#i came home from 3 days of overtime work and i just got a shitshow where i thought I would find comfort

[jeshie-yes]

2023.02.21

last night i felt such horror to witness and recieve a rage that left me sleepless and numb and hurting

[prorevenge]

My job is super-easy? Okay. YOU do it.

This is pretty long. Smartass TL;DR at the bottom.

I was telling a Buddy about this sub, and he related this story, I tell it to you with his permission.

Buddy is a very charismatic guy, great friend, and probably a great co-worker. He’s the type of guy that everyone is fond of. Easygoing, and seems to have a knack for personal relationships. Always remembers birthdays, if he hears that a band you like is coming to town he’ll text you the news, that sort of guy.

Buddy works for a company that services industrial machinery. It was a small operation, there was Buddy, GoodBoss, Owner, The Kid in the warehouse, a couple of Technicians, and some Office Ladies who handled administration. Buddy was the pivot man in the operation, he was the point of contact for the Technicians and had great relationships with the Clients and the Vendors who supplied the parts. He knew his job inside out, and everyone likes dealing with him. He gets things done.

Now the way this place worked was that the Technicians would send in their reports for the day after 4:00pm. Buddy would look them over, looking for “Rockets”, these were high-priority jobs that needed to be done ASAP, as opposed to routine maintenance issues. He would then email The Kid a list of parts to be picked. Buddy worked 9am to 5:30pm, and was on-call for emergencies. If a “rocket” came in after-hours, Buddy would email The Kid to add it to the morning order.

The Kid arrived for work at 7:00am, and would pick parts orders for the technicians. These would be picked up by a local courier at 9:00am, and taken to a depot. There were 2 major industrial areas in town, and the “depot” wasn’t more than a large mailbox in a post office in each area. The technicians could avoid city traffic by going directly to the depots, which were very close to the clients. The couriers would get these boxes to the depots about 9:30. Buddy would schedule a call for the technicians, and when they finished the first call, they would head around the corner to the depot to pick up their parts.

Things ran smoothly for years, and then GoodBoss decided he wanted to move on. He was grooming Buddy for the move up, and Buddy learned most of the managerial duties GoodBoss covered, in addition to his own duties, things like QuickBooks and scheduling, etc.

GoodBoss leaves, and Buddy takes over these responsibilities, again things run smoothly.

Until Owner tells Buddy that he’s getting a new supervisor. BadBoss. This guy came from a Sales background, had no experience in operations, and was basically there to help Owner bid on big jobs, but his title was Operations Director, and he was Buddy’s new boss.

Buddy was angry that he had been denied the chance to move up, which in a small operation, doesn’t happen often. Add to that the fact that BadBoss was a jerk, but not a dumb jerk, and quickly figured out that Buddy was a threat. And so the lines were drawn. BadBoss had it in for Buddy, and Buddy wasn’t taking any of his shit.

One day BadBoss comes in about 8:45 and sees Buddy shooting the shit in the coffee room with one of the Office Ladies, and lays into him. “Why aren’t you at your desk? I don’t pay you to stand around talking. Get to work.”

Buddy starts to protest that he’s actually at the office 15 minutes before his shift, but BadBoss cuts him off, “I don’t listen to bullshit excuses. I want you at your desk at 8am sharp, and I want you to send me an email every morning to prove it. Now get going.”

Buddy sends him an email, BCC to Owner, asking BadBoss to confirm that he wants Buddy working 8-4:30. There was also a previous email saying “no overtime”. BadBoss sends a tersely worded confirmation.

Now Buddy comes in just before 8am, sends an email right at 8, confirming he’s on duty, and BCC to Owner. But here’s the problem.

The Technicians send their reports in after 4pm. Buddy lets it be known on the down-low that closer to 4:30, the better. So the parts requests come in at 4:25, and Buddy leaves at 4:30. He doesn’t get a chance to review them until 8 the next morning. He sends the order pick to The Kid, who doesn’t have enough time to assemble the order before the courier comes at 9am.

So what used to be next-day service ends up taking an extra day. If a Technician requests a part on his Monday report, he gets it Wednesday, not Tuesday, the way things worked before.

The customers start to revolt, loudly and energetically. These are industrial production machines, and when a “rocket” is delayed, it means a machine is down for an entire extra day. The customers are losing production and they are NOT happy.

Buddy gets called into a meeting on a Thursday with Owner and BadBoss demanding to know what the hell is happening. BadBoss is in full form, and says that Buddy’s job is super easy, and these delays are unacceptable.

Buddy explains exactly why the delays are occurring, it’s all because BadBoss changed his hours. Owner gives BadBoss the stink-eye after confirming that he ordered the schedule change.

“Okay, fine.” BadBoss concedes. “You go back to your old hours, starting Monday”

“I won’t be here Monday,” replies Buddy.

“What are you talking about?”

“I am on holiday for 2 weeks. Didn’t you check the vacation schedule?”

BadBoss goes red in the face. “I never approved any holiday request from you. You are NOT on holiday.”

“Yes, I am. The request was approved by GoodBoss before you were hired. Do you want to see the emails?”

“I don’t give a shit. Your holidays are cancelled.”

“Sorry, but my brother is getting married, and I am in the wedding party. I fly out to The Dominican on Saturday. I will be back in 2 weeks.”

“Who have you trained to take over your duties?” asks Owner.

“Well, back in the day GoodBoss would cover. I guess it’s up to BadBoss to cover while I am gone.”

BadBoss is stuck. He can’t very well claim that Buddy’s job is super easy, and then claim later in the same meeting that he can’t do it.

Oh, my Lord. What a shitshow.

The Technicians requested, say, a front sensor for a BoomStomper Model 31. BadBoss would ask them for a part number, and the Technician would reply, “I don’t know, Buddy knows all the part numbers.” Then he would go to The Kid, and say he needs to send a sensor to the Technician, and The Kid would point to the racks, where all the parts were labelled by part numbers. “I need a part number if you want to add it to an order”.

Buddy had an exhaustive Excel folder with all kinds of parts lists in it on his desktop. He also had a massive collection of manufacturers binders on shelves behind his desk. The Excel folder was already named something obscure, BadBoss couldn’t find it, so BadBoss was forced to look parts up in the binders. No CTRL-F in Excel to find a part number for BadBoss.

Buddy had bookmarks on his Chrome browser for manufacturer’s and vendor’s websites. He removed all the bookmarks so BadBoss, if he wanted in to log into any of these sites, had to create his own login. Buddy’s were on LastPass, but BadBoss didn’t have the LastPass password.

Buddy was also the adept with computers, so he had been given the access to the phone system portal. He set it up so that any calls to his desk phone or work cell would get “I am on vacation, in my absence, please contact BadBoss at Extension 123.” And then the call would forward to BadBoss’s desk phone, and if unanswered, to his work cell. After hours emergency calls went directly to BadBoss’s work cell, and if unanswered, to his HOME phone.

Buddy set up his Outlook with an autoreply that said to contact BadBoss, and copied Owner in.

Then Buddy shut off his work phone and took two weeks off.

BadBoss found out in a hurry that Buddy’s job wasn’t so super-easy after all. He was getting calls from irate clients, Technicians with the wrong parts, and calls in the evening that he had no way to handle. Remember that they repaired industrial machinery, and some facilities were 24-hours.

When Buddy got back BadBoss was waiting for him by the door and went ballistic. It was a screaming match that drew everyone, even Owner, who literally had to step between them.

Finally Buddy just screamed, “Fuck this shit. I can’t work with this guy.” He turned to Owner and said, “You saw how this place ran when I was doing HIS job, and now you see what it’s like when he’s doing mine. I am going back home, right now, before I do something I regret. So you have a choice to make.

“I’ll come in tomorrow and clean out my desk if this asshole hasn’t cleaned out his first.”

When he arrived on Tuesday, all the staff were grinning and BadBoss’s office was empty. Owner called him into his office and told him that BadBoss was gone and Buddy could get back to work.

“Nope,” said Buddy. “His office is empty, and I want it. I want his job, I want his pay, I want his perks. I have been here for years and you know what I can do. Put me in charge.”

And that’s how Buddy got his promotion. Since then the company has grown, and Buddy has grown right with it. There are now branches in 3 cities, a huge staff, and Buddy is in charge of it all.

And he still reminds me when my favorite band is coming to town.

TL;DR Grow an attention span.

(source) (story by PJMurphy)