What is the weirdest thing a boss has ever asked you to do?

[Joe]

Back when I was GM of my family’s restaurant under the new ownership that had bought the restaurant from my dad, the “Director of Food and Beverage” (absolutely bs title, the dude did nothing) was furious with me because I had hired this hostess from Mexico that had literally the highest pitched voice of all time. Like it really was ridiculous. She sounded like she was squeaking when she spoke. But he wanted me to demand that she speak in a lower voice. I refused because I thought that was absolutely fucking ridiculous.

[Jason]

sounds like it was pretty ridiculous to hire her tho 

[johnny]

i’ve never had a boss ask me to do something weird. but we had two guys in charge at this place i worked at. both were sleeping with the same employee. one of them even used company cash to pay for her boob job and nose job. idk what happened to that guy but the other guy ended up getting divorced. 

[Joe]

5 hours ago, Jason said:

sounds like it was pretty ridiculous to hire her tho 

You would discriminate against someone because of their voice?

[TheLeon]

When I was working at Target, I got a "coaching" from a boss because I wasn't greeting every single guest that walked by. While she was explaining this to me, we were in the middle of the store, and what should have been a 30 second conversation took five minutes, because she kept interrupting herself to illustrate what I should be doing. She was desperately reaching out to everyone walking by, sometimes barely finishing saying "Can I help you find something?" to one person before turning away to say it to someone walking the opposite direction. It looked insane, and was so obviously an impractical way to spend your work day. I honestly felt like I was in someone else's comedy sketch. 

[best3444]

No lie, my supervisor who was riding with me on a mail run asked if she could blow me. This was a few months into my first job in the state, so 2007. She and I were flirting from the very beginning I was hired but she claimed NOBODY would find out. I absolutely refused and after that it was actually half way normal between us. 

 

She was very pretty ( oh no, I'm being sexist!) and married but she and I had severe sexual tension. She was an awesome boss overall but that was extremely weird and scary at the time. I remember it like it was yesterday. She wasn't my boss for more than a year and then she got promoted and left my agency.

 

I wonder how? 

[Biggie]

9 hours ago, Joe said:

You would discriminate against someone because of their voice?

If his/her job description would be talking directly to my customers and their first impressions of my restaurant? Then absolutely. I see why you're not the GM anymore lol.

[Joe]

1 minute ago, Biggie said:

If his/her job description would be talking directly to my customers and their first impressions of my restaurant? Then absolutely. I see why you're not the GM anymore lol.

Yeah, no. She was a great hostess and customers really liked her because she was unbelievably sweet. You have to actually interact with people in real life to understand customer relations buddy.

[Biggie]

1 minute ago, Joe said:

Yeah, no. She was a great hostess and customers really liked her because she was unbelievably sweet. You have to actually interact with people in real life to understand customer relations buddy.

Says the former GM of his family's restaurant 

[Joe]

4 minutes ago, Biggie said:

Says the former GM of his family's restaurant 

The restaurant was closed by the hotel company that owned it because the hotel it was inside was being renovated. Keep trolling though.

[Biggie]

2 minutes ago, Joe said:

The restaurant was closed by the hotel company that owned it because the hotel it was inside was being renovated. Keep trolling though.

[Joe]

4 minutes ago, Biggie said:

That bored today huh?

[Biggie]

1 minute ago, Joe said:

That bored today huh?

not anymore since you came along

[Guest]

Having your family sell a business and then milking the new owners for a bit is an American tradition. Good job @Joe

[Joe]

5 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Having your family sell a business and then milking the new owners for a bit is an American tradition. Good job @Joe

Is that a thing? I didn’t know. I guess so the existing clientele still sees a familiar face?

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Joe said:

Is that a thing? I didn’t know. I guess so the existing clientele still sees a familiar face?

I think it is to make everybody, staff/vendors/customers, feel like everything is going to proceed as normal

[Ghost_MH]

Not weird, but shitty. I had a CIO ask me to delete an email the CEO sent it to a bunch of folks...while we were in the middle of a lawsuit...while being publicly traded. I think I was the third he asked.

[Joe]

2 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

I think it is to make everybody, staff/vendors/customers, feel like everything is going to proceed as normal

Makes sense. 
 

The juicy part is that I wasn’t even a manager when the new company took over. Just a bartender. I eventually replaced my cousin as GM (who was GM for my dad for like 20 years) due to the fact that 1. they could pay me half his salary 2. I was the only tech competent person in the place and my cousin  behaved like a literal child and refused to learn to use the POS system. Family drama for days lol.

[silentbob]

More of a “words of encouragement” then anything from my theatre GM. 
 

Hey did you get the prints for Passion of the Christ picked up.

(had to pick up 2 prints from greyhound station) Yes I go them both

Good! Now don’t fuck any of them up cause they’re $5k a print and get them done. 

[Biggie]

9 minutes ago, Joe said:

Makes sense. 
 

The juicy part is that I wasn’t even a manager when the new company took over. Just a bartender. I eventually replaced my cousin as GM (who was GM for my dad for like 20 years) due to the fact that 1. they could pay me half his salary 2. I was the only tech competent person in the place and my cousin  behaved like a literal child and refused to learn to use the POS system. Family drama for days lol.

[SimpleG]

Not weird , just extremely unsafe /against code or out right dumb shit.

 

Customer spent several hundred thousand for a nurse call system at a new hospital and wanted something that the would take manipulating the code to a degree that was a bad idea so I told them no. Customer speaks to my boss and my boss tells them it can be done. I explain to my boss why its a bad idea but now a co worker who never misses a chance to make his co workers look bad tells my boss that they can do it together.  They get it working but 3 weeks later the hospital calls me at 2 AM because an infant coded with its bed ridden mother and the code did not come through and damn near died. So now lawyers are involved , the big wigs from my company , the manufacture of the nurse call system. Surprise surprise my boss and co worker attempted to throw it on me, saying it was my original programing that caused the issue. So we all show up to the hospital , we check the code system and it doesnt work, no surprise. I kept an original copy of the program on a USB and hid it above the ceiling just for emergency like this. I dump it back in and everything works. My boss and co worker left the following week to somewhere else, my company more or less ate the cost of the system rather then being sued.

[Chris-]

1 hour ago, Joe said:

Makes sense. 
 

The juicy part is that I wasn’t even a manager when the new company took over. Just a bartender. I eventually replaced my cousin as GM (who was GM for my dad for like 20 years) due to the fact that 1. they could pay me half his salary 2. I was the only tech competent person in the place and my cousin  behaved like a literal child and refused to learn to use the POS system. Family drama for days lol.

Jon Taffer would’ve straightened it out. 

[SimpleG]

1 minute ago, Chris- said:

Jon Taffer would’ve straightened it out. 

[Chairslinger]

On 6/8/2021 at 7:34 AM, TheLeon said:

When I was working at Target, I got a "coaching" from a boss because I wasn't greeting every single guest that walked by. While she was explaining this to me, we were in the middle of the store, and what should have been a 30 second conversation took five minutes, because she kept interrupting herself to illustrate what I should be doing. She was desperately reaching out to everyone walking by, sometimes barely finishing saying "Can I help you find something?" to one person before turning away to say it to someone walking the opposite direction. It looked insane, and was so obviously an impractical way to spend your work day. I honestly felt like I was in someone else's comedy sketch. 

 

 

I had a similar situation with a District Manager. She was a textbook example of a higher up that comes into the store just often enough to think they know everything, but not enough to know how much of anything actually works on a day to day basis.

 

This wasn't directed at me, but more the front line servers she was with. She started doing the drive thru at an insane speed to show everyone "how it's done". And like your example, about one order was all it should have taken to show her why it shouldn't be done like that. 

 

I was someone who took making the food fast seriously, so when I say she was doing it insanely fast, I am not kidding.

 

She was literally throwing bags of food out the drive thru window at people saying, "thank you have a nice day" in a auctioneer cadence that sounded more like a threat than a courtesy. Like, god have mercy on you if you didn't have a nice day because this woman would track you down and make you pay for defying her.

 

I can only imagine what this looked like from the outside. The drive thru window slams open, a bag comes flying at you, you hear "thank you have a nice day" shouted at you, and the window slams back shut all in literally the span of less than a second. And this was ideal customer service to this woman.

 

I am trying to think of weird stuff, but mostlyjust coming up with horrible and dangerous. I am probably forgetting a dozen good stories.

 

One serious request that I think could be categorized as weird simply for how comically unsafe it was having to do the leaderboard in bad weather.

 

It sucks enough having to do it in the rain, but for something like a six month period our pole was broken. To make a long story short instead of being able to place the letters from the ground we had about a 5 or 6 foot broken off piece of a pole that we used to stand on a ladder and reach to about a 20+ foot sign.

 

Oh, and the ground around the sign was loose gravel.

 

So this was all an escalating scale of suckiness, but the one particular request that stands out to me is one Sunday night the sign just haaaaad to be changed for a new week deal starting Monday. So I get to go out in the dark, during a thunderstorm, stand at the tippy top of a ladder, on loose gravel, in the rain, and 20mph winds. To be fair I am not sure how effectly the pole would have worked as a lightning rod because it did have the rubber suction cup at the end, but it still felt pretty fate tempty to be thrusting it towards the heavens in the middle of a thunderstorm

[Fizzzzle]

Nothing too weird, but I did used to have this lazy piece of shit boss a few years back. One night we were getting slammed the MOD panicked and called my boss in to help. He showed up understandably cranky. I had a full bartop, probably 6 other tables, and was making drinks for 4 servers. I wasn't exactly keeping up with dishes. My boss looked at my growing pile of glasses, dead ass looks at me and goes "you need to keep up with dishes" and walked away. I told him sure, I'm sure the drinks will fucking make themselves, Steve. He apologized and got out of my face.

 

I know... Great story.

[best3444]

9 hours ago, Fizzzzle said:

Nothing too weird, but I did used to have this lazy piece of shit boss a few years back. One night we were getting slammed the MOD panicked and called my boss in to help. He showed up understandably cranky. I had a full bartop, probably 6 other tables, and was making drinks for 4 servers. I wasn't exactly keeping up with dishes. My boss looked at my growing pile of glasses, dead ass looks at me and goes "you need to keep up with dishes" and walked away. I told him sure, I'm sure the drinks will fucking make themselves, Steve. He apologized and got out of my face.

 

I know... Great story.

 

Cool story, bro.  

[Joe]

9 hours ago, Fizzzzle said:

Nothing too weird, but I did used to have this lazy piece of shit boss a few years back. One night we were getting slammed the MOD panicked and called my boss in to help. He showed up understandably cranky. I had a full bartop, probably 6 other tables, and was making drinks for 4 servers. I wasn't exactly keeping up with dishes. My boss looked at my growing pile of glasses, dead ass looks at me and goes "you need to keep up with dishes" and walked away. I told him sure, I'm sure the drinks will fucking make themselves, Steve. He apologized and got out of my face.

 

I know... Great story.

Did you wash your glasses there at the bar?

[Fizzzzle]

Just now, Joe said:

Did you wash your glasses there at the bar?

Most of them, a few got sent to the dish pit, but 90% of glasses got washed in the bar.