A bad boss can really ruin a great job, and sadly they often get away with it for so long that people end up leaving positions they would otherwise love.

What would you do if you had a boss who was not only mean, but also very incompetent?

That is what happened to the IT professional in this story, so when he was doing his exit interview he set his boss up to be exposed for just how awful he was.

Check it out.

You are just cattle to me.

To set the scene, i was working for a then cable tv company.

The call center i was working at had been filled with guys poached from dialup support companies countrywide to support this new superfast broadband that was being trialed in country for the 1st time.

(500k connections… wohooooo).

I say this because that meant our call center at the time was full of some of the best support engineers anywhere in country.

Some of the most intelligent people i have ever known.

Anyway, after about a year there, 4 of us we asked to look into complaints sent to the Managing Director (Hereafter known as Big Boss) about the service.

Mostly, these were the original-brand Karen’s of the day, but occasionally, the customer complaining was someone rather important and they needed the special touch so to speak.

Turns out the 4 of us has quite different skills but complimented each other perfectly.

Before long, we were firm friends with the Big Bosses personal assistant at head office and had very good reputations to boot after some devilishly difficult issues.

(oh yeah, this is before google, so being good meant you knew your stuff, not just how to look it up.)

It was a great place to work.

Turnover was practically zero (the fact all our staff were experienced before getting to us meant we knew what we were getting into)

Then came the new director.

Hereafter referred to as Boss Man.

Boss Man had come from another call center in the company.

A customer services call center.

He was also completely inept technically.

Wow, it is like he is proud of being an idiot.

Seriously, this guy once told me that directors don’t use excel and only word so i needed to copy all the spreadsheets into word so he could modify the content and pass off his figures showing all was well.

He didn’t understand how excel worked as it transpired.

Anyway, all was not well.

In the short time he’d been there, he had alienated most of the best staff.

He tried to turn the staff into script monkeys as he wanted every case fixed in x minutes.

We were rebuilding tcp/ip stacks, hacking registries, heck, we even talked a few people through win98 rebuilds.

You ever tried to talk your gran through changing a ring tone over phone?

Now try imagining getting gran to rebuild windows after MacAfee and Symantec competed to see which could screw up her machine faster.

Now try doing it in 10 mins, or, get hauled into Boss Man’s office to be screamed at for “messing up his figures”.

Morale was utterly obliterated and we started losing good people.

Head office knew something was wrong so sent word down the line the Big Boss was coming for a meet and greet.

That line went through Boss Man, so of course, on that day, some of the more vocal amongst us were rotated off shift.

Those selected to meet the Big Boss were, I think the nice word is sycophants, or people who were instructed what to say and followed out of fear.

Upshot, Big Boss went away thinking all was well, and there must be some other reason for the issues on site.

My breaking point came when my team was given an impossible task.

By this point, I’d already handed in my 30 days. (Was about to become a dad so needed to get a proper career going)

He wanted a flow diagram of every possible fault we were dealing with and it’s solution.

And he wanted it all on a single piece of A3 paper.

We objected, he demanded, we failed. We got reamed.

Our manager got reamed, and let me tell you, she defended the heck out of us.

This guy just has no idea what he is doing.

We tried in vain to explain the nature of the calls, to explain that the reason we paid these very clever people to do this job was because they were essentially playing tech support to a nation of people who had turned a computer on for the 1st time ever today, did something they didn’t know was stupid and broke their machine.

That means their internet didn’t work, hence… our problem.

His response, at a volume comparable with a tornado jet taking off at full burner : “I don’t care!. Let me get this through your stupid heads. You are nothing and i am a director and when i tell you to do something, you do it or i will fire every single one of you. I can replace any one of you anytime I want because you are nothing but cattle, now get the heck out of my office”

I went home livid.

My girlfriend at the time (pregnant with our 1st) worked in the same office so while i was getting out, she would have to continue deal with him.

Knowing how he intended to treat my friends and family, i needed to do something.

I didn’t have a clue what I could do.

Friday, I go into work, ostensibly to say my goodbyes and do exit interview, paperwork and such.

One of those goodbyes was a phone call to Big Bosses PA.

Me saying goodbye was a shock because I’d been expressly forbidden to tell them over the previous month by, you guessed it, Boss Man.

She wanted to know why I was leaving.

I told her.

She asked me if I minded her telling Big Boss what i had said.

It is worth at least trying to tell them.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t seriously believe anything would come of it, but, what the heck I thought.

“Sure”. “I’ll get back to you soon” and she’s gone.

20 mins later, she calls me and says Big Boss wants to talk to me so can he have my personal mobile number.

I give it, and sure enough, minutes later the big man himself calls.

The next 30 mins is spent detailing why i was leaving.

Why we had lost nearly 100 people already and had 18 resignations that week alone.

“Why didn’t i hear about this when i was there the other week?”

So, I related the little personnel shuffle and the threats.

This was my moment and I tell you, I seized the heck out of that opportunity.

Let’s hope that the Big Boss actually takes action.

Me: “Look Big Boss, I get all you have is my word and I could be just some disgruntled guy but my friends and family are going to have to work here after I’ve gone.

And by family i mean my pregnant girlfriend so I have to do something. If you want to find out the truth, here is what you do.

1. Turn up on site unannounced for a day.
2. Send out your own email to the site as soon as you arrive giving no time for Boss Man and his cronies to get to anyone. Tell them to come to you if they have any concerns.
3. Here is a list of people that should corroborate much of what I’ve said, the rest, it’s up to them if they want to do something. Then decide if I’m a wrong.”

After a bit more chatting, the call ended and I went back to say goodbye to everyone.

I told a few people including my manager what I’d done, and told them if Big Boss did turn up, to get in there and tell him what’s going on.

Then I bid them all farewell and said I would see them all at the mass leaving day at them end of the month.

I’m at my new job the Tuesday after and I get a text from the Gf. “Holy cow, Big Boss’s here unannounced!!!”

More texts from other ex colleagues saying pretty much the same thing.

From what I gathered afterwards, Big Boss did exactly what I suggested, and it played out pretty much as I thought it might.

There was a queue. A long one.

I am sure everyone was overjoyed.

That night, Boss Man was summoned to Big Boss’s impromptu office and after that meeting, he went home. He was never seen again.

I did get a call from Big Boss. He can’t discuss details but, I’ll be very pleased to know I’m not wrong.

I went out with my old co-workers soon after. On entry, I was told I wouldn’t be paying for a single drink that night.

From there my memory goes from fuzzy to total blank.

The hangover the next 2 days was brutal, but totally worth it.

It is unfortunate that horrible managers can stay around for so long, but good to see that this one got what he deserved.

Read on to see what the people in the comments think about this story.

Yeah, that was an insane request.

That is a pretty basic function of Excel.

Sadly, there will always be bad managers.

This is almost always true.

How do these people get through their day?

There are too many incompetent managers out there.

And we hear about all of them on Reddit.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.