1

This is a few years back and went a long way to helping my decide it was time to retire from schools. I worked for a “Mac only” school district that I slowly converted over to PC in the computer lab and (this will shock you, I know) Chromebooks for the students to take home.

It was finally time to get new teacher machines. Budget was ultra tight, so I suggested $1200 MacBookPros were probably not in our best interest and that we should shoot for $400-$500 PC laptops. (I had previously built a Windows Server 2012 domain, so this also made sense for my managing of mobile devices)
so what does my boss buy as a “test?” A $1300 Surface Pro. Underpowered. SSD almost full just installing the OS. For 100 reasons, a real turd of a PC and in NO WAY what I suggested we buy.
He uses it for a week, then he stops me in the hallway to tell me everything wrong with it, how disappointed he was in me and that he looked for my guidance and I let him down. I told him he did not follow my guidance, which got him pissier. I was not invited back to following year, but already had another job lined up anyway, so we can call that departure mutual.
They are back to being broke but buying topshelf MacBooks. As Bill Engvall would say “Here’s your sign”
Okay, your turn. Let’s hear them!

34 Spice ups
2

To be clear, my point is not whether you agree or disagree with using Apple. It is not listening to me, and then blaming ME for his error.

14 Spice ups
3

I had a boss ask my one time if we were PCI compliant. I looked at him and laughed reminded him of all the things that weren’t, because of his decisions. Yeah I was on the you know what list for a while.

14 Spice ups
4

My Boss asked me to research for a couple od laptops for a few supervisors. I found and sent him 3 windows 10 pro laptops to chose from, all with the same specs just different brands. That was on a Thursday.
Monday he shows up at work with some laptops and said look I found these like you suggested but at a better price.
Well, yes they were the same model BUT all had home version.
Once I got the correct system installed they cost more that what I had found for him in the first place.
Oh well, his money I guess.

13 Spice ups
5

While in the military I had a boss ask why we named all our servers…

11 Spice ups
6

I had an IT Director fighting a monitor issue at the users desk. I happened to walk by and he asked for some assistance. I powered on the monitor and everything magically worked :slight_smile:

13 Spice ups
7

Rank and SN should have been sufficient.

10 Spice ups
8

So, if you have a private server, did it have to take orders from the general mailbox? :stuck_out_tongue:

17 Spice ups
9

ok… that sent coffee out my nose.

9 Spice ups
10

Then my job here is done. lol

8 Spice ups
11

My prior boss was an accountant that gave himself the title of Business and Technology Manager. He would bring anything in house for a free lunch. He decided to bring in several MPF and large format printers because a friend of his copier rep went to a new company. A brand we did not support and he didn’t verify the space vs size of the machines. That was a fiasco when he got 36x48 capable multiple tray laser printers (not plotters) for our real estate paralegals offices and they were physicallly too big to fit in their offices with the fancy built in cherry wood cubes. Think the size of a small chest freeezer. Only one was temporarily deployed (3 hours), and then they sat in a back hallway for over a month before the vendor agreed the were not a good fit. Of course I had to play bad cop and deal with the vendor, boss claimed that I wasn’t willing to work with a new product and was being unreasonable. Luckily management got involved and I was off the hook for the screw up. I still celebrate 10/30 as his last day.

7 Spice ups
12

Just a reminder… if any of you have current bosses that you have a story about, I suggest not telling the story under anything recognizable (we’ve had people fired over posts here before and I don’t ever want to see it again).

If you have a good story though, the alternative is writing to news[at]spiceworks[dot]com and telling your story to SpiceRex. If you do that, I might ask you a few questions and do a few edits, but the story will go on the home page as a “Dear SpiceRex,” published under my name to keep you safe, and we’ll also grant you some points.

14 Spice ups
13

I’m glad I wasn’t drinking or eating anything when I read these two replies or I would have been cleaning my desk. Thanks for the Monday laugh.

6 Spice ups
14

I had a boss that wouldn’t let me purchase a replacement tape drive after I told her repeatedly the drive was not working any more and it was out of warranty. wo or three months later the server crashed and we lost those two or three months of data. They had to hire several data entry people to reenter the lost data and she told me that we were lucky to still have our jobs. Later, her boss called me in his office and told me that my job was never in jeopardy as I had told her the issues and she wouldn’t act on it.

7 Spice ups
15

Hopefully your boss lost her job.

4 Spice ups
16

No worries Suzanne, I don’t work for this former boss.
Boss: Hey James, why is the wifi showing as 5G?
Me: We don’t broadcast wifi as 5G.
Boss: voice getting louder Yes we do it says it right here.
Me: Your not connected to WiFi thats your mobile data connection to your carrier.
Boss: Oh…so how do you connect to wifi?
Me: mental facepalm

10 Spice ups
17

Our School District was in the process of looking at which Netbook (To put into perspective of the time frame of this) to buy. There was several different models that were presented. The IT department made a recommendation as to which they think is best for the School District (I think it was an Acer EeeBook?). The Assistant Superintendent (Who was in charge of enough departments that she was the boss of all the departments that were going to benefit from the purchase and also spending the money) got involved somehow and decided to override the IT departments recommendation and we ended up buying some Dell 2100 and 2120’s. Her reasoning, She didn’t like the placement of the Shift Key on the Acer Keyboard…
The dumb thing was, she wasn’t even going to use them. I believe the Acer ones were cheaper, had a faster Processor, more RAM, and a bigger screen were the reasons IT made the recommendation.
In the end, it probably didn’t matter because the Atom Processors were all crap and every single computer I ever touched with an Atom Processor was a steaming pile of crap. We ended up having to support those Netbooks for almost 10 years…when Chromebooks could finally replace them. The fortunate thing was that after her FUBAR, IT’s recommendation was always considered (Except for one other time where the same person did almost the same thing which solidified the fact that IT was going to be involved in all significant Technology Purchases from then on).

9 Spice ups
18

Nope. However, she did transform into a much better boss after that and would listen to my recommendations for issue resolution more readily.

3 Spice ups
19

Yes or risk corporal punishment

6 Spice ups
20

This story is about a former boss, so I’m covered:

I was tasked with fixing a laptop that belonged to a business acquaintance of my boss. The laptop was previously worked on by someone else and that person, more or less, mangled the thing. The main issue was the ribbon connector holding the keyboard to the mainboard was broken. I rigged up a solution and it worked.

Boss then asks me if it was “sturdy” enough. I asked why and he responded that his buddy rides Harley motorcycles and that there could be a bumpy ride or two. I’m thinking to myself “WTF?” and just brush it off. He then straight up, laptop still on, shakes and contorts the crap out of this poor HP (this was definitely not a 2 in 1). I just stare at him after the screen goes blank and walk out of his office.

That laptop never booted again. I didn’t diagnose what was the cause and it didn’t look like he did either. He even made me return the laptop to the owner and tell him that I couldn’t fix it.

More or less knew that this wasn’t going to work out and am extremely glad to be where I am now.

3 Spice ups