The Bully Boss Strikes Again! Admin assistants on how to deal with bosses who make crazy requests

March 18, 2009 - PRLog -- Contact:
John Wilcox
BusinessManagementDaily.com
(703) 905-4506
jwilcox@nibm.net

The Bully Boss Strikes Again!
Admin assistants dish on how to deal with bosses who make crazy requests

And you thought your boss was unreasonable? Bet he never asked you to perform oral surgery or fill in for the bomb squad.

Talk about “other duties as assigned!”

With Administrative Professionals Day approaching (April 22), the editors of http://www.BusinessManagementDaily.com asked administrative assistants to weigh in with the craziest things their bosses had ever asked them to do. They expected to hear about killer hours, volatile tempers and perfectionist demands.

They didn’t anticipate anything involving stool samples.

Here are some of the best examples of “other duties as assigned.” (For the complete list—along with practical advice on how to manage a toxic boss—visit http://www.businessmanagementdaily.com/glp/26547/Bully-Boss-Strikes-Again.html)

•   Inspect the boss’s sandwich every day to make sure it contained no tomatoes.
•   Drop off a pet’s stool sample at the vet. “He left the container on my desk while I was having lunch.”
•   Call around for a used toilet to replace one that had broken in the boss’s rental house. “Uh, do you guys have any used toilets?”
•   Send fake rejection letters from universities to the boss’s daughter as a joke.
•   Take a Johnny Mathis album cover to the tailor to find material that matched Johnny’s jacket.
•   Throw a surprise party for an up-and-coming vice president’s dog.
•   Look for “anything suspicious looking,” after someone had called in a bomb threat.
•   Stuff tissue between the boss’s upper lip and teeth, after he chipped a tooth and then glued it back together.
•   Check the pencils daily to be sure they were sharp enough. “If they weren’t, I was to sharpen them, but only to the correct size for his hand. If he deemed the pencil too small, he would give it back to me and nastily tell me to save it for my children. I had no children.”
•   Spray the boss’s bald head with sunscreen.

And just to show how far the admin profession has come, here’s one for old time’s sake:

•   “Back in the day, a vice president would walk out of his office and, without a word, set an empty glass on my desk. That meant he wanted a glass of water. And the kitchenette was right next to his office!”

These outrageous stories came in response to a post on “Admin Pro Forum,” one of BusinessManagementDaily.com’s expert blogs.

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BusinessManagementDaily.com is one of the web’s fastest-growing business management portal sites. Our editors update BusinessManagementDaily.com hourly with practical advice that managers can use to save time, improve productivity and make more money.