My Boss Is An Awful Bully

by Chase
(NJ)

My boss is an awful human being. He only cares about himself, not his employees who make the money for him. For the Steel Dept, he cut 25% of their salary off four years ago and hasn't given it back since. My side, the Art dept., we haven't had a raise in 6 years, no Union contract for 4 years and possibly paid off our Union rep not to come around anymore.

He is rude, pushy, verbally abusive, two-faced, very stressful, and constantly yells. I've had many confrontations with in 10 years I have been working there but it reached the boiling point... So this past Friday morning, I walked in calmly and politely and asked my boss to talk to him in private into his office. I kindly asked him to lay me off after 10 years.

The reason why is I am not well and unhappy. I am sick mentally and physically. After being ten years at my job, I had to deal with constant verbal abuse by the boss, by salesmen, art director and production manager. I am forced to do other work besides being a production artist which I was hired to do. I'm forced to be customer service for the salesmen, run around do errands, and get harassed by clients as well. It's a toxic environment where everyone is miserable, mostly because the boss doesn't care about anyone but himself.

It has taken a toll on me. I am stressed out, I constantly get sick, I have very high blood pressure, battling depression, and now I have pneumonia for 3 weeks now, going on 4. I went back to work this past Thursday after being out two days for pneumonia where I should have stayed home for a week, instead I wanted to work. I had 13 jobs on my desk to do all day. So around 2 pm came, I had 2 jobs left to do for the day, I was in the middle of my third. So I pop online to check my email real quick, it could have been 10 minutes tops. The boss, who's literally 5 steps away, send me an email telling me to slow down on the internet all day because we have a lot of work. That's total bullshit because there was only 7 jobs behind me on a table which can be split up between 4 other artists.

I wrote back to him saying you should be happy I came in today in my sick condition. That morning I gave him the doctor's note saying I have pneumonia, he's heard me constantly coughing and hacking up a lung. I even gave him the medication I'm taking. I told him I should be home for the week. He didn't want to hear it! He accused me of not working, when he has said many times I'm his best go to guy. So I got my things and left for the day. So back to Friday morning...

I asked kindly to be laid off. He starts right out yelling at me like I'm trash, he says I made you sick... so I said you know what yeah, you and this company has after 10 years. I'm sick, depressed, stressed out, I need to get better. I said this calmly. He continues to yell at me saying what did I mean by that email... I said it's exactly what I said, you should be happy I came in while being seriously sick. I said how dare you to accuse me of not working when all I do is work and get jobs done at least 5 days before the deadline! Then he goes, you know what, I'm not laying you off, and yells at me, you're quitting!! I said I'm not quitting, I'm not a quitter. Then he yells at me, get the fuck out of my office. I stand up and say no. Then he proceeds to leave his office like a punk and yells at me get the fuck out of my office! Then I started to get a little heated, and ask am I fired now?? am I fired now?? He continues to yell at me to get the fuck out of here, and I ask am I fired?? Then he's still yelling at the top of his lungs saying I'm an asshole, oh you saying no one does work around but you right? Then I defended myself yelling back at him Yes! Yes I do, I do most of the work around, I'm the one who makes you the money! You treat your best worker like this after 10 years right?? He charges at me yelling with his fist in front of him get the fuck out of my office! I asked again am I fired?? He says what the fuck are you deaf? SO I said you know what go fuck yourself you piece of shit! Then he calmed down started stepping back and said that's my boy as he crawled away into the art department. Then I walked out.

The whole office heard it, his best friend who works there saw the whole thing went down. I walked out and saw the production manager was chuckling, I didn't know what to make of that. A couple of hours later a co-worker called me up saying he what happened was proud of me. A lot of the guys heard what went down and was happy. So now I wait to go back to work Monday and to see what happens because I was never told I was fired or laid off and I never said I quit. I feel like George Costanza now where in that episode he goes back to work on Monday after he berated his boss and quit. I started looking for a new job and tried to get in touch with my Union to seek help.

Anyone else have it as bad as I do? Anyone have advice?