31 Signs That You Have A Bad Boss

In this video, I discuss many of the possible things that bad bosses do! Play along with a randomly generated Bingo card!

[pmathewizard]

Calm: This is your new boss
Panik: He dont have experience in the subject and expertise
Calm: He will let you have the creative freedom
Panik: By giving all the work

[esven]

I've got very few issues with my current job but this video feels like it's explicitly calling out management at Becton Dickinson. I cannot express how miserable that job was. People would literally be disciplined for using words that were too big with upper management, deadlines were impossible, everything was understaffed, and everyone was just looking for an excuse to find someone to bully. The most toxic workplace I've ever set foot in by far.

[waterunderthebridge]

It’s like when I started my thesis, I didn’t know what I should have expected from them (first time (and hopefully last time) after all) and now that I’m knee-deep in it, I’m just too exhausted and no longer want to stir up any unnecessary trouble that could prevent me from graduating

[lefthandedspanner]

this may be a peculiarly British thing, but one bad habit of senior management is cutting corners for short-term financial gains, only for the longer-term consequences to be far more severe
there was a pharmaceutical manufacturer who didn't want to spend an extra £900 on British Pharmacopoeia certified IR standards, meaning tests had to be bodged, and the lamp in the spectrometer wore out more quickly; when it caught up with them in an audit three years later, every single batch they had made in the previous three years had to be retested, and the overall cost to the company was in the region of £70, 000

similarly, there was a notorious contract manufacturer who produced sun creams for a major retailer, and the management decided to save a few thousand pounds a year by cutting back on the sunscreen filters, without the retailer's knowledge; when the retailer found out, the manufacturer lost the contract, so they ended up losing £5 million per year for the sake of a few thousand

[pmathewizard]

This what I learned with some sarcasm

Sign 1: Don't ghost the team
Sign 2: Allow your teammates to succeed with more than sufficient input
Sign 3: Your leadership, your responsibility
Sign 4: Adapt and Learn
Sign 5: Let your team work creatively on thier deligated responsibility
Sign 6: Encourage the Team, and Ease off mistakes
Sign 7: Be optimistic and persuasive, and not delusional
Sign 8: S.M.A.R.T (or smarter) goals
Sign 9: Get an accountant, you psycho
Sign 10: Crunch Culture Cringe
Sign 11: Understand why you lead
Sign 12: Break a leg, but not your teammates leg
Sign 13: Catcalling is Cringe
Sign 14: So that's why there are a lot of toxic papers
Sign 15: Be a role model of effort and determination
Sign 16: Are you approaching me??? *menacing*
Sign 17: Apperance < Result
Sign 18: Komi-san cant communicate
Sign 19: Ser, this is wendy's
Sign 20: Loss RSS = Loss Work Output
Sign 21: Hire a Psychologist
Sign 22: sorry, guys i dont know, see ya bai
Sign 23: Fight, Fighr, Fight, how gonna bet against John for only 100 dollars
Sign 24: You know they could sue you, right?
Sign 25: Thats our problem, let's deal with it
Sign 26: No wonder the office is teeming with flies
Sign 27: This is totally not gonna fail
Sign 28: Welcome to the home of family Madrigal
Sign 29: Delegation is not the chance of having no work
Sign 30: Those mofos procastinate, I procastinate too
Sign 31: cleat inbox, or create a work email, stupid

Other Flaws:
Quid Pro, No thank you
Be like water in 25°C, neutral

[saxassoon]

I am finishing up my doctorate now and looking for work in both the commercial space and the academic space, and one thing I do worry about is the stuff covered in this video. I don't want to be "the bad boss" and hopefully the fact that I am worried about not being bad is going to keep me on the right path. Outside of my lab it sounds like everywhere is just toxic, toxic, toxic, and I don't want to pile on to that anymore.

Plus, like all of these sounded like too much effort. It sounds much easier to just be a decent person than to go out of your way to be a bad boss.

[peper.r]

jesus christ, blessed by the fact that i left the restaurant that i worked at, i'd have destroyed you all at the bingo, now i have a hell of a good boss.

[alanhere]

"oh it'll just take an afternoon, easy task"

takes 3 months full time

constant "write this big essay justifying yourself and the project" taking up loads of development time

then nearing the end of the 3 months extra major requirements keep being added each time it's nearing completion, so no part of it can reach any sort of satisfying conclusion

then it turns out they had no intention of paying for the work

[pelegsap]

My PhD supervisor ticked too many of these signs (and indeed I never finished the program). Wonder where I can share my "horror" story more anonymously.

[davidreznick]

Two comments
1. Many of these things (ie. physical abuse, wage theft) are illegal in the us. That being said, don't expect HR to be welcoming with open arms when you complain. I would highly recommend getting a lawyer and looking for another job in those cases.
2. Not adopting new technology can be an issue, but you also don't want a boss who insists on always getting the latest piece of technology even if it is exepnsive and makes your life more difficult.

[Cyclone]

Great video! Thanks!

One thing that I've come to realize is that just because a boss is nice and friendly does not mean that they're a good boss.

[craigjohnson]

#32) If your boss has no waste management so he instructs you to pour the rotovap catch flask, and all other waste into the back of the hood located at the far end of the lab, or your own hood in fact because "you wasting time walking down there" and "you just don't know how to be efficient". All the while he has no idea what EPA stands for

[aldenconsolver]

All valid, all good. There is an old saying (Covey?) that a good manager spends the majority of their time taking obstacles out of the way of workers. Things like 'Is there enough light in here for you to see well?' 'Do you folk think we should rearrange this work area to make it easier to get around to your parts? Demming writes in his awesome book 'Out of the Crisis' that a long-term study was made that showed that whenever management made a change (with worker consultation) It always improved output!!! No matter how little calculable good it actually did. Workers who are tied into their group, whose opinion is valued and whose managers clear obstacles out of the worker's way can be shown beyond a shadow of a doubt to have better workers. This is not a coincidence, crappy bosses make crappy workers who make crappy products.

[jamez]

If they tried to force me to do overtime otherwise they'll fire me, I'd say, "Go on, then, fire me, I don't care." And then walk out 😆

I worked in loads of places whereby the boss swears constantly...

[rebeccarivers]

Pro tip: Unionize your workplace. Unions are a good thing even when you work at a “good” company

[nicolek]

The very best boss I ever had could be very simply summed up. He set you up to succeed, was lavish in praise and sparing in criticism.

[davidhand]

Almost every boss I've ever had has hits on this list. I would add a few more things:

They are inconsistent in their demands, either over time, or with other management. My old boss at an analytical lab would tell me about our quality control policies and immediately follow it with something like "but come on, what a pain. Do you really want to do that?". Then he would fondly reminisce about my predecessor, who got fired for cutting corners all over the place and failing his state QC standards. But he could really crank out those results! He would chew me out about taking the time to get things right, but if the QC department caught me doing what he was suggesting, there is no chance he would have taken any of the blame or had my back.

Then there's manipulativeness. Same guy, when I raised concerns over a reporting practice that could be easily exploited by an analyst to cover up a serious mistake and/or report false negatives, asked me one night to validate some data that was due immediately. He literally never asked me to validate data from another analyst, not once, but he made it sound really important, so I said I would do it, and he promptly went home for the evening. When I get to validate the data, _of course_ it's another analyst using this same reporting practice. He either thought it would change my mind if I saw that other analysts were doing that, or he wanted to trap me into putting my name on something that might be compromising if I ever elevated my concerns to the DEP. He could have just said "this is the way we report data for these other analytes, so just accept it", but no, he had to force me into an impossible position. Sure enough, not two weeks later, some other analyst got two samples mixed up, one of which was _always_ ridiculously dirty (to the extent we had to dilute it about 1000x relative to other samples, and it _still_ messed up our instruments) and the other of which was clean as can be. The client called up to ask what happened, but thanks to the reporting rule I was warning them about, she was able to just stick with the false negative, even after I explained exactly what had happened to her. No repercussions, no explanation to the client, no correction. That was basically the last straw for that job.

[foc]

Sign 17: we have a lot of audits and when stuff is lying around that may cause stupid questions and lead to a lot of work afterwards so it is common for us to keep the place clean and tidy and do nothing, like no lab work at all😂

[pmathewizard]

Totally gonna apply it on my future groupworks

[Thaumius]

Can you make a video on signs you have a bad professor/teacher?