What are some of your absent-when-you-need-them micromanager boss stories?
Just thinking back to the worst job I ever had (And the worst boss/business owner I've ever worked for).
He never trained me on anything, so any time I fucked up he was always there to shit on me for doing something I had no idea I wasn't supposed to do.
He had access to my email inbox and would frequently delete all my read emails and leave only the unread ones….Meaning I'd lose email threads with important information. Any time a client liked the work I did he'd go out of his way to rip it apart and say it looked like shit.
One time I had a question about something I was of course not trained on. When I said I had a question he snaps back “NO! NO MORE QUESTIONS!!!” I then proceeded to fuck up the project, costing him money and a day's worth of work, because he couldn't take 10 minutes to show me the proper way to do something.
And he was always lurking over my shoulder when I didn't need him to, but when a legitimate emergency came up he always just happened to be out of the office. Since none of the employees had any legit training (Besides fucking up, getting screamed at, and learning from that) we had no idea how to handle it. If I took executive action to try and fix it I'd always be told I did it wrong, fucked it up, cost him money, etc.