Weirdest boss you have had and why? (Bit of fun - let's see how times have changed)

This happened to a colleague...

We worked at an accountancy firm as PAs. Her boss was one of the partners. He used to get her to do all his private stuff too e.g. collect his dry cleaning, etc. She went in his office one day and he asked her to go and buy something (I can't remember what) and he then proceeded very casually to take out of his wallet his platinum bank card. He then threw it across the desk at her and said "Use my platinum card. That's the closest you will get to ever having one".

She was a really sweet and clever girl but was in floods of tears.

Reminds me, Lisa, many decades ago before 'equal opps' were invented, even then being taken aback by a Secretary / PA's official job description presented to me as a member of the Works Job Evaluation Committee which under ' Other Duties' read

"Attend to her (sic) boss's personal needs"

The sad thing is, David, that was the 'norm' back then.
Lisa

A long time ago I had a boss who called me every morning at 9:00 a.m. sharp to see if I was in the office on time. If I was only 5 minutes late it was a major issue.

He however called from home or his car and was usually in the office at least 1 hour late.

I once had a colleague whose job description had a line in it saying "xyz's PA needs to be pretty".

That is shocking!!!

My first day of my first “proper” job I answered a phone call and picked up the nearest pen to take a note of the message. It was a green pen and once I finished the call it was ripped out of my hand and I was given a lecture about knowing my place in the scheme of things by my supervisor (with the pen in one hand and a cigarette in the other, glad that has gone too)

This was back in the days of manual records and staff used black pens. Supervisors had red pens to sign off any amendments, mistakes or annual leave requests on “leave cards” and senior managers (all men) had green pens to sign off a 5% check or for authorisations etc.

Not that I knew it on day 1 but people actually walked about with the range of pens displayed in their top pocket as a status symbol!

To be fair to that first supervisor years later when I was promoted to senior management (and by then we had early versions of computers) I received a green pen through internal mail.

This was back in the day when women were not allowed to wear trousers to work and the most senior female supervisor checked that skirts lengths were below the knee and blouses fully buttoned up. Those infringing these rules were sent home to change and a half day of annual leave taken from them.

How the world has changed.

I came back from honeymoon and my much older boss said to me "Now you know whats what :/ you can be my mistress". He was being serious as well! Needless to say, I left pretty quickly after that. What made it even worse was that I worked with his wife in the same office!!!!!

My first job where I currently work was as an administrator, I'd been interviewed by the then HR manager and Finance manager and it had all gone well (I remember them saying that the plant manager should have been there but was unavailable). However, on the first day, I was met by the then plant manager whose first words out of his mouth to me were "lets see how well you can make me a cup of tea" (this was not what I'd signed up for), I thought he was joking but I soon learnt that he wasn't, I immediately disliked him and our relationship from then on was difficult, all he had me doing was running his personal errands for him, getting him bacon butties from the local butty van, getting his shopping from the local supermarket, I would have left if he hadn't. Thankfully, I've been able to work my way up to a senior HR role and my current plant manager runs his own personal errands :-)