“Worst Boss” Story Contest Has No Shortage Of Entries

And you hate the idea of toiling in fear.

Cheer up.

You’re not alone.

A giant U.S.-union has launched a Bad Boss contest, designed to award a free week-long vacation to the employee who works for the worst monster in the country.

The AFL-CIO is looking to gain both recruits and publicity from the venture. “It’s an opportunity for people to get this off their chests and to see what’s happening out there and to shine a spotlight on this,” explains Executive Director Karen Nussbaum.

Internet visitors get to vote on the top ‘worst’ employer every week and the winner, to be chosen in August, will get a seven night vacation freebie, complete with $1,000 round trip airfare to anywhere in the U.S., Canada or Mexico.

That’s if their boss will give them the seven days off.

And considering some of the stories already posted, they might make better use of their time hunting for a new position.

Not surprisingly, since the competition was launched on Monday, there has been no shortage of entries. And it proves you’re not alone.

Here are just a few highlights:

• A Maryland man claims a company owner refused to give anyone a raise, ordered a cut in overtime and demanded his underlings instill “fear” in employees. The reason? He was jealous after meeting a competitor who drove a more expensive car.

 

• A worker at a large Pennsylvania financial institution recalls his boss telling him to completely rewrite the company’s training manual in simple English. But it turns out he was training his own replacement. The manual was sent to ‘new’ and far cheaper employees overseas in India, after management fired everyone who had worked on the new document.

 

• A California woman worked for a man who wheedled his way into a night out with the rest of the office staff. He got so drunk and belligerent during the outing, he fired everyone in an alcoholic rage, then couldn’t figure it out when no one showed up for work the next morning.

 

• A Virginia employee with an unfortunate small birthmark on her neck remembers being called into her boss’ office, only to be told that her ‘hickey’ was unsightly. When she told her employer it wasn’t what she thought, the woman executive ordered her to have it surgically removed or wear scarves to work from now on.

 

• A woman on the west coast recalls having a toilet break down at the office during a particularly cold winter. The boss, who was out of town at a golf course, refused to allocate the money to replace it, and employees were forced to leave work and go home to use their own bathrooms, then return to their jobs. The worker later learned the reason temporary facilities couldn’t be put in was because her boss’ wife was shopping for a $20,000 chandelier.

 

• A Missouri office worker found raw sewage leaking into his cubicle from a sewer backup and was told to retrieve a report from his computer despite the mess. When he refused, he was fired.

 

• An employee in Virginia with allergies complains her boss made up idiotic rules that he never explained and then criticized employees for breaking them. Among her transgressions that got her a trip to the corner office: sneezing too much and too loudly.

 

But while some of the stories are funny, a few are also tragic. One Pennsylvania employee, who’s currently leading the contest, toiled 50-80 hour weeks, missed her kids’ birthdays and even slept at work, only to be replaced for not being productive enough.

Another woman in Michigan tried to authorize a patient’s stay at a psychiatric hospital, but her boss vetoed it. When the applicant wound up committing suicide, the worker was so upset, she asked for time off and was refused. She wound up taking it anyway, using a vacation day. Her boss’ response? “I don’t know why she had to take the day off. People commit suicide everyday.”

And then there’s the guy who can’t even tell you his gripe. A person under the moniker of “Nobody” claims he can’t enter the contest at all, because his employer monitors everything he does on the Internet – including writing tales of woe about his bad boss.

The winner will be chosen in August.