This is a rant and only tangentially about bosses.
Im a woman and I work for a cabinet company. We have a woodshop where we do commercial work and we also do a little bit of repairs, mainly broken drawer boxes. I handle all kinds of calls from people wanting something fixed and about 90% of the work they want done is work we don't do.
At the beginning of March, a guy called needing three cabinets repaired. I told him it's not something we do, but he could email pictures and maybe I'll have an idea. When I make this offer, half the time I don't even get an email. He sent pictures and I told him I couldn't tell anything from them we'd have to look at them to see, but we couldn't send someone out because we don't do that.
Today I come in to work to find that he'd uninstalled his cabinets, brought them in and “dropped them off to be quoted like we talked about.” Now we have 3 junky cabinets in our warehouse, which Is filled with expensive merchandise we'll be installing in customer's homes and forklifts running around, loading and unloading them.
I couldn't get him by phone so I sent an email telling him he'd have to pick up his cabinets. We went back and forth and without listing each point and counterpoint here, his strategy was “its better to apologize than it is to ask permission” taken to the extreme.
He knew we didn't do this kind of work but seemed to think that if he dropped the junk off, we'd fix them. When i told him he shouldnt have left them, he said he couldnt find anyone to give him a quote. When he was told no, he wanted to speak to the boss. The boss (a man) told him we weren't going to fix his garbage cabinets, just like I did (I didn't use any word like garbage, though) and the guy backed down.
I realize I'm a woman in a man's industry, but I've been in the business for 25 years! But somehow, my “no” isn't believed, they have to hear it from a guy! I get so fucking tired of men!