Story time, a few months ago I had this part time job at a large corporation (a bank to be more precise). I quit after a month because it was intellectually stifling like you wouldn't believe. Everybody above me was a manager of something to the point it was an empty word. They had a fuckton of meetings every day which I attended to make notes. Nothing ever got resolved during any of those meetings, and this wasn't like a weekly evaluation kind of thing, this was the project department, things were supposed to actually be going somewhere. The people I've met all had some crappy business school education, clearly they all went to the easiest schools possible just to get a diploma because they were unable to do anything besides parroting corporate buzzwords during meetings and setting up automated out-of-office emails. Everybody acted so superior and smug towards me and tried his or her hardest to get me into a gotcha moment, like when I didn't know a corporate buzzword (1/3)
My direct superior (I was her assistant actually) was a character of her own. Not in a good way. She was constantly doing the thing where you pretend to complain about something but actually you're bragging, like "Oh I'm so tired from attending all these important meetings!" and such. She would give me incorrect instructions and then complain when I followed them and didn't instead magically know what I was supposed to do. She was present during the job interview and she just flat out lied to my face about my working hours, which is what made me quit because it slowed down the progress on my bachelor's thesis. She wouldn't explain the project terms they used during the meetings, even though I asked her several times, and get mad when I wrote them down incorrectly in my notes and then fixed it once I realized what they were. When I scheduled meetings, some of the employees didn't use Google calendar for theirs so I didn't know their schedule, (2/3)
and when I contacted them they didn't respond, so I was forced to schedule the meeting anyway and they didn't show up.
But the cherry on top was how petty she got when I told her I was quitting. I told her I'd quit by the end of the week in private, so she wouldn't seem like an asshole boss in front of the whole office (even though judging by the way she treated me in front of everyone I'd guess they realized she was an asshole). The next day, she loudly announced in front of everyone that she was firing me. Not that I cared what the other corporate drones thought about me, but holy shit was that a petty move. When I was packing stuff, returning the work PC and phone, I asked what to do with the key card they gave me, and she smugly replied "turn it in at the reception, I already told them we fired you" ... she apparently fed this lie to everyone and their mother, that's who petty she was. I wasn't even mad anymore, it was hilarious at that point. (3/3)
So yeah moral of the story is don't think highly of managers who make six figure salaries. In big companies like this it's often more about loyalty and boot licking than skill and you can get far when you're good at pretending to be working. You just gotta sacrifice 90% of your brainpower I guess. Seriously it was impossible for me to do the tasks I was given without turning off my brain. So many dysfunctional shit I had to work with. I'm glad I quit though, I wouldn't want to become an office drone.
But the cherry on top was how petty she got when I told her I was quitting. I told her I'd quit by the end of the week in private, so she wouldn't seem like an asshole boss in front of the whole office (even though judging by the way she treated me in front of everyone I'd guess they realized she was an asshole). The next day, she loudly announced in front of everyone that she was firing me. Not that I cared what the other corporate drones thought about me, but holy shit was that a petty move. When I was packing stuff, returning the work PC and phone, I asked what to do with the key card they gave me, and she smugly replied "turn it in at the reception, I already told them we fired you" ... she apparently fed this lie to everyone and their mother, that's who petty she was. I wasn't even mad anymore, it was hilarious at that point. (3/3)