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The 13 Most Horrible Bosses of All Time

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The 13 Most Horrible Bosses of All Time
We've all had a bad boss or two, one that makes us stay later than we want to, doesn't pay us enough or makes us do demeaning things for her/him like take out their trash when it's full. Bad bosses get a lot worse than that, though. From firing a woman who just donated a kidney to her boss, to a boss that made employees tattoo his birthday on their necks, to a boss who installed sniper towers and canons when workers asked for a raise, these are the worst, most horrible, bad bosses of all time.

Who are the worst bosses ever? If you think you've got it bad, just read a few of these and come into work tomorrow morning at peace with the fact that your bad boss isn't going to fire you over bringing him/her a flat Coke or liking a Facebook page. All of the bad bosses you've ever had ain't got nothin on the worst bosses of all time. And if they do, maybe it's time you looked for a better place to work (i.e. the streets).
The 13 Most Horrible Bosses of All Time,

Employees Forced to Tattoo Boss's Birthday on Neck
What would you do if someone demanded that you get his birthday tattooed on your neck? Even if that person was your boss? Are you sure? Yeah, OK, me too. (Wait, you answered, "Get it for shiggles," right?)

In 2010, an employee at Day and Night Spa in Mount Prospect, IL, told police that her boss Alex "Daddy" Campbell forced her to get three tattoos. One was a horseshoe - a "brand" he made all his female employees get - and another was the date of his own birthday (Sept. 17th - "917") on the back of her neck.

But that was just the beginning. Turned out all the women working out the "massage parlor" were illegal immigrants from Belarus and Ukraine, and Campbell held on to their passports and visas. He forced a few to have sex with him, and some to have sex with each other, and he taped the sex to use as blackmail in case any of them got mouthy.

In some places, these practices are called forced labor, sex trafficking, and extortion. Luckily, one of those places is America. At his arrest, Campbell was quoted as saying:
You all hating on my pimp game. My lawyer gonna get you good for f--king with me and my hos.
Campbell's first trial was dismissed after his defense attorney was exposed as a parlor client, but Campbell was eventually convicted on 11 counts and faces life in prison. What a pimp.
Boss Pimps Out Employee's Wife
Call this one a Long Con. Shelley Lynn worked at McDonald's, which is known for his minimum wages, lack of benefits, and weak job protection. The employer is so useless, in fact, that it forced Lynn into a life of prostitution.

Hold on, it's more complicated than that. Actually, it's very complicated.

Lynn met Keith Handley in 1982 when she worked the counter at a McD's in Arroyo Grand, CA. At 29, she already had three children and three ex-husbands, so she was happy to meet franchise owner Handley. He was educated, older, and English. And he stood by the manager when he fired Lynn for not putting ice away.

After her termination, Handley never gave Lynn money, but he did take her and her children to McDonald's every night. Back on welfare, she went to Las Vegas to try to be a dancer. Handley bought a house there for them, but it was hard to keep up homes in both places. Eventually, he convinced her to start prostituting herself.

At the end of 1986, Handley took Lynn to Chicken Ranch Brothel in Pahrump, NV, where she worked for the next 6 years. She had sex with many, many gentlemen, and Handley asked her to describe her trysts to him. They hung out with other McDonald's franchisees and their wives. They were living the good life.

The couple drew up in a romantic prenup and married in March 1988. Soon after, Handley started pimping his blushing bride out on freelance hooking gigs.

Things went on this way for years, until Handley - not Lynn - filed for divorce in 1994. Still, if 12 years of forced prostitution does not a horrible boss make, for the life of me, I don't know what does.
Walmart Employees Disarm Robbers, Save Lives, Get Fired
In January 2011, four Walmart employees in Salt Lake City were confronted by a robber and pushed into an office. One worker, in a heroic move, ripped the gun away from the would-be shooter, disarming him until police could come. After saving the day, they all got fired:
They were fired for violating the store's policy on shoplifters, known as "AP09."

AP09 shows employees are allowed to use reasonable force to limit movements of struggling suspects. But if a gun comes out, associates must disengage and withdraw.
Acting like a hero could endanger customers, but what choice did the employees have? They literally had their backs against the wall. Sounds like Walmart higher-ups could stand to take another look at their company policies.
Boss Takes Away Company Chairs
In a Bad Boss contest, this winner takes the gold cup. A former employee at a Minnesota non-profit started work to raise money for a cause. They had to reach goals. They were on their way...
So the first month after launch and doing $75K, we were all proud of ourselves, but we were all written up because "it wasn't enough"

The second month we doubled sales to $150K, but "it wasn't enough"...so to "teach us a lesson" Our boss took away all of our chairs...FOREVER!!!

Yes, we were in the ecommerce department, with NO CHAIRS, hunched over our desks working on computers all day long.
Best of all: A disabled employee had her chair taken away, too. Since her job description was rewritten as a "standing only" position, the writer was required to fire her.
Boss Fires Employee for Flat Coca Cola, Not Recognizing Him
It's understandable for an employee to want to keep a low profile at the workplace, but some bosses expect all their staff at the front-and-center. Jim Dolan, son of Cablevision / HBO founder / billionaire Charles Dolan, is one of those bosses. As chairman of Madison Square Garden, he has a reputation for being an absolute tool. Cases in point:

-He once fired an employee for serving him flat cola.
-He once fired a security guard for not recognizing his face.

Dolan is also known around the workplace for using colorful language - if not a very broad vocabulary - liberally sprinkled with those misogynistic B-words and P-words designed to keep lady staffers and athletes, like Anucha Browne Sanders, in line. In response to accusations of foul language around his arena, Dolan said:
It’s not appropriate. It’s also not appropriate to murder anyone. I don’t know if that’s happened here.
Whatever that means. Dolan also reportedly let Knicks player Stephon Marbury use his own truck to get down with a MSG intern - which officially makes him either the World's Worst Boss or the Best.
Boss Uses Employee Credit Cards to Pay for Fuel for His Private Jet
Lenny "Nails" Dykstra was a center-fielder for the New York Mets in the late-1980s and the Philadelphia Phillies throughout most of the '90s. Some years later, in 2008, he started a magazine called Player's Club about professional athletes and their expensive lifestyles. He even offered them financial advice.

The problem was that Dykstra was still living one of those expensive lifestyles even though he was no longer an athlete. In 2008, his net worth was estimated at $58 million. In 2009, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing less than $50,000 in assets. He claimed to be a victim of mortgage fraud, lost a house to foreclosure, and was the subject of at least two dozen legal actions since 2007. He has also been accused of sexual assault (Jan. 2011), arrested for sexual harassment (1999), and charged with indecent exposure (Aug. 2011) - note that those are three separate incidents. And he's been charged with grand theft auto, identity theft, bankruptcy fraud, vandalism, and possession of cocaine, ecstasy, and some other stuff he shouldn't have.

"But that just makes him a horrible guy," you say. "It doesn't necessarily make him a horrible boss."

Au contraire. Dykstra was known to pester employees at all hours of the night - and even to invite prospective employees to dinner and stick them with the bill. But those were still small potatoes:
The unluckiest employees were pressured into providing him credit card access with the promise they would be paid back with interest.

"One of the dumbest decisions I ever made, giving him my American Express card information," said Kevin Coughlin, who left another job to become photo director for The Players Club.

Coughlin said that Dykstra ran up tens of thousands of dollars on his card, including one $32,000 charge for a leased jet from Atlanta to Helena, Mont., where Dykstra’s son, Cutter, was playing minor league ball. Coughlin worked only 67 days for Dykstra, but it took months to recover the money.

Kevin Dykstra said Lenny used the same credit card ruse on their mother, Marilyn, and alleged that his brother invested, and lost, the $700,000 bonus his son Cutter received when he signed his first professional contract with the Milwaukee Brewers organization.
Stealing from his own mother? That's some cold sh-t.

In April 2012, Dykstra was sentenced to nine months in jail after pleading no contest of assault with a deadly weapon on a woman he met on Craigslist. The month before that, he was sentenced to three years in prison for grand theft auto. He is still awaiting trial for charges of federal bankruptcy.
Boss Counteracts Union's Plea with Paycuts, Sniper Towers, Cannons
Henry Clay Frick was an insanely rich man. Being the chairman of Carnegie Steel will do that for you. He was the exact kind of "fat cat" that's inspired cartoons for generations, living extravagantly with little to no regard for those around him.

An example of his "greatness", apart from the insane reaction he had to a union approaching him for higher pay, is that he once owned an entire town with his rich friends, just so they could fish there. They altered the dam in the town in a few different ways to make their fishing a bit more luxurious/easy. These alterations not only made is so that the dam got weaker, but also so that it broke, killing over 1500 people in neighboring towns. (From this article).

When the price of steel products started to drop in 1892, Frick anticipated a strike by members of the craft union in his Pittsburgh plant. First, he had them produce as much as possible before their contract expired so that he could stand a few weeks without them. When they asked for an increase in wages, Frick slashed them by 22%. Then he closed the mills, locked out 1,100 men, and announced that he would no longer negotiate with the union. Here's what happened next:
Although only 750 of the 3,800 workers at Homestead belonged to the union, 3,000 of them met and voted overwhelmingly to strike. Frick responded by building a fence three miles long and 12 feet high around the steelworks plant, adding peepholes for rifles and topping it with barbed wire. Workers named the fence "Fort Frick."

Eventually, a force of Pinkerton enforcers were brought in, and on July 6, a violent kerfuffle erupted on the Monongahela River. By the time the state militia was called in, 12 were dead; by the end of the ordeal, the total was 16. It really got out of hand. Fast.
Boss Fires Employee for Time Spent Off After Double By-Pass
Last time I had surgery, I was out of commission for a week. I spent every day on the couch watching "My Super Sweet 16" and popping Vicodin, unable to bathe, dress myself, or even microwave my own Easy Mac - much less go to work. And all I did was have my wisdom teeth removed.

In January 2008, New Zealander Murray Gardiner, 60, was admitted to the hospital after suffering a week's worth of major chest pain. He was put into emergency surgery for a double bypass. Afterwards, records noted that the procedure was "uneventful" and had "nil" complications" - successful by all accounts. Except one.

Gardiner's boss, Patch Rubber Company director Julian Proctor, dropped by the recovery room not with flowers or balloons, but with his briefcase. He pulled out a letter that said the following:
Murray, this is very hard on both of us but unfortunately I have to find a replacement for you.

I have been told that the operation was not fully successful in that the veins that they took from your legs were not much better than the ones that were going to your heart, so that only half the operation was able to be completed.

To return to full duties too soon could kill you.

A temporary replacement for you can not be found even if you are able in the future to resume full duties.
Woman Donates Kidney to Boss, Gets Fired
Debbie Stevens, a Long Island mother who sources could only describe as "kind and generous", donated a kidney to save her boss's life. The woman was then fired soon after, by the very same boss to whom she donated the kidney.

"I decided to become a kidney donor to my boss, and she took my heart," she said.

After temporarily moving away and taking another job elsewhere, Stevens decided to visit her old town in Long Island and meet up with her former employer, Jackie Brucia. Brucia had told her all about her health problems and that she had a kidney donor all lined up. Stevens, the kind-hearted, wonderful woman she is, then offered to donate her own kidney nonetheless, should she ever need it.

A few months go by and Stevens moves back to Long Island indefinitely, asking her old boss for her old job back. A few weeks later, she has a job. The boss, Jackie Brucia, let Stevens work for a while before calling her into the office and telling her that her kidney fell through.

Stevens quickly donated her kidney, which actually wasn't a perfect match, but it did help Brucia get up higher on the donor list. So Stevens donated her kidney to someone else so that Brucia could have a quicker transplant. This woman is a saint.

Soon afterward Brucia kept asking the woman who'd just donated a kidney (which is a very painful process for the donors and includes all kinds of digestive problems and body pain) "What are you doing? Why aren't you at work? You can't just come and go as you please. People are going to think you're getting special treatment."

If you're a co-worker of a person who just donated a kidney to the boss, not only are you going to have compassion for them already (I have a hard time giving a day of my weekend to my boss), but you're going to understand if invasive surgery keeps them out of the office for a few days.

Stevens was then moved to another dealership (these are all car dealers, by the way) 50 miles away from her home in a high-crime neighborhood that her co-workers jokingly called "Siberia". She was being punished for the medical implications of saving her boss's life. She was then fired. Lawyers were involved and the woman still does not work there anymore.

Source
Boss Kills Workers for Asking for Salaries
Maybe you've dreamed of killing your boss (#dark), but in Soviet Russia, boss kills you. In March 2009, a group of minibus drivers working in the central Russian city Nizhny Novgorod went on strike following a salary cut. The men - all Uzbek nationals - were especially upset because their boss not only cut their wages, but also took their passports. That meant they couldn't even leave the country.

The strikers confronted their boss to demand payment, but things got heated when he took out a pump-action gun and fired at the crowd. He wounded 47 year-old worker Aktam Khuzhamuratov and fled the scene. Khuzhamuratov died later that day.

This wasn't the first time a boss turned on his employees. In 2007 in Atlanta, Lithuanian car dealership owner Rolandas Milinavicius shot and killed his only two workers, Inga Contrearas (25) and Martynas Simokaitis (28), who had been asking for more money. Turns out the only thing Milinavicius had to unload on them was stress. Well, and bullets.


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