He turns 51 today, which gives us an excuse to post this deleted scene from Office Space…
… and ask: What’s the most Lumbergh-like thing your boss has done?
Sep 20
2007
02:56 PM ET
Today's Funnies: Happy Birthday, Gary Cole! (Plus: Share your bad-boss experiences)
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When I was working at a mini-golf course, my boss had me water all the plants (I think there were 100 or so) with a hose hooked up to a fire hydrant. The force of the water was insane, and he wanted me to pinch the hose to slow down the pressure. It took me 5 hours.
um yeah, cake for you?
the voice of harvey birdman
yeah that would be greeaaat
Once, as a Senate employee, I got in a fight with a constituent who had called (this is a major no-no, but the guy called my boss a communist and a few other unkind words, so I said a few back which of course resolved nothing). Before the guy called back, I informed my boss what happened, that this was a one time “just lost my cool under the circumstances kind of a deal” and that it would never happen again.
My boss then replied to me that she understood how it was pretty likely I had lost my cool under the circumstances and informed me that this could never happen again. Then her supervisor came and said the exact same thing a day later. The incident felt like the TPS forms being reborn.
My boss left a message on my cell at 7:12 a.m. to come in at 7:30 a.m. (I normally report in at 9.)
He emails me at 3 in the morning about stuff I already did.
Calls meetings at the same time we go to lunch, and then doesn’t show up.
Makes us frame his personal photos. (We are not a framing business.)
Steals our spaceheaters and puts them in his office when he’s cold.
Happy birthday, GC!
Can we have Midnight Caller on DVD now?
My boss was on a business trip and was expecting a Fed Ex package so he asked me to go to the bathroom with the door open in case someone came to the office while I was in there and I missed them.
When I was working at Barnes & Noble I had a boss who walked around with a coffee cup all day, just like Lumbergh. He’d busy himself with eating cheesecake, making long phone calls to his boyfriend, and reading magazines. Thankfully, he was tall, so we could see his bald head bouncing towards us through the stacks of books, and we knew to quit screwing off and get back to work.
i was the Communications Director for a large non-profit and in charge of multiple print and Web publications involving everything from HTML creation to various Adobe programs, etc. When i announced i was vacating my position, my boss put a post on craigslist for an ‘administrative assistant’ that said ‘Organization seeks individual experienced in multi-tasking. Knowledge of excel/microsoft word processing a plus.’
Our be-otch boss at Oshkosh B’Gosh (I’ll call her Miranda) made one of our staff members come back into work for meetings on 9/11 even though this staff member had brother who worked at the Pentagon and she had no idea if her brother was dead or alive. Beyond cold!!!
I used to work for a staffing company and our clients would often call with last-minute orders, sometimes over the weekend. Whenever that happened, my boss was sure to immediately call me and say that he was tied up with whatever and would need for me to go to the office and take care of it. I remember one week I told him I would be out of town the entire weekend and wouldn’t be able to come in if he needed. When I got back home on Sunday night, there were EIGHT messages on my machine from him asking me to go to the office then wondering where I was and why I hadn’t called him to let him know I would be there. My roommate at the time asked me, “Do you work for Lumbergh?” Monday was not a good day. I ended up handing in my resignation three weeks later and have never regretted leaving.
I need you to go
ahead and have a happy
birthday, Gary…yeah
The most Lumberghian thing my boss has done was this past Monday. I was sick as a dog and only came into work because I had an appointment out of the office I couldn’t reschedule at 8 a.m. At around 3 p.m., when I’m getting ready to go home an hour early (I was gonna make it up the next day), my boss asks me to cover some land-development (zzzz!) meeting that’s scheduled to go from 6 to 7 p.m.
Of course, the meeting didn’t end till 8, so, on the rare day that I got sick (and when I get sick it’s brutal since it doesn’t happen often) I worked 12 hours. Ugh.
I used to have a co-worker that would would explain things like she was talking to a kindergartner.
My current boss is great, thank goodness, but I had a boss at a former job who used to stand behind me while I was creating PowerPoint slides and correct my typing (“you put an extra space after that bullet…”), usually at 9 pm after we’d been at work for 11 hours already. He also looked almost exactly like Ned Flanders.
Hey Birdman, didya get that thing I sent ya? P. Potamus
I had a male boss that would say “Uhhh…” before every sentence, even during the performance review. I also had a female boss that wanted me to jot down everything I did per day, from the phone messages to the supplies I ordered for the department to how long I was at the copy machine. And I’ve outlasted all of them. Go figure.
LOL! I’m so thankful for the boss I have now but let me tell you guys about my boss from hell from a couple of years ago:
This woman injured her leg and still managed to come in to work, cast and all, to boss us around even though she was told she need to rest for 3 weeks. She banned any music being played on the floor (regardless of how quiet it was), sat at our desks until we showed up so she knew exactly what time you came in and expected you to be at work 20 minutes before your shift began so you could use the bathroom, get coffee or whatever you wanted because you weren’t allowed to leave your desk except for lunch or at the end of the day… no exceptions! I felt bad for my co-workers with small bladders, we came up with a system to rotate “tasks” that required us to leave the office so they could relieve themselves… LMAO! Man, I hated that place!