Because people seem to enjoy reading about the suffering of others, I have decided to record some of the highlights of my employment history, focusing on the worst bosses I ever had.
I fell by accident into the printing trade at a time before the rise of the copy shop. If you needed something printed, you went to a small print shop like the Sir Speedy I worked at for a short time. Sir Speedy was a franchise chain operation, and the middle-aged mom and pop who ran the shop bought into Sir Speedy all the way. Sir Speedy was their religion, the Sir Speedy manual was their bible, and the annual franchisee convention was the highlight of their life. Everything was done the Sir Speedy Way, even if it was completely stupid or insane - like operating a printing press in dress pants, a white shirt and a necktie. They were duplicitous and manipulative, but the wife was the worse of the two. She always carried pictures of her dogs and loved to tell you about them. When one of her pet customers came in, she began showing off for them by ordering me around in a high-handed manner which was almost laughable except that it was me being ordered around. The only good thing about the job was that one of the best thrift shops in town was in the next block.
I worked at a Kinko's copy shop in the early years of the company's development, when employees were shown a training video featuring the company founder, Kinko Himself, demonstrating the right and wrong way to do things. It was one of the most pathetic and retarded things I had ever seen, and I did not hesitate to say so - marking me for doom. I learned from that job to beware of employers who saw themselves as socially progressive. There was a profit sharing program I never understood, and monthly staff meetings so we could come to work on our off hours to eat bad free pizza and talk about our job. Because of these institutions, the owner seemed to feel her conscience was permanently salved, and operated her stores under a form of Stalinism. Except for the monthly meetings, she rarely set foot in the store except to execute a purge. Every few months, heads would roll. I avoided all efforts to place me in a position of responsibility, and awaited my turn. When my time came, the owner said, "I don't think you WANT to work for the McDonald's of copies," and I could only agree.
One shop I worked at was a cooperative venture of a number of hospitals to print their forms and paperwork. Half of the time I engraved nametags for hospital staff using a bizarre and incredibly noisy Hercules Engraving Machine, the rest of the time I joined the other three pressmen. The shop was capably operated by the foreman, but the "boss" was an absurd character whose position was clearly a sinecure obtained through cronyism. His name was John Smith, and he looked like a cartoon turtle whose catchphrase was a whiny "...I've been sick." He knew nothing about the work we did, and only entered the back shop when he had some stupid idea that would screw everything up. The foreman would take the least important people off their jobs and for the rest of the day we would do some idiotic makework task which would ultimately be abandoned as unfeasible. Any time you went past John Smith's office you were likely to see him sitting at his desk, immobile, staring at the wall. His crowning idiocy was in placing his daughter in co-foremanship of the shop, a woman whom I liked a lot as a person but who as foreman created only strife and chaos. She had her own ideas of how things ought to be done and refused to co-operate with the printing foreman who actually knew how to do the work. As engraving machine operator I fell under her command and had to attend her weekly hour-long staff meetings until the day I finally said, "You know, I have work to do and there is no reason for me to be here," and walked out. I eventually quit as a direct result of the stress of having to cope with that woman's whims and notions, and I wrote a letter to the directors of the company explaining that. I never knew if that changed anything. I worked with some really great people there and was sorry to have to leave.
The boss who for many years held the title of worst boss I ever had was named Myron Ellingson. He ran a foilstamping and diecutting operation which was purely Dickensian. It was tucked into an empty corner of a vast old industrial building and I was the only employee. Myron, his business partner, and the partner's wife who acted as secretary stayed in the office by the loading dock all day doing who knows what. The loading dock was for the paper box printing company that occupied the opposite corner of the building - huge presses larger than a city bus rumbling away all day. All the machinery I worked on was ineptly converted from decrepit devices designed for other purposes. The product was cardboard picture frames for photographs of middle-school sports teams, and my job was to imprint a football, baseball or soccer ball in the corner in silver foil. This is one of the few jobs I had in which I felt I was contributing absolutely nothing positive to the world. Certain aspects of the job required me to bend over and down into the press to remove and lift out a forty-pound hot iron plate half a dozen times a day, which messed up my back and my knees pretty badly. Myron wasn't really a bad person, but what made him a bad boss was his inability to say anything positive, ever. On payday he would secretively slip me my check and scuttle away. Eventually I told him I would get my check from the secretary in the office. I hated to see him debase himself like that. Once I did such impressive work on a diecutting, embossing and foilstamping job for the paper box company (cutting and embellishing cardboard boxes for locally produced smoked salmon) that he accidentally blurted out "Good job!" He immediately looked ashamed of himself, as if he had said fuck in front of a nun. He managed to de-incentivize me to a remarkable degree and the day I said to him "I don't think I can keep coming in here any more," he didn't seem to mind.
I have written elsewhere about the worst boss I ever had, a person of astonishing qualities whose business model was a naive fantasy, and whose ability to function on a daily basis was questionable at best. I have never known anyone less qualified or able to run a business, or anyone who smelled as horrible. She was a perfect example of the ignorant and inept boss who feels insulted and threatened by an employee who is even slightly capable or knowledgeable. I shall let it pass with just these few remarks. Thank you for reading.
