re: Worst boss you've ever had?

I've been fairly lucky, but my wife hasn't. She worked for two years for a higher ed institution with chronic leadership problems.

Probably the worst was when a high-level administrator left to take another job. As tends to happen in higher ed, instead of the school taking the time and effort to search for the most competent person to replace him, they just promote one of the people who worked under him.

That starts a whole domino effect of promotions to replace the position of the person who was promoted. There were 4 internal promotions that happened like this all the way down the chain. Not a single outside hire.

So anyway, one of the people who was given a promotion to replace high-level position was my wife's supervisor (who had told my wife on several prior occasions that she hates managing people!)

You can imagine what happened next...a high-level manager who admittedly hates managing

Things went to shite real quick. Staff running amok. No one being held accountable. Tempers flaring and people getting in arguments in the office.

My wife high-tailed it out of there. She stays in touch with some of her former colleagues who say that it's gotten even worse.