Giving by Taking
I think I may have an excellent bad boss story. I worked as a nurse in a private medical practice.
Our administrator was known to be completely off her rocker, so most of us just steered clear of her.
During the Christmas holiday one year, there was a notice posted detailing money that was going to have
to be donated to the doctor's gifts from the staff and secret Santa plans and so on. Well, we had seven
doctors and they wanted everyone to donate $10 per doctor! Plus, we were supposed to buy our secret
Santa a gift for $20 AND then we were all supposed to help contribute for the office party. Of course,
we didn't get any sort of Christmas bonus and even had to work Christmas Eve.
Well, I had just gone through a divorce and honestly didn't have two pennies to rub together, so I
requested a private meeting with the administrator (the money was to be given to her) explaining I
simply couldn't afford it. She became very angry and told me how much of an ingrate I was and that the
doctors cared about me and how I should be willing to show Christmas spirit and so on and so forth.
I left the office in tears.
A couple of weeks later, I was called back into her office and she had a list in front of her that
she handed to me. She had every single thing I had eaten and drank for lunch from the past several
weeks listed and a money amount next to them. She had added that up and told me if I didn't eat so
expensively (which I don't!), then I could have afforded the gift money. Then she wrote me up for
"bringing down office morale". This is no joke. I got fired a couple of months later because by
that time I really didn't have any morale or interest nor tried to.
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