Basic Trope: A boss who treats all their employees well, except for one.
- Straight: Alice is the CEO of Trope Co. and treats all her employees well, except for Bob whom she finds every opportunity to belittle and demean.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice yells, insults, assaults, demotes, threatens to fire and even attempts to murder Bob every day, but she's nice to everyone else.
- Alice is a Mean Boss and/or a Bad Boss to the whole employee roster, but Bob is the only one she treats like his contract had a clause that legally made him her slave for life.
- Downplayed: Alice is fairly nice to everyone, but is a bit harsh on Bob.
- Justified:
- Bob is an incompetent worker which sets Alice off endlessly. The other workers are functional enough not to press her buttons.
- Bob is the Professional Slacker. Alice can't stand having to put up with a lazy employee.
- Bob is incompetent, lazy, toxic, and/or insubordinate, but for legal reasons cannot be fired. Alice is deliberately trying to make Bob's life as miserable as possible in the hopes of getting him to quit.
- Bob publicly defied, slighted, or belittled Alice's authority. Alice thus decides to Make an Example of Them so the other employees know to stay on her good side.
- Alice thinks that Bob, even if he's a decent worker, doesn't fit her "standards" of being an employee.
- Alice is bigoted towards Bob who is from a different race or country.
- Bob is not in a position to quit, and Alice knows that the HR head also hates him and will ignore any complaints he submits. Alice is thus free to indulge her sadistic tendencies on Bob because he cannot retaliate in any way.
- Alice is The Alleged Boss. She lacks the backbone to assert authority on her other more domineering employees, so takes it out on Bob consistently.
- Alice holds a grudge against Bob, eg. he conned, bullied or cheated on her in the past. Now circumstances leave Bob serving under a vengeful employer.
- Alice has a literally insane amount of hatred for Bob and being her boss supplies her with an outlet.
- Inverted: Alice treats Bob favorably while she hates the rest of her employees.
- Subverted: Alice admits that she treats Bob harshly because he has the most potential; the fact that he hasn't tried to quit shows that he's passed her Secret Test of Character, and Alice promotes him.
- Double Subverted: The promotion was to "Official Ball-Licker" and she leads the other thousand employees within the building in a mocking chorus of "Quit Bob Now!! Quit Bob Now!! Quit Bob Now!!! Quit Bob Now!!"
- Parodied: Alice's bullying of Bob only goes as far as childish insults and blowing raspberries.
- Zig-Zagged: Some days Alice bullies Bob, some days she is willing to give Bob a lot of slack and support, some days she is willing to fire him for being two seconds late, some days she allows a nice bonus on his paycheck. Some days it's out of a desire to be nice to him but not knowing how and some days it's unrelenting hatred and giving him a reason to stay in the company so she can continue to make him suffer.
- Averted: Alice treats Bob and the rest of her employees equally kindly or badly.
- Enforced: The writers wish to write an office-space drama or Black Comedy and a surefire way to create tension is by having a boss who is ill-tempered towards the protagonist even if it makes no damn sense.
- Lampshaded: "Here comes the boss' least favorite worker."
- Invoked: Alice and Bob are placed in the same office, knowing that Alice hates Bob more than she hates everybody else.
- Exploited: Will enters the company Alice and Bob work at, knowing that Alice's hatred of Bob will allow him to continue to bully Bob.
- Implied: One of the most visible personalized features of the boss' cookie-cutter high-end professional office is a Dartboard of Hate with Bob's picture dangling by the door, where anybody that is not prepared could be hit by a dart as they come in...
- Defied: "I'll make it perfectly clear, boss, that being mistreated as if we're in a school yard is grounds for an official review, firing and maybe even a lawsuit, and every time you so much as give the the evil eye is being recorded in the building's surveillance video, right?"
- Discussed: "Seeing how Bob is the only employee that Alice mistreats, maybe he should quit."
- Conversed: "Gee, it sure is nice that I have a boss that went to the same business school as Mr. Spacely."
- Played for Laughs: Alice (mis)treatment of Bob is a Homage to old Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
- Played for Drama: Alice's mistreatment of Bob has led to borderline hospital-stay levels of overworking and lawsuits.
- Played for Horror:
- Alice secretly harbors a desire to kill Bob. All the horrible treatment is her building up to the moment she will finally "fire" him.
- The degree of abuse Alice tosses at Bob is quickly revealed to be a sign of mental derangement, and it's only going to get worse.
- Alice's abuse of Bob has some very deliberate resemblance to slavery.
- Deconstructed: Even if Trope Co. wouldn't function without Bob, he can only take so much abuse before he's driven to quit.
- Reconstructed:
- Bob is a masochist.
- Bob doesn't qualify for public assistance, no other company will hire him, and his attempts at self-employment don't pan out, so he reluctantly reapplies for his old job, where Alice resumes tormenting him.
- Alice does make some attempts to be nice to Bob, but their personalities just clash too much, leaving Alice still instinctively cold towards him.
Carol, Dana, Evulz, back to Boss's Unfavorite Employee. Reader, you're getting demoted!
