pay check one week. A local business owner cashed it for me. It bounced. The guy who cashed it called the fast food guy who gave some kind of excuse. When I went in to work the owner stood behind the window in his office glaring at me. Like it was my fault that his check bounced and he was called on it. I was 15. And that just made me sad. I am pretty sure that as far as bosses go, I have been pretty damn lucky.

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  8. Oh the bosses I’ve had….a few for the story books, that’s for sure! One of my top stories – as a personal assistant, a freezer full of meat had gotten unplugged, then plugged back in – in the middle of July in Tennessee. Now because these folks had more money than Beyonce, you’d assume they’d pitch the freezer and get a new one. Nope. They plugged the freezer back in and then asked me to clean it out. So I hammered away with a clothespin on my nose and bleach. And some bleach accidentally got on their black asphalt drive (quarter size) and I got into trouble for that. SO thankful I don’t work there anymore!

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  11. Remember my bad boss when I was a cocktail waitress and he made us all work on Easter? And there were no customers? Lucky for your family about your bakery take-homes, and hope you still had a bit of skin left on your hands )

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  12. Oh my gosh Mark – that’s funny!

    My first job I made nerve gas detectors for army use. Eventually had to take that off my resume so people wouldn’t give me that raised eyebrow look and actually hire me!

    I have been lucky in the boss department. Any bad boss experiences I had didn’t last long; either they left or I did. ❤

    Diana xo

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    • I read your first sentence about your first job too fast, Diana, and I pictured you TESTING nerve gas for the Army. Good gravy that would be an awful job even with the best of bosses. Now that I got that cleared up, I’m glad that any of your bad boss experiences went away quickly! 🙂

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  13. Fun post, Mark! I’ve had the extreme good luck of working for some really great bosses….until we started our own business and I found myself in the dubious position of working for my husband. This was an exceptionally bad idea. And didn’t last long. But our marriage has…..

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  14. My favorite part is the line “Don’t come back next week.” That’s a truly horrible job. My first was as roller-skating waitress at a (insert name of famous root beer) drive-in. I was so truly appallingly bad at this that I was promoted to cook the very first night.

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    • I remember the (famous root beer) drive-ins, Barb. In fact, they still have those here around the Syarcuse area. I can only imagine how hard it is to skate with trays of food. Nightmare! Cooking, better burgers and fries, better!

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  16. That was great Mark. I was a foster kid growing up as a teen in Milwaukee, WI. I worked at KMart in the men’s department. I thought I would die of embarrassment every time a guy asked where the underwear was. As soon as I could after graduation (2 weeks later) I was in the Air Force. Now if you want to know about bad bosses… ah well that would be another post. I sure enjoyed yours! 🙂

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  18. Having watched Jason Bateman last night in “The Change-Up” on TV w/ Ryan Reynolds, I can say I’m full of feasting on double man candy. Throw in David Sudeikis and it’s enough handsome to blind me. I don’t want to think about my horrible bosses, but the first dumb boss was when I was 18, working graveyard shifts at Jim’s Restaurant off a highway, before we had fancy computers and had to write on carbon sheets and the manager who looked like Arsenio Hall if he ate Eddie Murphy told me I couldn’t wear two rings on one hand. WTH? How is that even an issue? He said I had to take one off and I was tired of him trying to find things to rile us all up about, so I said something sassy about do I have to take my apron off, too and then I quit and then he called the next day and asked me to come back and instead I went clubbing with my gay friends.

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  19. Whew – I’ve had some moments with bosses but I don’t think I’ve ever had one that i would call “horrible”. My first job was sanitation in a bakery too – except a huge commercial operation. My boss there, Kenny, was really cool and was clear at what he wanted and quick to praise. He didn’t allow you to stop though until he was satisfied with the work. I was only 14 and eager to please. I ended up in some of the wildest situations. They had a lard melter that was like a huge stainless cooking bowl – except it was about 8 feet high and 8 feet across. There was a heating element in the bottom along with a drain. So, every Saturday, they would lower me down into this lard covered bowl and I would clean inside it for 4 hours until it sparkled. Then they would hoist me out, covered from head to foot in lard. After that I would often end up on top of the ovens. That was about 12 feet in the air and only about 3 feet from the ceiling. The oven would have been shut down for about 12 hours but it was still over 100 dgrees on top. I would crawl backwards with a little whisk broom and clean the dust and any dirt off the top – just pushing to to the floor to be swept later The ovens were each about 15 feet wide and 50 feet long and were criss crossed with with hot steam lines. I had so many burn marks on my ass and lower back from backing into live steam lines while cleaning the top of the ovens.

    So, I’ve done some thankless jobs, but I can’t say I’ve had any “horrible” bosses – some eccetric and some that assigned tasks that I didn’t like , but none horrible.

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  20. I could go one here but this is your blog, not mine….meaning if I began on all the horrible bosses I’ve had it would be a blog all on it’s own. Here’s hoping to no more horrible bosses ever again for either of us!

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    • He just knew what had to be done to keep the drive-by, drop-in inspectors happy, Jim, upon big-boy reflection. No-nonsense guy, and I was simply not prepared for it, even with my demanding old man and his white-glove approach to life at the home front. 😦

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  22. Last job: the final straw was my boss correcting me on the proper font to use on correspondence and labels. 12 Point Comic Sans was the “official” style of HR. ANY labels and correspondence, including letters regarding death benefits, disability, etc. I went into my office and the folders in my desk for my use had the labels ripped off and she had redone it in this font (I dared to use 11 pt Arial or something on my own folders…gasp!).

    That was just the tip of the iceberg. I had taken the job she had before being promoted to Director and it was do everything exactly as she had or it was wrong. We were also a three-person shop and she was best friends with my coworker, so I was iced out from day one. They took lunch together everyday and even went to get mammograms together. She told me a month in that she never wanted to hire me…which is funny considering we work in HR and know that we don’t HAVE to hire anyone.

    My current job is much better in terms of bosses, but that was the beginning of me realizing that I don’t want to go farther in this field and maybe I am burnt out on HR in general.

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  23. ha, my first job outside of babysitting was also in a bakery! I was a counter girl and didn’t last long–not even a month I think. How long did you stick your cleaning job out? I remember hating the hours, not always being on time, and finally being “let go” because I didn’t work hard enough. Which cracks me up now as I have not a lazy bone in my body. When there’s work to be done, I can’t kick back until I’ve done it. But 16-year-old girls have their own special way of thinking and I was no different.

    Jason Bateman is one of my favorite actors, even if only because he was a part of those “formative years” when I watched Silver Spoons and such. Thinking we’ve already had this conversation. Have you seen Dodgeball? Off to read your review 🙂

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    • Of course your first job also was in a bakery, Liz. It would be no other way. You lasted longer than I did. My great work ethic could not overtake the scalding hot water on my hands or the scrape-scrape-scrape of the floor. I spent a lot of other high school and college jobs after that making up for this one-week dismissal by hustling my butt off, I’ll tell you that.

      I do believe you have told me of your affection for Jason Bateman because of your Silver Spoon years. I am a fan of his recent Redux. I have not seen ‘Dodgeball.’ I bet I can on Netflix now, though.

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      • let me know if you see DB. It cracks me up every time I watch, though with that recommend you will probably think it’s just ok. But he’s such a goofball in the film. Definitely not the straight one. Not even really a leading role. Just very very funny.

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