Control Freak bosses - anyone got one?

I feel for ya. It's been 15 years since I worked for a control freak.

 

Go back to working for yourself. If youre going to think about your boss as 'isnt as experienced" as you, its not going to work out. You are not the man anymore, get over it or go back to being him.

 

My best friend and I started working together at this place where he got me the job. His control-freak nature was really getting on my nerves.

After about a week I finally told him he needed to stop trying to control every aspect of what was going on. After that things were a lot better.

It pays to communicate.

 

i wouldn't call my boss a control freak, he's more of a pedant. i mean EVERY LITTLE THING is something important. maybe because he's 58 years old, i don't know.

Oh, why didn't you put your contact info in your email signature? Did you fax them as well as email them? Did you highlight the dollar amount? Make sure you get a confirmation email from the department (even though I clearly showed him that they did what they were supposed to do).

email him a simple question and he'll respond with a 3,000 word essay trying to cover every aspect of the subject's history and how and why and what should be done next.

customer: "What's the replacement cost of this part?"
boss: "blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah $37.99 blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

Sincerely,
Name
phone number
work address
email address
alternative phone number

 

"You need to put more salt on the fries Moes!", "Smile when you take the order from the customer Moes!" "Stop staring down women’s shirts when you work drive through Moes!"
Damnit, leave me alone! Don’t you know who I am! I'm Moestavern19 b!tch!

 

Same scenario for my control-freak boss from awhile back. He had a heart-attack a year after hiring me. When he returned to work, the company put him in a position where he was not over people, which is where he belonged.

 

LOL...I guess you're right.

 

Yep, I've got one, although it seems mine has a purpose.

Folks at my outfit have been wearing Red shirts on Thursday to protest, and I've heard at least a 1/3 are leaving very soon. (roughly 15/50)

But he's been nit-picking at every little thing and whining when we've consistently put record #'s up for them.

The coup seems to be coming.

 

hey dakota, don't forget to attach those cover sheets to your TPS reports!

 

we have an anal retentive boss at our non profit. she was brought in as the new exec director and she micro manages everything from a potluck lunch to a "reply all" email...

the founding volunteers of the company want to rip their hair out...

 

Tell me about it.

My boss is very good at what she does. She's sharp, smart, and able to deliver. But she's also a micro-manager.

She will always pick apart things I do, from chart colors to the way I respond to emails, as if nothing is perfect if not done her way. And all in the name of quality and credibility.

She's driving me crazy everyday at work, such that I can't have a moment of peace to concentrate on my job.

It reminded me of a saying, that people don't leave because of their company, they leave because of their boss.

Just saw this on Welch's twitter:
An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive because he or she doesn't have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people.

I really wish she saw this.

 

sounds like a real pickywoman

 

Never had one in 15 years on the job and I wouldn't stand for it. Last thing I need is someone micro-managing my every move....especially in software development. I've run into some project analysts, however, who think they need to have every little thing in control and try to show how much in control of situations they are by accounting for every little detail all the way down to something as simple as someone on a project they are working being out of the office for a couple of personal hours. I had one stop me in the hall the other day while I was heading to lunch starting a sentence with "I'm glad I ran into you. Do you know what we need to do to blah blah blah blah blah blah?". She had this concerned look on her face that implied she didn't have complete control of the situation...when we had time to get it done and it really was not a big deal. I basically shrugged it off like "quit being such a damn worry wart about this and let it work itself out...it will be fine" (in my thoughts) but my reply was basically "no" with an unconcerned look on my face and I continued on my way to lunch with no worries at all. It's like she was getting panicky over something I considered quite trivial. I already know I don't like the way this particular analyst operates. She might be able to read it from my body language but I don't give a frack cause I don't report to her. Project managers and analysts who tend to micro-manage every little detail...I do have problems with but since they are their own area...frack em. I know how to get my job done on time without all the bs they throw at me.

Funny thing is my Dad was a project manager for NASA with a reputation of being a real hard ass. I know for a fact this is true because he tried to micro-manage me growing up and I rebelled against him. We had plenty of arguments because he wanted to control when I did my homework and crap like that. I still know he is a hard ass even in retirement...but that's okay because that is how he operates. It doesn't mean I have to like it...but he got things done for NASA by being that way and, in the end, people under and around him may not have liked him all that much but they respected him. People like Gene Kranz...flight director from the Apollo and the shuttle missions...gave him his respect. But, he also had his loose side and that came out on Wednesday and Friday night bar nights in the local drinking hangouts with fellow co-workers and astronauts. That was a regular thing for many, many years.

 

i am reminded by this thread that the CPR training I am possibly running late for (I have 8 minutes to get there) will have our boss there to open up the office. she'll probably try to control the meeting and tell me how it is a bad example to show up late (on a required training that we don't get paid for)

 

Oh yeah. My boss at my last job was a super control freak. To top it off he was about 5'5 and had major little man syndrome, which always is a bad thing for me at 6'1. He wouldn't let me do anything, and then four months in, threw me under the bus when his boss asked for a stats report on me- said I didn't do anything all day. I quit the next day- I was willing to settle for much less to work somewhere else at that point. Having a job takes too much time out of your life for it to be a miserable experience.