Bullying bosses

You also sound like you should be treated better as an emloyee on a personal level. Which you should.

As for the bottom line.. can you afford to deal with the possible repercussions of what's to follow if you hold your pride... I don't know. You know the answer to that question better than I do.

And it's obviously easier for me to say this and be in your shoes and do it, but I'd just be very diligent and stand your ground as you seem to be doing. If you have a choice to play music as any other employee does, just do it. Just because it doesn't fit what the other employees may play as well (and this I don't know) shouldn't matter. If your boss wants to single you out and not only let you have your choice but let the others, then at that point, decide whether it's worth the pain to stay on and comply, or look to head somewhere else. Again, I don't know how much you enjoy your job, outside this issue, or not.

Then again, think of it this way, if you think your boss enjoys bullying employees around, and then you leave (either by your will or not), he won't have anyone else to bully around anymore. I'm not suggesting you stick around as a punching bag. I'm just suggesting that you may be a far more important to him than he's letting on. If you tell him, in far more polite terms, "why are you singling me out? There's no proof what I'm doing is hurting business at all whatsoever.", then the ball's in his court. Unfortunately, this raises the stakes, and if he decides to let you go, then you have to find another job.

And again, easier said than done, but ultimately, life's too short to have to deal with pathetic bullying bosses in a retail environment. Either find a way to stop his bullying, or work on a way to avoid him from here on out.

(single you out and not let.. [remove the "only"])

(and i was going to insert "don't fuck with me" in the "if you tell him" part, so it's already polite, haha.)

: (

x-post, I would do that Ken, but he actually shouldn't really be paying any attention to what we're playing whatsoever.

I don't mean that in an impertinent way either, the given agreement is, we play the music for the store because we know the right music to play. There is a line which I think he's now crossed as regards control. I worry about the sort of pandora's box that's been opened now.

Now we are not infallible, but the fact is we are there to play the music for the shop, we are a business in our own right, saying we're doing this wrong is quite a step I think.

And DB you must remember this is Europe, people actually buy dance stuff from hearing it instore, Vitalic is one of our best selling CDs, hence on a Saturday afternoon you fucking play it, like any other best seller, because the fact is we sell something like 50 percent of stock from people asking about stuff that's playing in the store.

Hmmm. This makes him look far more like the problem than you. This is more of a confrontational dickwad fellow co-worker issue then.

Which doesn't necessarily make it any easier actually.

Do you have reason to believe that this guy is very well liked by your employers, and they will do what he suggests?

A lot of stores seem to just play the radio. I usually don't care for the albums stores play, but one day my mom came home and she said they were playing Killing Joke (debt).

Usually bars play better music. Although when I was in Texas (the bars seem to blast their music much louder, or maybe more bars just have their doors open) and my mom and I walked past five bars. Three of them were playing the Strokes and I looked inside to find about 4 people in each. As we kept walking, we past maybe three more and two of those bars were playing QOTSA and they had at least 15 to 20 people in there.

perhaps the QOTSA fans were just fatter and that made you think there were more people there.

I just got a text from my boss explaining what happened when he spoke to UO manager, he claims the music wasn't suitable for the shop, when it was quiet, my boss said it was a good selling cd, he (the uo manager) then claimed he mentioned it to me and was "winding me up" about it.

Great windup which ends with "at the end of the day who is in charge here" when one person is staff eh? That's pretty much what I told my boss too.

There were obviously more people in the bars playing QOTSA. They also seemed to be having more fun.

I believe my boss has said this to him now, and asked that any future problems with the music be directed to him.

It also seems, though I put this down to utterly random specification of time by the UO manager, that the "techno" in question was not Vitalic but............British Sea Power????

reasonable and affable. its all one way then, and its difficult for them. most of the time they are trying to make you fuck up, and give them an excuse to do something. dont give them that excuse

weird I was just about to start a thread about boss politics.

1. The Mover - From A Lobotomised Mind

http://www.theonion.com/articles/boss-has-deft-touch-for-making-employees-feel-like,32084/

... But neither his record of service as an educator and courtier, nor his presidency of the academy, nor his steadily growing list of scholarly publications could save Gundling from degenerating into a figure of ridicule at the court of Frederick William I. In February 1714, the King demanded that he delivered a lecture before the assembled guests on the existence (or not) of ghosts while taking regular draughts of strong drink. After much raucous hilarity, two grenadiers escorted the inebriated commercial councillor back to his room, where he shrieked with terror at the sight of a figure draped in a white sheet emerging from a corner.
Provocations of this kind soon became the norm. Gundling was confined in a chamber where the king kept a number of young bears while fireworks were rained down into the room from above; he was forced to wear outlandish courtly attire modelled loosely on French fashions, including a towering wig in an outdated style that belonged to the previous king; he was force-fed laxatives and locked in a cell overnight; he was pressed into a pistol duel with one of his chief tormentors, the joke being everyone but Gundling knew the weapons contained no shot. When Gundling refused to grasp or fire his gun, his opponent discharged a spray of burning powder into his face, setting fire to his wig, to the huge hilarity of all present

18th century style workplace bullying was brutally cruel in the court of Hitler's big hero, Fred The Great.

And at the same time I'm annoyed at myself for letting it get to me.

This bit in Ronan's original post really resonates with me....I can rationalise that my boss is an insecure person, and that's they're acting like a tosser. But in spite of that, I churn things over in my mind, unable to let things go - and simultaneously get annoyed with letting things get to me.

Even in death the king did not spare him humiliation. By royal command he had been compelled for a number of years to keep, in his bedroom, a coffin made from a varnished wine barrel, on which the following verse was written:

Here there lies within his skin
Half man, half pig, a wondrous thing
Clever in his youth, in old age not so bright,
Full of wit at morning, full of drink at night.
Let the voice of Bacchus sing
This, my child, is Gundeling
[...]
Reader, say can you divine
Whether he was man or swine?[10]

After he died, the king had his body paraded through the streets of Potsdam and then publicly displayed, wearing the outlandish costume he required Gundling to wear for his own amusement, propped up in the barrel. Various ribald songs were composed specially for his funeral, but the king's antics were so outrageous that the local clergy categorically refused to have anything to do with this parody of a funeral ceremony.[11] Instead, the funeral sermon was delivered by none other than Gundling's long-time tormentor, David Fassman.[12]

A monkey, dressed as Gundling, was introduced to him as his own son, and he was compelled to embrace and kiss it.

tbf "don't go down the ronan route of techno techno techno" is entirely how i live my life

xp
lol! I haven't got that far in the Chris Clark book I was quoting, Gundling was virtually a prisoner because of his debts. Previously in Fred's dad's era he was a respectable courtier.