16 employees share the worst threat or work 'rule' they ever got from a bad boss.

A boss that relishes in extreme micro-management, forces unnecessary phone calls, or attempts to boost 'morale' with activities that result in the exact opposite can be a 40 hour per week slog of nightmares, but sometimes a job is so bad that it becomes your go-to dinner party story...

The time your boss asked you if you could move your relative's funeral date? The shift you had to work a holiday while every customer asked 'why are you open on the holidays?' So, when a Reddit user asked strangers of the internet 'what is your 'the beatings will continue until morale improves' work story?' people who bravely endured a high level of 'this could've been an email' workplace torture were ready to share their funniest or craziest work stories.

1.

I had a bartending gig and they gave me sh*tty day shifts where people hardly came in. I got a new gig with better shifts. It was December 10th or so. I gave my two weeks notice for the first job.

The owner of the restaurant said 'but you have to work the holidays! What will you do when it's Christmas and you have no one to cover your shift!?!' I was like uhhh its not what will I do, it's more like what will YOU do? - woefulraddish

3.

I once worked at a company where morale was very low due to extreme micromanagement, low pay, and having to provide tech support for a product that frankly sucked. So they called us into a series of meetings to 'discuss' the issue.

The guy leading the meeting asked us as soon as we sat down, 'Who here is happy in their job?' And like one or two people raised their hands. He then said, 'Well in this economy, you're lucky to have a job at all. Meeting over.' And then he left. - Salarian_American

4.

I had a manager who would gather our team and ask us if we should do A or B. We were professionals and would provide arguments for and against both A and B, and provide her with an answer. She would then reply she had decided on C and that's what we would do. - mechant_papa

5.

My last veterinary hospital was really understaffed. Management asked what they could do to improve things and we all said that even just one extra nurse would make a huge difference. You know what we got? A f*cking coloring book. According to management, coloring helps with mindfulness which reduces stress. The fact that we'd never have time to use it didn't seem to matter. - Pabs23

6.

When my company decided to downsize, the CIO gathered everyone from IT into a large conference room to give the news. During his speech he told everyone we'd all need to make sacrifices and he himself had to sell one of his houses. Everyone in the room looked at each other trying to figure out if he was trying to make a joke. He was 100% serious. - Crispinwhere

7.

'It would be too much work for you to train new staff, so you'll just have to do your job plus most of someone else's job while we d*ck around for months on a unicorn hunt looking for some magic candidate who perfectly fits into the open position with zero training' Sincerely, the management - ThadisJones

8.

Not me, but had a friend whose supervisor got upset bc she heard people chatting while getting their lunches out of the fridge and making coffee. Her solution? Lock the break room at 8 a.m. (so you needed to come early if you want a cup of coffee), and lock the bathroom so people would need to approach her and ask for the key every time they needed to use the facilities. Imagine being in your 30s/40s and having to ask permission to use the bathroom. - Always_Trying01

9.

One of my coworkers had a heart attack a while ago and they told him hed be written up if he called out the day after. When he was compaining to other employees about that they wrote him up for insubordination. A month later they fired him - New_Butterscotch8592

10.

My boss's recent response to everyone hating the hours we keep was to tell us that our competitor makes their employees work sh*ttier hours. - Steakwizwit

11.

Manager asked what to do about low morale and high turnover. I know he’s a hardass so I offer something simple, “well there’s only 3 chairs for the given 15-25 of us on an average day, how about we get some more?” His response was, verbatim, “DONT YOU START THIS FIGHT WITH ME BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT GOING TO WIN” - URMILKJUSTWENTBAD

12.

'We're going to lock the knowledge base until productivity goes up. You should be able to do your job without it.' SPOILER: We couldn't. - Local64bithero

13.

We were all swamped with more work than we could complete and mandatory meetings would happen often that were to discuss why we were behind and what they could do.

One guy actually spoke up and said STOP HAVING SO MANY MEETINGS AND LET US WORK, EVERY MINUTE OF THIS MEETING IS PUTTING ME FURTHER BEHIND!. They literally called another meeting 30 minutes later to discuss how the last meeting was not a positive experience for them. - Corndog1975

14.

They would update the dress code every time anyone came in wearing anything the boss didn't like, even if it was entirely appropriate for work. Bill got a new tie for Father's Day and it has bright green stripes?

All-staff email the next day banning 'distracting colors.' There were only like 15 employees all working in one small building, too, so it was obvious who the boss was targeting each time. - Much_Difference

15.

They sent a survey about what our perceptions about the workplace were. Voicing some issues with some areas was 100% going to get you in trouble so I complained that the survey was not anonymous, and didn't complete most of it.

Some days later I was personally contacted by 3 people wanting to find out what was wrong. They completely missed the whole point - madkeepz

16.

If you did not display an enthused reaction to the 'Mandatory Fun' activities, you were put on the sh*t list. - PossibilityNo1805