Yahoo News My Jaw Has Gone Completely Slack After Reading These 23 Absolutely Ridiculous And Unfair Requests From Bosses
Previously, we spoke about a woman whose boss demanded she work a last-minute shift or be fired, so she quit. Inspired, dozens of members of the BuzzFeed Community weighed in with their own similar stories involving the most unfair or ridiculous request they received from their boss.
Here's what they shared:
1."I was uploading a Pride month post and had chosen a generic office picture to accompany it, which happened to have a person in a wheelchair in it (amongst a load of able-bodied looking people)."
"I was asked to remove said picture because 'it looks like we're trying to say gay people are disabled.' I think that says more about said senior person than anything else. I obviously refused to remove the image."
2."I put my holiday in for a festival, and my boss came in the next day having booked his holiday that same week. We were a small shop; only one staff member could be off at a time. He actually admitted, when he saw I’d booked my time off, that he was in the wrong and should have checked the holidays that had been booked before paying for his own."
"But he then expected me to rearrange my dates or pay the fee for him to rearrange his own holiday. I did neither, as I’m sure you can imagine. I did, however, post plenty of photos of me all over my socials that weekend of me having lots of lovely fun in the sun, rocking out to my faves."
3."I was working at the hospital in admissions and doing fertility treatments. Several women in our department were pregnant and going on leave. My boss comes up to me and tells me I couldn’t get pregnant."
"I went off on him, telling him he had no right to say that to me. I was so appalled that he would say that to someone who was struggling to conceive. I turned him into Human Resources, and he claimed he was joking. My husband told me if I was uncomfortable working with him to quit. I turned in my resignation a few days later."
4."I work for a pediatrician and had to translate because there was a language barrier between the patient's family and the doctor.
"Right as we finished the consult, my boss/doctor told me to tell the patients they smelled badly. I told her I wouldn’t be saying that and walked away."
5."Hurt my knee while cleaning at work and was asked not to file for worker’s comp."
"This was when I was a teen and didn’t know better. I wasn’t offered any sort of compensation for it at all. Ended up having to go to physical therapy."
6."While managing an apartment building, I found a tenant who had sadly unalived himself, and instead of calling the proper clean up people, the new owners wanted me to clean up the blood and bodily fluids myself and start showing the apartment asap."
"I quit after they tried to harass me into doing the cleaning."
7."This was in the 1970s. My mom once worked with one of the worst sexist chauvinist pigs. Well, one day he told her she had to go with him out of town."
"She told him she couldn't go because she had young children at home and he said if she couldn't go, she was fired. Luckily, she got a better offer with a female boss. She ran into that man afterwards and he asked her how her new job was, and she said, 'It's the best decision I made!'
A footnote: this guy is now married to one of my mom's very domineering relatives. Love watching him squirm at large family gatherings!"
8."This happened when I was 20, working a minimum-wage retail job."
"I was on lunch when I checked my phone and saw I had so many messages asking me if I’d heard from my sister; there was a shooting at her school. I was sobbing uncontrollably when a coworker found me. I couldn’t talk, so I showed her the texts. She dragged me onto the sales floor to find our boss so she could tell her what happened and have her send me home. After she told her, our boss looked me in the eyes and said, 'There’s nothing you can do if you go home. You’ll stay and finish your shift' with zero emotion. I was so shocked I stopped crying."
–Anonymous
9."My boss asked me to do the online defensive driving course FOR HIM!!! He's a real piece of work!"
–Anonymous
10."The new owner of my store owned two others of the same kind. The General Manager at one of the other stores needed to step down, so the owner and my store manager decided that I was the only one who could handle it and I ended up transferring. My first day there, almost every employee showed up late to their shift."
"Two of the employees ended up getting into a fight in front of customers. Hell, the high schoolers that worked night shift were more capable than the adults. To top it all off, they were only going to give me a dollar raise to deal with all this. I decided it was definitely not worth it and was nice enough to put in a month's notice for them to find a replacement. One night, I got a call from the owner where he told me that I could not quit, and that I CHOSE to take the job, and that I owe it to them to stay. I lost it on him and told him the exact date for my last day. They didn’t find a replacement until two days before my last. The guy quit after two weeks."
11."I was ordered to drive around during a blizzard to pick up my five coworkers since the buses weren’t running and the boss was leaving for vacation. It was my second day."
–Anonymous
12.I was the closing assistant manager for a Chick-Fil-A."
"My great-grandmother was ready to say her goodbyes and got to, to every member of the family except for me, who had the closing shift that night."
13."Had a boss at a pizza place that had me clean the coils in a cooler. No big deal. I was new. I’ll do anything. He gave me the chemicals to do so and left. After cleaning, I noticed my hands, arms, and knees were burning."
"Went to ask him about it. He informed me, 'Those chemicals are corrosive and will eat you alive.' Needless to say, I wish he had told me sooner."
14."My boss made us bring our own toilet paper to work."
15."I was to receive a very well deserved promotion after about a year and a half of very hard work, sometimes overtime and sometimes underpaid. I couldn’t wait for a raise and better responsibilities. My boss however had other plans. I came into work early at the last day of the work year and instead of a promotion, my boss handed me a mop."
"He told me that since I arrived before the custodian, I would have to clean up a carpet spill near the front office. I was absolutely furious at him and told him then and there that I had been working there long enough to get to a better place, not to be in charge of the cleanup, as that was well below my expected and current pay grade. He then had the AUDACITY to say that my 'outburst' proved I didn’t deserve the promotion. (May I add that my boss is an absolute d**k and hates everyone that doesn’t suck up to him.)
...I shoved the mop into his hands and told him to do it himself, I quit. That was the best decision I made and I don’t regret it one bit. I am now working my way up in a much better and respectful company."
–Anonymous
16."The heater went out, and he asked me to go on the snow-covered roof to reset it. I'm a receptionist."
–Anonymous
17."It was Christmas Eve. My boss called me and another coworker, and we went to his house at 1 a.m. to set up a trampoline because his kids still believed in Santa Claus."
"He came outside after an hour and told us 'good job' and gave us a bottle of water each. He quit two months later."
18."I work as a radiographer. The job required four weeks' notice to leave. I gave them six, so they had as much notice as possible to advertise for my replacement. A few hours after handing my notice in, I was summoned to the manager's office. It was a big department, so there were two male duty managers who were easily double my age then. They told me that they had already done the Christmas rota (Christmas was the week after I was due to leave), so it didn’t suit them for me to leave, and they were going to call my new job and negotiate my start date to after Christmas."
"Young me honestly thought they were joking, but safe to say they weren’t. I was too intimidated to challenge them there and then. I gave them more than enough notice, upholding the end of my contract, and the fact the Christmas rota would need to be changed was their problem, not mine."
–Anonymous
19."Working as a realtor, you are required to pass an ethics exam every other year."
"My broker, who owned our franchise, asked me to take the ethics course and pass the test for him. He offered me $100 to pass an ethics course."
–Anonymous
20."Worked in an office for a construction company on a military contract. The company would let pretty much anyone operate the big trucks and heavy equipment with or without a license. I kept my mouth shut as I was told. Until there was an accident, and I was told to lie outright to the inspector and say that someone else who was licensed was driving at the time."
"To make matters worse, the driver was a 16-year-old illegally employed and not even legally able to be on a construction site. So not only were his injuries going to be swept under the rug and get him screwed, but the driver that I was supposed to say was driving would have that on his record as well. And I could have even been arrested for lying about it. Needless to say, that was the last straw, and when I refused, I was fired on the spot."
–Anonymous
21."I hit my head badly on the job once, and my boss wanted me to keep working rather than go to the doctor."
"I told her to deal with it and went to the doctor (which I paid for out of pocket), and it was indeed a concussion."
–Anonymous
22."I worked in a preschool, and my school was a large school broken down into three buildings. My building hosted four classrooms with a total of 57 students ages ranging from 1 to 4 years old. Our building had co-directors, which means not one, but two people in charge. One was the best friend of our senior management’s sister, and the other was a ditz. Between the two of them, I don’t know who was worse: S, or N. N would screw up constantly, and S always had her back without question."
"We had a case of head lice in our 3-year-old room, which spread throughout the class and to our 1-year-old room. It stayed for the better part of six weeks because N told us we couldn’t send children home with live lice and/or nits present, as it was school policy they could stay. We tried telling her that was not the policy and she kept forcing us to not call parents to pick up their child with head lice. She also told us we didn’t need to check their heads upon arrival and that they were fine with lice and nits present. This was a major violation of both DHFS rules, and had licensing found out about this, our center would faced a write-up and a fine. We attempted to convince N otherwise, but all she did was argue, so we let the chips fall and watched as parents complained to senior management, who sadly ignored N’s leadership behavior."
–Anonymous
And finally...
23."My VP asked me to impersonate his recently deceased wife to an airline and ask that her frequent flyer points be transferred him. When I objected he told me not to be so silly and just do it."
–Anonymous
WOW. Now I'm curious if you've experienced anything similar.
Tell us the most unfair request you've received or the most ridiculous thing your boss has ever asked you to do at work in the comments below. Or, if you'd like to remain anonymous, feel free to share via this Google Form. Your answer may appear in an upcoming post.
