R.I.P. Boss From The Eighth Circle of Hell

Back in the 1990s I worked as a graphic designer at a marketing agency, for a rather colorful Boss. A Boss who knew little or nothing about the design process, and whose every move and decision made all our jobs that much harder. A Boss who came preloaded with so many outrageous quirks and bizarre character traits that it seemed like he stepped off the set of a hackneyed sitcom.

I wrote a series of posts years ago, outlining just a few of my experiences with this Boss— mostly as blog content, but also in an attempt to exorcise him from my psyche.

Alas, I was informed that the Colorful Boss died this past November.

I'm honestly not sure I feel about that. I guess I'm as saddened as I am about the death of any fellow human, but... dear lord, this was without a doubt the most annoying man I've ever encountered. Everything about him exasperated me— his personality, his managerial style, his mannerisms, his way of dressing and of course his voice. His horrible, grating voice that started droning the second he entered the building and never stopped until he left.

I once realized he was somehow annoying me even while sitting completely still and not saying anything. It was like his head was broadcasting "annoying waves," that only I could pick up. He was physically and mentally exhausting to be around.

And against all logic and reason his company is still around and fairly successful, despite his insane ideas and clueless management. The only way that's possible is if he made a pact with Satan, who finally came to collect his due a couple months ago.

Anyway, in honor of the Colorful Boss, here're the links to the posts I wrote about him. Enjoy my pain:

• The Interview

• The Superhero

• Email

• Color Correction

• Mexican Food

• Ear Drops

• The Flyer

• Restroom Surprise

• The Exercise Bike

• Chough

• The Wardrobe

And lastly, a special Bonus Boss From The Eighth Circle Of Hell Tale that I just remembered:

Back In the 1990s I worked as a graphic designer at a marketing company, for a rather colorful Boss. This was a man who came up in the 1960s, long before office computers and desktop publishing were a thing.

One day he came tearing out of the accountant's office, screaming at the top of his lungs, "Watch out, everyone! Tammy's got a fungus on her computer! Don't get anywhere around her!"

Of course he meant she had a virus on her computer. One that none of us designers were in any danger of catching, since Tammy had a PC and we all worked on Macs. Yet the Colorful Boss was convinced he was going to have to get her computer disinfected and fumigate her office, to prevent the spread of her deadly electronic fungus.

Seriously, that really happened.

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: Chough

Man, it's been AGES since I've posted one of these! Time to rectify that immediately, with a brand-spanking new Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell post!

Throughout my career I've prided myself on working hard, performing what's asked of me to the best of my ability and being an all-around good employee. I've also done my best to get along with my various bosses.

Alas, sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you end up with a Boss From The Eighth Circle Of Hell.

Back in the 1990s I worked at a marketing agency for a rather colorful Boss.

I don't want to mention any names here, so let's just call that particular boss "Mr. Bossman." At some point in his life, Mr. Bossman discovered that his family crest featured a couple of choughs on it. Don't know what the hell a chough is? Don't feel bad, neither did I until he told me. 

Basically a "chough" is a large black bird in the crow family, found mainly in Britain. For no good reason Mr. Bossman was quite proud of this fact, and even worked a chough into the company logo (!). 

Despite how it looks, the word's pronounced "chuff." Remember that, as it's about to become important.

The marketing agency's building was protected by a security system, complete with a keypad next to the door. Whoever arrived first thing in the morning would unlock the door and set off the beeping alarm, and would then have to punch in the five digit security code to disable it.

If the code entered incorrectly or not in time, the security company would call and demand to know the secret password. If they didn't receive the correct one, they'd think the building was being robbed and would immediately dispatch the cops.

So what was the secret password? You guessed it— "chough!"

One day I was the first one in the office and unlocked the door, which of course set off the alarm. I entered the code, but the alarm just kept beeping. I punched it in a second time, to no avail. Eventually I realized I'd transposed a two of the numbers. Unfortunately by then it was too late and the window of opportunity had expired. 

A few seconds later the phone rang. I answered it, and sure enough it was the security company, asking for the secret password. I said, "It's chough." The person on the other end said, "NO! That's not it! I'm sending the police over right away!"

I knew darned good and well that was the password, so why were they calling the cops? I finally figured it out— even though I told the guy the correct password, he didn't recognize it as such because he looked at "chough" and thought it was pronounced "cough" or "chooge" or some such thing. 

Instead of picking a normal, human password, Mr. Bossman chose one no one had ever heard of and was impossible to pronounce! Brilliant idea!

I hurriedly spelled out the password to the security guy and explained what it meant and how it was pronounced. Somehow I managed to convince him I wasn't a burglar, and avoided an unpleasant police shootout and/or jail time.

Helpful tip to anyone out there with a security system— pick a password that's recognizable and easy to pronounce!

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: The Wardrobe

Throughout my career I've prided myself on working hard, performing what's asked of me to the best of my ability and being an all-around good employee. I've also done my best to get along with my various bosses. 

Alas, sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you end up with a Boss From The Eighth Circle Of Hell.

Back in the 1990s I worked at a marketing agency for a rather colorful Boss.

This particular boss prided himself on his sense of fashion and style, but the cold hard truth was that everything in his wardrobe looked like it came from the Herb Tarlek Collection.

One day he came in wearing a bright pink sport coat. Why it's even possible for a human male to buy a pink sport coat, I have no idea. A week later he walked through the office wearing bright pink polyester slacks. Another week went by and he came in wearing a bright pink dress shirt.

It occurred to me that it was only a matter of time before he wore all three of those items at the same time. A spectacular sensory overload in glorious pink. 

It never happened while I worked there, but I like to think at some point it did.

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: Lorem Ipsum

Throughout my career I've prided myself on working hard, performing what's asked of me to the best of my ability and being an all-around good employee. I've also done my best to get along with my various bosses.

Alas, sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you end up with a Boss From The Eighth Circle Of Hell.

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s I worked for vast mega-corporation Sony, in a division that manufactured CDs, CD-ROMs and PlayStation discs.

I spent most of my time there making very simple CD-ROM labels that didn't require a lot of time or creativity. Occasionally though I got to flex my design muscles and create promotional materials for the company.

One such time I designed a brochure touting the company's lightning-fast turnaround time and other amazing benefits. I designed the cover and general layout, but I hadn't been provided with any of the body copy so I filled the space with "lorem ipsum" text.

For those of you not in the design biz, when you don't have all the text you need for a job you use lorem ipsum as filler to simulate how the finished piece will look. Here'a a sample:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

It doesn't mean anything, it's just a bunch of Latin gibberish that people have been using as filler for decades. It looks better than a big empty box that says, "Text goes here."

Shortly after I finished the design, my supervisor said the president of the company wanted to see it immediately and told me to take it to his office.

I printed out a quick copy of the brochure and walked down the hall to the executive suite. I'd never spoken with the President before, much less ever been in his office, so I was a bit nervous. I walked in and presented the mockup to him. He looked at it for a few seconds with a puzzled look on his face.

"Um... is there a problem?" I said.

"Well, yes. It doesn't say anything," he said.

"Hmm. I'm not sure what you mean."

"This brochure. It's all just a bunch of gibberish. I can't read it."

"Oh, that! That's just filler text. I haven't been given the actual body copy yet, so I used the filler to show where the real text will be and how it will look in the final piece."

"But... this needs to say something."

"Yes, I know. It will, eventually. This is just temporary."

"Well I'm not spending thousands of dollars on a brochure that doesn't say anything."

"Yes, of course. I can assure you that the minute I get the final copy I'll plug it right into the pages and it'll be ready to go."

"But I don't see why we'd want to print something that doesn't make any sense."

(Sighing heavily) "OK, can we not talk about the filler text for a minute? What do you think about the actual design? Do you like the cover?"

"I'm just not comfortable with all this this gobbledygook. Something needs to be done about that."

"YES, I KNOW! Can we please move on to the rest of the design? Do you like the colors? We always use blue since it's our company color, so I thought maybe if we added some accents in a yellow gold it would punch up the..."

"No, I don't like this gibberish at all. This... we can't use this."
 
(Through gritted teeth) "The gibberish is not the issue. I'm trying to find out if you like the overall design. I'm begging you to please stop trying to read the filler text."

"Is that even English? 'Lorem ipsum?' Is that someone's name? It looks like Latin. Our customers won't be able to read Latin."

"OH MY GOD! Yes, it's Latin. It's Latin so you won't try to read it and will just see where the final text will go. Mr. Blankman, please. Please look at the design and tell me if you like it or if you want me to try again."

"I think everyone here was expecting a brochure that we'd be able to read."

It took a supreme effort, but I somehow managed to keep my head from exploding. I grabbed the printout from him and walked as calmly as possible back to my desk. I told my supervisor that I wasn't going to spend another second on the project until he got me the final body copy so I could plug it in.

I eventually got the copy, added it to the brochure, printed it out and showed it to the President again. He approved it with flying colors this time, pointing out that this new readable English text was a vast improvement.

This was a true story.

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: The Flyer

Throughout my career I've prided myself on working hard, performing what's asked of me to the best of my ability and being an all-around good employee. I've also done my best to get along with my various bosses.

Alas, sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you end up with a Boss From The Eighth Circle Of Hell.

Back in the 1990s I worked at a marketing agency for a rather colorful Boss.

One day the Boss called everyone in for a lunch meeting (his favorite kind) and told us that in all the time the company had existed, it never had its own promotional brochure. I guess they were always too busy doing client work to promote themselves. He said it was past time we had our own brochure.

I worked on brochure concepts for a week or so and came up with some that the writers and other designers thought were pretty good. The only one I can remember now had sort of a drive-in movie theme. We were even going to include a little bag of popcorn inside the brochure, something to help us stand out in the mind of the clients.

Right before we were going to meet with the Boss to show him my ideas, he came running into the designer's room and said to stop working on it immediately. He was scrapping the brochure project (yet again). According to him he had a much better idea.

Not the real promo (or the real name of the Agency), but an incredible simulation.*

Instead of a tasteful promotional brochure he said all he wanted was a single 8.5" x 11" piece of paper to pass out to potential clients. The paper would have a large image of his face on it along with the company logo and the slogan, "Advertising isn't pretty" below. The topper came when he said he didn't want to use a regular photo of himself, but instead stick his face in the copy machine and use that image.

He stood there looking at us all, his hands in sort of a "Ta-da" big finish position, waiting for the applause and cheers to begin. We all just sat there with our mouths agape, not really sure if we'd heard correctly.

Finally when the shock wore off we all spoke up at once, pointing out that a single sheet of cheap copy paper with a xeroxed image on it didn't exactly shout class or quality, or that his choice of subject matter left something to be desired. Most importantly, what the hell did that "Advertising isn't pretty" slogan even mean? 

He got all petulant when we shot down his brilliant idea and said, "Fine, I guess we just won't ever have our own brochure then!" and stormed away into his office.

I left the company for greener pastures not long after that, so I don't know if they ever managed to put out a promotional brochure or not. I have a feeling they didn't, and never will.

* It occurs to me that I've probably made the fake promo look far better than it would have in reality. 

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: Email

Throughout my career I've prided myself on working hard, performing what's asked of me to the best of my ability and being an all-around good employee. I've also done my best to get along with my various bosses.

Alas, sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you end up with a Boss From The Eighth Circle Of Hell.

Back in the 1990s I worked at a marketing agency for a rather colorful Boss.

The Boss at this agency had a computer of course, but what he actually did with it I have no idea.

Case in point: He had an email account but the purpose of it seemed to elude him. Whenever he'd receive an email he'd tell his secretary (who had his email password) to print it to paper for him and lay it on his desk so he could read it. He claimed he couldn't read messages on the screen.

Conversely when if he wanted to reply to one of these printed messages he'd write a response on paper and have the secretary type it into his email account and send it for him.

Luddite? Technophobe? Barely sentient organism? You decide.

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: Ear Drops

Throughout my career I've prided myself on working hard, performing what's asked of me to the best of my ability and being an all-around good employee. I've also done my best to get along with my various bosses.

Alas, sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you end up with a Boss From The Eighth Circle Of Hell.

Back in the 1990s I worked at a marketing agency for a rather colorful Boss.

Every now and then the Boss would come into the graphic designer's room with a bottle of ear drops in his hand and suddenly lay his head down on the desk of a startled and unwitting employee. He would then plaintively bleat, "Will you put these drops in my ear for me?"

Yeah. That happened. 

I could almost understand if it had been eye drops. I myself have a lot of trouble getting eye drops to actually go into my eye. I always manage to blink at the last second and end up with the medicine running down my face like I've been crying for an hour. But ear drops? What the hell's so hard about putting in ear drops? Last time I checked your ears don't blink or involuntarily snap shut.

Please note that he never pulled this stunt on me, thank Thor, nor any other male in the department. He only tried this with the women of the office. Most of them would shrink away from him in revulsion and run to the ladies room, but one or two of them actually put the drops in his ear for him. The only reason this Boss' antics didn't cause us all to have to sit in the conference room watching sexual harassment videos every week is because we didn't have a human resource department at that place.

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: The Exercise Bike

Throughout my career I've prided myself on working hard, performing what's asked of me to the best of my ability and being an all-around good employee. I've also done my best to get along with my various bosses.

Alas, sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you end up with a Boss From The Eighth Circle Of Hell.

Back in the 1990s I worked at a marketing agency for a rather colorful Boss.

The Boss' office was a sight to behold. Every flat surface, including the floor, was stacked ridiculously high with books, papers and folders. It looked not unlike the image above, from the Time Enough At Last episode of Twilight Zone. You had to navigate through the stacks of crap just to get from the door to his desk.

In the middle of all this chaos stood the Boss' exercise bike. Every morning he'd come into his office, climb onto the bike, spread his newspaper out across the handlebars, and sit there and read. At no point during this time did his legs ever once move even a fraction of an inch.

He'd sit there on the bike sipping coffee and reading the paper for an hour or so, then finally climb off and start his day in earnest.

Of course at every opportunity he would tell anyone within earshot about how he "rode" his exercise bike for an hour every morning.

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: Mexican Food

Throughout my career I've prided myself on working hard, performing what's asked of me to the best of my ability and being an all-around good employee. I've also done my best to get along with my various bosses.

Alas, sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you end up with a Boss From The Eighth Circle Of Hell.

Back in the 1990s I worked at a marketing agency for a rather colorful Boss.

One day The Boss was all excited because he'd just come back from a successful sales meeting with a new client. They were some kind of food distribution concern whose primary product was Mexican cuisine. The Boss immediately called a meeting with the Copywriter and me to discuss ideas for an ad campaign for this new client.

We sat around trying to brainstorm ideas for a while without much success. Suddenly The Boss spoke up and said, "I've got a great idea! It's Mexican food, right? So here's the perfect slogan: Si Si Senór, Our Tacos Won't Make You Snore!"

Cue the chirping crickets sound effect as we stared slack-jawed at him.

Fortunately the Copywriter and I were able to talk him out of using that one. 

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: The Interview

Throughout my career I've prided myself on working hard, performing what's asked of me to the best of my ability and being an all-around good employee. I've also done my best to get along with my various bosses. 

Alas, sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you end up with a Boss From The Eighth Circle Of Hell.

Back in the 1990s I worked at a marketing agency for a rather colorful Boss.

When I first interviewed for the job, the Boss and the Co-Boss— let's call them Chad and Jeremy— took me to a local restaurant for a lunch interview.

We were shown to our table and sat down. I handed Chad, the Boss, my resume and he and Jeremy, the Co-Boss, looked it over. They mumbled and nodded to one another and apparently liked what they read. So far so good.

But then the mood at the table changed. Suddenly the Boss looked nervously around and said, "Um... we're pretty well known around town and some of our competitors may be here in this restaurant. We don't want them overhearing our secret business and trying to poach you away from us. So don't call us by our real names. Call us Carl and James." 

I laughed, but then to my horror realized that he wasn't joking. He was deadly serious. I looked to the Co-Boss for comfort, hoping to see some reason in his eyes, but he was serious about it as well. They really wanted me to use code names when I addressed them. I looked around to see if I might be able to spot a hidden camera filming the incident, but no such luck.

So I was interviewed by two grown men using fake names because they were worried about corporate espionage— in a town with a population of barely 50,000.

That should have been a BIG red flag to me. If I'd have had any sense I'd have excused myself and left the restaurant right then and there, but I didn't, mostly because I needed a job and also because they'd driven me to the restaurant and my car was back at their super secret headquarters. But it made me uneasy.

Turns out I was right. I liked the work that I did at the agency, but the "code name" incident was just the first drop in a big sloshing, leaking bucket of insanity that the Boss carried around with him all day.

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: Restroom Surprise

Throughout my career I've prided myself on working hard, performing what's asked of me to the best of my ability and being an all-around good employee. I've also done my best to get along with my various bosses. 

Alas, sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you end up with a Boss From The Eighth Circle Of Hell.

Back in the 1990s I worked at a marketing agency for a rather colorful Boss.

The men's room at the agency contained the usual: a urinal and two stalls. One day I went in to use the facilities and as I walked past the first stall, the door suddenly flew open. There was my Boss, sitting inside like a trapdoor spider just waiting for someone to walk by.

He actually wanted to discuss some marketing project while he sat there calmly doing his business with his pants around his ankles. Apparently he must have thought he was LBJ. I stammered a bit, averted my gaze and quickly did an about face and got the hell out of there.

A few days later I walked into the men's room and the stall door burst open again, once more revealing the Boss sitting there in all his glory. This time he tried to hand me a report that he wanted me to look over. I refused to touch it (and made a mental note to never again touch anything in that office for the rest of my life) and bolted for the door. Cheezus, we had a perfectly good conference room in the building; why'd he keep trying to hold meetings in the crapper?

Later I found out that I wasn't the first to experience his surprise bathroom "meetings." He'd opened his stall door to virtually every other male on the staff. Eventually we learned to always check and make sure he wasn't in the men's room before going in.

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: Fungus

Throughout my career I've prided myself on working hard, performing what's asked of me to the best of my ability, and being an all-around good employee. I've also done my best to get along with my various bosses.

Alas, sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you end up with a Boss From The Eighth Circle of Hell. 

As I've mentioned before, the Boss I had at the marketing agency in which I worked was not what you would call a computer whiz. We used to joke that we could give him one of those cardboard computers they use on desk displays in office stores and he probably wouldn't know the difference.

One day the Accounting/Payroll lady got some kind of virus on her computer. The Boss walked into the Designer's room and shouted, "Mabel (not her real name) has a fungus on her computer! Does anybody know how to get rid of a computer fungus?"

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: Color Correction

Throughout my career I've prided myself on working hard, performing what's asked of me to the best of my ability, and being an all-around good employee. I've also done my best to get along with my various bosses.

Alas, sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you end up with a Boss From The Eighth Circle of Hell. 

Back in the 1990s I worked as a graphic designer at a marketing company, for a rather colorful boss. One day my Boss came into the designer's office all in a tizzy. He was holding a color photo in his hand, moaning and fretting and pacing back and forth. After several minutes of questioning I finally got to the source of his strife: the color photo he was holding needed to be converted to black and white and sent to a print shop in Indianapolis by noon. The Boss (who wasn't exactly a technical wiz) didn't know how we could possibly accomplish this in time, as he said it would take days for a color photo to be turned into black and white and mailed halfway across the state.

While he was gnashing his teeth and rending his garments, I took the color photo from him and scanned it into Photoshop. Once in the application I selected "Grayscale" from a drop-down menu and converted it to black and white. I then saved a copy of the file and emailed it to the print shop. The entire operation took less than five minutes. I interrupted the Boss' fit and told him it was all taken care of. Instead of thanking me though, he just stood there giving me a wary look, like he suspected I was some kind of witch. He hurried out of the office, suspiciously glancing back at me the entire time.

A few weeks later the Boss came into the designer's office with a new project for me. You can probably guess where this is going. He handed me a black and white photo and wanted me to "work my magic" on it and turn it into a color shot. I stared at him for a few seconds and then told him that was impossible. He said, "Well you turned that color shot into a black and white one, so why can't you do it the other way around?" 

I tried to explain that going from color to grayscale was easy— you're simplifying the image, taking millions of colors and distilling them down to 256 shades of gray. Going the opposite direction is just not possible. How would Photoshop know what color shirt a person in the picture was wearing? What color's their car? The building behind them?

As you might well imagine, this (and any kind of technical explanation) sailed far, far over the Boss' head. He snatched the photo back in disgust and said, "Why do we have all this expensive equipment around here if it can't do what I need it to do?" and stormed out.

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: The Superhero

In the mid-1990s and I got a job as a graphic designer at a marketing firm. As my first official duty I was assigned to design an ad campaign for a client's new product. 

I had a meeting with my brand new Boss, the copywriter and the art director. It was decided that I would design two posters featuring a superhero. The first poster would be a teaser, featuring a Batsignal-like beacon in the night sky. Instead of a stylized bat though, the signal would incorporate the client's logo. Clever, eh? The second poster would depict the superhero holding and announcing the new product. As a long time comic book fan, this project was right up my alley. 

I drew a couple of quick mockups of the two posters in Photoshop and showed them to my Boss. He was confused about the "big light in the sky" on the first poster (even though he'd already approved the idea). I told him it was like the Batsignal. Still no comprehension. Amazingly he had little or no knowledge of the Batman mythos; something I thought was pretty much common knowledge by that point. I told him that when the Joker robs a bank, Commissioner Gordon goes up to the roof of the police station and turns on the Batsignal, which alerts Batman that a crime has been committed, he arrives at the police station, gets the relevant info and he then goes out to capture the crooks. Of all the things I thought I would have to do on my first day at this job, explaining how the Batsignal worked was way, way down on the list.

He then said, "What's the deal with Superman anyway (completely missing the point that we'd been talking about Batman)? He's the one they found in a basket in the river, right?" I said, no, that sounded more like Moses than Clark Kent. I swear to you I am not making up any of this.

The Boss then looked at the other poster (the one with the superhero holding the product) and very bluntly said the character looked "gay." When I asked him to elaborate, he said the guy was wearing form-fitting tights with his underwear on the outside, which apparently to him was a sure-fire sign of homosexuality. I realized then that this man had never in his life ever seen, much less read, a comic book. I pointed out that this was standard superhero garb and had been since 1938 when Superman first appeared. Several other people in the office backed me up, saying it just looked like the average superhero to them. Outnumbered, the Boss sighed and reluctantly approved the mockups.

I finished the posters and a week later accompanied the Boss to the presentation at the client's office. Before we went in he told me to keep quiet and let him do all the talking. "And for god's sake don't say anything about the superhero being gay! We'll lose the whole account if you say that! Don't say gay!!!" he exclaimed. I assured him I would have no problem with that.

We went into the client's conference room and my boss unveiled the two posters. Before the client could utter a single word my Boss blurted out, "I think it looks gay!" The client looked a bit startled and I just stared at the Boss, my mouth agape in amazement. He didn't stop there though, he went on about how he didn't think they'd want their company spokesman to be a guy flitting around in a purple cape and silver tights.

I have never come so close to beating someone to death with a tube sock full of Hot Wheels cars than I did in that meeting.

Luckily for me (job-wise and jail time-wise) the client liked the posters ("gayness" aside) and heartily approved them with only a couple of minor changes.

On the ride back to the office, the Boss looked over at me and said, "Well, I think that went pretty well, don't you?" I declined to comment.

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: The Plane, The Plane

Throughout my career I've prided myself on working hard, performing what's asked of me to the best of my ability, and being an all-around good employee. I've also done my best to get along with my various bosses.

Alas, sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you end up with a Boss From The Eighth Circle of Hell.

When I worked for the newspaper I had a very, very, VERY Michael Scott-like boss. In fact I couldn't even bring myself to watch the first two seasons of The Office because I was living it every day. Why would I want to relive it at home as well?

This boss wasn't the least bit concerned about anything that went on in his department. We got absolutely zero input from him, forcing us to pretty much run things ourselves. His top priority each day was where he was going to eat lunch, which he would begin planning around 9:30 am.

One particularly chaotic day there was an airshow in town and the pilots were practicing flying low over the city. The roar of their planes was incredibly loud and distracting inside our office. 

Suddenly I received a frantic phone call from the prepress room upstairs. They said that the machine that made the printing plates was down. As you might well imagine, that was a bad thing. Without that machine, there would be no ads in the next day's newspaper, and that was most definitely a very bad thing. 

I looked up and saw my boss running by. I called to him and told him the bad news about the plate machine and asked what he wanted us to do about it. His response? He kept right on running past me and said, "I don't have time for that right now." He said he was going up on the roof so he could watch the planes fly over the building and not to bother him with boring newspaper stuff. 

Eventually a veteran pressman with decades of experience (who's since been laid off, no doubt) figured out how to fix the plate machine and the paper came out after all while the boss stood on the roof, jumping up and down and clapping his hands at the sight of airplanes zooming overhead.

Bosses From The Eighth Circle Of Hell: Working Break

Throughout my career I've prided myself on working hard, performing what's asked of me to the best of my ability, and being an all-around good employee. I've also done my best to get along with my various bosses.

Alas, sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you end up with a Boss From The Eighth Circle of Hell.*

I worked part time at a grocery store when I was in college. One evening after working quite diligently for several hours, I asked my boss if I could take my fifteen minute break. He hesitated for a second and then asked if I'd mind taking a "working break." A bit puzzled, I said I didn't know what that meant. He said that since it was busy that night he wanted me to skip my break altogether. He wanted me to fill up the milk cooler, mop the floors and take out the trash, but he'd let me drink a Coke while I did it all. He called this a working break.

I told him if he needed me I'd be in the employee lounge taking a "sitting break."

 *According to Dante's Inferno the Eighth Circle of Hell houses, among others, those guilty of deliberate, knowing evil. I figured that'd be the most likely place to find a Hell Boss.