Help! My boss is nuts: The church lady

May 17, 2007, 2:25 PM UTC
Fortune

In their own words, Stanleybing.com readers talk about the bullies, narcissists and other crazy bosses they spend their working days with.

A reader in Sacramento writes:

I thankly have a good boss now only because the antics of my last boss had me fleeing to any other port in a storm. My boss, a female, would only hire or promote those who attended her church or had some other personal connection. As a result we ended up with a lot of incompetent Christians. We ended up with a student assistant who was the daughter of my boss’s OB-GYN nurse, a friend who lived in Arizona who we shipped confidential matters to for his incompetent (always) response, which then had to be re-analyzed and re-written by lower-level staff. We also sent work to her former Minister’s wife in Southern California.

My boss gave the phrase “empty suit” a new name. She also liked to take clerical staff and regularly humiliate them in staff meetings by referring to one’s hearing disability and openly calling another “stupid”. She left me alone, but the atmosphere at work was so tense that staff routinely called me on weekends weeping and asking for a reference.

What do you think? Is this boss crazy?