Ever been lied to by your boss? Share it.

I don't know if I was just gullible or naive, I'm sure bosses have lied for generations, It just seems to have become SOP around 2001 or 2002. Before then, I can't recall being treated shabbily by bosses.

 

During my brief stint in management, I promised to never lie to my crew. And they didn't always like what I told them (regarding cutbacks, more with less, or my displeasure with being told to ask them to do more work for less pay). However, when I quit, I know they all appreciated the fact that I never lied to them and explained the situation when things were beyond my control. I learned all of that from a really shitty boss. Why is it so hard for other managers to catch on to that?

 

I left for a job in 2002 to go to a bigger paper. I was young and naive, and I believed everything the then-SE told me. It wasn't a big bump pay wise and there were no moving expenses, but he told me if I stayed a year, I'd see a $5K bump (which was huge considering what I was making then), I'd receive the title of ASE and I'd cover a pretty big beat at one of the colleges (it was an incredibly successful basketball team, while he covered the other hoops team and football). So I take the job in February 2002.

In October 2002, the SE leaves to take an SID job. Covering the big beat? Nope, I'm chained to the desk. I'm now the interim SE and still handling all the ASE-type responsibilities I had. I go to the ME after two weeks of working 10-hour days seven days per week, tell him what the SE told me and I wanted to know if we could at least move up the title bump or something. The ME has no idea what I'm talking about, "We eliminated the ASE job two years ago and pay raises are anywhere from 2-5 percent each year. We can't bump you $5K."

Needless to say, I started my next job Jan. 1, 2003.

 

I can't begin, even 18 years later, to untangle the web of lies that led me to think it might be in my best interest to leave the best job I ever had (at The Nation's Nicepaper) before somebody did some real, lasting damage to me.

That will all have to go in the book, as they say.

At the next job I had, with a family owned company, my three-year run ended with a quit-or-be-fired demand less than two weeks after the owner assured me my job was secure.

But these kinds of lies, like coaches saying they haven't interviewed for other jobs, are so common as to not even register on the Richter scale.

 

A "job opening" I applied for turned out to be a "tryout." That turned into an "extended tryout." After five months, including me being a desk stalwart during an Olympics, SE called me in and said, "You went above and beyond what we expected from you, but we don't have a job available at this time. Thanks ... and see you later."
I'm sure he got his bonus for staying under budget.

 

"We know you are interested in news, and this is a news position, but our sports editor just quit so we'd like you to fill in there for awhile..."

Never did get back to doing news...

 

Irish Italian Stal....and I thought I was the only one who ever wanted to tape record my damn conversations with my boss...
i can't count the number of times he and i have discussed some things and, a few weeks later, I would mention someting in that conversion or that was being planned and he'd say, "nope, never said it" or "I never said anything like that."
and i know freakin' well he did. once being a time when I had proposed a book project in conjunction with the paper, etc., etc., and he said he had presented it to the corporate folks...come to find out he never did...but he told me he had.
or more recently, when he told all of us in the office that everything was going to be fine and there would be no layoffs any time soon. a week later, two writers are let go.
yea, damn right, need to start taping these freakin' conversations and i have enough digital recorders to do so.

 

OK, I'm about to get laid off, so for now, I'll resist telling stories.

But this happened on a regular basis. With numerous bosses.

 

Same here...I'd planned to answer the question by asking what number comes after infinity...

 

My favorites were the sentences that ended with "because I'm a nice guy."

 

or how about when the boss man tells you there's no way he can justify sending you on a road trip to cover a game because "we need to cut back in all areas" and then spends fucking no telling how much on a new copy machine the next day? or a fax machine....?

 

Well, I will say this: I found great enjoyment in catching them in lies, and calling them on lies they tried to pull. Physical evidence does wonders.