My ex-boss in my ex-job had this habit of disengaging the mental filter between his brain and mouth -- whatever he said was something he had thought about five seconds ago and was already working on saying something else.
This means he ended up humiliating the company's two female workers (me and my friend) in front of his clients in an attempt to look big while we were within an earshot.
There was a meeting in the tiny kitchen/lunch area of the company, and everyone not part of that meeting (read: everyone else) was told not to come in, but get their cup of coffee or tea since it could take some time and the boss did not want any interruptions. I note, there are no doors to the said kitchen area, but it is open for the rest of the place which is a maze of shelves full of various junk we needed for electronics R&D.
So he was in full micromanagemential mode, bustling and setting up the table for the meeting (munchies, coffee, etc) and the meeting began with an introductionary round of the clients walking around and shaking hands etc. I was barricaded behind a pile of components we were in process of sending to assembly.
The actual meeting began: the coffee pot was soon empty (since we had only a minuscule percolator in use) and the boss began to refill it and put a new batch on. One of the clients remarked with a voice that carried really well to the place where I was doing my job, "So in this company women don't brew the coffee?"
At that point I made a face; we were explicitly told not to go to the kitchen, but the guests couldn't know it, and I'm a tea drinker anyway, any attempt at making coffee ends REALLY badly if I try it, and my friend... well, she is and whenever the coffee is out she nicely does a pot for everyone else, but that's not the point.
At this point the boss could have said a dozen things, but he had to blurt out the worst possible words instead. "Oh no, neither of them do." (Which wasn't true, but I could have let it slide with a bit of 'meh' from my side.) But he just had to follow up with the next sentence:
"...I guess that the next one we hire, we have to make a clause to her contract that she'll have to make coffee for us."
At this point, I had an internal ragesplosion, and it was only a tiny speck of self-control which prevented me from wielding the scissors I was holding in my hands as a murder weapon.
This is a man who is unable to copy-paste a link to his web browser, and who is incapable of using bookmark features common to every goddamn browser, and who grouses how hard it is to remember every link (read: web mail) he has to use.
I got hired there to do their tech support, sysadministrational stuff, sort their electronics components and help with externalizing the production and deal with deliveries and various tasks like that. My friend is an electronics designer with 15 years of experience in embedded hardware designing.
On an upside, everyone else in the office thought that this was seriously the uncoolest shit, and they were completely flabbergasted that someone could be so big fucking troglodyte.
Funny thing was that whenever the said boss was away from the office and either doing his teaching gig or visiting clients and hyping up a product-to-be, we got more things done than those days when he was in the office...
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-03 03:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-03 04:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-04 04:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-04 05:06 pm (UTC)This means he ended up humiliating the company's two female workers (me and my friend) in front of his clients in an attempt to look big while we were within an earshot.
There was a meeting in the tiny kitchen/lunch area of the company, and everyone not part of that meeting (read: everyone else) was told not to come in, but get their cup of coffee or tea since it could take some time and the boss did not want any interruptions. I note, there are no doors to the said kitchen area, but it is open for the rest of the place which is a maze of shelves full of various junk we needed for electronics R&D.
So he was in full micromanagemential mode, bustling and setting up the table for the meeting (munchies, coffee, etc) and the meeting began with an introductionary round of the clients walking around and shaking hands etc. I was barricaded behind a pile of components we were in process of sending to assembly.
The actual meeting began: the coffee pot was soon empty (since we had only a minuscule percolator in use) and the boss began to refill it and put a new batch on. One of the clients remarked with a voice that carried really well to the place where I was doing my job, "So in this company women don't brew the coffee?"
At that point I made a face; we were explicitly told not to go to the kitchen, but the guests couldn't know it, and I'm a tea drinker anyway, any attempt at making coffee ends REALLY badly if I try it, and my friend... well, she is and whenever the coffee is out she nicely does a pot for everyone else, but that's not the point.
At this point the boss could have said a dozen things, but he had to blurt out the worst possible words instead. "Oh no, neither of them do." (Which wasn't true, but I could have let it slide with a bit of 'meh' from my side.) But he just had to follow up with the next sentence:
"...I guess that the next one we hire, we have to make a clause to her contract that she'll have to make coffee for us."
At this point, I had an internal ragesplosion, and it was only a tiny speck of self-control which prevented me from wielding the scissors I was holding in my hands as a murder weapon.
This is a man who is unable to copy-paste a link to his web browser, and who is incapable of using bookmark features common to every goddamn browser, and who grouses how hard it is to remember every link (read: web mail) he has to use.
I got hired there to do their tech support, sysadministrational stuff, sort their electronics components and help with externalizing the production and deal with deliveries and various tasks like that. My friend is an electronics designer with 15 years of experience in embedded hardware designing.
On an upside, everyone else in the office thought that this was seriously the uncoolest shit, and they were completely flabbergasted that someone could be so big fucking troglodyte.
Funny thing was that whenever the said boss was away from the office and either doing his teaching gig or visiting clients and hyping up a product-to-be, we got more things done than those days when he was in the office...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-03 08:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-04 04:52 pm (UTC)