let’s talk about out-of-touch company executives

Earlier this month, we heard from someone whose CEO shared photos of his recent family vacation at a town hall after announcing budget cuts, no bonuses, and increased health insurance costs. And we’ve heard about plenty of other out-of-touch executives before — like the company that quizzed employees on the new boss’s horses, family, and vineyard (yes, really), or the manager who wanted everyone to share their best and worst moments of the pandemic, or the CEO who joined a meeting about layoffs remotely from a golf course.

Please share your own stories of out-of-touch leadership in the comment section!

{ 935 comments… read them below }

  1. ZinniaOhZinnia*

    The head of the org I work for has been complaining about his home renovations for months. I get it, he had to move out of his house and… (checks notes) into the *other* property he owns.

    This has been happening while several employees are dealing with being illegally ousted from their rentals due to landlords not legally following the lead abatement process. But yes, your kitchen renovation that you chose to do, and temporary move into your own home is also clearly traumatic too.

    1. Anon for this*

      CEOs talking about their multiple homes always seems like such an easy gaffe to avoid, and yet so many of them step right into it.

      1. Zyzzx*

        I am in the very fortunate position to own a vacation home, and I’m sooooo cagey about it. I don’t think anyone I work with knows. But I don’t have that E-suite personality!

        1. Allonge*

          I don’t think that referencing it is an issue, as long as it’s not every other minute, or e.g. part of a complaint on how it’s so hard to maintain. Not directing it at others with a dramatically less money is also a good thing.

          People are usually not upset to hear others have more money than them – everyone knows this is the case! Consideration – as you are clearly doing it – is great though.

          1. Joana*

            I used to work retention for a cable company in the US. I got a call once of someone complaining that they couldn’t keep the services in their vacation home on vacation hold all year. Vacation hold was basically they let you freeze the service for like two weeks a year without having to connect/disconnect them and you don’t have to pay for the time they’re in that vacation hold (like if you did all two weeks at once, you’d only pay half a month).

            Like Sharon, if you have the money in 2014 to own a vacation home, you can figure out what to do about the cable and internet when you aren’t there.

        2. Laser99*

          I have heard anyone who owns a vacay home is constantly nagged about “When can I come for a visit?” Has this been your experience?

      2. 2 Cents*

        At my previous job, the CMO always managed to schedule the all hands *just* when his house cleaner (at his second home) would be vacuuming. It was hilarious.

        1. Yes And*

          Is it possible that the house cleaner, for reasons of their own, always managed to schedule vacuuming just when the CMO would be in an online meeting?

      3. QuiteQuiteContrary*

        I genuinely think a lot of them believe they are “inspiring” the poors to wOrK hArDeR and be like them… as if that’s actually how they got there. Born on 3rd base and all that.

      4. Ally McBeal*

        I love that one of the reasons that the UAW won their fight against the Big 3 automakers last year is because the chief negotiator for Stellantis took the very first negotiation call from his vacation home in Central America. UAW made gold out of that hay and fired up their members to keep fighting.

        1. LifebeforeCorona*

          Years ago when the big three automakers were looking for govt handouts, the top executives all arrived in corporate jets. It was duly noted.

          1. Artemesia*

            When people whine about DEI I like to point out that the lily white male leadership of both the auto industry and the steel industry lead US industry into the tank after WWII — so proud of their superiority.

      5. Mademoiselle Sugar Lump*

        I remember an all hands meeting during the pandemic when one of the execs mentioned that you can work from your vacation home, if you like. This was widely noted and discussed, not favorably.

    2. Can't Sit Still*

      My now-retired VP was complaining to me about her home theater renovation, when said theater was larger than my entire apartment. She suddenly realized who she was talking to, and immediately changed the subject. So at least a little self-awareness!

    3. MPM*

      In 2020, our CEO held town halls from his second home on the coast, taking care to show off his great view, while the rest of us dealt with, well, 2020.

      1. pagooey*

        We had a team leader–not a CEO, but several grandboss levels above me–who also led online meetings from his beach house in 2020…once, he “took us” on a walk down the block and to the sandy beach itself, so we could watch the tasty waves roll in via his laptop camera.

        1. Notasecurityguard*

          and when I was a boss in San Diego and lucky enough to live in coronado (lss I was paying WELL below market rate for a variety of reasons, like 1/5th of market rate. for a tiny converted garage but still) which for those who don’t know is a VERY bougie neighborhood, like my neighbor was a navy colonel and his wife was a brain surgeon, level bougie I didn’t tell my team (or my friends) where i lived because I was trying to be sensitive to the fact that i got very very lucky.

          instead I lived “Near downtown” (technically true). which i think made some people think I lived in barrio Logan (a very NOT bougie neighborhood)

          1. Richard Hershberger*

            I am quite sure that a navy colonel (which, by the way, is called a “captain,” not to be confused with an army captain, which is a much lower rank) cannot afford to live in Coronado on his own salary alone. The brain surgeon wife is footing that bill.

    4. Sloanicota*

      Ha my boss owns multiple homes (family money, plus I think her husband is rich – she’s not getting that money from our job!) and always forgets that’s not an approachable go-to subject. I can see people pause and blink in confusion whenever it gets brought up. “Your … other, other home. Ah yes.”

    5. Landed Gentry*

      I have a few bosses.

      One shared they had to sell their plane because physical issues and couldn’t pilot anymore, but they still had their farm.

      The farm doesn’t produce anything, they just have a lot of land…and horses.

    6. A manager, but not your manager*

      My husband worked at Oracle during a time when company morale was particularly low (mention of suicide in this paragraph): Performance reviews were repeatedly put off for COVID, which meant that most people hadn’t got a standard cost of living raise in years (and worse, people from acquired startups were being paid less than their lower level employees because the pay wouldn’t be adjusted to Oracle levels until their next review). A high ranking former employee sued the company for abuse and psychological harm, then died by suicide, so no one currently felt good about working there. To top it off, it was high COVID at a corporate job that didn’t care about its employees and everyone felt trapped and miserable.

      Enter Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle.

      Everyone in the company gets an email from Larry with a subject line that promises to dispell a rumor.

      He’s heard that people said he might move to Florida, but don’t worry, he’s not moving to Florida (this is not a rumor literally anyone had been talking about). Yes, he did buy an 80 million dollar mansion in Florida, but don’t worry, he just bought it to tear it down (no details on what he’d do with it, and why would there be? Doesn’t everyone buy 80 million dollar mansions just to tear them down?). He wanted to send the email to reassure everyone that he still planned to stay in Hawaii (on the 6th largest island. Which he owns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanai). The rest of the email was about how he was giving back to Hawaii (apparently starting a preschool is enough to make up for keeping most of a colonized island for yourself). This might sound like I’m being snarky, but the email made it sound like he actually thought it was important to clarify this concerning misunderstanding and there was no awareness whatsoever of how it would play.

      Obviously no work was done for the rest of the day as employees 1. asked each other “did you see that?” 2. told all their friends “you’ve got to see this.” I think this was supposed to be internal only, but thankfully everything in big tech leaks immediately, so people could share this: https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/4/12/22380192/larry-ellison-lanai-hawaii-palm-beach-mansion

      I’m not sure how much money the company lost in productivity that day. Oracle made about 39 billion that year, which is about 150 million a day, so if that email came in about halfway through the day, one email cost as much as a mansion in Florida you can tear down.

      1. CeeDoo*

        Only somewhat related, but at the start of the school year after c-word lockdowns, my principal announced that the pandemic was over and we were all required to attend a big district-wide pep rally thing with thousands of coworkers. The next day (after the pep rally), they announced that he had tested positive for the virus.

        1. Richard Hershberger*

          A more introspective person might consider the implications of having to make attendance at a pep rally mandatory, even apart from the communicable disease aspect. Back in high school I generally ditched them. The one time I was caught, I didn’t get in trouble because the administrator knew I wasn’t going to do anything untoward, but he made me go back in. Then I found a sympathetic teacher who let me stay in his room. Based on my teenagers’ experience, things are a little better now, with provisions for the kids who find the sensory overload agonizing.

          1. CeeDoo*

            Oh, we’re aware. But the administrators take attendance. I’d rather cut off all my toes than be in a room with 2,000 screaming people, but if we didn’t go, we’d get docked half a day’s pay. Even if we were on our campus working.

            1. Richard Hershberger*

              Do they make the kids attend? I’m not a in-the-administration’s-face type of parent, but if they made my kids ensure this pointless torment, I would make an exception.

      2. Four cats*

        As the joke goes, what’s the difference between Larry Ellison and God?
        – God doesn’t think he’s Larry Ellison.

        1. Azure Jane Lunatic*

          The majority of the corporate art in Oracle offices, as far as I’m aware, are photos of things like the Oracle airplane, the Oracle racing sailboat, and similar.

          1. StephChi*

            That’s because all of the real art is in Larry’s house. When I went to an exhibit at the Art Institute in Chicago back in 2023 called, “Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: The Modern Landscape”, several of the paintings were from his personal collection.

            As to A Manager’s comment, that definitely sounds like Larry. I worked in tech in the Bay Area in the ’90s and while I never worked with him directly, I worked with plenty of people who did so can confirm.

      3. No Plane Here*

        Larry Ellison is a piece of work and for those of you not in tech there are so many stories. He’s known for screaming at employees and being generally mean

        He’s also known for being an equal opportunity jerk to literally everyone else with his wealth. He tried to force through a sale for the general aviation (everyone who isn’t a big airline) side of San Jose Airport and kick out everyone else … including but very much not linked to all the Silicon Valley execs with planes. They were *pissed* and managed to stop it.

        1. StephChi*

          He and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were in a pissing contest in the ’90s to see who was the richest. So dumb.

    7. Still Queer, Still Here*

      I was working at a small private college, in a role that called for mid-level experience and/or a masters degree, but had a pay range that capped at just over $50k, and was located in a major city where the low-end average rent for a 1-bedroom was around $1800/month. So basically, not livable. I was married, and my spouse was pregnant when she was covid-furloughed and then laid off, so I was supporting my family on $47k + a $12/hr weekend job, and absolutely drowning. Everyone knew I worked that 2nd job to make ends meet.

      So my boss and coworkers and I are all out to lunch one day, and my boss starts telling us all about the vacation she just returned from: 3 weeks in the French Alps with her husband and young adult daughters. My other coworkers then start chatting about their planned vacations to Paris and Sweden in the next few weeks. When my boss then transitioned to complaining about how she had forgotten to reschedule her custom tub delivery to her home due to the vacation, I’d had enough and quietly made a comment along the lines of “wow, those are some impressive plans, my summer plan mostly just consists of trying to find an affordable apartment!” very light, nothing too pointed. Now to be fair, my boss and coworkers weren’t making bank either–but they happened to all be married to men making mid-6 figures, AND making considerably more than I was because they’d all been there a long time.

      My boss’s response though? “Yeah, we should probably stop talking about this in front of OP. She actually needs this job! I’m sorry, we just forget sometimes! I mean, my salary is about the same as my husband’s end of year bonus!”

      I stayed for 2 years, then found a job in a lower cost area that paid 40% more. Those 3 are still there, and constantly hiring for my old position because they can’t get anyone to stay, for some mysterious reason.

    8. Rebecca*

      I had a CEO make a very similar tone-deaf statement. When I was a young publishing professional 20 years ago, just as print media was contracting and laying off thousands of people, the CEO held a meeting to address the company’s own imminent layoffs and salary/hiring freeze. In an effort to commiserate with the rank and file, he told of having to pause the renovations on his home in California. Our company was based in New Jersey, and the executive did not work remotely. Maybe he just thought we wouldn’t notice that he had to be talking about his second home?

    9. LifebeforeCorona*

      I had a boss who had a city home and an island home. His biggest complaint was that the ferry didn’t run often enough for his personal convenience. He hated having to stay over Sunday nights at his second home because there wasn’t a late ferry. Also, the ferry was free and thus you couldn’t reserve a spot.

      1. DeeJay*

        This reminds me of a colleague who went to the Isle of Wight festival. He was a day late getting back because the Rolling Stones commandeered the last ferry off the island.

        As they walked past the crowd they’d stranded overnight they were pleased to see them waving and cheering. They didn’t notice that the shouts weren’t cheers and the waves weren’t showing all their fingers.

  2. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    New Chief exec came from the automobile industry and did a tour going round the nationwide company giving speeches about how we all needed to have a more competitive mindset and ‘need to advertise to best our competitors’ and banged on about how he got to his lofty position by always thinking of the competitive market.

    Slight issue. We’re a largely taxpayer funded monopoly.

    1. Anonym*

      WILD. Congrats on those “confidence in leadership” scores in the next employee survey (if they do them).

      1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

        Oh it gets better. This was a nationwide tour and we had at the time about 35,000 employees AND an internal company forum. It lit up BIG time – everyone from the office staff at HQ down to the engineers in depots in darkest Wales was going ‘WTF’.

        His tenure as CE was beset with BBC headlines and he left (annoyingly with a huge payout)

  3. juliebulie*

    I’m so horrified just by the examples given that I’ll be almost afraid to read all the stories. I often think of myself (not proudly) as a somewhat insensitive person, but there is a level of crassness in these stories that curdles my blood.

    1. juliebulie*

      I do remember something weird. Back in the 90s, my employer did a massive layoff. I was out of work for just two months (lucky) and once I started my new job, I pretty much forgot about the old one. So when, two years after the layoff, I received an “announcement” in the mail that some high-ranking person who had been laid off had found a new job, I was floored. The person’s name wasn’t familiar, so I probably wasn’t even in his business unit. Why on earth did he think we would care that he found a new job, and how as an ex-employee did he happen to have a database of all the worker bees’ addresses?

      1. Suze*

        Wondering if this meant they had found a job as a manager and had some openings for junior employees? If it’s just an announcement about themselves it is annoying, but people do this all the time in Linked in.

      2. Cringing_to_infinity*

        LOL i bet he thought some of these ex worker bees would want to work with him again. Cringeeeee.

    2. MigraineMonth*

      All this makes me feel a bit better about my insensitive comment this week when I mentioned my embarrassment when my credit card was declined because it had a limit of $X. (Hopefully my coworker just thinks I’m really bad with money and doesn’t realize I was complaining because I thought the limit was too low.)

    3. Calamity Janine*

      on the plus side, i can look at these and all the times in my life i may have been insensitive in similar ways and…

      …by comparison, maybe i’m doing pretty okay actually!

  4. Banking On It*

    Not exactly like the examples but my story is about the bank executive that insisted on a split shift for all tellers so he didn’t have to hire more staff. We were required to take 2-3 hour lunches to accommodate the open to close schedule. When we complained, he told us to go shopping for 3 hours and what’s the problem? You’re still being paid for your work!

    1. Ama*

      I think this is a great example – leadership can be just as out of touch in terms of workload as in finances.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        Right up there with the “bare bones” scheduling.

        Husband and I bought a new mattress late last year. When we went to the store, we found ONE employee in charge of the entire store–sales, stocking, answering the phones, everything. He was incredible at the job; including us he sold four other mattress sets and took about fifteen phone calls.

        I asked if he’d been there alone all day and he had. I asked (pretty appalled by now) if he’d eaten and he laughed and said he had a cup of soup but hadn’t had a chance to eat it. He was expected to close the store alone at something like 8 pm with no breaks, food, or bathroom breaks.

        I wrote a review on their site praising him to the skies and ripping the management decision to staff a store with ONE PERSON open-close up one side and down the other.

        1. Richard Hershberger*

          Mattress stores have some weird incentives I don’t fully understand. I live in a town of about 20,000, the county seat in a semi-rural semi-exurban county. It has three stores devoted exclusively to mattresses, two furniture stores that sell mattresses, and at least two more general stores that sell mattresses. This is astonishing, for an item that a person only replaces rarely. And yes, the pure mattress stores seem to have only one person working.

          1. Richard Hershberger*

            To complete the thought, my guess is that the markup is fantastic, justifying the commercial rents, but the volume is tiny, explaining the minimal staffing. I suspect that selling five mattresses in a short time was not typical, or was the mattress equivalent of the common retail phenomenon where a line at the checkout appears out of nowhere, then disappears just as randomly.

    2. ChattyDelle*

      my bank manager tried to do the same thing! I, as the senior teller & the scheduler, told her it was illegal & if she did it, O would be calling corporate HR. she backed down. (that particular manager was so so incompetent in so many ways)

    3. Caffeine Monkey*

      Not quite as bad but an office coup meant my team ended up with a new manager. Previously, we’d organised the shift rota between ourselves to ensure the desk was covered 7am-7pm, and everyone got one or two days WFH a week. New manager insisted we all had to do a week on each shift, so only one week in three where we could WFH. And even then, we could only WFH for two days that week because, “Nobody gets to work from home for a full week.”

      Yeah, guess who then proceeded to work from home for two weeks?

    4. LaminarFlow*

      Hold on, I need to pick my jaw up from the floor after reading that.

      WTF barely scratches the surface in this situation.

    5. Oogie*

      I worked at a regional bank and every branch was required to have a meeting to gather around and watch a video of the CEO informing us no one would be getting raises because the bank *only* profited 20 million last year.

  5. Bro Really*

    Our CEO always tells us how much more profitable (3x!!!) per employee we are versus our competitors. Readers, all it does is make us complain that we don’t make 3x money.

    He also got mad that people were asking questions about our RTO policy and said “If you live local, and you can’t commit to coming in twice a week, fuck you!”

    He works remotely most of the time.

    I don’t respect him at all.

    1. Arrietty*

      Wasn’t a chief exec but I had a manager who wouldn’t let me work from home for two hours so that I could accompany my partner to a hospital appointment in the afternoon. Not long after, manager was “working from home” while she moved house. Right, because that’s definitely going to be productive.

      1. Snarkus Aurelius*

        I had a boss who said if we wanted to work from home, we’d have to take sick leave. What one had to do with the other, I’ll never know, but I’m sure it made sense in her head.

      2. Sam I Am*

        I worked for an org with a CEO who would not allow remote work (this was pre-covid) because she thought people couldn’t be productive away from the office. But she worked from her vacation home for a full month every year.

        1. Lenora Rose*

          One thinks the reason she thought people couldn’t be productive from their (regular) homes was BECAUSE of how productive she probably wasn’t while at her vacation home — likely filtering her emails for an hour or less, and otherwise responding only for crises.

    2. Sloanicota*

      Ha I still remember an old boss telling me his “hack” for working from home (which our org didn’t support at all, for no real reason) – he just used his sick leave! And so could I! To work from home! So I could use PTO and still keep being productive from the comfort of my own home. Why wasn’t I more impressed??

      1. MigraineMonth*

        My toxic ex-company required a massive amount of travel and overtime from one role. I think the *average* length people lasted in the role was 9 months; at 2 years you were considered a wise veteran.

        To offset the stress of travel and overtime, the company offered comp time. Specifically, on the one week out of four that you weren’t travelling, *if* you had already worked at least 40 hours that week, you were allowed to WFH one day.

        1. jez chickena*

          I worked for a company with similar travel requirements for certain positions. You were expected to travel on your own time, so plenty of weekend travel and red-eye flights. It was the same for the hourly folks until we got audited by the state, and the company had to pay a fine. You were also asked to do special vacation projects while on “vacation.” I was terminated after not taking any days off for three years and having a mild stroke. I was let go the day I got back. This was a senior marketing role, BTW, there was no nefarious activity on my part. And after years of excellent reviews.

      2. boof*

        lol maybe this is where “unlimited PTO” comes in to play? Like it’s basically just a way to work from home when you want XD

    3. ferrina*

      My friend’s company was told that if you didn’t like RTO, “just move closer”. The company has offices in LA, New York, Seattle, and London….you know, cities that are not exactly easy to find affordable rent in.

      1. MK*

        Sure, I’ll move — so long as my salary increases to that cost of living! (I’m in Seattle. It’s expensive.)

        Reminds me of an acquaintance whose work decided to leave San Fran — they offered to let everyone who moved with them keep the SF-based salary, plus a small bonus for actual moving expenses. That let them buy a house in the new place.

    4. pally*

      Yeah, when I was asked to fill in for a departing manager in anther department, I did my darndest to do a good job. That got me promoted to manage that other department.

      Only thing: I heard later that the CEO was so happy with my promotion as it meant that he’d saved an entire salary. He did not have to hire the two people he expected to manage the department and the additional product lines to be added to that department. I had demonstrated that I could do ALL the work myself. Swell.

      1. jez chickena*

        I “covered” two director-level positions for one year. The only reason it stopped was that we got a new CMO who reasonably said, “Are you trying to kill her?” My boss (the VP) cried (literally) that she didn’t know what she would do. The New CMO said, “What exactly do you do all day?” He fired her a few months later.

  6. deegee*

    At one company I worked at – where some employees were earning shockingly low amounts – the managing director stumbled in to an all hands meeting explaining our pension plan, drunk after a two hour lunch, wearing sunglasses, and stood up to interrupt the pensions guy to explain that “unless you’ve got at least a million pounds in your pension it’s fucking useless.”

    1. Hroethvitnir*

      Wow. I don’t have a lot of respect for most of these people, but this one is up there.

      Especially because the way things are going, many people (who’ve worked their whole life!) are genuinely screwed – and lack of ability to buy a house has a huge impact for having somewhere to live *and* having an asset when you need to move into care. Which the peons know, you [redacted].

  7. the cat's ass*

    Describes my former pinhead boss to a T. Wandered around boasting about his new Tesla after letting us know there would be no bonuses that year. Took his own sweet time transferring funds to the proper accounts after the company dissolved. Don’t miss him one bit!

        1. Laser99*

          Yeah, but I don’t see why, they’re old hat now. I live in a resort area with many wealthy people, and they are so common. And yes, Tesla owners drive like douchebags. New Range/Land model drivers are numero uno. (I’m a courier.)

    1. Honor Harrington*

      Amazing how bonuses bring out the jerk in people.

      Boss explains to everyone that the team has a pool of bonus money, and anything he doesn’t give to us, he gets to keep for himself. Then invites us outside to see the brand new BMW he bought for himself with cash from his bonus. His direct reports all got half the bonus they had gotten the previous year.

      1. BlueSwimmer*

        My husband worked for a very small company owned by one boorish guy. He cut their bonuses one year and instructed the bookkeeper to add all their bonuses together and pay it as a bonus to him. Instead of bonuses, he gave each employ a regift from a vendor holiday gift instead of a bonus. Usually the vendor gifts were food that were put out for everyone to eat anyway… so, thanks?

        1. Grumpy*

          I had a boss tell me that the company just couldn’t afford a bonus this year instead of the twenty five hundred I had gotten in the previous year. An hour later he had me spent twenty five hundred dollars on his next flight to london for extra legroom. That was two years of loyalty and covering his ass destroyed in five minutes. I relayed that to the team and after that we started calling him the snake, or the princess, both of which titles he had well earned.

  8. Targaryen*

    My boss is the head of the DEI council and hasn’t yet met with any of the IT team, admins, facilities etc: aka the highest concentration of women and minorities, and the lowest paid at the company.

    1. Morris Alanisette*

      Reminds me of the Parks and Rec episode where Chris started a commission on gender equality and every department sent just men to participate.

      “Your gender equality commission is a real sausage fest” – April Ludgate

  9. Broccoli the Cat*

    Oh boy I have a good one!

    Our employer has been adamant about telling us things are tight right now, budgets can’t handle extra purchases, etc. Like, constant reminders about how funding is right now. Also plenty of talk about the economy in general being hard and inflation, etc. etc. (A decent percentage of our upper management can definitely be assumed to support the tangerine traitor.)

    In a meeting to discuss a potential project, one of the C-Suite executives brought up that they were looking for a new mattress. Totally fine, right? Nope, they proceeded to name drop the company and exact type of mattress they were looking at. One of my colleagues looked it up and ya’ll, THIS MATTRESS IS $50,000. And it absolutely went right over the C-Suite’s head that maybe now was not the best time to bring up the fact that they can even afford to think about making that purchase.

    1. Liz the Snackbrarian*

      For $50,000 that mattress needs to be massaging me, singing me to sleep, and loading itself in the moving van if I ever need to move. I got a king sized Tempurpedic this year and that was a big splurge for me

      1. Lemons*

        It’s a scam. I read somewhere that innerspring mattress quality rises equally with price until you get to ~$3-5k (I forget exactly) and after that you’re just paying for stuff you’ll never even experience since it’ll be under sheets and mattress covers, like fancy fabrics and embroidery.

        1. Rex Libris*

          Things like $50,000 mattresses exist solely so people with too much money can inflate their sense of self importance by buying $50,000 mattresses.

          1. Lime green Pacer*

            Sleep-deprived people can be convinced that *this* mattress will solve all their sleep problems, forever. Because how else could they justify the price? (Yes, my sleep-deprived partner had to be steered away from a similar exorbitant purchase, though at a much lower price point.)

          2. Random Biter*

            “Things like $50,000 mattresses exist solely so people with too much money can inflate their sense of self importance by buying $50,000 mattresses.”

            Wins the internets.

          3. jy3*

            “Neptunian diamonds were a status symbol because they were expensive, and they were expensive because they were a status symbol. I didn’t pretend to understand it, but it paid the bills.” -paraphrased from A. Irvine, “Shepherded by Galatea”

            1. Dictyranger*

              There’s an economic term for items like that: a “Veblen good”. Birkin bags are my favorite real-world example, since they’re both expensive and deliberately hard to get.

        2. Elsewhere1010*

          I live near a mattress company that’s been in business since 1899, and they’ve been making their mattresses by hand ever since. They even manufacture their own springs, and their quality is unbelievable. Every mattress is bespoke, and I believe their top price is 10k.

        3. Afac*

          I think sleep is one of those things that TechBros feel they can ‘hack’. You know, the same way they optimized nutrition with the Juicero.

          If 6 hours of sleep is good, and a comfortable mattress improves the quality of your sleep, then a $50,000 mattress must improve the quality of your sleep by 10x, so you really only need 60 minutes of sleep. Then you can give an interview to a magazine where you boast about how you optimized your life and that’s why you’re so rich and intelligent so everyone should follow your example.

        4. Elizabeth West*

          I sleep fine on my mattress-in-a-box from Big Lots. :P

          I did elevate the experience recently with an adjustable platform, mostly for extra storage space (it’s higher than the old one, which was in great condition so I donated to Habitat ReStore). Being able to tip up the head of the bed a little has helped my reflux IMMENSELY, plus the extra space underneath.

          I wonder what the $50K mattress people buy to hold it up. Probably a tacky solid gold frame with speakers installed, or something.

        5. goddessoftransitory*

          It’s like that movie with Matthew Broderick and Marlon Brando where the latter throws a rich person dinner party every year and serves an endangered species (the movie featured a Komodo dragon as the entree.)
          *SPOILER*

          It was, of course, a scam–they just served fancied up chicken every year. But he knew these rich glassbowls would pay buco bucks to “eat” something rare just because it WAS a rare animal.

          1. Lenora Rose*

            The Freshman! A pretty good movie where Brando is intentionally making fun of his own prior roles. We watched it with my mother-in-law on the basis it was a movie that wouldn’t include any of the non-PG things she tends to hate seeing in movies (violence more than sex)… because my husband had forgotten she wa a reptile-phobe…

      2. AnotherOne*

        i’m gonna assume it’s a hastens or something in that line.

        and i only know about it cuz they have a store in Carnegie Hill on 5th avenue. i can do that math- mattress store on 5th avenue means very very very expensive mattress. but i will say they may be the prettiest mattresses i’ve ever seen.

        it is supposed to be an amazing system if you can afford it (and they can get to be the cost of a studio apartment in NYC apartment apparently.) but definitely not for most of us.

        1. Bronze Betty*

          I just looked up Hastens and, yes, very pretty mattresses! Which I wouldn’t be able to even see once I put sheets on. I’d sooner spend my money on fancy sheets–but wait, I don’t even do that.

          1. AFac*

            Seriously, $590,000 is more than I paid for my house.

            Granted, I live in a very low COL area, but still!

      1. Oniya*

        I had to look that up. It appears that $50,000 USD isn’t even their most expensive mattress. O_O

      2. Princess Pea*

        I had someone in a language class recommend Hastens to me when I was talking about buying a new mattress. I think they run around $10K where I’m living. But that was the moment that really understood the class different between myself and her (both of us unemployed at the time).

    2. Natalie*

      Is this mattress actually a car?
      Because if I spend $50,000 (!!!) it had better do something absolutely magnificent to justify that amount of money!!

        1. Walks on Gilded Splinters*

          Now I really hope this exec has a race car bed! It will be custom made, California king size, of course.

    3. Seal*

      If I’m paying $50,000 for a mattress it’d better come with its own bedroom and en suite bathroom with a separate shower and soaking tub.

    4. pally*

      I hope the dog has an accident on it.

      There’s no reason to advertise such a purchase. In fact, there’s no reason to MAKE such a purchase.

      1. That Paralegal*

        Literally the only reason to make such a purpose is so you can tell everybody about it.

        If a butthead buys something stupidly expensive and the whole world didn’t hear about it, does it really exist??

      2. goddessoftransitory*

        I hope their multiple cats go under the bed and slash up the underlining of the box spring to make hammocks out of.

    5. Ruth*

      Is this the mattress where the purchase includes a labor agreement for specialists to come to your house and “massage” the mattress? This is a real thing!

    6. Artemesia*

      Feeling really good about the Casper $1000 king size I’ve had for about 6 years. Great mattress.

    7. econobiker*

      Those mattresses are priced the same way luxury clothing, accessories, etc. are – for bragging rights and flexing money. because of brands.

      No one needs a $50k mattress just like no one needs a $30k hand bag, or a $1 million dollar car.

      1. Emmy Noether*

        This is true. The upside is that it keeps that money in circulation. And if a decent part of that money goes to good wages for skilled workers, I can’t be too mad about it. It’s when the product is made crappily in exploitative ways and the money just ends up in a different rich person’s bank account that it’s truly galling.

    8. Chirpy*

      That mattress is ONE HUNDRED TIMES more expensive than mine…and I struggled to pay that $500 because I only make $35k a year….

    9. Tierrainney*

      I found a description of a $50,000 mattress with:

      Each of its coils is wrapped in hand-sewn cotton. It has ten layers of natural materials for luxurious comfort and softness, comprising Mooseburger horsetail, Talalay latex, Joma wool, cashmere, silk, and cotton.

      so, its “natural”

  10. Decidedly Me*

    There were layoffs at a company I was working at that affected most teams, including mine. My manager and other upper management created comms, but were waiting for official communication from the CEO before sending them out. Layoffs happened, still nothing from the CEO, who said she’d send it in a few days. A few days pass and suddenly a decision had been made that there would be no CEO comms on the layoffs. However, she did make sure to send out a company-wide email celebrating her 1 year anniversary with the company and how amazing she was….

    1. CrazyCatWriter*

      There was a round of layoffs in my company October-November. I’m not sure exactly when. The only reasons I know it happened are 1) it was mentioned as an aside in a media article, and 2) someone on my team reached out to me to do recommendations for him on LinkedIn because he’d been laid off. (2 happened before 1.) There has been no official announcement from my team’s leadership that this person is gone. Like, we all know at this point, but there was never a, “This was a tough decision, but…”

      I have no idea who is gone from other teams. No one that I deal with, as far as I can tell.

      1. ICodeForFood*

        At one point (2007-20012) I worked for a company where the only way we knew layoffs were going on was if someone saw an employee being escorted out to the parking lot with a box of their personal belongings… As if we wouldn’t notice that our coworkers were gone since there was no official communication.

        1. So they all cheap ass rolled over and one fell out*

          2012-2015 I worked for a company that would only inform the immediate team (the ones who worked every day with the person and would immediately notice). For everyone else, it would be as if the ex employee just disappeared… sometimes you’d find out from the rumor mill, other times you’d just get a bounced email and find out someone has been gone for months.

          1. Kermit's Bookkeepers*

            This is how it is in my company, most of the time. There’s definitely a culture of sending effusive company-wide goodbye emails on your way out for some areas of the company, but the people in sales seem to leave exclusively by Irish goodbye.

          2. Anonymask*

            My current company does this! Actually, they don’t even tell you when that person is gone (if you’re on the same team). Their name tag just disappears and their desk stays empty until a new person is hired. It’s WILD.

          3. One day*

            I’ve worked at companies where I wouldn’t even get a bounced email! I’d send emails and they would disappear and I’d get no response at all. In the end, I’d try contacting someone else in the team – which was really difficult because there were no lists of who was in what team. Finally, I’d find out the person had been laid off or resigned – and no one had informed any of the projects they were involved with, and no one had closed the email account, so emails were still being accepted, but not actually going anywhere!

      2. Packaged Frozen Lemon Zest*

        I was once out in the field and only found out one of our admins had been laid off when I called her to check in after being out of cell phone range for 6 hours (since she was my designated safety contact). She said “Chad let me go this morning, call him and ask him to look out for you” and hung up on me.

      3. lanfy*

        Yeah, I don’t know why companies are so fond of handling layoffs like they’re midnight raids by the secret police, but it’s weirdly common.

        And every single time, it causes problems.

        The best one I saw was when one of the people was in an at-will state, and they gave her no notice at all. Just walked her out one day and didn’t tell anyone.

        Turned out she was the only person handling documentation for a major project in a satellite location. Because she never had a chance to talk to anybody, the other writers didn’t know they needed to take over, and the people in the satellite office didn’t know she’d gone. There was an awful lot of panic a month later on ship date…

      4. No Information = No Morale*

        I worked for a county government in 2008 whose County Administrator announced on a Thursday that there wouldn’t be layoffs, attended a county commission meeting Thursday evening where they decided to layoff 150 people, which was announced in the local paper that same evening. Many people found out they were laid off when their card readers didn’t work or they couldn’t log in to their computers; they called IT about the problem only to be told, “there’s no employee by your name in the system.” Assuming, of course, you could get through to IT, half of which was laid off. County Administrator said not a word to remaining staff until the following Tuesday.

    2. PinkBanana*

      I worked at a place where the sort of opposite happened. Our CEO just casually mentioned in a standard quarterly company wide meeting that there would be layoffs. Didn’t tell any of the other senior managers this was the case and they were caught completely unaware. The managers all then scrambled to meet with her afterwards to figure out what was going on and if they would be losing staff. And then later meet with us.

      luckily I survived the layoffs as did my department mostly but was a tense 2 weeks while people waited for updates.

  11. Pottery Yarn*

    My grandboss told all of us we needed to start coming into the office in mid-2021. He’s been working remotely in another state for 20 years.

    1. H3llifIknow*

      At one of my govt. contractor jobs, we were told when we put in notice “please do not send a goodbye email out” because they wanted to control announcing when/why people left (i.e. control the narrative and spin it). I thought “it’s my last day, what recourse do they have? So I sent an email to about 40 people that either worked for me, or I worked with often/liked/respected. Fuck that nonsense. It was always weird to come in and be like “Where’s Joe? He was here Friday…” and never see him again.

      1. No ads*

        I can’t fully understand why people do this? If you are leaving, there is little recourse the org has, unless you need a full reference. I’ve been asked not to announce my departure, when I’m leaving on good terms to another position, closely related to my current one, and where I’ll still be working with my colleagues. I declined to not tell them and sent an email to everyone I could and set up an automatic reply to my email so people would have an alternative contact. Our IT often took months to close email accounts – which may well have been because no one told them!

      2. DeeJay*

        I heard a story once about someone who worked at an organisation where whenever someone left, the boss would claim they’d been fired. So when he came to hand in his notice he hatched a cunning plan to prevent this while still maintaining the “tell the boss first” rule.

        He drafted an email saying “I’m taking up a post at other company, bye everyone, lovely working with you” and left it open when he went to the boss’s office to tell him. Afterwards he dashed back to his desk and hit send. A few minutes later a cry of “F***!” came from the boss’s office.

    2. Quinalla*

      This I think is one of the WORST offenses right now, bosses forcing their stay to RTO and they WFH every day or nearly. Ridiculous!

  12. Union*

    I worked an office job that didn’t pay me enough to live in the vacation town the office was based in. Like I would have had to spend 70+% of my salary to live in the same town, instead of the 50% I was spending to live two towns over.

    The CEO, who normally worked in another office, came in one week because his MULTIPLE vacation homes in town were subject to a new short-term rental ordinance and he needed to file objections in person. He tried to complain to me, the entry-level person working 60+ hours a week and still unable to afford even to rent in town, and I think I actually said “I don’t think I’m the right audience for this conversation.”

    1. Kermit's Bookkeepers*

      Can confirm that this response works wonders for uncomfortable conversations with all kinds of asshole.

  13. WeirdChemist*

    I was in grad school during the first wave of Covid lockdowns, working full time in a lab. The professor I worked for kept urging us to “work from a separate office space from your bedroom” to help with focus/etc, talking about how helpful his private office space in his house was. Cool, but we’re all grad students making 20k a year… all of us lived in tiny student apartments with multiple roommates who were also now trying to work from home, so where exactly was this private space separate from our bedrooms supposed to be???

    1. Spacewoman Spiff*

      Hahaha, I worked for a consulting firm when covid hit and similarly, we got directions from some Partners to find private, professional spaces to work from. The one I remember in particular worked from his home library, and this was highlighted as a good option. (He also started scheduling meetings at 7AM, because why not, everyone was at home.) That it never occurred to anyone that the more junior staff were not working from our dining tables, sofas, bedrooms, out of a strong preference to work from these locations…

      1. WeirdChemist*

        Ha, my boss tried to schedule zoom meetings during Covid at 8pm, because he “didn’t want to disrupt our work”… I definitely took *those* meetings from bed lol

    2. Coverage Associate*

      We got a lot of that, too. And while it maybe worked for even junior employees in low cost of living regions, none of us mid career or below had home offices or dining rooms or any surplus room in the Bay Area. Empty nesters did, though.

    3. Swedish Engineer*

      I had one colleague who lived in shared flat during the lockdowns. She was basically the only one who was allowed to go into the office so that she could work in peace. Living with 4 or 5 other people who suddenly all are working from home can be an issue even if you have a private (small) bedroom.

      1. Richard Hershberger*

        I volunteered to be the one person going into the office specifically because with my teacher wife and two school aged kids at home, me adding to the congestion was clearly a terrible idea.

  14. BootoBoors*

    Uh oh. I have several examples:

    1) Head of a non-profit that was suffering financially during the 2008 recession. She gathered everyone, potluck of course, and asked us to donate 10% of our salaries back to the non-profit. Then told us about a skiing trip she had planned.

    2) CEO gave a talk to our women’s professional group. So: the audience was his female employees. When asked about women that had helped shape his career, he couldn’t name any and said something along the lines of “all the women i’ve ever worked with got pregnant and stopped working.”

    1. BootoBoors*

      Oops, one more. My boss was late coming in to work one day and didn’t let us know. Kinda crappy, because she had ripped into my coworker the week before when he had been a few minutes late, and his reason was because his truck’s transmission went out the same morning his boiler had broken. Single-income family and he had 4 kids. But even worse? She was late because her car’s battery had died, and she had insisted on buying a brand new (BMW, natch) car.

      1. That Crazy Cat Lady*

        Wait – she bought an entire new card just because the battery died? Did I read that right?

        1. My Boss is Dumber than Yours*

          During grad school, I worked at an Apple Store in one of the wealthiest parts of Boston. Had a lady come in and say she wanted to purchase the largest MacBook Pro we had, and weight didn’t concern her because she was never going to move it but she wanted a huge screen. We asked her if she were at all interested in an iMac instead, since she could get double the screen space for thousands less. She told us no, because she didn’t want any wires at all on her desk…

          I pointed out that she would still need to charge the battery on her laptop, and she asked how much it would cost to just replace the battery at the store every time it ran out. Yes, she seriously sat there contemplating spending $3000 extra dollars then dropping another $130 every single time her laptop battery ran out rather than have one single power cable on her computer desk.

          1. No wire wires, ever*

            She’s never gonna use that $4000 computer, is she. She’s gonna set it up to look exactly like her interior designer’s render of The Perfect Midcentury Modern Home Office and get right back to checking her email on her phone.

        2. Disappointed Australien*

          if you think of it as “bought a car with a warranty when the old car’s warranty ran out” it makes very slightly more sense. Its trading money for time when you have a lot of money (or more money than sense).

          My boss came very close to selling his luxury car when it wasn’t compatible with the latest iPhone. That would have meant trading it in after 18 months instead of the normal 24. But it turned out that the new model also wasn’t compatible*. So he had to learn to use an Android phone after all (ie, get an engineer on six figures to spend a few hours explaining it to him and providing tech support).

          (* MMI bluetooth problem back in about 2018)

      2. what?*

        I’m sorry – her battery died, which led her to buy a new car? On a whim, or had she been meaning to get a new car?

        1. what?*

          I see above since I started drafting my comment the answer is yes, battery died -> new car (which doesn’t answer the second question).

          1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

            I’m sure this isn’t the case with this boss, but I did once replace a (15 year old) car when the (hybrid) battery died. The replacement cost was about half-again the book value of the car. The car I replaced it with was definitely not a BMW and it was not done on a whim, though! In fact, I was royally pissed because I thought they were talking about replacing the conventional battery for about a hundred bucks. Nope!

          2. BootoBoors*

            This woman was so upset that her car wouldn’t start for the very reasonable reason of a dead battery that she bought an entirely new car. The car was not old and did not have any visible defects. She just “didn’t want the hassle.”

            1. MasonryEnby*

              Granted, I’ve never bought a car myself (mine is a hand-me-down from family), but given what I know about both the process of buying a car and the process of replacing a battery (which I have done)…the former is way more hassle than the latter.

              (I realize I’m looking for logic where there is none, but Jesus tapdancing Christ on a cracker.)

            2. goddessoftransitory*

              Rich is now defined as “Buying an entire new car is LESS hassle than getting a new battery.”

            3. Chirpy*

              ….how is buying *a whole car* less hassle than buying a battery???

              I’ve had to buy a new emergency battery and even with having to wait for someone to bring it to me, it took less time than the paperwork for a new car (not to mention a test drive!)

      3. Suze*

        You know, this makes me think a bit. Over the years a large percentage of contractors / babysitters / cleaners we hired canceled at the last minute due to “car trouble” (and sometimes no-showed). I started to think of “car-trouble” as just a go-to excuse like the “dog ate my homework”, because many of these people were clearly flakey in other ways too, and some were late almost every other appointment for this reason. Now I am just not sure, maybe it was a genuine problem. It is true that when my car breaks down, I can afford to take time off work and get it fixed properly at a certified shop, it’s annoying but just a routine expense. BTW we do not have fancy cars and they are both 10 years old, and don’t think of ourselves as particularly rich. But it is in fact not entirely intuitive that a routine expense for you might be very expensive for people you employ.

        1. Chirpy*

          I went into work the day of a car accident because I couldn’t afford not to. While I was physically fine (and luckily my car was still driveable, and eventually the other driver’s insurance covered it) I was absolutely too shaken up to be at work. But what else can you do, when you don’t make a living wage?

          But also, I have friends whose cars are much worse than mine, and because they do not have parents who can loan them interest-free money for a decent vehicle, their cars break down much more often. It’s a vicious cycle of you can’t save for a better car when you’re spending all your car money on keeping the one you have running so you can get to work….

          1. DeeJay*

            That, along with “We won’t give you a mortgage even though your rent’s more than the monthly repayments because you can’t afford it with that rent, even though if you get the mortgage you won’t have to pay the rent any more” is another example of the Sam Vimes “Boots” theory of economic unfairness.

        2. Laser99*

          I retail for a long time and I can assure you it is valid. Back in the day it would actually state on the application, “Must have reliable vehicle.” Which is impossible on $10/hour.

    2. Not That Kind of Doctor*

      Oh, your #2 reminds me of the guy who gave a talk to my degree program about corporate jobs and how you should always be looking for opportunities to network. His example was a chance encounter with the CEO in the men’s room. We were almost all women.

      1. My Boss is Dumber than Yours*

        Seriously hoping one of the Eagles takes a cheap shot at him during the Super Bowl. Would love to see him carted off the field with a career ending injury.

    3. allhailtheboi*

      This is more baffling than outrageous: the chief exec of my local government and employer visited my work site to speak to staff about our concerns. When we mentioned anything he would pivot the conversation to the council’s refurb of the local leisure centre and had we been yet and did we like it? It’s not even an expensive leisure centre, so it’s not tone deaf in that sense, but it just such a weird and out-of-touch with our concerns conversation.

    4. Under_score*

      My company started a women’s leadership group, led by the VP of HR. Outside of this VP, the entire leadership team is male. There are only two women in the level below that. So, the company clearly needed to make better efforts to promote gender diversity. I was hopeful! This could be good!
      Then, in the first meeting, she gave us gift baskets of drugstore anti-aging face masks and other similar beauty products to “pamper ourselves.” Shockingly, it did not improve from there.

      1. BootoBoors*

        Yes, this same women’s working group circulated a “do’s and don’ts” fashion guide, and gave us the advice of “learn golf and to like whiskey”.

        1. LaurCha*

          This “fashion dos and don’ts” business is giving me a flashback to when I was looking to change jobs and a childhood friend who is in sales in the gas & oil industry said I should get blonde highlights and wear high heels, it had always helped her. Maybe a push-up bra, too. Thanks, sister, for the empowerful support. For the record, I was a museum curator looking to transition to academia. Not exactly the place for stilettos and fake-looking boobs.

          For many, many reasons, we’re not really friends any more. This is just one data point.

  15. 3-Foot Tall Inflatable Rainbow Unicorn*

    I had a manager who changed up our in-house style from light background to dark background “effective immediately,” meaning the tech writers had to update hundreds of pages and create thousands of new images ASAP. An hour later the manager posted “Be Glad It’s FRIDAY!” with lots of dancing tree, smiling sun, and margarita emoticons in the company Slack channel.

    1. Lenora Rose*

      So many TGIF comments feel a bit tone deaf or off kilter, but this seems in a special category of its own…

  16. Localflighteast*

    We had our annual presentation from the company that handles our pension scheme. Well intentioned I’m sure. But going on about how you can take up to $60K from your plan for a house deposit when I am sitting next to people who I know can’t even make rent on their own , let alone contribute enough to have $60K available was really painful for me.

    1. Wolf*

      Ah yes, the “just take some money from your other bank accounts” school of budgeting. A classic.

  17. Susie Occasionally Fun*

    I was laid off from a previous job. After the layoff was announced, I was sent to a meeting with the HR Director to discuss severance, how to access COBRA, etc. Or so I was told. The meeting was actually half an hour of me listening to the head of HR talk about how awful laying people off was, and how much it was messing with his mental health. My layoff was so hard on him, and he wanted me to sympathize with how the whole thing was ruining his week. At the end he had me sign an NDA and sent me out the door with papers explaining how all the layoff stuff would work—papers that he was supposed to go over with me, but we were too busy with his self-pity party.

    1. Lab Boss*

      This one really boils my blood- a lot of these stories are from wealthy people who are totally oblivious to people with less than them. Your HR director was fully aware of how bad the situation was and still made it about himself, which is simply unforgivable in my eyes.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        It reminds me of how people go into stores that are open on Thanksgiving/Christmas and moan to the staff about how terrible it is that they have to work. Well, the reason the store’s open and staffed is because there’s a customer base for it that shows up on those days, dude! If it’s so damn terrible don’t go to the store!

    2. A Simple Narwhal*

      Ugh I still remember so clearly how when I was laid off years ago, my boss wanted me to comfort her. She spent most of the meeting in tears going on and on about how this wasn’t her call, she didn’t want this, how terrible it was, etc. She followed me down the hall and kept going on and on about how upset she was by this, standing over me wringing her hands and crying as I packed up my desk.

      Everything about this performance screamed “just tell me it’s ok! tell me I’m not a bad person! acknowledge my suffering in this too!”, and as much of a people-pleaser as I was back then, I didn’t for a second consider giving her the satisfaction, I just stared at her and said nothing.

      She wasn’t an exec by any means, but it was definitely out of touch. I’m sure it sucked for her, but I’m fairly certain that it sucked more for me, the one who actually lost their job.

    3. anotherfan*

      i wonder if he was related to the doctor who had to confirm my miscarriage. all he talked about was how hard it was for him to deliver such bad news, and he’d had several in the past week!

      1. Walk on the Left Side*

        i can’t even imagine this. i am so, so sorry you had to have that experience. i like to think if someone had been like that when they were confirming mine, i would’ve said something to call them out but…trauma in the moment is so weird, who knows how my brain would’ve responded. that’s just such a shitty thing for a doctor to do to a patient. :(

    4. Orora*

      Yeah, I’m in HR and that is the first rule of layoffs: Do not discuss your feelings about them with the person being laid off. If you still have a job at the end of the day, your day was better than theirs was. They do not care about your sad fee fees.

      Doing layoffs sucks, no question. It can take a toll on you when you have to be the hammer for an employee that is doing a good job. But save that discussion for your boss, therapist or other HR colleagues.

    5. Distracted Librarian*

      Oof. I’ve had to lay people off, and it’s extremely painful – but not nearly as painful as being laid off, which is why I shed my tears in private and cried to my husband about it at the end of the day. With employees, I tried to express genuine sympathy and care but kept myself together.

      1. Csethiro Ceredin*

        Exactly!

        Whenever I’ve had to fire or lay off anyone, I arrange a dinner date for that day with my friend. I know I will just go home and brood if I don’t pre-plan, but I also know I will feel better afterwards.

        I sure as heck don’t complain to the person who’s being let go!

      2. goddessoftransitory*

        See, that’s professional behavior! Part of being a good manager or exec is keeping a lid on your own emotions when having to deliver bad news and not making the person receiving it have to suddenly comfort you.

    6. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

      I’ve also had to lay people off, and been very upset about it, but at least I kept my feelings from interfering with delivering the message as quickly and sympathetically as possible. Then the chief engineer (may his memory forever be blessed) took me into his office, shut the door and handed me the Kleenex. I was younger and much more naive then, but even then I knew better than to make the layoff about ME.

    7. allathian*

      Not quite as bad, but one former manager who was a very touchy-feely person and really shouldn’t have been a manager at all because she hated it when her reports disliked her decisions, most of which were ones that the upper management had imposed on her. When we had a performance review and there was no budget for raises, I really resented having to manage her feeling disappointed over not being able to give me a raise instead of being allowed to simply sit with my disappointment for a while. And then I was supposed to perform happiness about all the free trainings I could do during my working hours in lieu of a raise, when I had enough work on my plate already. Sure, free trainings are fine, but they don’t compensate for the lack of a raise.

      The next year, when I knew going in that I wouldn’t get a raise, I pre-empted her by saying that I realized there was no budget for any raises and that I’m sure she would’ve given me a raise if my performance merited one and she had the budget for it, and she said that my performance would’ve merited a raise but there was unfortunately no budget for it.

      I was glad when she quit being a manager because I really resented having to manage her feelings.

  18. Less Bread More Taxes*

    This is nothing mindblowing, but during an all-hands two years ago where we were told we were being brought back to the office, our entire executive team – like eight people – all joined the call from their homes. Not a single one was in the office for their big announcement.

    1. Green Goose*

      Argh! That unearthed a memory of something similar at ours. One of the few remote employees was making snarky comments about people not wanting to go back to the office and it was interesting that she did not offer to work from the office that was a 20 minute drive from her home but judged others for not wanting to.

    2. WS*

      This happened to my brother. He was already planning to quit at the end of the month for other reasons, so he said, “Oh good, so we’ll see you here too?”

      Sudden silence. The next day he was offered a severance package which was about three months’ salary, much more than he would have got if he’d quit, so he happily took it.

  19. Chelle*

    Our CEO took time at an all-staff meeting (>10k people) to tell employees to put start times in the subject line of meeting invites, because that’s how he prefers to manage his calendar. Apparently it’s not sufficient that the meeting invite will be over specific blocks on the schedule in the first place? It was just framed as “when you’re scheduling meetings, do X,” too, not “when you’re scheduling meetings *with me*”. It was summarily ignored.

    1. Charlotte Lucas*

      I have a lot of Thoughts about poorly executed subject lines and crappy meeting invitations. I didn’t even know this needed to be on the list until today.

    2. CheeseHead*

      I had a CEO who would take time at all-staff meetings (~10k people) to talk about whatever was on her mind. It was usually had something to do with the business, but was delivered as a bunch of non-sequiturs. She’d heard some people were stealing food from the cafeteria. Did we know Chinese students did better on standardized math tests than American students? Customers didn’t like the how plain the software looked and wanted more color (off-the-cuff reversing a major company project she’d initiated by complaining about all the color).

      1. Distracted Librarian*

        This sounds like a certain politician I know of. Leaders should not be spewing out stream of consciousness to a captive audience.

        1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

          I cannot listen to that certain politician — a friend described his speaking style as “word salad with Nazi dressing.”

          1. Elizabeth West*

            Randy Rainbow speeds up the audio so he sounds like a chipmunk.

            I wonder if there’s a setting or add-in on Teams that will do this for video calls, so if you’re forced to listen to a CEO being oblivious, you can at least entertain yourself.

    3. Hoobert Heever*

      The CEO of our division just had an all-hands meeting, where we had to play trivia about her. Vote on where she was born, how many coffees she drank per day, and which netflix shows she binged. Twenty minutes of that, with thousands of employees. One of the most tone deaf and expensive meetings I’ve ever been too, especially since there was nothing about our business strategy or results.

      1. Anon for this*

        I used to work at a place where the CEO would come into an all hands meeting with flashing lights and loud music playing (Rocky theme song maybe? I forget) and all the employees were supposed to applaud and cheer.

      2. Artemesia*

        The music and cheers I can imagine — gross, but I can imagine it. but the trivia thing? How can someone that narcissistic function professionally. It would not be accepted in a novel — too far fetched.

    4. sir pancake*

      Ahaha Chelle, I think we work at the same place… The fact that this has been doubled-down on in subsequent staff meetings also cracks me up.

  20. Swiss Army Them*

    This is maybe more bizarre than crass, but still.

    The last company I worked for had a round of massive, out-of-nowhere layoffs. They were handed incredibly badly, announced via email, and it came only weeks after we were told that the company was doing “amazingly.” At the end of a tense Zoom meeting, in which lower-level employees basically interrogated the higher-ups about where the layoffs came from, why we were given no warning, why they chose to do them over email, and what the future of the company looked like, the COO inexplicably decided to call out one of the middle managers and make small talk about her children. She mentioned that her kids were playing outside, and the COO asked if she was worried that her kids would be kidnapped from her yard. The manager blinked and said no, she was in a pretty safe neighborhood, so no, she wasn’t worried. The (older, male) COO then, in what I think was an attempt at a joke, said that she was someone who had to worry about kidnapping because her daughters were so cute. “After all,” he said, chuckling, clearly proud of himself for finding a joke to end this long and miserable meeting with, “no one’s going to try and kidnap an ugly kid!”

    So not only did we learn that our friends were laid off, our jobs may be at risk, our bosses were willing to lay us off over email, AND the whole company was in dire financial straits – we also learned the COO thought our kids were ugly if no one had tried to kidnap them yet.

      1. Swiss Army Them*

        yeah, writing it out, he sounds like a serial killer lmao. it didn’t come across that way in the moment, though; he was truly a well-meaning, if bumbling and incompetent, guy lol. he was awkward but not threatening in any way

  21. Yikes*

    This happened to a friend…their company did layoffs (fairly unexpectedly) the day before the company’s Halloween party. Someone in senior leadership showed up the next day wearing a Halloween-themed shirt that said something to the effect of “I’m a witch.” Maybe not out of touch, but deeply tone-deaf.

    1. Halloween*

      At my previous company, they did layoffs/reorg on Halloween, with some people in costume for the meeting.

      1. Galadriel's Garden*

        Literally a scene from The Office, and man is it brutal to know it happened in real life too.

    2. CrazyCatWriter*

      This happened in my twenties. The company had a half-day on Christmas Eve, with a Christmas party after. Before going into the room for the party, my supervisor pulled me aside to let me know I was being laid off. It wasn’t just me; this happened to about twenty, twenty-five people. The party was downright funereal, as we’re standing around shellshocked and processing this.

      At Christmas dinner the next day with my family, my sister asked me when I went back to work after Christmas. “I don’t,” I said. “I was laid off yesterday.” Cast a funereal pall over Christmas dinner, too.

      1. Nack*

        Wow… this one takes the cake for me. That’s the kind of plot you write in an over-the-top unbelievable story about a terrible boss.

        1. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

          And after the layoff, she stayed in her quaint hometown, where she met the handsome owner of the Christmas tree farm and his adorable but naughty golden retriever …

      2. Charlotte Lucas*

        The debate on whether it is worse to lay people off at the beginning or end of the day/week is settled. It’s officially the middle of Christmas Eve before the company party.

        1. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

          I got my layoff on the 15th of December. It was still COVID and it was lunchtime, so I got to process it all while I was in my car driving to pick up my lunch.

          Happy happy joy joy.

        2. Hey there*

          That’s for sure. Meanwhile, there’s no way I’d attend that damn party. Like, oh, ok well bye-eeeee!

          1. MigraineMonth*

            If I just got laid off, I’m eating well and taking home all the leftovers that I can. I don’t know when I’ll be employed again!

      3. Wolf*

        I was once laid off on the day of the Christmas party, but at least it wasn’t on Christmas Eve.
        It was awkward enough to spend the afternoon with smalltalk of our plans for next year, and having to answer “I won’t be there for that project anymore” to all of them.

    3. mh_ccl*

      We lost our funding and knew for a few months that our entire Staff was going to be laid off. During this “not yet announced but we all know it” period, we had our Halloween potluck. I sewed myself a simple costume. Of all people, the director chose to call me out during his speech and ask me what I was dressed up as. I sat there, in my simple pink dress, and said, “I’m a pink slip, Frank.” A colleague later told me I must have balls of steel to say that.

  22. Snarkus Aurelius*

    At one of my first jobs out of college, the CEO was notoriously cheap. He certainly didn’t live that lifestyle, but he was a penny pincher everywhere else. Some highlights:

    *We had our own self-administered health plan because it was cheaper. The CEO refused to pay for anything that was preventative. When my coworker got a UTI, the lab work and RX were declined unless she could prove she was septic. Breast exams weren’t covered at an annual OBGYN visit because “women can do that themselves for free.” All the female employees realized that we could go to our local Planned Parenthood for better health care because they had a sliding scale. When we brought up our concerns, the CEO said he had no issue with the health plan because everything he needed was covered.

    *Starting salaries for recent undergraduates couldn’t exceed $30,000/year in 2001. That meant all of us were on very tight budgets. The CEO chronically complained to HR that we weren’t dressed professional enough and we needed personal shoppers because that’s what his wife did. (Filene’s Basement, TJMaxx, and Ross Dress for Less were all we could afford.)

    *The CEO required the receptionist position to have a college degree, despite the role not needing one, and refused to pay more than $27,000/year. When one receptionist presented her case for a $5K raise, he refused to budget. So she got a better job at one of our member companies for $10,000 more. We had to hire receptionists every 1-2 years because of that salary. He didn’t care “because the rate has always been too high since [he] started” in the late 1980s.

    *The CEO regularly lectured the low-paying staff about buying real estate as an investment. He said it was super easy because he got money from his family to do it and it paid off for him. If we buy now, we’ll have a great investment in 20-30 years.

    I still hate that guy today.

    1. Lisa B*

      [Breast exams weren’t covered at an annual OBGYN visit because “women can do that themselves for free.”]

      FLAMES. FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE.

      1. Hannah Lee*

        Oh, the things that poorly managed “self-funded” “self-administered” health plans get up to.

        A couple I know both worked for years at a hospital – Hospital A He got diagnosed with a very scary cancer. Fortunately, not far from them there was an excellent cancer treatment facility – Hospital B with a whole program, extensive expertise on treating that particular cancer. That treatment was only moderately invasive (small incision, but still full excising of the identified tumor, affected lymph nodes), would require him to take about a week off from work had had fees that were not much higher than Hospital A’s. Hospital A had several oncologists, none of whom had particular good reputations … the main ones were on the verge of retirement (and from their reputations, probably should have retired already) and hadn’t updated their treatment protocols in years. The treatment plan Hospital A came up with would require a long torso incision, and had follow up that was using a dated chemo protocol that didn’t have the good result % as the other hospital’s approach. Hospital A’s other clinicians often referred their oncology patients to Hospital B (they were in sister networks that collaborated all the time.)
        But it was a bit cheaper for Hospital A to cover the treatment in-house at their own facility, plus it was revenue for them. So their *super* *special* review board, reviewing cases (with the patient’s name redacted) to approve/deny coverage, denied the treatment at Hospital B, insisting they’d only cover in-house treatment.

        My friends were unhappy, tried to figure out if they could fund the better treatment on their own (and couldn’t afford it) so made plans for the approved treatment since something had to be done quickly. Guy went to his boss to give him a head’s up about needing 6-8 weeks medical leave, his wife also started arranging time off, since she’d be his caregiver. Word got back to the review board, and the CEO called a special meeting of the review board with the couple “We didn’t realize it was YOU when we denied it, of course we’ll cover the treatment with the clinically proven better prognosis.” While the couple were glad the decision was reversed, they were horrified that apparently the supposedly clinically-guided and objective review board valued *some* employee’s lives more than others, was prioritizing bean-counting, and figured having that particular couple be able to keep doing their jobs was worth the incremental cost of the Hospital B treatment.

        Years later, the surgery was successful, guy has been cancer free for 8 years, and both he and his wife no longer work at that hospital with the warped values. But yikes! How many employees of that hospital were stuck with sub-par care and suffered the consequences.

        1. Grenelda Thurber*

          I feel really naïve for believing this stuff like this didn’t happen in real life, only in made-for-TV movies. This turns my stomach.

      1. Snarkus Aurelius*

        It’s why I don’t find the episode about the health plan all that funny. I feel like I lived it.

    2. Elizabeth West*

      I’m sorry; I went rage-blind after reading the health one and couldn’t go any further.
      >:( >:( >:(

  23. Cyndi*

    I used to work in a really hypercontrolling mail processing facility that was obsessed with security theater. (I feel like whenever I answer an “ask the readers” post it’s always about that job.) It was a casual workplace but we were specifically banned from wearing boots above the ankle, anything with a hood, or skirts above the knee. Once I came to work wearing a nice cozy fleece-lined vest with a wide collar and my manager made me take it off because it was…too much like a hood? Or something? I once got sent home to change because she thought my skirt was a couple inches too short. I was thirty years old and this was a non-public-facing job where I sat down all day.

    Anyway, we once all had to stop work for a floor meeting, where a woman several management levels up from us came on the floor and lectured all hundred-odd of us–mostly women, mostly dressed in jeans and sneakers and t-shirts–about how we had to stop “dressing like we were out at the club.”

    Folks, she was wearing a suit with a mid-thigh-length skirt and knee-high boots.

    1. Seal*

      Early in my career I worked in a beautiful historic university library building that didn’t have air conditioning, like many of the older buildings on campus at the time. During the summer, temperatures inside the building were consistently in the mid to upper 80s but just under what OSHA considered dangerous. Most of the windows could be opened, but those in the big reading rooms with 20-foot ceilings in particular didn’t open far enough to generate a cross breeze. Hugh floor fans ran constantly, which helped, and everyone had a personal fan at their desk. People that worked in the building dressed accordingly; most summer wardrobes included things like shorts (walking shorts were in style then), sundresses, and sandals. Things were more on the casual side of business casual but still work-appropriate and definitely influenced by the lack of air conditioning.

      At one point, there was a sudden interest in updating the libraries’ employee handbook and a committee was formed. A certain and very vocal faction of the committee wanted to add a clause to the dress code that prohibited staff members, including student workers, from wearing shorts to work. It goes without saying that none of them had ever worked in our building in the summer. When others pointed out this was impractical for our building, they doubled down and started making wild accusations about how incompetent the staff in our building was and how disrespectful we were to staff in the other libraries and how unprofessional we looked in “gym clothes”. I believe either the dean of libraries or an associate dean finally had to step in to make them back off. The kicker is after the handbook was updated (with no mention of shorts), a few members of the anti-shorts faction had to attend a meeting in our building during the summer. More than a few people overhead them complaining about how hot it was.

      The building finally got air conditioning after a major remodeling and renovation project. Ironically enough, the people who work there now regularly complain that the air conditioning is too cold.

  24. Tall Hobbit*

    This happened to my brother when he was a college student, so I don’t know if it counts, but: during his senior year in college, the school had an informational session about paying off student loans. He had a few friends in attendance with him who had over $100k in student loan debt and were going into fields with fairly low pay. Before the program started, they had a rep from the school’s development office talk about how the school relies on alumni giving and they should start thinking about how they want to give to the school after they graduate.

    It was not received well.

    1. Snarkus Aurelius*

      That happened at my college graduation! The university president went on and on about donating, and the booing got louder and louder.

      I worked in the catering service, and I’ll never donate because the alumni association was so awful to the catering staff.

      1. Lab Boss*

        Living in a college town and volunteering with students, I’m constantly astonished at how many people who live and work right next to the students forget that undergrads are actual human beings.

        1. Strive to Excel*

          I recently discovered that one of the better paid public employees in my state is the state college’s business school dean. And I honestly really can’t be bothered about it because the man is one of the cooler professors I had. Always took time in his schedule to teach the undergraduate classes, especially the basic accounting ones. Never any shenanigans with making students jump through hoops. Extremely supportive of ADA-friendly classrooms – our college probably had some of the least struggle with going remote during COVID because they’d invested ahead of time in electronic systems.

          I still think it’s a silly amount of money to pay anyone out of taxpayer funds. But if anyone’s getting it I’m glad it’s him. I wish more university staff acted that way.

      2. RLC*

        Alumni associations really, really need to think about how they communicate with new alumni.
        As a new graduate, I sent a donation (personal check) to alumni association. Representative called me to let me know that “your bank misspelled your name when they printed your checks” and that I needed to fix that. Huh? Checks look fine to me. Representative: “you are an engineering graduate and your checks show a woman’s name so it is obviously wrong”
        Me: “checks are correct and yes I am a woman”
        Representative: “you graduated in engineering, how can you possibly be a woman?”
        I did report the representative to their boss, who happened to be the advisor for a women’s academic group on campus, a group which I was a member of.

        1. Overthinking It*

          omg, what year was this?! In fairness to the alumni association, they often hire students, so maybe it was an idiot undergrad who hadn’t had time to learn that he hasn’t experienced the full range of life in his 19 years living in Podunkville (or the insular gated community of Podunk Landing, or whatever.)

          1. RLC*

            1984. I noted to their boss (a truly lovely person) that Representative needs to be trained not to argue such things with alumni. She was mortified and assured me that training would occur.

          1. RLC*

            Ok, now must share a postscript:
            In 2011, contacted alumni association to change last name from “name at graduation” to “married name”. Now my alumni correspondence is addressed to “Mr and Mrs (Husband Firstname) (Husband Lastname)”
            Husband is not an alumnus of this uni.

            1. Grenelda Thurber*

              That’s lovely. So modern and forward-thinking. Now you don’t even have a name. You’re just the “and Mrs” in the middle of your husbands name.

            2. Cisco kid*

              Ugh I hate that! I work at a small private university and we very specifically list out everyone’s full name on communications. Mr First Name Last Name and Mrs. First Name Last Name. I am my own person, thank you.

      3. WeirdChemist*

        I worked at my school’s on-campus bookstore, and we frequently got request from alumni to get taken off of the mailing list for store catalogs and what not. The problem was that the alumni association would go behind our backs to add back everyone we removed from the mailing list (the catalog had a page soliciting alumni donations), meaning that we kept having to field angry calls from customers about still receiving mail. No matter what we would do or how many times we asked, the alumni association would keep re-adding everyone to the mailing list (and were hella rude every time we talked to them). We eventually just started telling customers to directly contact the alumni association with their complaints. I also refuse to donate because of how rude they were!

    2. Rex Libris*

      Sounds typical. I finished grad school around 20 years ago, and to this day the only communication I ever get from the college is an annual postcard that basically says “Happy Birthday! Give us money.”

      1. One Million Velociraptors*

        I received fundraising calls from the alumni office days after I graduated, with no job lined up and about $300 to my name. I told the poor person on the other side that I’d consider donating once my actual diploma arrived in the mail, since the school had to give out empty cases at graduation when some sort of delay meant they wouldn’t arrive in time for the ceremony.

        1. Coverage Associate*

          I pledged a whole 10% of my expected salary upon graduation from law school. 10% of 0. I still don’t have my diploma because I skipped graduation and never requested it.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          My college had a “capstone project” that you can’t get your diploma without. I have a friend (later diagnosed with ADHD) who completed all their coursework but not the giant project, so they’re essentially “all but dissertation” as an undergraduate, and so far as I can tell the college hasn’t taken any steps to help them get their diploma. Since paying for 4 years of private college and then not receiving a degree doesn’t set you up in life, this friend is struggling financially.

          Doesn’t stop the alumni association from asking them for donations so that others can experience the same “advantages of a world class education” they got.

          1. Frieda*

            That’s such crap. It might be possible for your friend to still complete the course, or to arrange to transfer in a course from another school – theoretically, the school should be interested in figuring out a plan since it is a low-effort way to increase their overall graduation rates.

            Capstones are a real thing that are often important to the degree, but the school should absolutely have a structure so that students don’t get stuck without a degree because of the one required course.

            1. Artemesia*

              We had a special degree for people who did not complete the semester long internship (with accompanying projects and seminars). Sometimes you could not put someone in the field; sometimes they beclowned themselves and were dismissed from the internship; sometimes students got pregnant and were not in a position to be able to take it on. So there was a generalist degree that they could be awarded without completing this but with sufficient hours and meeting other requirements.

          2. Elizabeth West*

            I don’t know if this would help, but I switched majors from criminal justice to English. I finished the English degree (including the capstone paper) but I lacked one statistics class from getting a double bachelor’s with the crim degree. As I’ve mentioned, I have severe dyscalculia and there was no way I would have passed that course.

            The school let me take it as an associate degree. I wonder if she could do this? It might be worth checking. I know it’s not the same as a bachelor’s, but if she’s not able to go back and finish or transfer anything in as Frieda suggested, it’s better than nothing.

        3. WFHomer Simpson*

          I was once the poor person making these ill-advised calls. Students at my university who received scholarships were required to volunteer for fundraising a certain number of hours each year in order to keep receiving our scholarships. I didn’t have any choice over who I was calling and inevitably got a few recent grads who were still unemployed or working low-paying jobs. So incredibly awkward for everyone. But not as awkward as calling older alumni only to end up talking to the spouse because said alumni was deceased. Or my personal favorite, an older alum who apparently had severe dementia and had wandered away from home a week prior and hadn’t been seen since. My call asking for money was definitely not something the sobbing wife was up for that day. Just awful.

          1. WFHomer Simpson*

            Forgot to mention that I was in school from 2007-2012, so I was making a lot of these calls in the middle of the great recession. Yeah, definitely a great idea to ask new grads for money in the midst of a terrible economy.

            1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

              A couple of my friends made these calls for their work-study requirement and it was miserable. At least one switched to the cafeteria, and our food was gross! I don’t actually donate to the universities I attended because I save my limited donation budget for other causes (and they seem to be doing quite well without me). But I’m always nice to the callers, particularly if they sound really young.

      2. A perfectly normal-size space bird*

        I never graduated from my first college (got 3.5 years in, had to take time off, eventually went back to college elsewhere). Despite not having attended since the 20th century, I’ve been receiving the donation requests ever since. Since then I’ve moved a dozen times across three different time zones and changed my name. I’ve never once updated my info with them, repeatedly have asked for them to stop, and yet somehow I still get a birthday card that asks for a donation.

        At least the school I did graduate from would send recipes with the birthday card donation requests.

      3. Artemesia*

        I had some professional successes including national awards in my field and yet my alumni magazine and association never printed any of them or acknowledged any of them but they could track me down through 6 different states for money.

    3. Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender*

      Something like this happened at my law school. My class was among those graduating at the height of the recession. Our on campus interview (OCI) season for hundreds of graduating students had a grand total of two employers (the email *enthusiastically* hyping OCI only to later reveal only two employers prompted one classmate to send a reply that just said, “Is this a joke?”)

      The graduating class was staring down mortgage-sized debt to pay off and almost zero employment prospects. Anxiety was HIGH. The fundraising office somehow decided that the same week as financial aid exit counseling (where graduating students learned about the student loan repayment options they had, which was fun when you had no way to make the actual payments) would be a GREAT time to solicit for a “class gift,” meaning the graduating class would make commitments to donate money back to the school. They even planned a festive event for this!

      It was so breathtakingly tone deaf that I have staunchly refused to ever donate to the school.

      1. Bethany*

        I would consider paying a small sum to see the stats on which classes are the least profitable for schools. I hypothesize that at schools where they just pushed the graduates to pay up without regard for hard times, the rates of donations will always be low.

    4. Pikachu*

      My college online bookstore has regular old College University license plate frames for $19.99.

      The College University Alumni version is $49.99.

      :|

      1. Ally McBeal*

        Ha! My mother drives around with a cheap plastic license plate frame from my alma mater, which she did not go to, so she can brag about the great university her daughter got into. I found this weird until I met a man who proudly wore the t-shirts and flew the flags of his kids’ alma maters. I guess the difference is that he actually liked his kids, whereas my mother mostly just wants the clout.

        I paid more — hopefully not $50 but it’s entirely possible — for the pewter alumni frame and have no regrets.

    5. Nativefloridian*

      I worked for a (private, expensive) college once, they were a couple of times this happened. The one I was there for was suggesting automatic payroll deductions. It was received about as well as you’d expect.

      But one of my coworkers told me about an email she’d received previously saying that it didn’t look good for someone who was both an alumni and an employee to not donate something back to the school. She replied with ‘You can look up how recently I graduated, you know how much tuition costs, and you know how much you pay me.’ before effectively telling them to pound sand.

      1. CorruptedbyCoffee*

        I’ll never forget when my bosses boss told me all employees would be donating part of their paycheck to the org through payroll deduction. I worked for a small museum in a major city, making …I think it was $7 an hour, getting 11-20 hours a week. They sent out paperwork to everyone with amounts preselected with how much I would be donating. It sure was nice of the museum director to decide how much her desk clerk would be giving her.

    6. Hey Nonny Mouse*

      My undergrad asked my mom for a parent donation during my FIRST SEMESTER. She told them off.

      My grad school had the decency to wait until I graduated before asking for a donation. I told them point blank that I could not afford to donate. (My student job had ended upon graduating, so I was unemployed.)

      1. Seal*

        My graduate school did the same to me my first semester. I was tempted to thank them for assuming I’d graduate one day.

    7. me*

      Lol I had a conversation with a student who called looking for donations in which I explained that due to budget cuts to the “arts” so they could fund the “sciences” part of the “arts and sciences,” my department was significantly cut right before I graduated and my classes had to be arranged so I could graduate with my degree. The student suggested I donate money for students to study abroad (at other institutions) so they could learn what my school was supposed to teach.

    8. JS*

      i work at my alma mater, who is way behind in paying us market rate. I laugh my ass off anytime I get a request for an alumni donation.

      1. Seal*

        I got bullied and eventually forced out of my last university job, yet their alumni association continued to send me requests for donations for at least a year. None of my degrees are from that particular university, although I did consider giving them my two cents on more than one occasion.

    9. BigLawEx*

      this happened at my undergrad *and* law school. I glibly said I’d consider it after I paid off my loans. Some years later both called and asked if I’d paid off my loans and would I be willing to donate. I was then permanently removed from any alumnae/i advancement requests. Which as I type this I realize they’ve honored. It’s been 30 years without a single solicitation.

    10. Elizabeth West*

      I went to a private college and had to call the alumni office and tell them not to send me any more donation letters after I lost my job. I added that in fact, they should probably just never send me anything ever again, since I still had so much debt from going there thanks to the ever-mounting usurious interest. The woman on the phone sounded young, like a student worker, and she sighed and said, “I hear you.”

    11. goddessoftransitory*

      My college couldn’t find me for a reunion invitation, but had no trouble tracking me down to solicit donations.

      I gave them precisely what they gave me.

    12. MC74*

      After I graduated law school, my first job was in a small city on the other side of the state where I attended law school, just a few miles from the state line. The bordering state is mostly rural with only law school. Since the firm I worked at had clients in that state, I became a member of its bar. Low and behold, I started getting solicited for donation from that state’s law school. At the time, I had (for that time) a significant amount of debt and I told them that if I am not able to give to my alma maters, why would I give to a school that I have never even visited. After about 15 years of soliciting me, they finally gave up.

    13. Quinalla*

      Oh, this reminds me of my sorority house from college sending out the year after I graduated asked for donations. The only problem? The board had completely mismanaged $$ and decides to close the house at the end of my junior year. They made this decision after most everyone had housing nailed down, so we all scrambled to find housing for the next school year. They then reopened the house the next year (which they told us they wouldn’t be able to do) and I also knew since I was one of the house council members on the board that they knew they could get money from our alumnae, but they weren’t going to ask until they closed the house as they didn’t like the current members – yes they said this in a meeting I was in. Then had the audacity to ask us for $$. The email I sent in response to this request was livid and they did not contact me again.

  25. anon for this*

    Not sure if this quite applies, but I once had a manager finish out an absolutely grueling year by telling us that they had been deliberately over-promising on all our projects (and thus over-working us)……. because if we showed the board how much we could do on such a small budget, then surely they would want to give us more money, since we’ve proved we can deliver!

    In a shocking turn of events, the board in fact assumed that a team that was already exceeding its goals was not in need of a budget increase.

    1. Cathie from Canada*

      On a side note, I remember one AudioVisual Dept head who told me he wanted to mess up the AV at a meeting I was organizing because it would demonstrate to the university leadership that his department needed more staff.
      Uh, no…

    2. learnedthehardway*

      Ooh – I had a client I was on contract with over-promise results to their client. I had flat out told them that they would NOT get what they were asking me for in the time period they had budgeted, and then they went and specifically told their client (in front of me) that they were guaranteeing the work would be done. Afterwards, they turned to me and said, “Well, now you have to deliver!!”

      They were SHOCKED when they got the bill for my services – it was triple what they had expected, but I pointed out that not only had I warned them that what they were asking was impossible, but that I had pulled it off by working overtime for a month. Pay up or I quit.

  26. Not That Kind of Doctor*

    Mine is similar to the OP. My employer was acquired, and within a year there was a round of layoffs that didn’t affect my unit but hit some others in our division pretty hard. The senior executive in charge of the division sent a “this is very hard for all of us” email and attached soothing sunset on the water photos from his vacation pretty much explicitly so we’d have something happier to contemplate. Teams blew UP, and my boss, who takes no crap and minces no words, reportedly told him he’d better never do anything like that again.

  27. Nameless*

    The president of the org took us for happy hour and cried, physical tears, that their Christmas gift to their parents that year was beginning to pay back their student loans that their parents had been paying for 20 years because they were finally financially stable enough to pay them back.

    The president earned 250k per our financial reporting. This was at a table of people earning 50-70k a year.

    1. Strive to Excel*

      If someone is making 250k a year and has only just become financially stable to pay off their student debt, I’m highly dubious of their ability to stick to anything remotely resembling a budget. Or sensible COL.

      1. Ally McBeal*

        Yeah this is one of those situations where you deeply hope that the CEO also founded the company as a startup and that’s why his family was covering his loans, because I don’t know how you pass a background/financial check to become a CEO without everyone learning how much of a financial slacker you are in your personal life. Most people I know started paying their loans while making $35k/year. I’m fortunate that my family was so poor that I qualified for grants instead of loans, so I graduated with only ~$5k in debt, and that still took me 5 years to pay off.

    2. Observer*

      The president earned 250k per our financial reporting.

      So a guy earning that kind of money lets his parents pay off his loans for 20 years?! And he thinks that he’s giving his parents a *gift* for finally taking on the responsibility for his own debts?!

      This guy is not just “out of touch”. He’s a full blown self centered narcissist (used in teh colloquial sense.)

    3. Gumby*

      Ugh. I started paying off my own student loans when I was earning $35k/year. In the SF Bay Area around 2000. Not a penny from my parents who didn’t have the money either. (How you ask? I had 5 roommates and we referred to our landlord as a slumlord for a reason. Also I biked or walked where I needed to go. The bus was a luxury on rare occasions when I needed to get to Target.) Thankfully my salary increased quickly-ish to about $60k.

      $250k before you are financially stable enough???? This is a deeply, deeply out of touch person. I am also side-eying the 20 years on student loans thing. Not as a general rule, I know lots of people are in that situation. But if you are earning $250k/year? Like – you know that it is possible to pay more than the minimums, right???

    1. Maleficent2026*

      SAME. If I hear one more person complain about how Federal employees just sit around and do nothing all day, I’m gonna develop an eye twitch.

      1. Mother of Panthers*

        I’m so grateful for the work you all do (former public employee here). I hope you all dig in and practice many acts of malicious compliance.

      2. Ally McBeal*

        Or, like, “this plane crashed because… DEI??” instead of “this plane crashed because Congress has refused multiple times to increase ATC’s budget so it isn’t desperately underfunded and understaffed.” ATC leadership must be beside themselves today.

        1. goddessoftransitory*

          I could not BELIEVE that “brown people caused the crash” crap, although I don’t know why I can’t.

    2. Technical Writer*

      I work for the federal government as well. I found out earlier this week that the databases my agency uses for background checks are currently no longer available for any sort of background investigation for people who work in law enforcement. (sorry I know it’s off topic but that shocked my division director for a good minute)

    3. All things considered, I'd rather be a dragon*

      Yep. Our new CEO thinks we should all quit our jobs and go do something useful for once. Yesterday’s email pretended to be tactful by “encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.” From a guy known for multiple bankruptcies.

  28. Alex*

    The pandemic was ripe for this sort of thing! In 2020 I was working at a place with a VERY unpopular leader, who decided to pass the pandemic by renting a luxurious cabin in the mountains for her family (she had college aged kids who were normally away). Every all staff meeting she would dial in with the giant stone fireplace in the background and talk about how wonderful it was to spend this precious time with her family and luxuriating in nature.

    You can imagine how well this went over with the rest of the staff, many of whom were separated from their family and friends, had sick loved ones, etc. Most of us did NOT have the resources to relocate to a luxury vacation rental!

    1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

      During the pandemic, the big corp I worked for was headed up by a woman who apparently owned a ranch in Wyoming. Corporate headquarters was based in another state, so I didn’t know- or care- how often she wasn’t in the office. One day, an exec on a conference call breezily said, “It’s lovely that she’s so engaged and only goes to her ranch one week a month!” I don’t know- being gone from your headquarters 25% of the time seemed like a lot to me, but then again, I was living in a ranch house in a different state, with elderly parents, hoping none of us got Covid and died, so maybe my perspective was a bit different.

    2. eee4444*

      oh man I had a lot of these during the pandemic. like, height of lockdown, late spring of 2020, a member senior staff asks in a ‘morale building’ (to be fair, optional) meeting ‘what are you guys’s summer vacation plans?’ silence. me: probably just staying in my apartment! *silently thinking: and hoping i don’t die*
      her: oh boring. is nobody traveling?
      the other junior staff: no, just…..staying in our apartments
      her: well MY family *describes to us her travel plans with her family*.

    3. My Boss is Dumber than Yours*

      I had a senior coworker who kept trying to “keep positive” during COVID lockdown by reminding everyone that “family isn’t canceled!” Except, my spouse and I lived on the opposite side of the country from everyone else in our family, had put off seeing them the previous year because we were all saving for a once-in-lifetime family trip together that was now cancelled…oh and had a new baby who no one could see or help with. I finally snapped and hit reply-all to her upteenth email and she had the good sense to publicly apologize.

    4. goddessoftransitory*

      “All alone in the remote wilderness, you say? So, if, perchance, a bunch of hungry bears got into your cabin one night no one might know for weeks? What’s the turnoff to get there, again? No reason.”

  29. Maleficent2026*

    I’m a US federal employee. Soooo, the current US administration. I think that’s all I need to say about that…

    1. A Significant Tree*

      And really, all we have to do is wait a minute for the next example of crass, out of touch, wrong-audience-for-this commentary… gonna be a long couple of years.

      1. Snark*

        This morning, he sagely informed us all that the helicopter that flew in front of the airliner that crashed last night could have gone up or down or turned to avoid the collision. Glad we have that penetrating analysis months before the NTSB report comes out.

        1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

          Also, DEI apparently caused the crash. DEI and Biden.

          Every time our far-from-fearless “leader” speaks about anything, I think of the older homeless man who would stand outside my old apartment building and give lectures — the one I remember best was about how the atom bomb was actually created by Milton Hershey (the chocolate baron) and there was a top secret bomb lab at Hershey Park. He was a bit strident, but not cruel…and he didn’t have the nuclear codes.

          1. Gumble in Transportation Department*

            And he had the ever living gall to go after Pete Buttigieg of all people. Shows who he is scared of. *mutters* No one goes after Mayor Pete *mutters*

  30. AnonFed*

    I mean, I work for the feds. We are being continually lectured about how none of us actually work during telework by someone who spends more time at his golf course and private club than at the office (which is also, ironically at his home) . So that’s fun.

    1. Anon So I Don't Get Fired*

      I’m a Virginia state government employee. When Youngkin tried to take telework away from us because he was insistent we were screwing around, his appointees were always, always, always calling into virtual meetings from their homes. They never even tried to blur or change their backgrounds. I’m sure they didn’t care.

  31. Ferns*

    During Covid, my country was in extended lockdown. We had an all hands meeting intended to be a check-in on our welfare, where a senior staff member shared their tips on managing working remotely. Their tip was to keep their work items like headset in a little bag, so whichever room in the house they were working from, they could take the bag and be sure they had everything they needed with them. We had junior staff living in shared houses, working standing up over an ironing board because they didn’t have any private space other than their own tiny room, which was too small to even fit a table. Leaving work items in other rooms of our large homes was not something that was a cause for concern for most of us…

    1. Wolf*

      And on your break, why don’t you go for a workout in your home gym, or work on your tan in your private garden? (Best I could do was a yoga mat and a potted plant in my kitchen.)

  32. Sunflower*

    My boss is always saying they’re broke but go away on vacation at least 4 times a year, pay for their children’s needlessly expensive stuff, and brought a dog for over $1k.

    In the meantime, the rest of us are barely able to pay bills on the salary we’re paid. Ok, it is what it is and we’re all free to look for better paying jobs if we’re able, but don’t freaking say we’re all lucky to have jobs in this economy and keep going on and on that you’re broke when you make a six figure salary and brag how much you pay for your children’s activities and buy a $1k dog!

    1. Ann O'Nemity*

      My previous CEO was the same way – high salary and always complaining about being broke. Lived in a mansion, drove a Mercedes, multiple international vacations per year, vacation homes, housekeeping and lawn service, etc etc. Yet, she’d conveniently “forget” her wallet when it came time to pay at restaurants and coffee shops. She’d ask to borrow things from employees and never return them (e.g. never going to see that iPhone charging cable again). She’d bum rides off of employees to avoid door dings and parking fees. No shame taking money from employees that made a tenth of her salary! I later found out that she repeatedly took loans from her 401k and made other terrible financial decisions. Totally living outside her means and totally tone deaf about it.

  33. Mimi J.B.*

    Brand new chief executive ordered exec team to come to his house for meetings rather than meeting at offices. Real reason that became apparent? His new puppy couldn’t be alone all day. This dog was allowed to openly run around the home and jump up on all of us while we were trying to work and generally misbehave. It was a multi-day set of meetings. No one was warned in advance or asked about allergies or fear of dogs etc. This behavior was foreshadowing of how he ran the organization into the ground.

    1. amoeba*

      I mean, I have to admit that that sounds like my absolute dream! But yeah, certainly not something you should spring on people (or make anybody do who hasn’t expressed enthusiastic consent…)

  34. Pleasemadam*

    I just interviewed at a family-owned local crafts-based business. Everything about the job sounded great until we got to the wage: minimum wage to start, and their current highest-paid artisan is making a couple of dollars less than what an actual living wage would be in our area. So if I worked very hard and spent years learning this (very complex) craft I might someday…still be living in poverty while working full time. Meanwhile the owner had talked about his multiple international vacations per year, his new Tesla, his home in one of the city’s priciest areas.

  35. Clawfoot*

    In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t truly egregious, but we did get a very stern lecture about the importance of coming into the office and mandatory in-person attendance from an exec who was herself calling in remotely (to the mandatory, in-person meeting) because it was “too cold.”

  36. Beth**

    At a time when my public sector employer had already faced 2 years of pay freezes followed by 2 years of pay restraint, a new CEO arrived. In addition to his rather generous salary, he was offered a “housing allowance” that was almost 5 times the mean salary in the company. Because public sector, this was in the public domain. That same year, staff were offered an average salary increase of 2.5% (just below prevailing inflation) to cover cost of living and merit increases.

    1. Anon Just for This*

      I’m also in the public sector, working for a regional government. In late 2019, the government decided to pass a law capping wage increases at 1% a year for three years. (Unions ended up taking them to court over it and won). At the same time, various heads of organizations were making super high wages. Including some making well over a million dollars a year. And the politician in charge of the government inherited a family business and is independently wealthy.

      1. EllenD*

        In the UK there’s a well-known posh Department store and supermarket group that has a link between the salary of Chief Executive and the lowest paid employee. So that the Chief Exec’s salary can be no more than a set multiple of the lowest paid full-time employee – although the ratio is 75:1. If the multiple was less, it would be better.

  37. CrazyCatWriter*

    This unfolded over about three months.

    There was an all-hands meeting. No pay raises due to rising expenses and flat revenue, but the company would revisit in the spring.

    One of my colleagues said, “Well, this sucks, but at least they’ll make good in the spring.”

    I said, “What makes you think that? They won’t revisit in the spring. Something will come up. They just don’t want people bailing in Q4.”

    January rolled around. The CEO sent out an excited email. The company was acquiring another company in a completely different business. (It was a debt leverage buy; the revenue generated was supposed to pay off the acquisition loan.)

    That went over really well. Morale tanked. There was no revisitation of raises in the spring. But hey, it worked to keep people from bailing in Q4.

    This was a CEO who, for Christmas 2008, when the Great Recession was kicking into high gear, had a Christmas card made that was a cut-out hanging mobile of the places around the world he and his family had visited in 2008, with illustrations of cities and airplanes and his family. That went over well, too.

    1. Soft clothes*

      You buried the lede – that Christmas card story is the wildest thing in the comments section!

  38. Three Flowers*

    Our college president did the big winter vacation photos thing at a retreat recently.

    If I listed the many things the rank and file are doing right now to try to save the institution, without raises, after a bunch of layoffs last year and a massive voluntary exodus of longtime employees, I would probably reveal enough to get fired. A lot of our younger employees struggle to find affordable housing, let alone go on vacation. But hey, optimistic leadership!

    1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

      I will never understand why executives think we want to see their vacation photos. I don’t know these people! For some, it’s got to be a power play, rubbing it in our faces, right?

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        I don’t even want to see the vacation photos from most of my friends or family, unless they went somewhere really, really fascinating. And I love them!

      2. Aerin*

        I’m guessing for them it’s like “Oh, isn’t this place cool and interesting? Sharing my experience with everyone will make them feel like they were there!”

        Buddy, if I was really that interested, I can google it.

      3. CorruptedbyCoffee*

        I had a director who did this via long emails about her vacations. I think she thought it humanized her. Talking about vacation plans is what colleagues do. She failed to realize it just made her seem more out of touch.

  39. Cal*

    I was working at a nonprofit that serves people experiencing poverty. The CEO described herself as “single momming it this month.” She was married. Her husband was a high-earning lawyer and was working on a pretty intense case involving a lot of nights and weekends, so she wasn’t seeing him much. Single moms… do not have a husband bringing in a lot of money to the family. I just blinked at her, resisting the urge to say “I don’t think that means what you think it means.”

    1. Overthinking It*

      I don’t think youvshould have resisted that urge! It’s a wonderful sentence in that context, just nuetral and cryptic enough. . .but she can puzzled it out if she trys. Also, if she asks you to explain, well, the answer she gets is on her.

    2. Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk*

      I mean…I will say I’m “single parenting” one night or another when my wife is busy, but it’s always in an apologetic way in the context of “Can someone give my kid a ride home from practice so I can do bedtime with his little brother?” I wouldn’t complain about it, and I certainly wouldn’t do it in that context.

      1. Ally McBeal*

        Can I suggest substituting “parenting solo” for “single parenting”? Single parents can be (rightfully) really sensitive about married people co-opting the term.

      2. DeeJay*

        There’s a married couple I know who work for the same employer, having met there. The wife went on an overseas trip and got stuck there because of flight delays. The husband asked for time off to look after the kids.

        “Can’t your wife do it?”
        “She was going to, until you stranded her in another country”

    3. Nack*

      Ugh that’s awful. Yes it’s tough to be doing most of the hands-on parenting, but that paycheck really makes a difference!

      I have an acquaintance who once posted on social media about how he was being “Mr. Mom” while his wife went a work conference for a couple days. Definitely gave you a glimpse into that family dynamic! Didn’t realize that feeding and clothing your children was solely on mom’s shoulders…

    4. Spreadsheet Hero*

      Oh, man, that’s when you weaponize (or invent) your tragic backstory. “Oh, gosh, I just so respect single moms! You know, my mother had to raise me pretty much by herself after my dad tried to bankrupt her with a custody battle and moved to (faraway city) so he wouldn’t have to pay child support. ” Big smile. “It’s so tough having to raise a kid all on your own while working and trying to make your ex see reason all the time, don’t you think!” Unblinking stare.

    5. Jean (just Jean)*

      On occasions like this I fantasize about weaponizing my widowhood…by speaking out loud, not just by thinking my own thoughts. Example:
      “Me too! I’ve been single momming since my LH died in [month, year].”

      It’s not as bad as it sounds–I’m mothering one young adult with a driver’s license, not a group of rowdy little kids who require my attention for 95% of their waking hours–but my private snark is strangely satisfying.

      1. Jean (just Jean)*

        P.S. Without going into enough detail to out myself, I can add that I have supportive family and friends, local and long-distance; a modest but steady income; and a kind-hearted, supportive Significant Other. Life could be much, much more difficult.

    6. anon, because I posted something else about this person before*

      An HR rep I used to work with was independently wealthy* so her husband only worked part-time and was otherwise a stay at home dad. Which was totally cool. But then, one week, he was off on some super-expensive golf vacation (just ask how we all knew this), and HR lady went *off* about how hard it was to take care of the kid. She had the gall to say that it was actually *worse* for her than it is for “regular” single mothers because she was used to things like her Tuesday wine bars, and most single parents just didn’t know what they were missing.

      *how did we know she was independently wealthy? She sent an email to almost everyone bragging about every house she bought (five in seven years), then sent us all listings for neighboring houses. Each of which started at $900K…and no one on the email list even made six figures. Quick google searches showed most of her money came from her CEO father, but her husband’s *cocaine dealing* likely also got them somewhere.

  40. Anna Mouse*

    I work at a university. We’ve been dealing with budget cuts for professional staff for months and hearing dire warnings about the budget deficit.

    The university president sent out a long email about how great the capital campaign is going and how they’re going to be able to invest millions of dollars in athletics facilities and buying more real estate (on which they will not pay property taxes).

    It didn’t go over well.

    1. office staffer*

      Oh yes, the importance of athletics in higher ed. I worked in higher education in a unit that offered continuing education courses for business professionals. We even ran a small hotel and conference venue on campus where people would stay when taking our professional development workshops. The hotel was also used by the school’s football team during the season. The team would stay there the night before every home game. One morning we arrived to work only to be called into a mandatory all-staff meeting. There we were told that the university had to make some budget cuts and had made the difficult decision to eliminate our unit and close the hotel. All of us were losing our jobs through a reduction in force. Over the next day or two several (but not all) of us would be offered our old jobs or similar jobs as part of a new smaller unit. Anyone who worked for the hotel was out of a job because they were closing the hotel. Then they said, “But don’t worry, we’ve already notified the football team and they are ok with the change.” The way they said it implied that of course, the football team would be of higher concern to each of us than our own livelihood.

    2. S*

      Haha, is this an Ivy League institution based in Rhode Island by any chance? If so, that email was hilarious. I can’t wait for the professional staff to unionize.

  41. techie*

    This was now more than ten years ago, but it is still a catchphrase employees at my large tech company use to represent out-of-touch execs: the former CEO once told us that he uses a certain smart home product “at my various houses” to save money.

    Rank-and-file employees still love to joke about how policies we have to follow might be different if we had “various houses.”

  42. Colin Software*

    At a major investment bank, we had a mandatory attendance for the head of IT’s retirement meeting. An auditorium filled with 100 lower-level peons who couldn’t care less, a dozen weeping execs, and the guest of honor.

    My two “favorite” parts of his retirement speech were him saying, “I hope you have all been financially rewarded as well as I have”, and “I’m hoping to spend more time with my family — I’ll be road-tripping with my daughter this Spring to choose a boarding school.”

  43. Retail dalliance*

    I work at a private school. Three years ago, health insurance went up 300% between December 2021 and January 2022. My payment jumped from $100/mo to $300/mo and our administrators were absolutely fine springing that on us about two weeks before it happened. That sets the stage for what came next:

    The school came upon hard financial times during COVID. They froze our salaries, raised the percentage of healthcare costs that employees pay, and decided to do a reduction in force in March 2022. They hosted a “professional development day” where we were invited to give input about which departments should be downsized!

    It does not get more “hunger games” than that–many people felt that the arts department should be downsized (not my department, but my heart went out to them) and art/music teachers had to watch their coworkers do a GALLERY WALK, at the behest of the principal and president, putting ideas on posters about how to save the school money. It was a “brainstorming session” about who should be laid off! The arts department still enormously dislikes many of the rest of us, and I don’t blame them.

  44. Dust Bunny*

    Minor one (I haven’t worked anywhere that had literal executives): I had to pull over and call in late on the way to work one day because I was driving in a literal blinding rain storm and came very close, several times, to either mis-steering or being washed off the road into the ditch. Not exaggerating–I could feel the car sliding sideways.

    I was not reprimanded but at the next staff meeting one of the upper-level professionals made a point of telling us that we needed to do better about planning ahead for travel in bad weather. This was clearly about me being late one time (I was religiously on-time. I also lived the furthest away from work and always left a lot of buffer time to get there).

    The kicker? She had traded shifts that day with a professional who lived closer because she didn’t want to drive in the rain.

    1. Hannah Lee*

      At a very large company I worked at years ago, I struggled to get to work in a literal blizzard.
      It took me hours in my little car, but I didn’t feel like I could afford to miss work. Things were so bad the workers at the Mass Turnpike toll booths I went through on the way in all told me to get off the roads. “honey, you should NOT be out here in this … did you see the roads? The only people out should be the plow”

      Many many people did not make it in, there were accidents and spin outs and people stranded in snow banks for hours.

      The next day, the CEO sent a company-wide email with the title “Yes it snows in New England …” paragraph after long paragraph chastising the entire company for the poor attendance due to the blizzard, with rants and personal insults and attacks on people’s character for not prioritizing duty to the company over their personal safety and the needs of their families … for. one. day.

      This was the same CEO who was prone to also company wide email to badger employees into voting Republican and donating to his preferred political candidates (with implied threats about how he would know who didn’t and what he would do to those employees) as well as badgering everyone about signing up for hefty United Way contributions. Like, buddy, you’re a gazillionaire with your own plane, multiple homes and half your family working here being paid very very well – fund your own stupid causes! And stop badgering the lowly peons at “your” publicly traded company.

      1. Chirpy*

        A few years ago, we had an extreme cold snap. And by extreme, I mean I live in a place that regularly gets to -10 or -20F most winters (so people are used to that) and it was forecast to hit -60F. Even places like McDonald’s were closing early the day before so everyone could get home before the temperature dropped. The busses were free for the day to try to get more homeless people into the extra warming shelters. The whole city was going to be closed.

        My manager called a meeting where he told us he expected us all to be at work in the morning, and it would not be good for us if we weren’t…and then said “but I probably won’t be in because my kid’s school will probably close.” It is a store that later got classified as “essential” during the pandemic, but honestly, it doesn’t sell much that you couldn’t wait a couple of days to get (maybe a generator??)

        So, stupidly, I attempted to come in…luckily, when my car broke I was only about a mile from home and I was able to drive it back before it got worse.
        It cost me several hundred dollars in repairs, and it took 4 days for the tow company to come pick it up, because since I was safe at home, and it was so cold, they were only doing emergency rescues.

        I do NOT miss that manager. And I heard that there were only maybe 5 customers all day, because, you know, IT WAS SIXTY DEGREES BELOW ZERO

  45. Anon for This*

    Our company announced that we were going to start offering paternity leave (a small amount, but still better than nothing), and our CEO was weirdly combative about it. He then, on a call with the entire company, announced that he was going put his wife “back into production” so he could take paternity leave. Yikes.

    1. Observer*

      announced that he was going put his wife “back into production” so he could take paternity leave

      How on earth does someone with such a total lack of understanding of people get to that position!?

      I’m no longer shocked that people who have no moral compass are successful. But being this out of touch is a whole different level.

      PS I wonder what his family was like.

        1. Jean (just Jean)*

          Absolutely! Plus, people this crude and clueless are a walking, talking advertisement for vasectomies. He’s given the world enough genetic material already, thankyouverymuch.

  46. Upside down Question Mark*

    My husband and I were living with my grandma to afford rent as newlyweds and this was widely known in our small company and small town and nothing I felt particularly ashamed about as everyone loved her too and it was an expensive tourist-flooded area in the Rockies. The new CEO had the company pay for him to have a 4,000 square foot luxury cabin in the San Juan mountains in CO (if you know, you know) for the FRIDAYS he flew in first class from Seattle by himself. During a team building mountaineering outing with him, he and his wife, who was visiting, made a big show in front of everyone of “compassion” towards me after acting shocked at learning I lived with my grandma and saying “Yeah, times are really tough for all of us. Keep your chin up.”. I got a kiss from karma that day when my husband (an ex-German military mountain corps) beat that CEO up that 14,000+ ft mountain peak and back down in front of everyone and one year later (after being laid off) learning the CEO had taken our 150 person company down to 7 people, sending a local building custodian out to work the construction project we were managing with no certs at all on top of it. They had to sell the building and I wonder where he slept on Fridays…

  47. that hertz*

    The company that I used to work for had a milestone anniversary that fell during peak lockdown, at a point when we were absolutely drowning in work and struggling to adjust to WFH. The company’s founder/owner decided to celebrate this anniversary by setting up a compulsory all-staff Zoom call that I believe lasted at least an hour, in which he related the entire history of the company, how he founded it and how its success had made him personally a multi-millionaire. This was honestly not unusual at that company but the finishing touch was that throughout the entire call, which he was taking from his second home in Monaco, he was smoking a large, cartoonish cigar.

    1. Kermit's Bookkeepers*

      One of those rare instances where the sheer cartoonishness of someone’s assholery almost makes it worth suffering.

  48. AnonFed*

    Oh, I remembered another one. I work for an agency that has a culture of “move out to move up.” Basically an expectation that to be in leadership, you need to work in multiple regions to get well rounded experience.

    When I first started about 20 years ago, I went to a new employee orientation, and the topic of how to manage that culture in dual career households came up. The group of about 200 people was probably 60% women.

    One of the panelist, a man in his 60s, seemed befuddled by the conversation, and said he was successful because he found a supportive wife, and questioned whether leadership was right for those of us didn’t have supportive wives, because life is about choices.

    1. pally*

      I think, as a woman, I would have asked that panel where I might go to find one of these supportive wives. Maybe order one up from the Sears catalog maybe?

      I’m sure that panel would know exactly where to look.

    2. learnedthehardway*

      I have more than once mentioned ironically to friends that I (female, married, straight) could do with a supportive wife. This typically comes up when I am asked by my spouse to do the supportive wife things (in addition to running my business, etc. etc.) that he doesn’t like doing – like making dentist appointments, etc.

      1. Spreadsheet Hero*

        “Gotta get me a wife” has absolutely been a catchphrase in my friend group for that exact feeling (though not usually because of men, since my friend group is as queer as I am).

    3. Quinalla*

      I too have joked (but kind of not) how it would be great if we could add a supportive wife to our dual working couple family. We are fortunate to make enough money to outsource some things and my husband is a great partner who carries his share, but even if you have that, yeah the working world is still in a lot of way set up assuming a dude full time worker married to a woman who doesn’t work (or part time at most) and handles everything household/kids/etc. It sucks!

  49. Monkey bread*

    The last company I worked at had completely clueless and horrible executive leadership.

    Last year a new CEO came in, who then proceeded to replace the CTO, CHRO, CPO, CMO etc., all his cronies. They started a “We are family” kinda of bimonthly newsletter where each time a company employee will be featured, with insight into them as a person. You all….. the featured person in every newsletter was either a C-suite or someone high up the chain. The company did a ton of silent layoffs last year, with no raises, budget cuts, mandatory RTO and hiring freezes. But we diligently got to read about the amazing lives of these execs, photos of their families in front of their properties, their amazing vacations, their children getting admitted to private colleges.

    Oh, also the CTO lived in a different city than HQ and didn’t like traveling often. So they opened a whole new office in Utah…..and demanded employees from other states to relocate there. With the company paying 40% of the moving expenses!

    1. MissGirl*

      I’ve got five bucks that said he wanted the office in Park City, the richest area in the state with out of control housing costs. After all, he’d need to be by his ski house.

  50. Josame*

    At a quarterly meeting, attended by the entire company, which happened to fall on February 29th, the CEO first announced gleefully that he was getting an extra day’s work out of us without having to pay extra. Then he said that some countries had a tradition on Leap Year day that unmarried women could propose to men. He then turned to the only woman on the executive staff, who was single, and said, “(woman’s name), quick! Get right on that!”

  51. Nina from Corporate Accounts Payable.*

    I’ve shared this story on here before, including the recent post about the executive sharing family vacations. The owners of the small company at my first job out of college were very into conspicuous consumption. I had a long commute and a car that broke down frequently. I was late one day because of car problems and one of the owners asked me and I told him the reason. He said “you need to get a new car” and I said “I can’t afford one”. Another owner chimed in “you need to get a new car” and again I said “I can’t afford one”. I then said I live with my parents and I don’t spend much on other things, but somehow I still couldn’t afford a new car. One of the clown owners said “I know, you have a crack addiction!” I just mumbled “yeah, that’s it”. I was paid a pittance at that job and they knew it. Meanwhile they were driving Porsches and owned small private planes. Years later I found out the small plane thing didn’t end well for one of those guys…

    One of my colleagues heard the entire conversation and he was disgusted on my behalf. He was also underpaid – it was a recession and they took advantage. I only stayed there for 9 months – I just needed that first job experience and moved on as did the colleague who overheard the discussion. Within six months at my new job, I could afford a new car!

    Those owners were awful and sadistic in other ways. They enjoyed making the office admin cry and played mean pranks on her until she found another job and left. That’s another story for another time.

    1. MyStars*

      Now I want to hear about the small plane outcome! Though I suppose that whould be in the comeuppance stories from last week.

      1. Nina from Corporate Accounts Payable.*

        Actually a tragic ending, too sad for the comeuppance thread. The idiot crashed his plane into a house (destroying someone’s home and killing their pets, although they were not in the home at the time). He died along with his two tween daughters and his lady friend who had a young child, although that child was not on-board. FAA report said it was squarely pilot error. I never met his ex-wife, but how sad for her that she lost her daughters because of her idiot ex.

        When I was digging further into the situation, I read about a lawsuit filed against my former employer by a life insurance company. That guy had a business life insurance policy that explicitly excluded payouts for plane crashes. The existing owners cashed in anyway, and a year or two later the insurance company went after them to claw back the funds.

        I have more bizarre stories from the 9 months I worked there compared to the rest of my 20-year career. I could write a lightly-fictionalized novel about that place. And my boss, who was the brother of the guy that died was married to his brother’s ex-mistress. The company still exists and seems to be thriving from what I’ve seen on their website. My former boss took over and runs it with his wife (the former mistress of the other brother).

  52. Working under my down comforter*

    At my first job, the publisher/owner was on the board of a major cultural institution that held an annual fundraiser dinner every summer. Upon getting ready for this dinner, he would make us go to the location to help set up tables, chairs and decor during our workday. Some who pushed for exemption got it while others were expected to go. Usually the department heads went to make peace on both sides. Nothing was offered as a thank you; no provide lunch either. We all had to go back to work after. Over time, people started pushing back or making themselves unavailable. Finally, after many years, this favor stopped.

    1. Sydney*

      And using the expression “return to work” rather than “return to office” – another slap in the face.

  53. Judge Judy and Executioner*

    In the buffet line at a company event, the new Chief Legal Counsel (reported to the CEO) was talking about moving to our area. She shared how nice she found the corporate apartment, which no one else knew existed. Her audience was low-level managers and individual contributors making less than a third of what she did, yet she kept going on about it. It must be nice to get free housing with a job, especially when her annual salary was higher than the average home price in our area.

    1. No ads*

      I’ve always thought that it is completely nuts that the highest paid employees get the cars, car parks, accommodation etc.

  54. Mainly Lurking (UK)*

    Not a CEO, but a Head of Department, does that count?

    In early March 2020, having been in between jobs for some time, I started a new fixed term contract in an NHS project team which had been short-staffed for months, and had in fact been waiting to appoint for the role since November. On 19th March I was told that as all the health programmes were on hold, the programme management office staff would be deployed to other teams and there was no need for me to be there. My last day was Friday 20th March.

    It didn’t help when a Head of Department (who was linked the programme team, and almost certainly knew I was being let go before I did), felt compelled to tell me at length how she and her husband were going to save So! Much! Money! because of the Coronavirus! Cancelling the Sky Sports channel because there are no sporting events! Not going away on holiday! Reduced mortgage payments due to the cut in interest rates! Not going to restaurants! Not going to the cinema! I don’t think she was a bad person, probably she felt a bit awkward (we were living in unprecedented times after all) and didn’t realise I really wasn’t the right audience for this message.

  55. Red*

    I’ve got two:

    Worked at a company once where every year the owners would throw a party right before Christmas. To be fair it was nice. It was a 2 hour catered lunch in outside tents and they honored all the employees who hit milestones. However, where they were a bit out of touch was with their gifts for the milestones. Mostly it was branded stuff, but I remember one year for the person who had been with the company 20 years the owners praised the employee and then started talking about how they, the owners, always go on vacation to beautiful locations and how they wished they could share that with everyone. At this point my friend is convinced this lucky employee is about to get tickets for a trip or a cruise or similar. But nope! What the employee got for their 20 year anniversary with the company was a framed photo collage of the owner’s vacation complete with the owners in shot.

    Additionally, at another company I worked at, the boss’ wife was our VP and HR. She loved to brag about how she had a degree in engineering and a master’s in chemistry. She also liked to brag about how she passed her hardest classes because her professors either a) always passed the women because then the women couldn’t complain of discrimination or b) the professors thought she was hot and so would just give her an A.
    (For the record, I never saw her degrees, but I did see a photo of her younger and I don’t think anything she ever said was true lmao.)

    1. Quinalla*

      Yikes!! Bad enough when these folks show off their fancy vacations to a captive audience, but to think this was an appropriate or desired gift for a work milestone, how full of yourself can you be, woof.

  56. NonnieMuss*

    My employer owns and operates daycare for its employees. In December 2020, when said daycare was taking the children of essential employees (not most of us) only, when public schools were closed, and the daycares that hadn’t gone out of business were at limited capacity, we got an email ordering us all back to the office because we’d had enough time to figure things out. The top brass all had at least one of (1) money (2) stay at home spouses (3) adult children.

    People were furious and the top brass threatened to have middle management take attendance. People were furiouser and top management beat a hasty “we didn’t realize” non-apology retreat from their announcement.

  57. ceebie*

    Early in the pandemic our CEO (small company) insisted on individually calling everyone who’d been furloughed.

    Not sure why as the leave had already started and all the important admin parts had been handled already on a team level. I think in his head he thought we would feel valued and encouraged, but in reality it just made for an awkward small-talky conversation, especially as I was quite new and he didn’t really know me and now my job was insecure.

    Part way through I mentioned I’d been trying to grow a handful of plants in pots on the window of my rented flat, a tower block in a town centre, since I was spending so much time there now. He responded with an anecdote about how much he was also enjoying being able to spend time in his large flowering garden… and lawn… in an especially nice part of the countryside… plants are great right?

    Hmm. I left that conversation more disheartened about the situation than I was before, that’s for sure!

  58. anon for this*

    Public library with a large sign outside the front door proclaiming exalted sentiments about respecting the rights & dignity of all, etc etc that employees pass all day long in jobs where admin refuses to support employees who are bullied by supervisors and assaulted/hate crimed by ‘patrons’.

  59. VoPo*

    I once worked as a Director at a small company that was sold. After I’d been working with the new CEO a while, I met with him to talk about my role and compensation. I hadn’t had a raise in 2 years even though the company was doing really well (I should know as I managed our revenue reports and P&Ls). He said that the company wasn’t looking at compensation at this point but I should check in with him next quarter. I did and got the same answer.

    Around the time of the second conversation, he hired a new marketing employee (who would report to me) without consulting me or letting me interview her. She was awesome fortunately, and none of this was her fault. One of my many hats was HR/payroll, so I had to ask him for her offer letter so I could input her salary. Y’all, he hired her at $30k MORE than my salary. She was straight out of a master’s program with minimal professional experience. At the same time, he also promoted a young man we’d hired less than 6 months previously with a significant salary increase to go with it. And to add even more, he also had an increase in his own salary that I got to input in the payroll system.

    Well, I met with him and asked again to review my compensation and brought proof of my value to the company. I also mentioned that he clearly was reviewing compensation considering recent hiring and promotions. He told me “if you can’t handle seeing someone else promoted, you shouldn’t be in charge of payroll”.

    I quit two weeks later (I’d been job hunting for months – the writing on the wall was clear). When I told him salary was a big reason I was leaving, he was shocked.

  60. Olive*

    During his first all staff meeting, the COO said he had taken the last two years off before this job and that he highly recommended we all do it.

  61. Slinky*

    I’ve shared this one before, but it’s been a while. My husband used to work for a private company, a family business that the owner inherited from his father, who inherited from his (who was also the founder). This business aggressively underpaid employees and provided no support.

    The owner, however, had all that inherited wealth. He’d take his family on lavish trips, rumored to cost $1 million (I suspect this is an exaggeration, but think private planes, chalets, gourmet dinners, the works). Every Christmas, he’d send employees a photo card of his family on their expensive trip.

    You can imagine how well received that was.

    1. econobiker*

      A vacation with private jets and chalets and staff can cost that much. I saw a huge yacht in Florida that the tour boat guide said could be rented for $500,000 per WEEK! of course that includes the ship’s staff but that alone not including traveling, etc. for the whole family…

      1. econobiker*

        We were on a $29.00 each person x 2 hour tour boat ride around that city’s harbor/ bay and NOT on the big yacht. LOL

  62. jane2*

    One of the partners for an agency I worked for more than a decade ago was widely recognized as A Problem in more ways than I have the spirit to get into. She went through half a dozen assistants in a few years and was given largely unchecked power over a slew of unpaid interns, many of whom were getting college credit for their internship and were thus actually paying to be there rather than being paid for it. Their duties were supposed to be specifically related to learning about the agency’s work and getting direct experience with it- not functioning as mini-assistants.

    Anyway, one time she sent her unpaid intern to wait in line at the Apple store to repair her iphone.

  63. Successful Birthday Rememberer*

    President of the company loves to tell us that if we are not dedicated and passionate about the company and disrupting the industry yada yada, then we shouldn’t be working here.
    Barely anyone in this fortune-200 company got any raises the year he was especially passionate about it (practically scolding people in a company-wide meeting). This man comes from old money but also makes 7 figures a year.
    But sure, you’re here because you are dedicated and passionate. I am sure I can explain to the grocery store and utility companies that they need take my corporate passion and dedication instead of money.

  64. MardiGras*

    I worked for a large electric utility in Louisiana. Based in NOLA. In 2005. Many, many of my coworkers lost homes and family members. We were spread throughout Texas, Arkansas and Missouri to keep working.

    Leadership sent out a “care package” with thanks for the mandatory 12 hour days we were working. With a copy of “The Wizard of Oz” on dvd. Because “there’s no place like home” and “we know you are all missing home, and we want you back as soon as possible”. People were OUTRAGED, and extremely hurt. It was gross.

    1. Kermit's Bookkeepers*

      I HAVE to believe that was dreamt up by someone who’d never seen the first fifteen minutes of the movie. Otherwise this world is too dumb for me to keep living in.

    2. Ally McBeal*

      Ah yes, nothing like getting a DVD that you can’t watch because you no longer have a HOME, let alone a tv and dvd player.

  65. E*

    In mid 2020 the CEO laid off 10% of the office staff and cut all salaried employees pay by 3% because covid. A month later bought himself a new porsche and his son (who was a manager) a new $80k truck as company cars. This was an essential industry where our revenues were higher in 2020 than 2019. I left but a friend who stayed didn’t get that 3% back until 2022!

  66. Ghost Emoji*

    Right before Thanksgiving in 2020 (aka in the middle of the pandemic) the CEO of our small company called my whole department into a meeting. She told us that a regulatory agency had scheduled an audit for the week after Thanksgiving, and asked all of us to “strongly consider” not seeing our families for Thanksgiving so we wouldn’t get COVID and be out sick during the audit.

    Then she left for her Thanksgiving vacation in Vegas with two other employees.

  67. mango chiffon*

    The time for admin professionals day where the leadership invited all of the admin staff for a “celebration lunch” in which they forgot plates, so one of the EAs had to find plates for our own lunch. And all the people in the room were the people most senior in the org, the EAs who reported directly to and supported the senior leaders, and admin coordinators who are among the most junior in the org. Our president was talking about his summer plans to go to Italy, and then the chief of staff decided it would be great if she asked each of us admin support staff to talk about our summer travel. Needless to say, none of us had any plans because it’s hard to take extended time off and we don’t have the money to travel to Europe. I was also wearing a mask and not eating lunch because I didn’t want to risk my health, and was asked about why I wasn’t eating. Super awkward. Eventually the leadership started talking amongst themselves about work related things during the celebratory admin lunch and the admins all just sat there in silence. And since I wasn’t eating lunch in the room, I was literally twiddling my thumbs waiting to get out of there. The following year, we admins just asked if we could go to a restaurant on our own for admin professionals day and they let us do that thankfully.

  68. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

    our nonprofit is directly impacted by the Title IX changes, the threatened financial aid stop, the people we serve are already getting targeted by bigots more than they were a month ago… and executives held a big meeting to grin at us about a new logo they designed. which is the old logo CUT IN HALF, like that couldn’t possibly be misinterpreted.
    c-suite people keep fishing for compliments, “how do you like the logo?” and we all could not possibly give less of a crap.

  69. bamcheeks*

    This is not especially egregious as these things go, but I’m still pissed off about an email about redundancies, red-circling, consultation period etc which was sent by our organisational leadership in about 2012. It finished with a fair stock-phrase, “We want to reassure everyone that, whilst difficult in the short-term, this re-structuring will leave Organisation in a better shape for future challenges blah blah blah”.

    So, I may be being made redundant, some of my friends will definitely be made redundant, we’re all going to go through the hassle and stress of re-applying for our jobs, but it’s all good news because Organisation will be all right in the long run! Such a weird, weird perspective on what people’s priorities are.

  70. Tall Hobbit*

    A colleague and I once met with a Board member to express concerns about salaries. Everyone on staff was grossly underpaid to some degree and both my colleague and I were at least $10k under market value for entry level (we were both long term employees). At the start of the meeting, the Board member talked about how the sale of his house was kind of disappointing—only $125k profit for a house he’d owned for 15 years.

    Strangely, my proposal to evaluate increasing taxes by $50 to fix our salary problem was just too unreasonable.

  71. HomerJaySimpson*

    When the USS George Washington had a minor epidemic of suicides among her sailors, the Chief of Naval Operations (Basically the dude right under Secretary of the Navy) showed up to ship and held an all hands meeting wherein he shared such gems as: “Lower your standards, at least you’re not in a foxhole getting shot at” and other words that boiled down to ‘stop crying and suck it up, have you tried not being depressed?’
    It didn’t go well. People started sharing fake recruiting posters with the CNO’s picture and the slogan ‘US Navy- Lower Your Standards’

    1. Secret Squirrel*

      According to the article linked from Wikipedia’s page on the ship, that was actual the Master Chief Petty Officer, not the CNO.

    2. Anon for This One*

      I have a loved one who served on the Washington. I have VERY STRONG OPINIONS about what command can do with themselves, and none of them are polite. “Have you tried not being depressed?” is basically their response to anything that sounds like, “my mental health could be in the toilet, and actually i’m having suicidal thoughts, I could use help.”

      Strong opinions.

      1. froodle*

        Gotta love mental health “support” that comes right out of the Mad Men era of “cheer up, b*tch!”

    3. Chirpy*

      Dang, I’ve seen more sensitive mental health military training videos from the 1940s, and they were only just beginning to realize “combat fatigue” was a real thing then.

      Like, even in the 1940s they knew “Joe is irritable, jumpy, and feels like crap, he should talk to his CO/ a medic because we have New Scientific Methods for getting him back into fighting shape! He needs a rest away from the front and a chance to talk about his feelings!”

  72. CEO of Llama Drama*

    In the middle of some layoffs that were impacting a certain part of the business, our CEO told that team about the wonderful Disneyland trip he had, encouraging everyone to take one as soon as possible and really immerse themselves in the magic.

  73. Sigh*

    Yesterday, our CEO said it hurt his feelings and he felt attacked by feedback provided — at leadership’s request — on an open but anon forum after they absolutely bungled the response to the current funding and comms freeze impacting our org. After they hemmed and hawed on even telling us if we could meet payroll and lectured us about reacting vs responding.

    1. NVC*

      There’s a book about Nonviolent Communication that explains why “attacked” is not a feeling (I think it’s a judgment). I like its lists of emotion vocabulary – when our needs are, and are not, being met.

  74. SnookidyBoo*

    I don’t know if this if counts but:

    I worked for a few years in the public art department at my city. My boss was an older woman who had been in the position for decades. In my three years working for her she:

    – hid important documents from me even when I told her how much of a difference having those documents would make and I really, REALLY needed them (I found them in her office drawer after she retired)

    – was completely hands off in her role as manager to the point where she foisted an angry client off to me over text and that angry client escalated to the point to where security/police had to be called to trespass her from the building

    – told long weird inappropriate stories about sketchy things she had done on the art council to get certain pieces of artwork

    – once dragged me off the job to hang posters in her office

    and finally once came to an art reception completely blasted with one of her male art buddies (who owned a major gallery in the community) and both of them proceeded to sexually harass me the entire night.

    The kicker is a few years after I had quit I was watching my local PBS channel and she was on an advertisement advocating for local art in the community. The commercial portrayed her as this wise and benevolent grandma, talking about her grandson and the importance of leaving behind a legacy for future generations. It was all I could do to not throw something at the television.

  75. Bookish*

    Payroll messed up my first paycheck at my brand new job. It was terribly stressful- I had just graduated grad school, had a mountain of student debt, and was living off a credit card full of charges from a cross-country move. I was single in a strange city. Payroll worked it out but when I told my boss, trying not to cry, she said, “Oh, I wonder if they’ve messed up my paycheck. We live off my husband’s salary and my paycheck gets deposited into a trust fund for my son, so I never look at it.” Decades later, I am still gobsmacked at that response.

    1. Charlotte Lucas*

      I once had a trainee whose first paycheck was missing (back then, direct deposit took more time to set up, so everyone’s first check was paper). Once we did all the legwork to make sure it wasn’t misdirected, we confirmed with Payroll that it hadn’t been issued. Payroll asked if they could just “wait,” because they didn’t want cut a check manually, then to go to the COO and admit their mistake. (It would require his actual signature.)

      Luckily, my manager and department were beloved by our VP (who was great), and once the situation was explained, he made sure that the check was issued by the end of the day.

  76. gratone*

    Some context: I’m the chump who hasn’t had a raise in 11 years who wrote in with a different question a couple of months ago.

    My boss recently told a coworker that she might as well embark on some home renovation projects, because “the money’s just sitting in my account.”

  77. Gunther Centralperk*

    We were volunteering at a community center that served meals to low-income youths. Our exec customized matching t-shirts branded with our very recognizable financial organization name because “it’ll be a great opportunity to show that we care!” We tried pushing back, but she insisted that the t-shirts were essential for team building.

    I was giving someone a sandwich and they said, “So this is like a fun field trip for you guys? You work in an office and then come here once to make yourselves feel good?” It was awful, I didn’t know what to say back because it was true and so tone-deaf.

  78. I don't work in this van*

    When Teslas were still fairly new on the market/had year-long waiting lists/all cost over $100k, my boss would *regularly* and in huge meetings say things like “you know how on the Tesla screen…” or other references that required either owning or having some pretty in-depth familiarity with Teslas. This was at a company in a high COL area where entry-level jobs started below 40k and the HR director laughed because people kept asking for raises and she found that somehow impertinent. So out of touch.

  79. European Worker*

    I work outside of the US, with very different bank cards (credit cards like in the US don’t exist). However like an American credit card, for a fee, you can get a gold or platinum debit card that give you different advantages. My boss asked me to put all my airline tickets (thousands of euros) on my personal bank card and be reimbursed, rather than continue to use the company account on file with the travel agent we used. When I asked why, he told me that my bank card would give me travel insurance. I told him that I didn’t have a gold or platinum level card (which costs a lot of money every month), just the basic free debit card. He was really puzzled, since he didn’t know lower level cards existed. I also had to tell him that I never had enough cash in my account to cover multiple international plane tickets, and could we please stick to the current system. He eventually agreed.

  80. Az Torch*

    Switching to anon mode for this one

    A few jobs ago I was looking to move up, and had a rare moment with the operating manager of the company while travelling. I asked him what opportunities there were and if there as a ladder for me to climb. He said there was, and that he was a great example. He started at the very bottom level and was now all but running the firm.

    It was wonderfully inspiring – or would have been if his father weren’t the founder and CEO. I appreciate that he worked his way up, but it might work a bit differently for those of us whose names aren’t literally on the letterhead.

    1. Generic Name*

      Omgggg. That illustrates the old saying of someone being born on third base but thinking they hit a home run.

  81. The worst*

    The minute lockdown requirements were removed where I live our CEO told us we were going back to the office full time (no hybrid option), and anyone who had a problem with it was lazy and ungrateful.

    She, however, would only come in a few days a week because she had medical conditions and had to be careful.

  82. Ialwaysforgetmyname*

    I used to work in HR in several national parks for what’s called a concessioner (they hold the contracts to run services such as buses, food, visitor centers, etc.). The work is to put it mildly, brutal. As just one example, during season ramp up in May we got no days off, a short day was 8 hours, and many of those days were 11-13 hours. We lived in dorm housing with the rest of the employees and ate our meals in the employee dining room. Again, brutal, and you have ZERO personal life because you are living, working, and eating with the same people 24/7.

    But an exec who had transferred to our business line from a different one was always saying to the HR team “you don’t know what hard work is… in (other business line) we sometimes worked 10 hour days, 6 days per week…”

    At that point 6 days per week of 10 hour days sounded like a vacation. And she was NOT living in our dorms or eating in our employee dining room.

  83. a name*

    I worked at a job where we would have a big push at month and especially quarter end to get orders out the door so revenue would be recorded in the current month instead of the next. I suspect the CEO’s compensation was tied to revenue per month not profit. If we were close to but not at our monthly revenue goals they would keep shipping until midnight. If they didn’t have orders to ship, they would have sales trying to drum up new ones, which then had to be entered, approved, built and shipped all after hours on the last day of the month.

    This meant that often multiple teams had to be on call to work late on the last day of the month. This was not just manufacturing and shipping teams, but also sales, order entry, etc.

    The director of the sales department was generally not needed for this push, but he wanted to “support the troops”. If it was going to be a late night, he would often head over to manufacturing to offer his support and stay there until they could go home.

    His support consisted of cracking open a beer while doing shit like sitting on the machines they had to use and generally getting in their way.

    Nothing says support like some rich dude drinking beer while you work your ass off on Halloween, missing your kid’s trick or treating, to push out some custom order that the company is selling at a loss today instead of holding and selling at a profit next week just so some other rich dude can buy another private jet.

  84. Orange Cat Energy*

    It was June 2020. The company had been restructuring over the past year. A lot of teams were laid off and replaced. One Friday, my department was told we were slated to be laid off one year from that date because they were changing the technology that we use and outsource our jobs would be outsourced. The following Monday, the company was having it’s end of fiscal year meeting (it was over Zoom because the pandemic was happening and everyone was WFH).

    The company sent a book called “What the heck is EOS?” to all the employees. EOS stands for Entrepreneurial Operating System. Folks, this book had analogies like: Imagine there is a table; sometimes seats get arranged; sometimes there’s no seat for you…a real (not) subtle hint about how you can be fired at any time. If your employer sends you this book, that’s your sign to run.

    Let’s get back to the fiscal year meeting. During this meeting, the Chief Financial Officer lists the company’s top 5 blockers (in accordance with the philosophy of the EOS book that they’re following). The CFO lists my department as one of those blockers…because there’s too much work for us to do and the company doesn’t have the capacity to hire more people. WTH…how are employees the blocker when you have more work than they could possibly do in a 40 hour work week?

    During that Zoom, I was already working on my resume when the meeting started. I resigned at the end of the year…it was their busiest time and they tried to get me to push back my last day. I have given 3 weeks notice and they wanted me to extend it by another 3 weeks. I said no. I didn’t plan to leave at that time of year. It just worked out that way.

    The CFO is actually the CEO now. And my job that was going to be outsourced…it was never outsourced. They realized that outsourcing would cost more than having people on staff. Those who remained in my department took the buyout (they had to give back their stock shares). the company hired new people to replace us.

    1. Generic Name*

      OMG, the EOS. This book must be an offshoot of the book “Traction”, which uses the term Entrepreneurial Operating System. I actually read it at my last job, and it was…..kinda dumb. Lots of references to other dumb business books (like 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which I read only a portion of because about a quarter of the way through it, I thought to myself, “the most effective thing I can do right now is stop reading this book because it’s trash”).

    2. nonnymoose*

      I think EOS, like many other similar systems, is dumb. My company went through a phase where they tried implementing it, but like most phases my company goes through, it didn’t last long. A company we work with will occasionally mention their “rocks” and it’s hard to not roll my eyes. It felt like something our management team needed to stay on track, not the rest of us.

  85. devinpentree*

    During COVID, the head of the company for which I then worked often used video meetings to bemoan to the entire staff how difficult it was that he had to spend the pandemic at his country mansion instead of his big city apartment. Judging from his video calls, said mansion had acres of outdoor property in addition to amenities like a pool. But how he missed getting to go out and be social! Mind you, there had, by this point, been furloughs, hours cut, and wage decreases. I was living in a one-room studio and was one of the lucky ones among my colleagues.

  86. Honeybadger*

    Years and years ago, OldCompany was bought out by a competitor. There was a big meeting with C-Suite to notify employees. For all of us that were out of the office that day, we were given notice in the afternoon that we needed to be in the office an hour earlier the next morning for a mandatory meeting as we missed the first one. This required that many of us make alternative child care and transportation arrangements for the day. We arrived and we waited. And waited. Finally, after sitting there for almost 45 minutes waiting for the meeting to start, the Chief Communications Officer came in to apologize. Turns out, none of the C-Suite were aware they needed to be there and they were scrambling to find someone to attend. She told us that this was understandable as they had been working hard on this buy out for months. Keep in mind she was excusing a team who was getting multi million dollar golden parachutes to a room full of people who were about to get laid off. Talk about tone deaf.

  87. Not a Vorpatril*

    Minor one:
    At a previous job that was primarily physical labor we had an all-hands meeting where my grandboss gave the old “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean!” motto. Which, honestly, there were times when that may have been appropriate, as we did get downtime at times, and were definitely slacking here and there when we had slow days where we didn’t have too much to do (hourly job, but on-call during those hours for when clients had stuff we needed to do for them)

    But at this point? We had been working for a couple of months at half-manning, which for a job primarily focused on labor meant a lot of movement and running about to get stuff done, particularly since much of it was time-sensitive. I was effectively on my own or actively training new hires (which means I was doing just as much, if not more work, then if I was on my own).

    I may have made some disgruntled noises/remarks then, which either went unnoticed or were politely overlooked, but I was rather frazzled and pissed off to be hearing that statement just then.

  88. Eleri*

    I used to work in IT at a large nonprofit organization. During 2021 – when the pandemic was still raging and gas prices were going crazy – senior leadership started talking about bringing everyone back to work full-time on-site. This made many people very upset, as most of us had been working some type of hybrid/remote schedule for 10+ years, and we absolutely killed it with service during 2020 – we received a lot of compliments from the organization at large at how well we transitioned everyone to remote. We all complained and asked “Why now?” and the CIO’s response was that “Hey, I drive 20 miles to work every day, and the gas isn’t really THAT expensive, so I think everyone just needs to suck it up and do it.” Never mind that he made way more money than the rest of us, and gas prices weren’t making much of an impact on him (he had a hybrid car, to boot). Never mind that our organization always paid the bottom 10% of industry standard for our roles, and hybrid/remote was a huge benefit that attracted talent. Never mind that we were overall a happier, healthier, more productive workforce due to WFH. All that mattered was that we had a recently renovated building and leadership wanted to see bodies in it, and feel like everyone was “collaborating and idea-sharing” (even though we all sat on web meetings all day and no one seemed to have an issue with collaboration and idea-sharing).

  89. Young Business*

    Co-founder and CEO of a sizeable tech company. She was casually going on trips that lasted 5-6 weeks at a time. Insisted on micromanaging the crap out of all her direct reports and all operational matters despite the fact that she was away for most of the year. It absolutely affected her ability to do her job effectively.

    At a company-wide town hall someone asked where she was (innocently). She responded that she’s in Hawaii, and didn’t we know that in the remote work world you could take your laptop and work from anywhere?!

    I love how she thought her employees had the resources and ability to park ourselves in an expensive tourist locale to work. So clueless and insulting.

  90. Rage*

    This story is less about an exec being out of touch with the reality of staff’s lives (though she was pretty dismissive of us in general) – but she was massively out of touch with the values and beliefs of the staff.

    It was a humane society. So already a low-paying yet stressful job. As anyone who has worked or volunteered in any sort of companion animal rescue org probably knows, it’s very easy to adopt out puppies and small breed adult dogs, as they are preferred to adult large breed dogs. So ED was meeting with an animal behavior specialist, the shelter manager, and one or two other people higher up in the org. The specialist and shelter manager suggested that they brainstorm ways to boost adoption rates for adult large-breed dogs.

    ED says, “Well, if they are that hard to adopt, why don’t we just…you know…not?”

    Some confusion. “Not what?”

    ED shrugged. “Offer them for adoption. We could just euthanize them all to make room for the ones that will get adopted.”

    Oh yeah that went over really well. Behaviorist (who I didn’t like, and who didn’t like me, but I had to give her props for what she did) went home after the meeting and put together a huge plan for getting adult large-breed dogs basic obedience training. She planned the whole thing – recruiting volunteers, their training, the process for training the dogs, timelines, milestones, the whole shebang. Rolled it out, within 12 months they had increased the adoption rate of adult large breed dogs by ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.

    Of course, the behaviorist herself was a bit clueless in one very specific way: she named her new program the “Canine Enrichment and Training Program”, or the CET Program.

    In the shelter world, however, the acronym CET already had a meaning. Certified Euthanasia Technician.

    1. Hlao-roo*

      Oof to the CET Program meaning two very different things. And Yikes on Bikes to the ED’s initial suggestion! But big props to the behaviorist for the large dog training program! Warms my heart that the program had such a positive effect on large dog adoption rates.

    2. Observer*

      ED shrugged. “Offer them for adoption. We could just euthanize them all to make room for the ones that will get adopted.”

      I’m having a hard time responding in a way that’s consonant with the rules. But this woman is just . . . The *ED* of an organization whose *whole mission* is to help animals just suggesting that a whole class of non-unsafe animals just be euthanized just because?! Without even *trying* to place them?

      I also have questions about the Board who hired her, though. Because it does not sound like she actually had any concern for the actual mission.

      I get that some shelters find that they have to euthanize some animals because they cannot place them. But this is a whole other level.

      1. Spreadsheet Hero*

        It’s a particularly ruthless calculus, but not all shelters are no-kill shelters, and sometimes that’s math you have to consider, especially if you’re in an area with crappy insurances or a lot of rentals (where certain common large breeds may really struggle to be adopted since owning that kind of dog can get you kicked out of housing). But you should never, EVER broach it that freaking casually, because what you’re proposing is a tragedy. You say that with gravitas and hesitation and “would our mission to help all local animals be better supported if we triaged? I am looking for alternatives; would somebody please help me brainstorm them”.

        The utter insane callousness and ignorance of shrugging when you talk about killing living things so the bottom lines looks better… Really makes you wonder about that chestnut about sociopaths becoming CEO’s.

        1. Observer*

          Exactly.

          It’s one thing to acknowledge that you may have to do that. It’s a whole different thing to casually just toss it out with a shrug. Especially with such a broad brush. Even worse without any attempt to see if there are other options.

      2. Rage*

        She was rather the type of person who got into leading nonprofits because it made her look good, not because she was particularly invested in the org’s mission. As for the Board, well, it was pretty well stacked by her. We, as employees, were expressly prohibited from speaking or otherwise engaging with board members. It was a fun place [insert eye roll here].

        1. nonnymoose*

          As an idealist who struggles mightily with being too selective about jobs so as not to “sell out” or take a job that would require me to compromise my moral principles, I cannot STAND people who lead nonprofits to boost their own image/career. I worked at a women’s college under the leadership of a president who was 100% a political conservative – there’s no way they voted for the orange guy, but their privately-held values definitely did not align with the publicly stated values of the college. Working for them drove me absolutely nuts.

  91. People Gotta Eat*

    Like many these days, my coworkers are barely scraping by, expressing the desire to access free community food resources while our CEO is a trust fund baby who has been overheard referring to $1,000 as “chump change,” grousing that her staff won’t pay$7 for a hamburger to support a fundraiser, and regularly encourages company-wide potlucks to foster camaraderie, where everyone is expected to provide a dish for up to 60 employees.

    I work at a food bank.

  92. Managercanuck*

    A previous boss (non-profit) lived out in the country and would drive to work. All the other staff members save one took transit to get to work. We live in a pretty snowy area of the world and so winter storms are pretty common. This was pre-remote work, so most of the team had desktops and other than checking our email, couldn’t really do anything from home. Nevertheless, even in winter storms, we were still expected to be working in the office, but she wouldn’t be in. She also gave special dispensation to the one staff member who drove that she could be at home too. And then, boss lady would have the gall to call us in the office and tell us how pretty the snow was around her house.

    This was the same lady who decreed that we needed to have two staff members in the office at ALL times for security’s sake. Which made it awkward if you needed to go get lunch or run an errand knowing that she’d call and ask who was in the office and ask to speak to both of you.

    I do not miss her.

    1. Managercanuck*

      What made her comments about the snow being pretty even worse was that every single one of us who took transit had to wait outdoors in the snow to catch our buses. We were not happy campers.

  93. Ialwaysforgetmyname*

    My recent favorite that I’m still stinging from: The salary level for me and 90% of the employees in our non-profit is such that $1,000 is a meaningful amount. An about-to-retire exec told me that they plan to not touch the (extremely large!) balance in their company-funded retirement account because “I don’t need it.”

  94. pally*

    Our CEO likes to talk about his kids regularly.
    These days he’s happy that they are finally making good money now that they are out of college.

    Only thing, he cites their salaries all the time, and they are $50K-$70K higher than what we make. And we are a couple of decades out of college. Way to make us feel valued.

  95. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

    A couple weeks ago a senior exec (one step down from the CEO) was leading an all-hands for our division – probably about a thousand people – where he talked about the wonderful opportunities from the less-regulatory environment (in terms of merger and acquisition) from the new US presidential administration, at a time when anyone reasonable would know that at least 50% of employees (probably more, given that the majority of our offices and thus employees are in large cities in blue states) are in fact terrified about other aspects of the administration. Supremely tone-deaf – I understand focusing on that aspect is part of his job but bringing it up was just awful.

    1. Ally McBeal*

      I work in corporate comms and this is one of my biggest pet peeves right now. Like yes I understand that a few of you are about to make a metric f-ckload of money, but the rest of us are worried about whether our marriages will be invalidated or our coworkers will be deported or if we’ll have health insurance and/or a job tomorrow. I do not want to hear one single solitary CEO mention a “benefit” or “silver lining” for this administration.

  96. Trash Can Queen*

    My company was in the news about a year ago when our CEO sent a company-wide email at 3am saying that while it was good to be “winning” again, teams needed to have less work-life balance and work harder, giving the example of a quote they recently received to re-wire the internet cables in the office. CEO said he would have volunteered to come in on a Saturday and do it himself, because that’s how much he cared about saving the company money.

    A month later we had our third round of layoffs in two years.

  97. Packaged Frozen Lemon Zest*

    I work for a publicly traded North American company. Our stock price has decreased by almost 20 percent, we’re getting no bonus, our preferred stock units won’t pay out any money for the next two years, and we’re underperforming by every significant business metric compared to our industry peers. Good news though: we just increased our fleet of corporate jets from one to three and rolled out a huge stock buy-back! /sarcasm

  98. The worst*

    The minute lockdown restrictions were lifted where I live, our CEO told us that we were returning to the office full time (no hybrid option), and anyone who had a problem with that was lazy and ungrateful.

    She, however, ended up only coming in part time, because she had medical conditions and had to be careful.

  99. soontoberetired*

    the company started layoffs to save money and talked about how we had to find ways to cut expenses. then bought a plane. and in the midst of more layoffs, bought a second plane. We know the CEO used the plane for his own vacations.

  100. Box of Rain*

    CEO gave us all $50 gift cards for Whole Foods and said to treat ourselves and our family to a nice dinner. He loves Whole Foods, but the office is not near a Whole Foods. None of the staff live near a Whole Foods. The nearest Whole Foods is over an hour away, so if we go there it is a special occasion situation. So of course, he kept asking us what we got at Whole Foods or if we’d used our gift cards yet. I sent mine to my daughter who DOES live near a Whole Foods and she Venmo’d me $50. I used that money towards a new tattoo, so I answered that I used it for something really special and enjoyed what I got. I think I told him I got a bottle of wine. He approved.

  101. BurnedoutEngineer*

    The company I worked for was being bought out by a company headquartered in another country. The executives traveled to our site for the transition and were presenting in a town hall. The new CEO talked about how the company set them up in temporary apartments and complained about how it was so hard to live in an apartment, do his own laundry, and get his own food. All this, to an audience of manufacturing employees who had been working mandatory overtime and weekends for the past 2 years, during COVID, with no raises. He might have been able to commiserate with his fellow executives, but we were not the right audience for that.

  102. Only one person in this conversation is a Cybertruck owner...*

    Was denied a raise from the CEO because “I make the most money in the company, even more than me!” Doubtful, as the CEO owns multiple homes, multiple luxury cars, and a PLANE.

    1. Only one person in this conversation is a Cybertruck owner...*

      Should have said YOU make the most money, i.e. he was claiming I make more than him, the CEO and business owner.

  103. IT But I Can't Fix Your Computer*

    We just started hot desking. The rollout has been Not Great. Everyone is in a terrible mood. Our VP has been cheerfully reminding people that the federal government is calling people back into the office full time, as though “doing better than the US federal government” is anything but the lowest possible bar this week.

    1. Bruce*

      One relative who works for a federal agency has said that they closed the office buildings that used to house most of the workers, so that will be interesting. Another who works for a different one says that their agency has enough desks, but people will not be able to sit anywhere near where their team is…

      1. Abogado Avocado*

        One of our elected overlords wants to institute a RTO policy in the local government for which I work, but we are out of space and do not have enough desks and offices for everyone. And, not to mention, that we save money by having back office analysts and others not in public-facing jobs WFH. But, hey, it gets him headlines everytime he brings it up.

  104. Arya Parya*

    This happened to my SO.

    He worked for Company A and they were merging with Company B. To celebrate they had a party at a restaurant at the beach. During the party there was a pub quiz They were divided into three teams: the employees of Company A, the employees of Company B and the C-suites of both companies. The prize was an kite surfing workshop for an afternoon or something like that. Pretty big anyway.

    Turned out all the questions were about both companies. So of course the C-suites team won, as they were the only team with people from both companies. They gave themselves the prize and were apparently very happy with it.

  105. Chocolate Teapot*

    Not quite a work situation, but our local glossy business magazine also produces in-flight magazines, so they always have a business slant to them. Each issue there is a Me and My Wardrobe double page, and the last one I saw was a female lawyer going on about how she always has to wear Dior and Cartier jewellery.

  106. Bruce*

    Not sure if this counts as “out of touch” or just “amazingly blunt”, but in the mid-80s my smallish (400 person) company had layoffs that were sudden, painful and had a large helping of office politics involved. In the aftermath the CEO called the engineers together and said he expected everyone to “work hard and keep your heads down… because there are bullets flying and you might catch one”, making a gesture of a gun to the head. He was a veteran of a shooting war in a small country that has had a lot of shooting wars, which added a touch of the surreal…

  107. DEEngineer*

    When I was 6 months pregnant, my company changed the maternity benefits. Instead of full pay for the first 6 weeks, I’d have to apply for their short-term disability and get 66% pay. It was a substantial sum of money for me, and they would only make exceptions for people currently using the benefit. I don’t know which executive was responsible for this, but the company sent a company-wide email thanking the benefits leader for all the money they saved the company by cutting benefits, and posted it as a success story on their internal website.

    1. ICodeForFood*

      For some reason, this reminds me of when my synagogue (Jewish equivalent of a church, for those who don’t know) laid off the long-time bookkeeper and forced out the long-time ofice manager, and then sent around a letter *bragging* about how they had saved money by hiring new, cheaper office staff. Incredibly tone-deaf, and just awful… the gall of the “committee” to BRAG about firing long-term employees…

      1. iglwif*

        Ewwww.

        I am especially grossed out by this behaviour because I’m currently on my synagogue’s board and we have had to let a couple of people go (not fire them) over the past few years for performance reasons. I can’t imagine behaving that way about it!! So awful!

  108. Don't make me come over there*

    Back when I worked at a big multinational company, our division head moved on to greener pastures. At his going away gathering, with 70ish people in attendance, he told a “funny” story about one of his first experiences in the group. He had to fill a manager-level position, did the interviews, picked his favored candidate. And then, ha-ha, his bosses said no, we like this other person better. And he said, but I really think candidate 1 will do a good job. And his bosses said, no, you’re going to hire candidate 2. And that’s how he met our colleague, who’s a great guy and who became a good friend, the end. I’m sure he thought it was a heart-warming anecdote, but it just confirmed to many of us that certain people in the organization were anointed and the hiring process for many management positions was a farce.

  109. DEEngineer*

    I worked a small company where the President made a point to get to know the employees, at least surface-level. He was the stereotypical President: white, conservative, 72 years old, named Bob. He had served as a pilot during the Vietnam War. At his retirement party when people were giving speeches about how much they would miss the President, one of our employees born in China spoke up to say something about how when he told the President which area of China he was from (south, bordering Vietnam), the President told him that he had been there – bombing villages. To be clear, this was more of a “glad to see him go” than a “we’ll miss him” anecdote.

  110. Wendy the Spiffy*

    Worked at a Fortune 100 company whose CEO was treated like a literal rock star. At all-hands meetings, when the employee Q&A times rolled around, he’d often tell the person with a question that they’d get a prize if they would sing their question, or make it rhyme, or whatever. Very “dance for me, monkey” vibes.

    The one that has stuck with me in the years since was at a town hall for top performers on the front line (retail stores and call centers). A young woman stood to ask a question, and he said he wouldn’t answer her unless she could give the first and last name of every single (15 or more) executives sitting on the stage. And he made her do it, pointing to each exec one after the other, and making a big deal of it anytime she didn’t know some or all of the name. I could hear her soul dying as her voice got more and more shaky with each miss. It was excruciating.

  111. Cruciatus*

    Not quite the same thing, but in the same vein, but I used to work for one of the largest medical schools in the country (let’s just say, this is when I found this blog) and every year the local newspaper would post the salaries of the CEOs for the local non-profits and one of the founders of the medical school would always get so enraged (but it was public information). This was years ago so I’m sure her base salary is higher, but at the time it was something like $800,000 a year AND other benefits that put her over a million dollars a year (and we live in a small, affordable city). I worked there 4.5 years started out making $8 an hour and, after one job switch, left making a whopping $10.25 an hour. So at least she knew she should be upset about this information being out. But it always made us talk amongst one another why we were then paid so little.

  112. AnneCordelia*

    My husband’s job had just had significant staff cuts. So at a an all-company meeting with what staff were still left, the president decided to give a presentation about her family’s recent cruise to Antarctica. Because that’s such an interesting destination, surely everyone would love to see her pictures!

  113. Green Goose*

    I used to work at a nonprofit and we had a leadership change. The new CEO made a lot of changes including hiring her friend to be the Chief of the department that my team rolled up to. This Chief was very absent and just not invested in the job. One of my coworkers let it slip that this Chief was making over $350k per year which was pretty shocking considering it was a nonprofit and our entry level staff were not paid well.
    She flew in for a retreat and one of her opening lines to a group of people that were making poverty wages in the Bay Area “no one works in nonprofits for the money” ummmm YOU do! I was appalled.

  114. Too soon not to be anon*

    This just happened last week, so going to be vague on details. We had our quarterly town hall which this time was year end recap as well. The SLT put on their show of trying to act like they are just like the rest of us. It’s the same story…. we made 7 billion dollars in revenue last year, which was short and no one is getting much of a raise or a bonus. Then followed by mass lay offs. Then they turn around and hire more levels of management. More management to tell the dwindling numbers of people who actually do the work what to do.

  115. 2 Cents*

    At a previous small company that routinely delayed annual reviews or would win new business, but then claim poverty when it was time for raises, it was expected that the employees give a group gift to the (married) millionaire business owners. My last year there, I utterly refused. I was actively job searching anyway, and really just didn’t care. But I’d be d***ed if I was putting in money for someone who owned two houses (one a beach house), drove a Porsche, flung money around like it was nothing, but then begrudged a 2 percent raise.

  116. nora*

    Two stories come to mind. First: end of grad school, a couple weeks from getting a masters in social work, stressing about finding a job, etc. A bunch of professionals did a panel discussion about Real Life Social Work. One of them was one of my instructors. She told us, from her very cushy position as a doubly-employed person with a wealthy spouse, not to worry about money and just “drive for Uber” for a while. I reported her to the school, anonymously, because I was terrified she would fail me. Apparently she got a talking-to about it and she has since changed her ways.

    Just a few months later, I was in my first job as a baby social worker. The executive director chose to pay me less than the person I technically supervised, knew I was planning a wedding, also knew my fiance had been laid off from his job, and was baffled and kind of angry at me for declining to attend a lunch at an expensive restaurant that the company was not covering. Probably a good thing I didn’t stay there too long.

  117. Not me*

    There were terrible fires near us recently and I was talking to an exec about them, and they mentioned how horrible they were and how they had to hire a private fire department to…protect their hobby vineyard. Like, people’s homes were burning down, entire neighborhoods were destroyed, people died, and this person put resources into making sure that the vineyard where they make wine for a hobby was safe, and thought I’d be sympathetic to that.

    1. Observer*

      Out of touch, to be sure. And he should have absolutely kept his mouth shut.

      But actually, any land that is protected protects everyone else. Partly because the people doing this stuff (I mean the firefighters) are not going to ignore sparks flying into the adjacent fields / homes / land. Also because And partly because any area that is kept from flaming is one less area that can be a jumping off spot for sparks and embers. Essentially being a firebrake.

      Not that I think he had the least concern for that.

      1. Disappointed Australien*

        You’re assuming the hobby owner had a better grasp of what was required to fight those fires than the actual fire management.

        At least in Australia private fire fighting teams can be (and frequently are!) contributed to the fire command, but what they definitely cannot do is go into a fire zone without authorisation. They turn up, they get added to the team, they do what they’re told. And everyone is very grateful.

  118. Elle Woods*

    I worked a life insurance company. During a meeting with field reps, the then-CEO bragged about how he’d just bought another $1,000,000 life policy then jokingly said, “What, aren’t you agents selling those on the regular?” No one found it amusing. (The average life insurance policy agents were selling were in the $50,000-$100,000 range.)

  119. Aerin*

    When dropping the bomb that they were dramatically increasing the on-site requirement, our president and FVP (both new on the job) kept focusing on the fun things they would do to entice people into the office. As if that’s the deciding factor, instead of things like childcare, health issues, cost of commuting, and so on and so on. Sensing he was losing the room, the president announced that they’re building an on-site handball court! This announcement included a brief presentation from the director of facilities (who was very visibly shocked and unprepared) and a mention that the president had family who worked for a local handball place and might have input on the project.

    The room instantly went from displeased to outright hostile, and I could swear that LinkedIn spontaneously installed itself on every phone in the room. The handball court was an immediate punchline among the rank-and-file. I was not the only person to file an ethics complaint, and I’m pretty sure the whole project is going to be quietly memory-holed.

    The kicker? They started off the town hall by sharing that a recent survey indicated low trust in senior management, and promising that they were going to work hard to counter that. I didn’t have any opinion of these two before that meeting, but I left it with the distinct impression that neither of them had ever talked to anyone making less than $100K a year (except for maybe their domestic staff).

    1. L_Rons_Cupboard*

      Office ‘fun’ incentives always remind me of the finger traps/coffee koozies/waffle party on Severance.

  120. Stella70*

    I cleaned houses to supplement my (full-time job) wages while I attended college (also full-time, but several years past the period one usually starts). Even though I was an actual DINK (double-income-no-kids), I ate ramen by the case.
    I was employed by the uber-wealthy partly because they saw the car I drove and deduced a proper thief could afford better wheels.
    One day, I found myself on my hands and knees, under a baby grand in the Grand Foyer (← the owner’s capitalization and Lord help you if you pronounced ‘foyer’ with a hard ‘r’). I was using a toothbrush to straighten the fringe on the Persian rug, so that it all laid flat and pointed in the proper direction. (I often spent this time reflecting upon being selected as “Most Likely to Succeed” of my graduating class and debated contacting them to nullify the vote.)
    Hell-en, (my preferred spelling of the owner’s name) joined me to ensure I noticed and cleaned a spot on the rug. She was quite disgruntled about the guest who caused it and asked if I ever entertained someone so rude as to spill Dom Pérignon. Hell-en was born to and married money, so there was no snark, just cluelessness.
    I sincerely replied that Boone’s Farm was removed quite readily from the AstroTurf that the prior renter had installed in my garage apartment, and in most cases, I didn’t even have to bring in a hose!
    The triple combo of Boones Farm/AstroTurf/garage caused an arc in her brain synapses, because it took her nearly a minute to acknowledge my “fanciful” imagination, and to chide that a simple “no” would have sufficed.
    During the last five minutes of my last day there, I crawled back under the baby grand, and this time, made the fringe look like it went through a tornado.

    1. Hlao-roo*

      I am cracking up at “I was employed by the uber-wealthy partly because they saw the car I drove and deduced a proper thief could afford better wheels.” XD

    2. ferrina*

      Kids these days, just spilling their Dom Perignon everywhere! Have you ever heard of such a thing?!

      Truthfully, no.

    3. Possum's mom*

      Stella, you’ve done it again! Your writing is pure gold …
      let us know when you publish your first book.

  121. LostCommenter*

    My story is tame compared to these stories, but our CEO came to work every few months in the new car he just bought. Ferrari, Lamborghini etc. And I was struggling to make ends meet with a title of “junior manager” on my payslip to indicate why I’m not getting overtime pay despite working 80 hour weeks. It was once explained to me that my contributions made it possible for the CEO to get his new car, even though they had excuses each year at my performance review why they couldn’t justify my raise. So every time I’d get home and complain to my partner about something the company/management did again, he’d simply say “Lamborghini”.

  122. stelms_elms*

    We have a fairly new VP for our division who has been here for a total of five months. She gets paid $40K more than the previous VP who was here for 25 years. She just brought in an AVP who was hand-selected (no hiring process), who we have no idea what they will be doing. She has retained three different consultants to fix things that might be bent but definitely aren’t broken, all to the tune of a half million dollars. Meanwhile, we’re all being asked to do a “budget realignment” exercise to cut our budgets by three different percentages to see what we can withstand while still providing a semblance of the same level of service.

    1. Kendall^2*

      That reminds me of PreviousEmployer, a private university, that paid consultants who knows how much money to evaluate just how under market current wages were. I got an adjustment because of it (upward, thankfully), but still am peeved that it could have been so much more for all of us low-paid folks had they not contracted expensive consultants!

  123. jaques*

    I worked at a small business owned by someone who previously had been an executive at large, global companies. She would berate me about our sales and say we needed to be better because she “had a mortgage to pay”. She lived in a multi-million dollar home in the wealthy area of our city. I was working 70+ hour weeks for $30k a year and could barely afford my portion of rent on my crappy apartment. (I was young and didn’t understand the working world well enough to advocate for myself. I only lasted about 3 months there, and the business went under not long after.)

  124. Wonky Policy Wonk*

    I’m a civil servant and I’ve seen a lot of ridiculous, out of touch moments from leadership (either politicians or political appointees) in the various departments I’ve worked in, but there’s one that literally made my jaw drop. We had a new Minister and his staff come in to tour the department’s office and do a quick meet-and-greet with staff and upper management (just below the political appointee level) sprung for coffee and assorted baked goods for the occasion. Important background – our government had instituted a “fiscal restraint” policy a couple years before and were no longer covering the cost of most “non-essential” office expense, which included things like coffee and snacks for meetings. The policy was so restrictive that we had to create an entire business case, power point presentation and executive summary included, for why notebooks were “essential” so we didn’t have to take notes on random pieces of printer paper and post-its.

    So there’s the Minister, sipping on the coffee and eating a muffin paid for by his department’s staff that is at least four pay bands below him, and someone asks if he plans to make any changes to the expense policy. His face lights up and he starts going off on how ridiculous the policy is, all the department staff is PUMPED thinking we’ve got an ally on our fight against asinine office spending restrictions, and then it becomes clear the more he talks that it’s the executive expense policy he’s against. He finds it absolutely humiliating to have to use a 5 year old, domestically produced sedan as a work vehicle and it’s completely outdated that they won’t allow him to expense tips on working lunches, don’t even get him started on the ridiculously low budget for new office furniture! He went on for at least 20 very excruciating minutes about how he was working to bring the executive spending policy inline with what he was getting in the private sector, because how else do you attract high level executives to go into politics (*insert massive eye roll here*)?

    I think it was a surprise to no one who met him that day that when we renegotiated our collective agreement, government staff are unionized in my jurisdiction, he made a bunch of comments to the media that we were all overpaid and greedy bureaucrats that were out of touch with what the average office worker was entitled to. An absolute ass hat with no self-awareness.

  125. WhoKnows*

    One of my favorites…

    During Covid, the head of our department bought a weekend/vacation home in the suburbs. Her housekeeper would routinely walk behind her on Zoom calls, cleaning up and emptying trash cans, while the dept head ignored her existence. And then one day she says, “Have you guys ever heard of Overstock.com? I have been trying to decorate the new house and they have so much stuff for great prices!” Cue the rest of us immediately in side chats on slack being like – the 15 of us in our 20s and 30s? Yeah. We have heard of the website that sells cheap stuff.

    Also, when we were told that we had to go back to the office (a full year before anyone else in our industry did), she said “I know a lot of you are really anxious about having to come back to the office, and I just want you to know, you should feel free to feel that way.”

    She wasn’t cruel…mostly just oblivious.

  126. EarlGrey*

    I’ve heard my share of oblivious “my vacation property” conversations from higher ups but the one that sticks in my mind isn’t financial. The president of the company was announcing triumphantly that we had landed a big client. We’d been doing a few months of work for them and got to a milestone approval that meant a longer term contract. Great news! Except the way he praised the team who’d been doing the work sounded SO miserable. The client would call at 6 in the morning! They’d expect late nights and weekends! They wanted a hundred versions of the work with tiny changes and then demanded half of it be done over! And the team STEPPED UP and GOT IT DONE!

    My side chats quickly turned into “…is this supposed to be good news?” It felt very much like celebration from the guy who’d be taking the credit while the front line team was locked into another few years of completely unreasonable expectations for work hours and perfectionist standards.

    1. Generic Name*

      I’m suddenly understanding why the principal I asked for help from when a client had outrageous demands simply said, “We haaaave to keep this client happy”. Okay. Thanks for the tip. SHE didn’t have to do anything to keep the client happy, that was all on me, the PM.

      1. EarlGrey*

        exactly, like, you’re the person with enough power to set some boundaries with this client, but i guess praising the team for meeting such wild demands is all we can expect from you!

  127. Lemons*

    I’ve worked at multiple “cool” offices where the owners would complain we weren’t being cool enough because we weren’t blasting music, even though a lot of the tasks workers were doing required quiet concentration, like writing and research.

    1. Workerbee*

      Oh, god, flashbacks to when I was in a Marketing & Communications department and our CMO complained that people complained we were too quiet. Apparently we were supposed to be running around being all markety and loudly proclaiming Great Ideas with accompanying light shows.

      In reality, we were…concentrating on writing effective copy. Designing accessible visuals. Having non-loud meetings about projects. Meeting our deadlines. All of which takes some form of dedicated presence.

  128. DramaQ*

    We keep getting reminded of how bad our company stock is doing and there are “budget restraints” blah blah which are likely going to translate into us peons not getting bonuses.

    At our last department meeting our director bragged that our head of department has despite teh company not having money managed to secure a week long meeting for all of us in Chicago that is costing $1000+ to send everyone to from my location. There are about 150 of us here vs 12 in Chicago.

    Our CEO wants to have it in Chicago because he doesn’t like Omaha and doesn’t want to fly he doesn’t see the need. So all us peons have to use up a week we could be working to go to Chicago while aware that the cost of this could pay many people’s salaries for a year.

    All so we can listen to VPs complain about how they can’t understand why nobody wants to work anymore and where did company loyalty go and how you have no business working for this company if you aren’t lying awake on Sunday evening shaking with anticipation to come in on Monday.

    I wish I was making that up that was last year’s meeting. My husband still thinks I am making it up and I told him if I was that creative I wouldn’t be working for these people I’d be making bank writing books.

    1. Roy G. Biv*

      “how you have no business working for this company if you aren’t lying awake on Sunday evening shaking with anticipation to come in on Monday.”

      wow. just wow.

    2. LBD*

      “The anticipation for coming in on Monday has me lying awake shaking every Sunday night.”
      Pretty much same words. Possibly more accurate?

  129. fran*

    Upper management for health care org who weren’t front line got covid shots before they were readily available for all front-line health care workers. Later when vaccines more widely available, director of public health lectured us to go get our boosters because they were on their fourth covid infection. This is the same nitwit who informed us there was no way to know if or when the pandemic would get worse because apparently epidemiology or even math about exponential growth do not exist. That fall their region had some of the highest covid hospitalization rates and covid deaths in the country during Delta.

  130. Anon for reasons*

    Changing my tag to be in stealth mode… I worked for a company where the CEO repeatedly bragged about how he sacrificed his marriage for his job, he expected his staff to put their job ahead of their marriages, and one time he called on a group of us to put our hands up if we were divorced. That time I was really glad my wife was not in attendance! Another time at a party he got cussed out by the wife of one of my co-workers after he made comments like this.

  131. just let me park my tiny car*

    We had a serious parking shortage at our old building. During construction of the new building, we were assured that they would solve the problem. We move into the new building; there is not enough parking for us plebs.

    Higher-ups have assigned parking spaces. Fine, I guess that’s pretty standard. Except the CEO has TWO spaces next to each other, both with his name on them. Whichever luxury car he drove to the office that day gets parked across both spaces.

    It’s not the only thing that drives me crazy, but it’s the most visible one.

  132. Hotdog not dog*

    I supported an executive who owned 3 homes, sent his children to pricey private schools, drove luxury vehicles, etc. At the time I was making the lower end of the salary range for my role. Due to a medical situation, Mr. Executive was out for about 12 weeks, during which time I kept his whole business running smoothly. Fortunately, he recovered and said he was very grateful for my “stepping up to the plate”.
    He was full of praise until I asked for a salary increase to bring me closer to the midrange of my job title, and then all of a sudden I was “taking food from his children’s mouths” and being “ungrateful for the opportunity” to learn to do his job on top of mine.
    Same executive, about a year later, started talking about retirement. Because he was the only one I supported, I asked him how his retirement would impact me. (It was normal in that company for the EA to either be reassigned to a hand-picked role, usually a step up, or let go altogether.) His response was, “Oh, you’re a decent EA. You’ll figure something out.”
    Spoiler: I did figure something out, and boy was he mad when I “left him high and dry” a few weeks later.

  133. EMP*

    We got periodic reminders from HR that we did not have a remote work policy and all employees should be working from the office…while our CEO was working from his second home in Florida.

  134. Nonprofit peon*

    The Associate VP (100+ direct and indirect reports) who moaned to a junior junior manager (8 direct reports) about how toxic their workplace is.

    1. froodle*

      oh wow that must have been so hard for that poor Associate VP… if only he was in a position to do something about a toxic workplace culture… alas…

  135. It's Thursday!*

    I work in a ten story building. The elevators are constantly breaking…and it’s a very busy building so being down to one causes a lot of delays and having none – well it’s just a problem of course not everyone can walk up 10 floors and some of the upper rooms contain equipment that can’t be moved.
    we asked about plans to deal with the elevators and the VP (who did not work in our building and at the time had their knee in a brace and was using a cane) dismissed our concerns and said it wasn’t a big deal – we always had at least one and more people could just use the stairs.
    Well a month later we lost all the elevators for two months causing huge work disruptions (and $$$) – during all that time the VP never once climbed the stairs to our 7th floor offices. They are now “fixed” but still regularly down to one and there are no plans to do anything concrete

  136. anononon*

    He’s not an executive, but my boss, after:
    – not giving me anything for Christmas — I did not expect or even particularly want anything from him, but it is apparently the norm in this office for bosses to give support staff presents;
    – complaining that people were taking their remaining PTO at the end of the year;
    – being particularly upset that the office was closed on Christmas Eve and that his peers in the company were letting that stand instead of insisting on making support staff work that day;

    had the audacity to complain to me that he didn’t get any Christmas presents and only one Christmas card this year, and complained that “the world has changed so much,” because he used to get so many presents that they filled the living room of his (large, suburban) house. Such a weird, out-of-touch tantrum to have. I had previously been more tolerant of his annoyance that the whole world stops in late December, because we’re both Jewish and this year the state set a major deadline during Rosh Hashanah, meaning one of our clients urgently needed to sign a document during a period of time where he was not only busy with temple, but also religiously obligated not to use electronic devices or handle any business concerns. But all that and then complaining about not getting Christmas presents???

  137. Workerbee*

    Was in a small workplace that really didn’t like people working from home, but you could appeal with a special case. HR left it up to individual managers at that point.

    However, lower-level executive staff (not C-suite, but all the guys just below C-suite with “Senior Director” in their title) were expected to be on-site.

    My team reported directly to one of those.

    A teammate asked to work from home 2 days a week on a very temporary basis (medical issue).

    Senior Director: “If anyone should be able to work from home, it’s me, because I have a long commute. Since I can’t, there’s no way I can have it happen for you.”

    1. Workerbee*

      (hit Submit too soon)
      Perhaps more to the point, this was the same person who fired one of our program managers for not anticipating the Covid pandemic that stalled one of our main projects. “She should have planned for any surprises,” he said.

      Nobody wept when he himself finally got fired.

  138. A Teacher*

    I teach in a public school and every morning during second hour, we do the pretty much standard pledge. My principal likes to add before the pledge “Please stand for the BEST country in the world in honor of all those that sacrificed for it.” Hint: most don’t stand and none say the pledge, including teachers. Until last week the BEST country in the world was annoying. Now it is out of touch and tone deaf. I teach in a blue state and our district had to republish it’s Safe Haven policy last week because of the ICE raids. Telling my building, which is the most diverse building in this part of the state, with over 100 languages spoken, that we are the BEST when many of the kids are fearful for their family, friends, and themselves for being not White is really out of touch and tone deaf.

  139. Charlotte Lucas*

    The debate on whether it is worse to lay people off at the beginning or end of the day/week is settled. It’s officially the middle of Christmas Eve before the company party.

  140. AnonToday*

    Ooh, our executives can be really out of touch. Two in particular will randomly reference their au pairs and one went on at length about how they just buy their child whatever they want, no matter what cost, while the rest of the table (all staff level) was discussing how expensive raising our kids has been.

    During onboarding, more than one on the admin team gushed about one of the executives’ penchant for designer clothes as if it were a cutesy quirk. The executives’ stock activity is public knowledge, so I know the designer clothes person made over a million last year on top of their salary and bonuses.

  141. CheeseHead*

    My example is surprising because it comes from the other direction. Our CEO/business owner came from an upper middle-class background and was pretty much in denial about the fact that owning a billion-dollar company made her a billionaire. She was wildly inconsistent about what she thought was worth spending money on.

    This resulted in the surreal experience of having a our billionaire CEO spend a significant chunk of an all-hands meeting of 10,000 employees lecturing us about not stealing or losing the branded pens. She’d eaten out recently, and the server had given her one of her own company’s branded pens to sign the check, which meant that one of her 10,000 employees had taken one from the building and left it at the restaurant. She’d also heard that some people threw them away when they ran out of ink; didn’t we know she paid nearly $1 per pen for the high-quality refillable kind? As for stealing pens from the company and using them at home, that was completely unacceptable. True, she herself did so occasionally, but only pens that were already broken or leaking!

    Given the number of employees and the salaries involved, that lecture about pens cost roughly $100,000.

      1. ferrina*

        Pens are infamous for walking away. Branded pens are known to disappear- this is a fact of the universe.

        1. Hlao-roo*

          I once had a pen that said, “This pen was stolen from [business name].” No idea how I ended up with that pen, as I had never been to nor heard of the business in question, but it was one of my favorite pens because I loved that it said it was stolen right on it. (I think I threw it away when it ran out of ink, a move that would further dismay the CEO in CheeseHead’s comment.)

          1. Lexi Vipond*

            I was given a pen to use that said it had been stolen from So-and-So’s hairdressers – when I was acting as a juror in the High Court!

      2. ICodeForFood*

        Yes… Which reminds me of the experience of a friend of mine, who was a sales rep at the time. Her employer had ordered some promotional items (I don’t remember what they were), and her boss refused to let her or any of the other sales people give them to customers and prospects, because “They cost a lot of money.” So the only people who were reminded of the company name were those who occasionally saw them in the locked supply closet that they could not be removed from.

  142. WillowSunstar*

    I am in a company that is laying off hundreds of employees. Yes, I’m one of them. We had a town hall this week that was the most out-of-touch town hall I’ve ever seen, and I’m middle-aged, so I have seen quite a few. Over half the meeting was all the leadership staff patting themselves on their backs for the new, “excellent” first quarter numbers, and we all knew the numbers were the results of the layoffs. I didn’t see any non-leadership employees get recognized for anything except work anniversaries, and who knows how many of them were being laid off. Last week, they also announced more layoffs coming this year.

    Also the main nod to the layoffs was “we’re in transition” and “people now have career opportunities” (there’s a hiring freeze in the company). The safety moment was this mental health app that you only get a free membership to if you are a current employee, and it’s expensive if you are not.

  143. Project Manager*

    My second job out of grad school was as a Residence Director, they paid us a $27,000 salary in addition to the free housing. Our Dean of Students, who frequently credited the fact he and his wife had so much money was because they never had kids, told us we should be saving the amount of rent we’d normally pay each month to be able to buy a house in the future. In Denver, that was half our salary, and with student loan debt and other bills, utterly out of touch.

    1. ferrina*

      You wouldn’t have been able to pay rent with that kind of salary anyways. The free housing is how they can afford to still hire people.

  144. Amber Rose*

    Some years back, after doing some layoffs and cutting hours, management said we were still doing the annual company camping trip and pig roast. Every employee knew the camping trip was only so they could show off their new, fancy campers. Also the friggin pig roast while some of us were worried about buying groceries.

  145. Cabbagepants*

    I work in the research division of a larger company. We pay a handsome sum to rent laboratory space, and we’ve been very successful and made a lot of money for the company — much more than our costs. Furthermore, this lab generates 90% of the revenue for my division.

    Recently during an all-hands meeting discussing budget cuts, our division head complained bitterly about the cost of renting the lab space and said that the way of the future is to just license existing IP.

  146. JM*

    During Covid, the senior leadership of a multi-billion dollar company was discussing how to get people to come back to the office while many restrictions were still in place. Someone brought up that parents had kids who were not able to go back to school yet. The CEO (a woman) said, they should just hire a nanny.

    ……sure, because everyone has tens of thousands of dollars of disposable laying around to hire a private nanny.

  147. Posy*

    My first job out of uni, I had a boss who was very posh. Her kids were all into horses; the eldest was some kind of dressage champion. One of my colleagues once went shopping during lunchtime and was showing off her purchases, including a potato masher. The boss replied:  Oh, new stirrups for your horse, how nice!

  148. JJ*

    Years ago, I worked for an auto insurance company in California. The owner had taken over from his father, and his wife ran HR. I’d been warned the place was a nightmare and the owners were awful, but I was desperate to get back to work, and a friend worked there, so I gave it a shot.

    There are plenty of stories, but one that really stuck with me was when they made us take mandatory furlough days every month to “help the company save money.” They claimed it was temporary, but it dragged on for at least two years before I finally rage-quit.

    Not long after the announcement, I was walking out with a friend when we spotted six brand-new Porsches lined up in the owners’ parking spots. Turns out, the owner had them delivered so he could test drive them and decide which two he and his wife wanted. This was right in front of all the employees who’d been dealing with pay cuts and three years without a raise.

    After I left, I heard the company got sued into oblivion and the owners lost everything. Can’t say I was shocked.

    1. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

      I remember something like that… Must have been back in the ’80s. I worked for a major defense contractor.
      Anyways, one day the company announced layoffs. Later that afternoon, senior management was seen in the parking lot arguing about who got which company cars.

  149. Varthema*

    The CEO of my former company laid people off while driving his car. On the way to the airport. For his trip to the Maldives. During the pandemic.

    (can’t remember if it was 2020 or 2021).

  150. As I Live and Breathe, Raisin?!*

    While the upper management has fortunately been pretty close-lipped about their spoils (I only learned after two years that one of our CEOs lived in another state and flew in every week) the middle management has been surprisingly clueless. As the lowest paid person in the office I have been told a story about one person’s 3bdr/2bth STARTER home and been consistently questioned by a supervisor why I have not bought a house when we live in an area where 70s fixer-uppers start at $500k. When I said I couldn’t afford it he said “sure you can!”

    1. ferrina*

      It’s hilarious/terrifying when people who claim to be experts in finances/economics are surprised that many people can’t afford to buy a house, or that many younger employees have student loans. Um, yeah, that’s a reality for lots of people (particularly Americans with the student loans). Business people forget to do the numbers.

      1. Aerin*

        In any article where someone explains their secret to setting themselves up for financial independence, you’ll find about 4-5 paragraphs in that they very briefly mention the person’s actual secret: a large amount of money from their parents

        1. Disappointed Australien*

          Or lack of student loans because when you’re working in the family business you don’t need to borrow money if you need a degree. Or, as my bosses kids have done, your parents let you live rent free in one of their properties then gift it to you as a weeding present.

          It’s easy if you just put in the effort!

          (my boss is actually very reasonable and all this comes from random video calls while we both WFH. His son is actually a better boss than the other director who has since “stepped back from directly managing staff” {cough})

        2. ferrina*

          Yeah, I have yet to see someone write:
          “First, a third of your monthly income is going to paying back student loans and half of it is going to rent. Now here’s how to get rich with the 1/6 of your income you have left for every other expense….”

          Oh, and don’t have any medical conditions if you are in the U.S.

  151. Kelli with an I*

    Granted this isn’t as bad as the others here but my boss renovated his house, bought his daughter a new car, took a cruise, and a weeklong trip to the mountains. We usually got an end of season bonus in June. Well September rolls around without the promised bonus and everyone was too afraid to ask until one brave soul spoke up. The boss forgot about bonuses. This was after we were all working 6 days a week for almost 9 hours. I don’t work there anymore and will not work for a family business again.

  152. Cauliflower Queen*

    The company I worked for got bought out. The (all white male) execs of the purchasing company came out for a “get to know you” lunch and did a little presentation on the new company and a little bit about each of them. Including their hobbies – every one of them was golfing, sailing, horses, travel. Oh thank you sirs, these manufacturing floor employees can totally relate to you now.

    1. froodle*

      I interviewed at a company for an investment and insurance administrator role(£27-£30K salary range back in 2022) and one of the interviewees asked me about my hobbies then blarted at length about how much he enjoyed skiing

      (our location is somewhere where you’d have to take a lengthy and pricy plane trip to find somewhere to ski).

      I’m sure skiing is perfectly lovely, but I really enjoy “making rent” and “buying groceries” so, yeah

      I didn’t get an offer, and the feedback to the agency was that I didn’t seem like a good fit.

      Okay rich boys.

  153. dcatron*

    Way back in the early 90s I was working for an established eye doctor. His wife was the “office manager” and we saw her maybe twice a week. My husband was active duty air force E3 and I think I was maybe making $5.50/hr, so yes, barely making ends meet. The last year I was there, the rank and file employees didn’t get any raises, not even a quarter. The wife soon comes in sporting a new anniversary diamond solitaire that was the size of a robin’s egg. So large a patient saw it and asked “is it heavy?” I can laugh about it….now.

  154. It's Marie - Not Maria*

    My Boss is the CEO, and is treated with fawning deference by most people in the company. Because of this, whenever one of her Management Team brings a concern to her attention about employees treating them and others rudely or disrespectfully, she has said “I have never seen them act like that.” Of course you haven’t, they fawn over you.

    She was shocked when someone the Management Team knows to be rude, disrespectful and regularly quite nasty to most people made a mistake and showed off their behavior in an email, which I promptly forwarded to her. Yeah Boss, now you can see what the rest of us put up with from this person.

  155. FricketyFrack*

    This guy wasn’t an exec, just upper management, but he was also one of the biggest jerks I’ve ever worked with. Like a lot of places, we had layoffs in 2011, and apparently our department was told that they had to eliminate one of the three people in his position. This was state government, and he’d worked there forever and had maxed out his possible pension amount, so he absolutely could’ve retired at any point. Instead, he decided to stay and the one with the least seniority (who also had kids in daycare) lost his job instead. Ok, that’s allowed, kind of crappy but technically how the rules worked. Except then he walked around the office with zero self-awareness talking about how cool it was going to be to retire on 12/12/12 and all the fun (expensive) stuff he was planning to do after that.

    The guy was a condescending jackass anyway, but I lost any respect I had for him at that point. Thankfully? I was also laid off, but I was fortunate enough to get another offer pretty quickly, so I didn’t have to look at his smug face much longer.

  156. Nothing Creative*

    At a company wide town hall meeting, mostly listening to the upper management praise each other, the president gushed on and on how the VP helped her kid get into (local private school here) where the yearly tuition was more than most people on that call made in a year.

  157. CS*

    My old company tried to rescind a well deserved raise my manager had gotten, revoking the salary she’d negotiated back to a lower hourly pay. Small company so our customer service department was just her and me. She quit with no notice (as she should) and without wrapping anything up. New owner called me and spent an hour complaining about how could she do this to the company, asking me to see if I could get in touch with her and convince her to stay, which I did not feel comfortable doing because she had every right to quit under the circumstances. Then he started a get to know you conversation with me talking about how him and some friends sailed around the Caribbean for a few months. I was making 28k a year and was about to have to take over all my managers work because he cut her pay and she quit. More shady stuff continued to happen under the new ownership and when I was applying for new jobs after a layoff the company would not reply to any prospective employers to even confirm I worked there for 10 years. Had to dig out my old tax forms to prove employment. Such a horrible person. Glad I’m out of there!

  158. Our Lady of Shining Eels*

    Not exactly a CEO, but the president of our union local, was a) self-described best friends with the head of HR, b) was on vacation when COVID hit, and was pissed that he had to end his vacation early, and c) told us we were all doing nothing and just sitting at home twiddling our thumbs when most of us were working virtually, through a pandemic, when living in an epicenter.

    He also had what many of us thought was a collection of Faberge eggs that we all would stare at during virtual union meetings – where he would yell and tell us that we were all lying, because best friend told him we were lying.

    He saw the writing on the wall and retired.

  159. Miss Chanandler Bong*

    Right before I was laid off, my company was acquired. I saw the writing on the wall and knew my role was going to be eliminated. But someone at an all hands meeting asked the CEO if we could expect layoffs.

    Rather than say something like “we don’t have information on that at this time”, the CEO said “Keep working hard and that won’t happen.”

    Spoiler alert: many, many people lost their jobs, including some employees who had been there for decades.

  160. Lisa Frank*

    I worked at an arts nonprofit and many people were laid off in the Great Layoffs of 2020. 100% of the people laid off were getting emails from the development dept asking for donations! Some of us were added to that list AFTER we were laid off. We had to ask several times to be taken off the list. They finally took us off those lists after there were some articles in industry papers and magazines about it.

    1. Lisa Frank*

      Oh! I forgot to add that 1) of those they kept on, some of them, not all, were given “reduced” hours, even though everyone was salaried. So in theory they would be doing 50% of the work for 50% of their former pay, but it’s nonprofit and everyone puts in more hours. So those with a reduced salary did just as much work as before. Also 2) most of the POC and Black people were laid off, but they kept a few on bc optics are the most important.

      So guess who were the only people that were affected by the reduced salary?

      Say it with me: The remaining POC and Black people.

  161. The Badger of the Sea*

    My company implemented a brand new HRIS/Payroll system and it was a full year’s job for our entire department (HR) and our Finance department. Our CFO was also our VP and HR/Finance both reported to him. HR was left behind on everything the CFO did but we stayed in our lane for the most part.

    CFO was refusing to re-up our contracts while getting all the ones for Finance done early. He was also stalling on stipends to pay us for extra work during implementation, but Finance was getting theirs with no issue.

    He was tired of our questions and called an impromptu meeting with our whole department where he raked us over the coals for “wanting more than we deserve” re: continuing to have gainful employment. Then he tried to play the pity card by saying he also wasn’t getting a stipend for extra work during implementation. The man makes almost five times more than what our most tenured employee in our department makes.

    Our CEO didn’t appreciate hearing that when we all requested a meeting with him the following week to share what had happened. Apparently CFO had also shared his side and it didn’t line up with what we said. It was our word vs. his, but there’s 12 of us and 1 of him.

    We got our stipends, they also were retroactive, and our contracts were renewed within 48 hours. We’re also under a new VP now. :)

  162. Morris Alanisette*

    This isn’t my story but my spouse’s. A few years ago, his company laid off about 25% of their team (my spouse was spared).

    The NEXT day, the CEO’s admin sent a message around to the company offering up the CEO’s Palm Springs vacation house for Coachella for an “employee discount rate” of $8k per night!

    (My spouse no longer works there)

  163. Ruby*

    Our company president had a meeting to announce layoffs. He assured us that he knew what we were going through because his daughter also works here, and she’s worried about her job.
    Said company president is the son of the former company president.

  164. 653-CXK*

    At ExJob, we would have quarterly all-staff meetings, where upper management would give us updates, etc.

    At one particular meeting, the director at the time went off on an unhinged, angry tirade about China and Walmart. Only problem – the majority of the people at the staff meeting were Asian. There were quite a few gasps and moans about this tantrum; whether a few people went to HR after this was unknown, but it certainly gave us a far more negative impression of them. (Upper management wasn’t exactly kind to POC, and this particular director was even worse.)

    The director did get their comeuppance a few years later, however – they decided to mouth off to the wrong person – probably a big muck-a-muck – and by then their bosses decided they had enough of their shenanigans and fired them. Karma was a patient mistress, and I would have paid money to watch them escort this awful, nasty director out of the building.

  165. Middle manager*

    A few years ago, our company raised our health insurance rates by a lot. In our management talks, my grandboss noted that this was a real burden on the younger employees, since they were paid less in general. “For us, it’s just a trip to Paris,” she said. Um, lady, you may have Paris-trip money, but down in middle management, I certainly didn’t. And while I was definitely better set to absorb that rate rise than those I managed, it was a lot harder to deal with than just not going to Paris that year.

  166. Betty Spaghetti*

    I have 2 good stories for this! 1- We were having a routine all-staff meeting, when the division head decided to go-off topic for his presentation about the budget. He spent a good amount of time telling all employees that the outlook was dire, but we all needed to be saving more for retirement. The kicker? He followed that all up with how his advice didn’t apply to him, because he “is rich”.

    2- I was working at a small, private company when all of upper management decided to buy themselves new company cars. For months afterwards, us lower peons heard nothing but complaints about how upper management didn’t like the color of their new cars, or the lack of cup holders or blah blah blah. During this period, there was an all-staff presentation that was geared towards (again) the lower peons looking ahead to retirement and adjusting our 401k accordingly. Things were so dire, we all realized we’d never be able to retire on our wages, and people left the meeting openly crying.

    1. Betty Spaghetti*

      I have another story from the same place as #2 above! A few years before I was hired (I took this job out of absolute desperation, please keep this in mind), they had mass layoffs. This is how they approached it. Suddenly one morning, all employees were invited to a non-descript meeting. Folks started talking, and it turned out you were either invited to a meeting in room A or room B. You can see where this is going. Folks in room A were told their jobs were safe, but all of their colleagues in room B were being fired, en-masse. Effective immediately. Employees who used company cars for commuting were not able to take them home, obviously, and so were now stranded at work. In an area with no public transportation.

  167. pinyata*

    I mean, just any time our administrator complains about how large a chunk of our salaries take up in the budget (bargained for in our union contract) when she makes 3-10 times as much as we do. Don’t try to shame us for earning a living and advocating for a living wage.

  168. Fluffy Initiative*

    In summer 2020 my former company got a new CEO. He decided to introduce himself via email with a short bio. So far so good!
    The bio included that he was currently sailing his boat (yacht?) around the Mediterranean with his [20 year younger, former Olympian] fiancée and his parents, before heading back to the US where he split his time between his apartments in NYC and Seattle. Meanwhile, most of us hadn’t left our homes for more than groceries since the pandemic started.
    Oh, and he continued his fun little monthly newsletter with the subtle title “From the Helm”, in case we all forgot that he had a yacht. Did I mention the company had frozen our 401K contributions and all promotions and raises due to “pandemic uncertainty”? It was GREAT for morale.

  169. Nickel n dimed*

    Not really a CEO but when I worked as an hourly personal assistant one client bitched constantly about paying for my parking ($20/ day, a steal) because I should just be able to park for free on the street in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Manhattan (this was during the pandemic before the vaccine and my employer specifically included the parking because they didn’t want employees on mass transit)
    The client also continually complained to me about how expensive I was as they were going through their annual budget. They spent something like 5x as much on their club memberships (which they almost never used even after the pandemic had waned) than on my salary (which included my company’s cut).

  170. Desk Drone*

    During the Covid lockdowns after we were told we needed to take salary reductions and a PPP loan to stay afloat, we had to repeatedly hear all about the CEO and CFO’s shore houses and how they spend the weekend together on the beach since they live so close by.

  171. ferrina*

    My VP tanked my annual review. She didn’t give me credit for several projects I had done, and evaluated me based on goals that were not for my role. She didn’t read my self-review, which had included these projects and documentation of howthis VP had changed my goals.

    The annual reviews were tied to raises and bonuses. I asked my VP to re-review, since the poor review she gave me put me below the bonus threshold (again, because she didn’t include several things she was obligated to include).

    She reviewed, realized that she would be scolded by HR if she tried to retroactively change the review, and told me that she wouldn’t be changing the review. She tried to console me by saying “The bonus would have been 2% of your salary, and at your salary that’s not even that much money!”

  172. I Super Believe In You, Tad Cooper*

    Years ago I was an SME at a tiny start-up that was constantly in hair-on-fire, wheels-off-the-bus mode, and that claimed they had zero tolerance for workaholics–despite the fact that bonuses were based in part off how many nights and weekends you worked.

    One day, I got a request at 11:45–just as I was getting lunch out of the fridge–for a meeting with leadership at 12. I decided to wait until after the meeting for lunch. 12 turned into 12:15, turned into 12:30… and finally at 1 the CEO cancelled the meeting.

    I was starving at this point, so I went to the office kitchen, heated up a burrito, and took it to my desk to eat while I tried to make a tight deadline. As soon as I sat down, I realized I had forgotten to get a knife and fork. I went back to the kitchen, got the knife and fork, and turned to go back to my desk–but instead ran into the leadership team I was supposed to have the meeting with.

    The CEO flagged me down and said “Oh, hey, I know you’re about to go eat but while I have you—” and started to run through 20 minutes of big-picture questions about our strategy for a particular client we just won, where I was expected to provide key information and help plan everything out. All while standing there, holding a knife and a fork.

    Then the conversation pivoted to another half-hour of them lamenting our hiring struggles, and saying how important it was to bring in more employees to help me execute on all the major projects I was currently handling solo. After all, they said, they wanted to be sure they were taking good care of me, and they strove for an excellent culture with good work-life balance.

    –As I am standing there, holding a knife and a fork, at 1:45 in the afternoon, and my lunch has gotten ice cold.

  173. Doc*

    I used to work for a large century-old company that was still “family owned” in that one of the founding partners’ granddaughters had inherited the business despite never having contributed actual work to it. I used to call her CEO Barbie because in addition to looking the part, playing dressup was about the extent of her professional acumen.
    This company did an annual charity campaign for which employees voted on the beneficiary and were heavily encouraged though not technically required to donate. One year the selected charity was an organization that gave once-in-a-lifetime experiences to terminally ill children. Not my preference but nothing objectionable, so I just deleted the “reminder” emails and continued contributing privately to causes closer to me.
    One day an URGENT!!! company-wide email went out just BURSTING with ALL CAPS and EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!, in which CEO Barbie was SO EXCITED to tell us about her recent appointment to the board of that year’s charity, which gave us the EXCITING OPPORTUNITY to participate in an additional campaign to … bring one specific child from Western Europe to the U.S. for the world championship of a country club sport.
    Barbie was so enthused about this campaign that she hijacked the (mandatory) quarterly all-hands town hall meeting that week to convince us to join in. The stated goal was for the child’s trip to be 100% funded through 100% employee participation.
    Most of us already hated those meetings. They weren’t so much an opportunity for thousands of people across three countries to learn how the company was doing as they were a back-patting session for executives with a captive audience. So just imagine the collective reaction Barbie got when she took the stage in her conspicuously logoed dress and shoes (you know the ones) to implore us all to pitch in for an excursion that cost less than her monthly salon expenses. This woman stood up in front of God and everyone to say, verbatim, “I know a lot of you have trouble making ends meet, but…”
    She wasn’t wrong about that part. And why did we have trouble making ends meet? Because paying below-market salaries was baked in to the company’s business model, a critical pillar of the sales pitch used to sign all of our clients, which we all learned after we started working and found out how much the people we replaced used to make.

  174. pally*

    The CFO asked me about what places I could afford in the local housing market as she’s got a son out shopping for real estate. I mentioned a few places but couldn’t afford much.

    She wrinkled up her nose at my suggestions. She pointed out that I ought to look at some places close to where she lives. They were much nicer. Yeah, they were. And all of which were wildly outside of my budget.

    But her son could afford these places. Why couldn’t I?

    Thanks for rubbing it in.

    1. March*

      I swear, as soon as people start being able to buy big houses, a part of their brain just shuts off.
      The supervisor of our tiny team had a LONG story on our last online catch-up meeting about how the heating in her (brand new, extremely expensive) house was defunct and how she was waiting for the technician to show up. There was complaining. (it was well above freezing outside) I kept waiting for the right moment to jump in with my story about how I’d had no heat in my cheap rental flat throughout an entire weekend during below-zero C temperatures and how I’d managed.
      The moment did not come. Coworker A, also a homeowner, made sympathetic noises. Coworker B was smiling politely and not really replying.
      Coworker B is a political refugee regularly working unpaid overtime.
      Supervisor is being replaced from next Monday, and I’m sort of glad, because this was a level of tonedeafness that I find it hard to bounce back from. Talking about first-world problems in front of someone who has had to leave their entire world behind? WTF.

  175. Cat Stepmom*

    I worked at a non-profit as an AmeriCorps member, earning $14k a year to run the volunteer program. My team and I were all on SNAP benefits, and the on-site food pantry gave us first dibs on extra perishables to help make ends meet.
    Several months in, the CEO (earning six figures) took a major donor on a tour of the office. When they reached our desks, he loudly announced that we were the “free labor,” with a laugh. He was an awkward guy, and I don’t think he meant any harm, but he fostered a lot of resentment that day.

  176. JanetM*

    These are small change compared to the other stories so far, but they both niggle at me.

    Many years ago, I worked for a two-attorney law firm that handled almost exclusively contingency fee cases. One day at staff meeting, the senior partner told us that the staff obviously didn’t care about the clients as much as the lawyers did, because we got paid whether they won cases or not.

    We were all “salaried” and working loads of unpaid overtime, including occasional weekends to come in and do what we called “search and rescue missions” to get client files off their office floors and back into the file cabinets so we could find them when the attorneys wanted them.

    I went upstairs, immediately typed up my resignation letter, and called the temp agency that had originally placed me there to let them know I’d be back in the market for temp jobs in two weeks.

    —–

    Much more recently, in 2009, the public university I work for appointed a new CIO. He announced at the first all-hands division meeting that anyone who’d been working for the same company for five years or more was deadwood and needed to be managed out.

    Oddly, I am still here, approaching year 31. He was fired after a few years – and a considerable number of employee complaints and allegations of fiscal mismanagement. He was fired from his next job just a few years later after similar complaints and allegations.

  177. Nicky D*

    Several years ago my employer was undergoing a major reorganization of one particular department which was going to result in both layoffs and major changes in job duties for the survivors. This was pre-Zoom times and they arranged an online chat to allow potentially affected employees to ask questions of leadership. An email was sent to employees the day before with a link.

    Leadership decided to have a practice run the day before the chat, which included a role-play exercise. The players (or people acting on their behalf using their names) were a very senior leader of the organization, the leader of the affected department, and a fictitious concerned worker named “Angry_[Job Title]” Unfortunately for them, some employees clicked on the link while the test run was in progress, and took screen shots.

    Among the comments from leadership in the test run: “Life is full of risk. Accept and move on,” in response to a question asking how affected staff could decide whether to accept the early retirement offer without hearing full details of the future of their jobs under the reorganization. The chat also included sentences such as, “We are realigning our resources to ensure blah blah blah,” which were attributed to the leadership.

    My role supported some of the tasks included in the reorganization plan. I received a lecture from the same senior leadership expressing how important it was that I give 110% to the effort because of the anger and low morale in the affected department. My only comment was “well, thanks for laying the groundwork, dude.”

  178. CzechMate*

    ToxicOldBoss™ loved to complain that my colleagues and I had no business sense and that we were just wasting her money (and we were paid accordingly). Same boss:

    -Drove a Tesla to work,
    -Had an extensive designer wardrobe,
    -Lived in a mansion in a very wealthy part of the city,
    -Constantly updated our work spaces,
    -Was always expanding into other commercial real estate spaces, which were usually empty,
    -Would pay tens of thousands of dollars for us to do frequent Tony Robbins trainings to “unleash our potential.” These would be from 2-5 pm every day when we should have been, you know, actually performing the necessary functions to make the business run,
    -Decided the company should put on a music festival. The work we did was not related to music, performing arts, or community relations (like a chamber of commerce). It also wasn’t a consumer brand like, say, Budweiser, where it would make sense for us to sponsor an event and sell our product. We were an unsexy service provider more akin to tax consulting or insurance sales.

  179. You want stories, I got stories*

    Many years ago … ok many many years ago. Town hall meetings. Easy over a thousand people there. It was time for the open questions. One of the higher up managers asked, “Who is going to win, Clay Aiken or Ruben Stoddard?” (American Idol Season 2) This was at the height of American Idol popularity. It got some definite noise from the audience. The CEO looked at her and then said, “Who is that?”

  180. pally*

    I love those years when we get raises.

    The CFO goes on and on about what remodeling she’s gonna do to her home. New bathroom. New kitchen. Marble counters. Fancy sinks. New appliances. Blah, blah, blah.

    The best I could do with my raise was buy a couple of new tires for my truck.

  181. Feline Meteorologist*

    No specific example, but when my bosses complain about their renters or rental properties, I get super annoyed because they are excess properties they own, and if you hate it so much, sell them!!! Like no one is forcing you to buy up multiple properties. Eye roll.

  182. Starchy*

    I worked for a small company, (approx 100 people), we never knew if our paycheck was going to bounce. It was so bad, the bank would let us call ahead to see if there was sufficient funds to cash them. In the meantime the owner would hide in his luxury RV parked out back. Then the following Monday tell us stories about how he flew private to watch the game in another state courtside, how many houses he owned etc etc all while our checks bounced. When I pointed out that the discrepancy between the lifestyle and funds to pay us, I was told he was using personal money for his lifestyle and didn’t have enough in company money to pay us regularly. He got busted after we notified DOL that he wasn’t making our 401k payments on time.

  183. Rey*

    In an evening graduate class meant for older students who were already working full-time, the professor was talking about the new BMW he purchased that day, and that he was disappointed they didn’t have his preferred color. This was on Zoom in the middle of the pandemic, and our class included people who were working full-time in local government roles and non-profits that were directly impacted by the pandemic. He was a tenured professor that was close to retirement, and I think he had been teaching the same course content for at least the last decade without any updates.

  184. Nightengale*

    It’s not out of touch with finances as much as out of touch with what the organization actually does.

    I am a doctor and work for a giant health care organization. It has an insurance arm and a medical care arm and probably other things. Within the medical care arm are clinical people like doctors and nurses as well as all the non-clinical people that make health care work, from management to facilities to IT to marketing.

    A few months ago we all – ALL – got an e-mail about a required “all employee” meeting in January. This meeting would take place live in multiple settings and virtually. It was scheduled for 8 AM on a specific day. Then it was moved to 8 AM on a different specific day in February.

    Reader, I have patients scheduled. The wait list to see me is nearly a year, so it would have been a big deal to have to move a patient. (This health system also has a requirement that a VP has to authorize a doctor taking time off with less than 6 weeks notice.) Many other practitioners have patients scheduled. The operating rooms across our multiple hospitals probably have surgeries scheduled. The emergency department and intensive care units I am sure will have patients at that time. People who work night shift might be sleeping at that time.

    It was as though it never occurred to the people in charge of this major health system that some of us. .. actually provide patient care. We don’t all have office jobs that consist mainly of taking meetings. I asked my office manager about how mandatory this actually was, and she felt it wouldn’t be all that mandatory so I decided to skip it but worried about missing a “required meeting.” Finally, we got an e-mail telling us they recognized that clinicians may not be able to attend and that the session would be recorded. Good of them to notice!

  185. Post Morbus*

    In my first corporate job in the early 2000s, it was when Survivor had just started and it had an absolute chokehold on coffee break conversations. EVERYONE watched it.

    Around Christmas we had a major layoff (about 1/3 of the company) and the entire office was full of crying when people were escorted by security to clean out their desks. I remember one woman who lost her job had been recently widowed and was now a single mom to a school-aged child. She was actually banging her head on the wall and screaming right outside of my office. It was absolutely awful and I was fresh out of university so I had no clue what normal was in a layoff situation. I was absolutely gutted.

    After everything died down in the afternoon, the CFO brought us all into a large meeting room and tried to give the requisite speech to assure employees. Instead of empathy, he launched out of the gate with, “I want you to think of it like Survivor – you weren’t voted off the island today!” The room erupted with gasps and looks of horror as he smiled, clearly quite proud of his metaphor. I thought the head of HR was going to die right on the spot!

  186. Feline Meteorologist*

    Oh! I thought of one. Not a CEO, but I had a former coworker who talked about how she couldn’t afford to retire because of the high property taxes on a farm she owned in another state, and didn’t spend time at. Like…okay?

  187. MHG*

    I was laid off from my PR agency job. They made my last day of work May 26, but they didn’t tell me until May 27. The reason? The CEO was on vacation. They didn’t pay me for the 27th. I wanted to fight it, but they also gave me extra severance to pay for COBRA because I was still in PT after a knee surgery. I didn’t want to jeopardize that.

  188. Longwing*

    Back in 2021 we pivoted to remote work. Our CEO realized that with all this newfangled video conferencing stuff, he could get the whole company on one video call where they could listen to him talk. So he set up mandatory twice-weekly all-staff calls.

    He saw himself as something of a comedian/charmer, so he’d reserve the Friday call for being “unfiltered”… Which meant inappropriate jokes, giving upper management dumb nicknames, making fun of staff if they took time off the same week as their birthdays… the list goes on and on.

    As someone in IT, I got roped into “running” the meetings (because they happen on a computer and we’re “good” with computers), forget that there’s nothing remotely technical about them. So I had to be an amateur producer for this unhinged drivel every single week.

    The absolute highlight for me was the day where he was “joking” about his European vacation during the same meeting where he announced an across-the-board 10% pay cut to deal with the shortfalls from Covid.

    He retired at the end of 2024, and I was not sad to see him go… and we still do those moronic calls once a week. Our “project manager” reaches out to different departments to drum up content for them because “We have this meeting, we need something to talk about!”

  189. average higher ed admin*

    A university I used to work for had a president who had a generally good, pro-environment stance. At a town hall, students pressed him on the university’s investment holdings with companies they argued were destructive to the environment. Rather than addressing the question directly, he retorted, “I walk to work, do you do that? That’s the kind of action that’s good for the environment.”

    Not only was his response weirdly defensive, as the university president, he lived in a university property. Of course he walks to work, his work is right there! And affordable student housing was in the outskirts of town, too far to walk and not close to public transit.

    1. Donut Explosion*

      I just posted a story about my school’s out-of-touch Dean’s response to the pandemic, but this reminded me of another one!

      Though we went fully remote in Spring 2020, the College decided in Fall 2020 our classes all needed to be based on campus – because classes take place in classrooms. But of course not all of our students would be able to get to campus all the time so we would offer our courses in HyFlex. In this modality, the instructor would be in the classroom, teaching to whichever students would show up to class. The class would be streamed online and students who couldn’t come could log in and participate online.

      If faculty didn’t wish to come to campus, no problem! They could just not teach that semester. No one was forcing them. (Almost all of our faculty were adjuncts, so not teaching meant you didn’t get paid. I think many of the full-time faculty who didn’t feel comfortable coming to campus were assigned the few remaining online course sections)

      But wait, there’s more.

      During a meeting where they discussed logistics of faculty returning to campus, a few faculty expressed concern for their and their students’ safety, because their classes took place at night and they were worried about walking through a mostly-empty campus to get to their cars or to take public transporation home.

      The Dean absolutely scoffed at this, saying that he was on campus all the time and he felt perfectly safe walking from his office to the parking garage.

      A few people tried to point out that he wasn’t there at 10 o’clock at night and asked if they too would receive free parking passes so they could park in the nice, secure garage but he wasn’t particularly interested in hearing from them. They could call campus security to escort them to the edge of campus so they could walk the rest of the way to their car if they didn’t feel safe.

  190. Raine*

    When I worked at a grocery store, management would incentivize the staff with promises of free pizza. And it would work! Goals would be met, pizza would be had.

    Pizza that we, the hot foods employees, would have to make.
    All.
    Day.
    Long.

    I’ve never been so de-incentivized to meet goals.

  191. Donut Explosion*

    In Spring 2020 I worked in higher education in a faculty support role. Anyone who worked in higher ed during this time knows what a huge struggle it was. My area in particular worked harder than ever helping faculty move their courses online (previously almost everything was in-person), and lots of other areas had to figure out how to move their processes online. And then once we got through the emergency remote instruction phase, leadership made a bunch of weird decisions on how to move forward (namely, that rather than primarily continuing with online instruction we were all going to adopt HyFlex, which required another round of training and course redesign). I left in Spring 2021 for mostly unrelated reasons, and though many classes were on campus most of the rest of the college operations were remote – because we had all figured out how to work remotely.

    A few months after I left college leadership decided they wanted everyone back on campus full-time, and held a large Town Hall to share the decision, announcing to the College community that it was “time to get back to work”. My former colleagues, who had been busting their butts from home for the past 18 months were, to say the least, not impressed by this.

  192. RussianInTexas*

    A division VP in my old job had a meeting with my department once. That department was the only one in the company still hourly, with some people making minimum wage or close to it. He whole spiel was how the company needs to create the “elevator pitch”, and how each one of us needs to create a personal “elevator pitch”, and how we should provide the excellent customer service like her Lexus’s dealership does.

  193. hypoglycemic rage (she/her)*

    I was working super part-time at a local public library. the assistant director/head of HR got some special permission to work entirely (either totally or a significant majority more than others, can’t remember) from home for several months during the worst of COVID and for several months after. meanwhile the rest of us, even part timers, were still coming in a couple days a week. and most of us were front-desk people, helping the public. (at this library, management did not typically work the public desks, which was a whole other problem for me.)

    one of her first days back, she comes out to the adult services area and faces me and says something to the effect of “wow it’s been so long since i’ve been here.”

    it just seemed so out of touch with what most of us had been going through for the last several months, working with the public and that involved a lot of changing policies that said public did not always like or appreciate.

  194. NotAnEconomist*

    During the summer of 2020, the chief Human Resources officer at the elite college where I worked explained in a tense all faculty/staff meeting that we shouldn’t be upset that they were making changes to our retirement matching program (they were suspending it) because the institution had our best interests at heart — and because as a majority female staff/faculty we didn’t have a great grasp on finances anyway. Note: the chief HR officer was a woman. Either the execs weren’t wildly out of touch, or my lady brain (which would have been frustrated but understanding of the reality that pandemic-related restrictions were having a negative impact on the institution’s financials) was just too lady-brained to actually understand that I’m bad with money.

  195. Mascot Madness*

    It was sometime after COVID when morale was terrible. We had these occasional virtual all-hands meetings led by an incredibly out-of-touch member of leadership. He genuinely, 100% earnestly, stated that his proposal to improve morale was to establish a company mascot.

    We were notoriously underpaid, overworked, and leadership had not been listening to the many good, meaningful changes being proposed. This was mocked for years (and is still mocked by those of us who were around for it)

  196. anytime anywhere*

    A new university president planning a week of inauguration activities right after the university is placed on fiscal watch by the state and a RIF where 13 or so faculty and staff lost their jobs. Yes, they did eventually scale back the inauguration events, but not until a few weeks prior. Wondering who had (appropriately) raised a stink about that one…

  197. Higher Ed Kitten Party*

    My coworker and I were talking to our immediate boss about how rough the housing market is in our town. We were specifically talking about how each of us only has secure, affordable housing because of dumb luck. Our director chimed in to say, “yes, I totally understand! When both of my sons graduated high school and move out, I had to downsize my home. I even had to have one of the extra walk in closets converted into an office. The renovations took forever!”

    Buddy. That is not the same.

  198. Anonymous University Employee*

    The provost at the University where I work had a listening session I attended, ostensibly to hear the concerns of faculty and staff, including challenges to tenure and low pay and morale. Instead he spent his 10 minutes explaining to us how to set up direct donations in our 401ks to the university. I really hope someone told him off later (someone with tenure).

  199. BrainyMC*

    I worked in food manufacturing. My old manager kept hiring people without college degrees to be quality control specialist. Mind you, we have to account for all food standards, keep records up to date with the latest scientific research, understand and investigate microbial growth, and understand temperature kill steps. The job involved a lot of scientific reasoning that isn’t taught in high school. She slowly dumbed down the department. She was a terrible manager so all of us with college degrees ended up leaving to bigger and better companies.

    My last day, she shut herself in her office and refused to talk to me at all. Maybe she was trying to teach me a lesson? I was super relieved.

  200. SleeplessDad*

    A company I used to work at did not offer parental leave. So when my wife got pregnant, I began saving up PTO to use after the birth. I also asked my manager if I could work from home temporarily after coming back from PTO. This was somewhat uncharted territory for the small company (it shouldn’t have been post-COVID, but anyway…), so the request went up to his boss, the president. The president had a meeting with me to discuss how it would work.

    He seemed very nice about trying to accommodate, but also quite clueless. When discussing the return-to-office timeline, he said things like, “So after a week or two when the baby’s sleeping through the night, and you start thinking, ‘Man, I really want to go back to work!’…” Yes, he does have children of his own!

    I could go on about that grandboss and his sometimes quirky, sometimes toxic behavior, but that stands out as the most out-of-touch thing I remember him saying. Thankfully I’m now at a company that has paid parental leave, a strong hybrid/WFH culture, and a healthier work environment overall.

  201. Bird Lady*

    While working for a local nonprofit, we had a leadership change right after Covid. Our former ED was local, and while economically well-off, was a fiscally responsible woman who when I joined the team was driving a 20-year old Toyota. She wore high-quality clothing but nothing overtly designer and all quite tasteful.

    Due to Covid-related loss of revenue, our team was overworked and underpaid. As people left for other opportunities, responsibilities were passed along to remaining staff rather than hiring replacements.

    Our new ED came to our first in-person gala, where we were honest about the pandemic’s affect on our finances, in a couture gown, brand new Gucci belt, and $1,000 shoes. She regularly wore brand-new designer clothing and balked at people who shopped at Old Navy. At the gala, she told donors that she didn’t need to work because she was rich, but she wanted to work to keep busy. She was making twice what the former ED was making, and at least 10-times more than our highest paid staff member.

    She once complimented me on my jeans, and when I said that they were from the Gap (and they were really nice jeans!), she said she didn’t respect anyone’s taste if they wore cheap jeans. I was her sole development person at the time, responsible for all our fundraising events.

    I very quickly quit.

  202. MHG*

    Just remembered that I have another! And I’m naming names as I’ve told this story many times when discussing this man’s out-of-touchness. I interned for the Chicago Bulls in sales in 2001. We were paid $25 per season ticket we sold. If you know anything about the Bulls then, the times were bad and I got yelled at a lot when I tried to sell tickets. We dressed professionally and women were supposed to wear “proper hosiery.” It was July in Chicago, so most women ignored that rule.

    The one good thing about the job was they catered lunch for us. One day in the lunch room, Jerry Reinsdorf, the Bulls (and White Sox) owner was there. The next day, all the women were given memos to remind them to wear proper hosiery.

  203. Alice Quinn*

    My favorite moment was when an SVP took my team out to lunch to celebrate a successful launch of a major project – a really nice thing to do! He happened to be seated at my table, and proceeded to go on and on about his plans to purchase a plane since he’d completed his pilot’s license. No one at the table was making anywhere near a plane-purchasing salary. When one of my friends called him on it, his response was, “It’s just like having a second mortgage, so it’s not that bad!” Sir, none of us have second mortgage money either.

  204. Grey Coder*

    CEO of a tech startup was a nepo baby whose family had invested in the company. CEO was American but the company was based in the UK. Came the day when layoffs/redundancies were planned, CEO was baffled by the idea that he had to follow UK employment laws. “Can’t we just fire them?” were his actual words.

  205. Amari*

    My boss’s boss was always bragging about her huge house, multiple cars, expensive purses, expensive shoes, etc. etc. I was an underpaid entry level employee who was being held back from a deserved promotion. Eventually one day when she started talking about the size of her garage I blurted out incredulously, without really meaning to, “That’s bigger than the size of my entire apartment!!!!” I think maybe she toned it down after that.

  206. AndersonDarling*

    At my last company, the CEO was holding an “all hands” meeting about how we all needed to step up, sacrifice for the company, do more work, take more responsibility… and then asked “Do you need to take a pee-pee break?” He was speaking to everyone and legitimately was wondering if it was time to pause the meeting for a few minutes.
    That was some astounding compartmentalization. We needed to step up and save his company, but our perceived social and language skills were still on the “pee-pee” and “poo-poo” level.

  207. Long Time Lurker*

    Years ago I worked at a non profit where most of the staff was very poorly paid and we were either part-timers or “contractors” which meant we didn’t get any benefits, including any paid time off (not to mention health insurance, etc). The director, however, worked full time, had benefits, and took ample time off, in part because her husband regularly traveled to Europe for his work and so she would go with him, often for weeks at a time.

    One of my colleagues had always wanted to travel to a country our boss went to frequently and his grandmother had given him the money for a trip as a special present. He knew he’d have to take a week off (unpaid) but he was so excited.

    Until our boss said “there’s no point in going to Europe unless you go for at least two weeks, honestly, I think three weeks is the bare minimum.”

    She knew exactly how much he made and the fact that he didn’t get any PTO.

  208. JoAnna*

    We had a town hall meeting in November where all the execs talked about how successful the company was and how much money it had made. Also they’d just spent $$$ renovating our offices even though most staff are remote or hybrid.

    When it came time for Christmas bonuses, mine was… $125. That’s .25% of my gross salary.

    Also they talk big about being supportive of mental health but we only get five paid sick days per YEAR – and the only reason we have that is due to state law.

    Allegedly I’m eligible for a merit raise later this year but I’m sure that will be some pathetic amount as well.

  209. Oogie*

    I worked at a regional bank and every branch was required to have a meeting to gather around and watch a video of the CEO informing us no one would be getting raises because the bank *only* profited 20 million last year.

  210. gotta be anon*

    This month, the HR at my large public university sent out a survey to all full time staff, asking us which of our benefits we wanted to keep (that’s not how they worded it, of course; it was a “Total Rewards Survey: Share feedback on pay, benefits, education and more”). The survey questions were in the vein of: rank in order of importance to you: your pay, your retirement, your health insurance. This was a huge series of questions for all of our benefits, including tuition reimbursement, dental insurance, vision insurance, adoption assistance, flexible work, etc. Making us rank what we would be willing to give up in benefits. Reprehensible, right?

    The real kicker was one of the last questions, which was basically: would you be willing to pay more for your health insurance if you got off the days between Christmas and New Year’s without having to use vacation?

    Morally despicable from a place where the university coaching staff and administration are the highest paid public employees in the state, but the rank and file are woefully underpaid and our benefits aren’t anywhere as good as they used to be.

  211. Knows a teacher*

    Someone I know who is a teacher has a coworker who has been having a custody battle with their ex spouse. They had to miss a lot of days due to court dates and come in late when the ex is late to exchange the kids.

    Then one day when it’s almost the time of the week for them to get the kids back, they find out the ex has taken the kids 7 states over and is on their way to the border. Of course they took some time off to take care of that. The superintendent went to deny the leave request with “you should’ve planned better” even though they had the sick time. As if every absence can be planned for.

    I don’t know if the leave dispute has been resolved yet, but I do know the union got involved. And they did get the kids back, along with full custody.

  212. Anonymous and Bitter*

    I’m sure all of this is cluelessness rather than malice, of course, since when is a highly-paid corporate executive ever a narcissist/psychopath who enjoys lording their wealth and position over their peasants… er… employees?

  213. Random Bystander*

    It’s been a very, very long time but … oh, so very out of touch.

    I was working retail (30+ years ago), and to “save costs” they decided to lay off all the part time employees (including the ones who restocked basic items like packaged socks, underwear, diapers, etc). Further, they reduced all of us full-time employees to 32 hours/week. So we were feeling the pinch, especially since the hours the store was open were not reduced. That’s when corporate announced that in order to keep the CEO’s pay “equivalent to [other CEOs]” that they were *doubling* his pay and *tripling* his bonus. I mean, the increase was in dollars well into the six figures.

    Perhaps it is not a surprise that the particular store (entire chain) is no longer in business.

      1. Scrimp*

        Sounds similar to what PayLess did. Execs basically bought the company in order to give themselves massive payouts and bankrupt it in the process. I believe they were taken to vourt over it.

  214. Bruce*

    Not my story, but when my son attended SJSU the President was squeezing the instructors and increasing class sizes to save money. Then he made a sweet-heart deal with a big tech company to spend $28 mega-bucks on a dedicated video phone system… This was in the early 2010s when Skype was already in wide use! He was not widely missed when he moved on.

  215. Beauty and Roast Beef*

    After our nonprofit’s main funding source cut our funding by nearly 50%, we had a lot of staff layoffs and department reorgs. I sat near the HR team and saw a lot of closed-door meetings (complete with a white noise machine) so I kind of suspected it was coming. It was stressful and tense – they gave people about a month’s notice and they had to continue working to be able to get their full severance, vacation payouts, etc. Soon after, maybe about a week after the layoff announcement, I overheard our CEO pop into one of the HR manager’s offices and ask, without closing the door and in full earshot of anyone around, if his quarterly bonus would be included in that week’s payroll. Like dude, READ THE ROOM.

  216. Anon for This*

    I worked for a private non-profit university several years ago that was having financial difficulties. I found a new job elsewhere but still had quite a few friends working there. They had their big fundraising event on Friday night, where many employees generously donated to the cause. On Saturday morning they announced that the university was closing permanently and everyone’s jobs would end within the month. They kept all the donations, of course. I am pleased to note that they were the subject of multiple lawsuits, although no one got the jail time I felt they deserved.

  217. cncx*

    Ok, this was not in the us and us rules don’t apply, but our hr person made a payroll mistake when our pension plans switched and as a result all of us had to pay back into our mandatory pension between what was the equivalent of a month’s salary. Again, not the us, normally this amount is withhold from our salary but strangely our salaries didn’t change, hr sucked there for that (new pension was obviously a worse deal and this was maybe not a payroll error but the price of switching and or hr’s incompetence passed on to us) and other reasons. They were like, we can garnish your entire wage this month (legal in that jurisdiction) or we can spread it out over two or three months. I chose to have one third of my salary garnished for three months.

    I was going through a very expensive divorce and I could not go without a month’s salary. I couldn’t really go without the money they wanted to take in the payment plan. I didn’t have it in the bank because I was throwing every last cent at my ex husband’s tax debt ( another peculiarity of that jurisdiction). Although my salary was good, I still was the second lowest paid employee.

    Did not enjoy being looked at like I was an alien from planet wtf for not having it in the bank, and skipping all socializing and people being like “but we pay you good money”…yeah it is good money if you aren’t paying for the company’s pension “mistakes” and the price of your freedom from your marriage. I had a lot of peanut butter sandwiches those three months. The people acting like this was me not managing my money when actually I was doing an amazing job managing my money given what I had to pay in my divorce still leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

    The kicker is in this jurisdiction usually there is a legal framework for the company to eat these kinds of mistakes that were their fault, and maybe they did for the executives but they didn’t for us peons. The expensive summer party would have more than paid the pension mistakes for me and the other two poors.

  218. Justin*

    At my current job they really do pay us well enough (entry pay is 70k depending on location) that this is much less of an issue. Amusingly, this means that we both are paid better and the top execs are more conscious of it.

    A few jobs ago I was making 40k (in nyc) and I was in a cab with my boss and her boss, and all they were talking about was what trip they were taking over the long weekend and then they asked me, and I said, well I will be here working. (I worked Saturdays.)

  219. ragazza*

    Worked at a company where the CEO would park his shiny red sports car diagonally across the spots for disabled people. Right in front of the entrance of course. Not a good look.

    1. juliebulie*

      You’re not kidding. I thought some of these stories would be difficult, and no surprise, they are. Sometimes I wish people could hear themselves.

  220. Always Tired*

    Our CEO rambles about how HE manages his ADHD just fine without medication, so he doesn’t get why others need it or perhaps accommodations. Meanwhile, he (1) has a multi-generational home with his retired in-laws taking care of most child related tasks, (2) weekly housekeeping and gardeners, (3) always has food delivered and never does his own grocery shopping (4) pays for laundry service, and (5) never looks at his calendars or follows up on emails, just relies on employees to tell him/remind him. HE does not managed his ADHD. everyone around him does, and he doesn’t even realize it.

  221. Lady Ann*

    This isn’t as egregious as some of the others, but when I was a brand new professional a few months into my job, my car broke down. I had a job where I traveled from place to place during the workday, so I couldn’t just get a ride to work and home. It was a real inconvenience for me. My VP at the time heard me complaining to a coworker and interrupted to say “What’s the big deal? You just bring it to the dealership and they’ll fix it for you.” Reader, it cost almost $4000 to fix the car, which was in fact my entire savings at the time.