The Incredible Douchebag
I'm seriously tired of working for a bully.
My boss is a jerk, plain and simple. He's the owner of this one restaurant which he acquired from his father a year and a half ago. This isn't just some period of adjustment. We went through that already last year. He's still learning how to run the business side of a restaurant, but he doesn't know how to properly deal with employees. It's always, ALWAYS his way. Yeah, he's the boss, but his way isn't always the best. If he would take time to assess situations, taking other employees' ideas and opinions into account (especially those who have been there the longest), lay down a set of rules and stick to them, weigh out the good and bad qualities in each employee, compliment the good, critique the bad, and reward employees for a job well-done, then he might be a little better of a boss. But he's got a long, LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG way to go and I don't think he can shake his bully mentality.
First of all, he just makes shit up as he goes along. There are no real set rules. He just makes them up off the top of his head as the situations come up. And often times, he goes back on a rule that he set, claiming that he never made the rule in the first place. He also has a bad, bad habit of telling one or two employees his new, on-the-fly rule and not anyone else. I guess he expects them to spread the word, but that doesn't always happen. One of his favorite things to do is to ask for ideas on a subject, then shoot down everyone's ideas, claiming his own to be the best. Then, after enough time has passed, he will claim someone else's idea as his own brilliant concept. He's done that to us several times, especially me. And when we call him out on it, he mocks us and the idea.
He tries to interact with us, jokes around, listens and joins in on our private conversations. It's really hard to have a private conversation there, but when we want to make it as private as possible, we talk very closely in low voices. He makes a point to stop whatever he's doing and listen closely to what is being said. It could be work-related or it could be about either our personal lives or someone else's - it doesn't matter, he STILL listens in. He does it for several reasons. One, of course, he wants to know if we're trying to hide a work-related situation from him. Two, he wants to know if we're talking about him. And three, because he LOVES to start shit between employees. He spreads gossip and just simply makes shit up about what this person said about that person and how this person said this when they never did say anything of the sort. I've tried to stop talking whenever he's around, but my co-workers can't seem to understand how damaging his eavesdropping can be and try to continue on with the conversation. He slanders almost all of us behind our backs, spreading gossip and ill opinions of us and about our work. I haven't got a clue what he says behind my back, but if it's anything like what I've heard him say about others, then I ought to just kick him in the nuts right now. When someone quits, whether it is because of him or because they simply found a different and better job, he seems to take it awfully personally and likes to bad-mouth that person's future at their new job. It's like he's trying to mask some kind of hurt behind his muckraking.
He's a sadist who loves to tear us down, little by little, until there's little to nothing left of our self-esteem or self-confidence. He belittles every one of us and is a master at the backhanded compliment, often giving a compliment, then taking it away by criticizing something that same person did "wrong". And we can never do anything right, according to him. He tells us to do something, we try to do it, but it's not good enough. So he shows us how he wants it done (or the "proper" way). Even after that, especially for certain employees, it's not good enough. Recently, he's been ragging on this one cook. Actually, the boss likes to choose one guy at a time to pick on. When the boss first started, it was Michael until he finally, FINALLY, "let [him] go" (i.e. fired), after 8 months. The Incredible Douchebag then moved on to Ross, who had been working there for over a year at that time. But of course, that didn't mean that Ross knew what he was doing, according to I.D. Jerk. Then Ross went off to college last fall, so the boss moved on to Jacob, until Jacob recently quit to work at FedEx for better pay and hours (not because of the boss). So now he's on Keith's nuts. When Keith started, he told us that he has a learning disability. It's something like the synapses in his brain don't process information fast enough for him to comprehend something the first time around. It can take several times for him to finally understand something. Plus, he's got a slight case of ADD. Ironically, so does the Incredible Douchebag. I've yelled at him a few times over his lack of focus on one task at a time. Keith's been working there since August and he knows what he's doing, he just sometimes forgets things and has to be reminded. It takes patience in managing him and sometimes you have to be stern with him, but he's not that bad to work with. He's a good worker when he focuses on his job. Plus, he's a great kid. He's 20 years old, fun-loving, easy to joke around with and get along with, and, in my opinion, just precious. Sometimes, though, we all let the playing around interfere with our jobs. For "normal" employees, it's not too hard for them to re-focus and get their jobs done, but for Keith it can be a little more difficult. The lazy, impatient managers, however, don't make the effort to calm the fuck down and be patient when dealing with him. So they drive themselves crazy and into nicotine fits and then go complain to the boss.
Anyway, the Incredible Douchebag has been on Keith's nuts for a while now. He's constantly telling Keith that he can't do anything right (even though he's not done one wrong thing up to that point) and harps on the little (sometimes NOT so little) mistakes that Keith has made in the past. Mistakes happen. Yes, big mistakes are more difficult to correct, but Keith has never made such a great mistake that it hasn't been able to be corrected. We all make mistakes, but my boss just loves to ridicule Keith for every little (and big) mistake that he makes. Well, the boss is thinking about firing Keith, simply because "you gotta tell him five times what a small [order of] fry is". That's not true, but yes, Keith does get confused on simple tasks like that. All you have to do is remind him what to do or how to do it, but not five times. Jesus. If employees could work without supervision, then there wouldn't be any need for supervisors! Keith never gives attitude, ALWAYS does what he's told (although he does need to be told a few times on occasion), rarely complains about his crappy job, and is always on time. He's only called in sick once or twice and even came into work when he was sick because no one would work for him. But all of that's not good enough for the Incredible Douchebag, so he wants to hire some new kid. You should have heard the way he was talking with this kid today during his "interview" (which was just a random meeting of this kid somewhat rudely asking the Incredible Douchebag to hire him). It was like the Incredible Douchebag was trying to be "teh cool upperclassman" to this kid's freshman attitude. Totally unprofessional.
So while I was leaving today, the Incredible Douchebag started bad-mouthing Keith again for like the umpteenth time that day. Of course, Keith wasn't around to defend himself, but I was. I started sarcastically yelling (mainly because I was in the back and wanted my boss to hear me, but also because I was furious) that it was a great idea to fire the "dumbass" we know and hire a "dumbass" we don't know. I.D. claimed the prospective new kid wasn't a dumbass, but I said that we didn't know that. I mean, we obviously didn't know that others were "dumbasses" before we hired them (damn, I should have said that to him, but I only now thought of it). I.D. said that Keith had been there for so long and "still couldn't do anything right".
That's when Sarah chimed in with, "Well [I.D.], I've been here for six years and you STILL don't think I can do ANYTHING right!"
I facetiously retorted, "Yeah! Let's fired Sarah!", at which he laughed in response. It's not that he found what I said to be amusing, it's the fact that he had pushed my buttons and sent me over the edge. And boy, did he ever succeed. I stormed out of the restaurant, not saying another word to anyone, including Amy or my cousin who both said goodbye to me. All I could do was give them an exasperated wave over my shoulder.
Which brings me to my next complaint about him: he LIVES to just get a rise out of certain people. He takes great pleasure in making others miserably and irritatingly frustrated. It's about the only way he gets his kicks, other than gambling and drinking. Once, he seemed to take pride in making Ivy cry. One year, her stupid boyfriend didn't get her anything for Christmas (or maybe it was Valentine's Day), but she had gotten him something. The Incredible Douchebag and another guy purposely harped on the matter, knowing that it was a sore subject for her, until they made her cry. Yes, she was crying over her stupid boyfriend, but a considerate person/co-worker/friend/human being would lay off the subject if they noticed that it was a touchy one for the person, especially if THEY WERE ON THE VERGE OF TEARS! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! >:-<
I've come to the conclusion that he's just a miserable, unhappily married, almost-middle-aged man, who felt obligated to take over the restaurant when his father went into semi-retirement. But instead of turning it into a "gourmet" restaurant, he's realized that he's stuck with a fast-food greasy spoon. And he had to move back here from Lexington, where he had a life of his own out from underneath the shadows of his father and older brother, thus turning him into the Incredible Douchebag. I used to like him, back when he would come in for an occasional weekend visit and stop by the restaurant to say hi. And I don't know for sure if he is unhappily married, but he seems to be by the way he treats his wife. His wife, although not a "hottie", is such a cool, cool woman and doesn't deserve his misogynistic treatment, in my opinion.
I've made my final car payment. Yes, I do still need money and I have no other prospects for a job and very little self-confidence in finding another job in a different field, but I'm prepared to just walk out and quit if things keep going in such a bad direction. My fuse keeps getting shorter and shorter and I'm about to explode. I really feel like I'm drowning in the shallow pool that is my low self-esteem and don't know what I want to do with my life or where to go.
My boss is a jerk, plain and simple. He's the owner of this one restaurant which he acquired from his father a year and a half ago. This isn't just some period of adjustment. We went through that already last year. He's still learning how to run the business side of a restaurant, but he doesn't know how to properly deal with employees. It's always, ALWAYS his way. Yeah, he's the boss, but his way isn't always the best. If he would take time to assess situations, taking other employees' ideas and opinions into account (especially those who have been there the longest), lay down a set of rules and stick to them, weigh out the good and bad qualities in each employee, compliment the good, critique the bad, and reward employees for a job well-done, then he might be a little better of a boss. But he's got a long, LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG way to go and I don't think he can shake his bully mentality.
First of all, he just makes shit up as he goes along. There are no real set rules. He just makes them up off the top of his head as the situations come up. And often times, he goes back on a rule that he set, claiming that he never made the rule in the first place. He also has a bad, bad habit of telling one or two employees his new, on-the-fly rule and not anyone else. I guess he expects them to spread the word, but that doesn't always happen. One of his favorite things to do is to ask for ideas on a subject, then shoot down everyone's ideas, claiming his own to be the best. Then, after enough time has passed, he will claim someone else's idea as his own brilliant concept. He's done that to us several times, especially me. And when we call him out on it, he mocks us and the idea.
He tries to interact with us, jokes around, listens and joins in on our private conversations. It's really hard to have a private conversation there, but when we want to make it as private as possible, we talk very closely in low voices. He makes a point to stop whatever he's doing and listen closely to what is being said. It could be work-related or it could be about either our personal lives or someone else's - it doesn't matter, he STILL listens in. He does it for several reasons. One, of course, he wants to know if we're trying to hide a work-related situation from him. Two, he wants to know if we're talking about him. And three, because he LOVES to start shit between employees. He spreads gossip and just simply makes shit up about what this person said about that person and how this person said this when they never did say anything of the sort. I've tried to stop talking whenever he's around, but my co-workers can't seem to understand how damaging his eavesdropping can be and try to continue on with the conversation. He slanders almost all of us behind our backs, spreading gossip and ill opinions of us and about our work. I haven't got a clue what he says behind my back, but if it's anything like what I've heard him say about others, then I ought to just kick him in the nuts right now. When someone quits, whether it is because of him or because they simply found a different and better job, he seems to take it awfully personally and likes to bad-mouth that person's future at their new job. It's like he's trying to mask some kind of hurt behind his muckraking.
He's a sadist who loves to tear us down, little by little, until there's little to nothing left of our self-esteem or self-confidence. He belittles every one of us and is a master at the backhanded compliment, often giving a compliment, then taking it away by criticizing something that same person did "wrong". And we can never do anything right, according to him. He tells us to do something, we try to do it, but it's not good enough. So he shows us how he wants it done (or the "proper" way). Even after that, especially for certain employees, it's not good enough. Recently, he's been ragging on this one cook. Actually, the boss likes to choose one guy at a time to pick on. When the boss first started, it was Michael until he finally, FINALLY, "let [him] go" (i.e. fired), after 8 months. The Incredible Douchebag then moved on to Ross, who had been working there for over a year at that time. But of course, that didn't mean that Ross knew what he was doing, according to I.D. Jerk. Then Ross went off to college last fall, so the boss moved on to Jacob, until Jacob recently quit to work at FedEx for better pay and hours (not because of the boss). So now he's on Keith's nuts. When Keith started, he told us that he has a learning disability. It's something like the synapses in his brain don't process information fast enough for him to comprehend something the first time around. It can take several times for him to finally understand something. Plus, he's got a slight case of ADD. Ironically, so does the Incredible Douchebag. I've yelled at him a few times over his lack of focus on one task at a time. Keith's been working there since August and he knows what he's doing, he just sometimes forgets things and has to be reminded. It takes patience in managing him and sometimes you have to be stern with him, but he's not that bad to work with. He's a good worker when he focuses on his job. Plus, he's a great kid. He's 20 years old, fun-loving, easy to joke around with and get along with, and, in my opinion, just precious. Sometimes, though, we all let the playing around interfere with our jobs. For "normal" employees, it's not too hard for them to re-focus and get their jobs done, but for Keith it can be a little more difficult. The lazy, impatient managers, however, don't make the effort to calm the fuck down and be patient when dealing with him. So they drive themselves crazy and into nicotine fits and then go complain to the boss.
Anyway, the Incredible Douchebag has been on Keith's nuts for a while now. He's constantly telling Keith that he can't do anything right (even though he's not done one wrong thing up to that point) and harps on the little (sometimes NOT so little) mistakes that Keith has made in the past. Mistakes happen. Yes, big mistakes are more difficult to correct, but Keith has never made such a great mistake that it hasn't been able to be corrected. We all make mistakes, but my boss just loves to ridicule Keith for every little (and big) mistake that he makes. Well, the boss is thinking about firing Keith, simply because "you gotta tell him five times what a small [order of] fry is". That's not true, but yes, Keith does get confused on simple tasks like that. All you have to do is remind him what to do or how to do it, but not five times. Jesus. If employees could work without supervision, then there wouldn't be any need for supervisors! Keith never gives attitude, ALWAYS does what he's told (although he does need to be told a few times on occasion), rarely complains about his crappy job, and is always on time. He's only called in sick once or twice and even came into work when he was sick because no one would work for him. But all of that's not good enough for the Incredible Douchebag, so he wants to hire some new kid. You should have heard the way he was talking with this kid today during his "interview" (which was just a random meeting of this kid somewhat rudely asking the Incredible Douchebag to hire him). It was like the Incredible Douchebag was trying to be "teh cool upperclassman" to this kid's freshman attitude. Totally unprofessional.
So while I was leaving today, the Incredible Douchebag started bad-mouthing Keith again for like the umpteenth time that day. Of course, Keith wasn't around to defend himself, but I was. I started sarcastically yelling (mainly because I was in the back and wanted my boss to hear me, but also because I was furious) that it was a great idea to fire the "dumbass" we know and hire a "dumbass" we don't know. I.D. claimed the prospective new kid wasn't a dumbass, but I said that we didn't know that. I mean, we obviously didn't know that others were "dumbasses" before we hired them (damn, I should have said that to him, but I only now thought of it). I.D. said that Keith had been there for so long and "still couldn't do anything right".
That's when Sarah chimed in with, "Well [I.D.], I've been here for six years and you STILL don't think I can do ANYTHING right!"
I facetiously retorted, "Yeah! Let's fired Sarah!", at which he laughed in response. It's not that he found what I said to be amusing, it's the fact that he had pushed my buttons and sent me over the edge. And boy, did he ever succeed. I stormed out of the restaurant, not saying another word to anyone, including Amy or my cousin who both said goodbye to me. All I could do was give them an exasperated wave over my shoulder.
Which brings me to my next complaint about him: he LIVES to just get a rise out of certain people. He takes great pleasure in making others miserably and irritatingly frustrated. It's about the only way he gets his kicks, other than gambling and drinking. Once, he seemed to take pride in making Ivy cry. One year, her stupid boyfriend didn't get her anything for Christmas (or maybe it was Valentine's Day), but she had gotten him something. The Incredible Douchebag and another guy purposely harped on the matter, knowing that it was a sore subject for her, until they made her cry. Yes, she was crying over her stupid boyfriend, but a considerate person/co-worker/friend/human being would lay off the subject if they noticed that it was a touchy one for the person, especially if THEY WERE ON THE VERGE OF TEARS! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! >:-<
I've come to the conclusion that he's just a miserable, unhappily married, almost-middle-aged man, who felt obligated to take over the restaurant when his father went into semi-retirement. But instead of turning it into a "gourmet" restaurant, he's realized that he's stuck with a fast-food greasy spoon. And he had to move back here from Lexington, where he had a life of his own out from underneath the shadows of his father and older brother, thus turning him into the Incredible Douchebag. I used to like him, back when he would come in for an occasional weekend visit and stop by the restaurant to say hi. And I don't know for sure if he is unhappily married, but he seems to be by the way he treats his wife. His wife, although not a "hottie", is such a cool, cool woman and doesn't deserve his misogynistic treatment, in my opinion.
I've made my final car payment. Yes, I do still need money and I have no other prospects for a job and very little self-confidence in finding another job in a different field, but I'm prepared to just walk out and quit if things keep going in such a bad direction. My fuse keeps getting shorter and shorter and I'm about to explode. I really feel like I'm drowning in the shallow pool that is my low self-esteem and don't know what I want to do with my life or where to go.