My Horrible Boss Story

   In my adult life nearly every job I have had has been in sales. I am not particularly fond of being a salesman, but I am good at it. That is mainly due to the fact that I think like the customer and treat the customer the way they want to be treated. Being in sales does have it's share of great stories. One of these stories came to mind the other day when I saw the trailer for the new movie "Horrible Bosses". I, just as many of you probably have, had a terrible boss at one time in my career. I would like to tell you about him.
   Let me start off by giving you a little background information. There was a time when, like many people nowadays, I was unemployed. I had been searching for a career for a while and was working with a landscaper part-time to get some cash. Well I had a friend who told me that the company she was working for needed a salesman. So needless to say I jumped on the opportunity and emailed my resume to the sales manager without asking a whole lot of questions. At the time I sent my resume all I knew about the company is that they sold tractor implement replacement parts. For those of you that know me personally, you know how much of a city boy I am and how little I know about farming equipment.

   I waited for about 3 months before I ever got contacted about the position. That should have been my first clue to not take the job, but I went in for the interview anyway. I ended up interviewing with two people that day. The companies CEO and the sales manager I sent my resume to. The CEO was this man in his 60's from Holland. He moved to the US when he was in his 20's. Needless to say, I could barely understand what he was saying through his still very heavy dutch accent. His interview consisted of telling me very little about the job and wanting me to "ask questions". This was his favorite phrase. That should have been clue number 2.

   Clue 3 was when I went to meet with the sales manager. Seeing as I interviewed on a Saturday and business hours were Monday through Friday we had to meet some where out of the office. That place was a McDonalds. Yup, you read that right. We sat in a booth and discussed the job. He explained in way more detail what the job was about and how the pay scale worked. I felt like that interview went much better than the first.

   Even after three pretty blatant clues as to why I should've not taken the job, the lure of 30k a year plus commission won out.

   My first day at work I am shown to my desk and told I can set it up anyway I want. Once I got done with that I was shown the training materials. These materials consisted of excel spreadsheets that were written in shorthand that you needed special training to decipher. We are not talking about common short hand practices. I mean it was some weird made up Dutch short hand. I was told to look through the file server and memorize everything. Remember, I know nothing about this business and I told them this in the interview process.

   After one week of little to no training, I was thrown into the shark tank. Not only was I expected to cold call businesses 6 hours of the work day, but I was also expected to sell something to 75% of my cold calls. If you have ever been in sales before you know just getting someone to talk to you on a cold call is hard enough. Actually getting them to buy something is a feat of it's own. I also need to mention that if we were on the phone with a customer for more than 5 minutes we would get an email saying we needed to move on to the next customer. Also, if we were off the phone for more than 5 minutes we would get an email saying we needed to make more calls.

   On top of the phone calls I was required to make, I was also expected to take work home with me. Now I would be ok with this if the work was clearly mapped out, but this was dumb busy work that I would turn in and be told that it was wrong and made to do it again. If tell me to do something knowing that it will not be completed to your liking then tell me exactly how you want it done. Don't just tell me to do it. On top of a 40 hour work week I was expected to take 20 more hours out of my own life at night and on the weekends to do this busy work.

   The straw that really broke the camels back is when I was told to do market research on a product that I knew nothing about. Not only that, but I was not allowed to work on it in the office due to the fact that I was getting hounded by emails telling me to make phone calls. How do you expect me to do market research at home when all of the info I need is from customers and competitors and I can't call them after business hours?!?!?!

   Needless to say, I did not last very long in that environment, didn't matter how great the pay was.

   Everyone has had a boss like this in the past, or maybe even the present. Leave a comment below with any stories you would like to share. They don't have to be as long as mine.