14 Moments When Entitled Bosses Got Humbled In Epic Fashion
"The director of the show was a brilliant composer/conductor/ music educator; but his associate director was a narcissistic poseur with delusions of grandeur, who kept himself surrounded by sycophants, and thus was unaccustomed to question or correction."
We recently asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about the worst entitled managers who got a good ole taste of karma when they were humbled in front of everyone. They had a lot to say. And subsequently there was a Reddit thread where people also shared similar stories. So here are some of the best:
1."There's an admin at the school I just left. When I say she's a horrible person, I mean it. Absolutely awful. She's committed so many ADA violations against students it's not even funny, and if we dare point it out to her, she screams at people. She's one of the most arrogant, selfish, and useless bosses I've ever had, and I had a boss who broke a POS system by being stupid once."
2."I was in my 20's working at a local Starbucks and our manager was a nightmare for years. She would never get our broken equipment serviced, she never helped with prep work, she was always taking personal calls on the store phone, and she would often clock in and then just leave and go to the spa or salon."
3."I used to work as the receptionist for an orthodontist I’ll call Jim. He was a real asshole — very condescending, super pretentious, and kind of creepy . Then one day he announced that his wife was pregnant, and what was he going to name his child? Robin. But here’s the thing. He wanted to spell it Robine. I thought he was going for a unique spelling, but it soon became clear that he believed that this was truly how 'Robin' was spelled!"
4."Cashier in the service dept at a car dealership, here. For only being the cashier, I have A LOT of responsibilities day to day, and I'm damn good at all of them. My boss would always try and micromanage me and get on me about the absolute smallest aspects of my job. We had a meeting one day and we were literally yelling at each other because I had two days worth of repair orders that needed to be scanned into our system. Two DAYS. Not two weeks, or two months... a whole two days. Absolutely trivial."
5."I used to work in an electronics pawn shop, we had a computer for testing stuff that also had software that provided the shop's music. One day I went out to lunch, came back, and saw my boss glaring at me with his arms folded."
6."About seven years ago, I was supposed to go to a concert but due to inclement weather, I couldn't make it. My Dad surprised me that Christmas with tickets to a festival the band were playing at, and as soon as I got back to work, I put in my holiday request for that weekend. We were a small store, only one of us could be off at a time and it was first come, first serve. Anyway, I come in the next day to see my boss has scribbled out my request and put his own in, explaining he just booked his holiday for that week and should probably have checked but oh well. He didn't even ask, he just scribbled me out and decided he was having it."
7."In my youth, I worked at a fudge shop. My role prominently featured customer relations, and I enjoyed it greatly. So you can imagine my dismay when one day Eddie, my boss, humiliated me in public for the way that I cut up fudge for a customer."
8."I'm a musician and was playing bass in a Christmas show with a large cast and chorus. The director of the show was a brilliant composer/conductor/ music educator; but his associate director was a narcissistic poseur with delusions of grandeur, who kept himself surrounded by sycophants, and thus was unaccustomed to question or correction."
9."My first job out of college, I worked in manufacturing and our general manager was a lady who was way in over her head. She acted as if she knew everything, but couldn't make a simple decision without calling a meeting to get other people to pretty much make the decision for her (including calling me while I was on vacation multiple times, asking for help on filling out a spreadsheet). Our Vice President for the company once had us on a conference call and just started absolutely laying into all of us, especially her."
10."Mine started out at work when I had a picture of my Mom and me on my desktop. This guy, Pat, kept commenting on how hot my mom was (he was about the same age). So after about a month of this, I asked my Mom to jokingly call him and tell him he is sexist and a bad influence and whatnot. She did this but they ended up talking for 30 mins and after that he told everyone at the office that my Mom was trying to pick him up. For the next year, every time he saw me, he asked how my mom was. At my 5-year pinning ceremony, he told the story to a bunch of strangers and my bosses."
11."I worked as an installer in a remote office which means I traveled a lot for work, often spending weekends on site. This was fine under my old boss, who gave me a lot of leeway by letting me work from home and gave me comp time. After 4 years, I got a new boss who insisted I come in anyway (45 min drive) to sit in an empty office. But I still had to travel Sunday through Friday, with no overtime and no comp time. When I complained to HR, the HR manager told me that since I'm salaried, if they wanted me to work 80 hours a week, I would work 80 hours and I shouldn't expect any compensation."
12."I worked as the IT lead for a college that specialized in distance learning. They were in the middle of a lawsuit because of admissions issues. One day we found oddities in the database, strange records with missing/inconsistent data. Turns out, a few girls from the same group of friends in the financial aid department took out some federal grants, knowing that the college was going out of business meant they wouldn't have to repay the money. Unfortunately for them, we pulled through and didn't go out of business, now they needed to show proof to the feds that they were enrolled, hence them playing in the DB. When a coworker and I pointed this out to the owner, he told us it wasn't the director of the school, but only one of the financial aid reps, totally threw her under the bus. The girl was guilty, but it was the director and an admissions rep that overall were the brains behind the operation."
13."I worked in construction through one of the largest temp firms in Norway. After talking to some of the people I worked with who came from the same temp firm, I discovered that people weren't getting paid the same wage. I asked my colleagues if they thought it was fair, and they didn't. But like me, they had been instructed not to talk about their salary. And no one wanted to make a fuzz about it, in case they'd end up losing their job. So I called up the firm and asked our supervisor why that was, and he gave some BS excuse about how people with more education and experience would get paid more than those without — for a job that required no education or experience. I told him that they needed to pay everyone the same, and he told me to stop causing problems."
14."I'd been told by my boss to install about 25 copies of a database program, even though he only had a license for one copy of it, for his business that he was screwing and tricking small businesses into buying new credit card processing terminals. He was also severely screwing me on pay, and wouldn't reimburse my cellphone usage for work-related calls, and my mileage on my personal vehicle."
Note: some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Got any stories to share? Let us know know in the comments below! And remember, when you get that promotion to Manager, treat your employees well or you'll get served a fresh slice of humble pie and end up on this list.
