Nightmare Bosses!

29 August 2006
We all have dreams and aims. Everyone of us needs to have jobs in order to pursue our dreams, if we are lucky, we get our dream jobs. But in our wildest dreams, we never imagine that our own boss or employer could actually come to be the problem at our dream job. Sadly, this is a most common thing here in the Maldives and probably elsewhere in the world as well. However, focusing on Maldives let me tell you about some nightmarish bosses or employers some people have had the misfortune of having.

A friend of mine did her degree and diploma and was searching frantically for a job since she was almost always over qualified for all the positions she had applied for. However, her break came when a well known travel company invited her to join their prestigious company.

Impressed, since it was a pretty famous company, and joyous, at finally getting a job, she went off to work for the company. Little did she know the reputation of her boss since she had been studying abroad for almost four years. After working there for a couple of weeks, her boss asked her in for a meeting that was after her actual working hours.

Thinking nothing of it, she went in and found that she was the only one he was meeting on this particular night. Let’s just say that he made some advances and she right out refused and almost slapped her boss and walked out of the meeting. It seems that since she was the new meat in office, he just wanted to see if she was easy as the rest of the female staff working there.

After discussing her dilemma with some of her other workmates, she came to realize that it was quite common for these ‘meetings’ to go on in his office and if the person actually granted his wishes, one could be the next one joining him on his many trips to other parts of the country. My friend did not want anything to do with this place and quit immediately.

This is not the only type of employers you meet at work. At least she was over qualified for the job she was hired for. But not in the case of Naila who was employed after an interview with a director of a company. She was hired simply because she was ‘fair’ and ‘easy on the eyes’ according to the director. Since she was quite desperate at the moment, as everyone knows how difficult it is to find a job these days, she thought she would work there till she could find another better job.

Alas, it was not to be! One day, she walked in on the said boss going through some pictures of hers. Being a headstrong woman, she walked in and demanded that he delete all her pictures from his computer. Apparently, the director had recently bought a camera phone and was collecting her pictures according to the day of the week and he had collected all her pictures for every week since she had been hired! She decided to speak to the other directors there and this other director, who turned out to be the human resources guy, was fired immediately.

In the case of Shaila, she actually did not have to work since she was hired. She was bored at work since her boss thought of her more as part of the decoration and decided to do everything for her. Now as flattering as this might be, Shaila decided to quit after just two weeks since the boredom was killing her and she did not think she deserved the money he was paying her to just sit at a desk in his office, since her boss had asked her not to associate at all with the other two female employees in the office.

I notice I have mentioned only females, but sometimes, there are male employees who have to suffer as well. Ahmed was employed at a well known company as a Purchasing Officer. He was to find out later that this also meant the purchasing of his personal groceries and anything else his boss was asked to buy, by his wife. It might be ok if this happened only once, but it came to the point where Ahmed realized he was actually a sort of ‘housemaid’ for his boss without getting paid for the extra hours he had to put in to finish his boss’ grocery list and other personal affects.

Now, if you are just newly coming into the working environment, take this as a warning. One might think that this is quite rare and this happens to only few people due to how they behave or due to the sort of job they have. But this could happen to anyone, anywhere. It doesn’t depend on the sort of job you have, it depends on what type of boss you might have. It is always good to check out the background of a company and the possible employers before actually applying for jobs.

Perhaps this is how the working environment has been since the beginning of time; otherwise, there won’t be so many boss jokes making the rounds right?

Note: All names are changed; however, all the mentioned nightmare bosses are 100% real!