It’s no secret that a lot of people don’t like their jobs. But for some, the job isn’t the problem so much as who happens to be watching over them while they do it.
Whether they’re rewarding their employees’ work as little as possible, trying to deny them a benefit they’re supposed to get, or just disappearing completely at the worst possible time, there are certainly a lot of gripes for people to have with their management.
But perhaps the most common one concerns micromanagement in which managers zero in on any trivial issue an employee can have so they can feel like they’re in control.
Yet in one satisfying case, it seems that one manager was in such a rush to feel important that she underestimated just how much an employee was listening to her.
Before the employee we’re about to hear from tells their story, they wanted to make it clear how much they generally like their job.
As they explained in a Reddit post , their job involves helping vulnerable people and they have no complaints about the pay, benefits, the metrics that measure their performance, or their coworkers.
And until recently, the same was also true of their managers.
However, the one this person has had to deal with lately was keen to exert control no matter how well a given employee was doing.
As the worker explained, this meant that if you you scored 99 out of 100 on something and the target was 50, she’d meet with you about the remaining 1%.
If you were more efficient than the company expects, she’d harp on the one case in which you weren’t.
But if that wasn’t annoying enough, she had a habit of making up policies when existing ones contradicted her desires.
For instance, the company’s policy is that when someone knows they’re going to be late, they then call that information in and make a request for a schedule adjustment.
After the manager tried and failed to claim that the employee didn’t do that, she decided that they now needed to call her directly and explain why they’ll be late.
And when she didn’t follow up on something the employee had asked her to, her response and apparent catchphrase was, “If it’s not in writing, it didn’t happen.”
Eventually, this philosophy would come back to haunt her in one instance where she wanted to meet with the employee.
When the employee turned up for this meeting, however, she wasn’t there. And since her written policy about this was that they should return to their desk after a minute of waiting if this happened, that’s what they did.
Nonetheless, she asked why they didn’t wait and proceeded to duck out of two additional rescheduling attempts after she was reminded of her own policy.
Eventually, she tried to have the meeting after hours, which was refused because that would take place on unpaid time.
She then threatened to turn that refusal into an HR meeting about the employee’s misconduct, which they accepted and brought along both their chat logs and their union representive.
And when the employee explained what happened, she claimed otherwise until he reminded her that “if it’s not in writing, it didn’t happen” before presenting all of his evidence.
With that, the union representative asked both the manager and the HR person, “So do you maintain the position that employees should attend meetings unpaid, and that misconduct investigations are a good use of resources if they refuse?”
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After the HR person caved and let the employee return to work, the worker secured a written assurance that they were no longer accused of misconduct.
And the day before their Reddit post, the employee said they were told the manager “had decided to pursue opportunities outside of the company.”
How sweet it is.
h/t: Reddit | nerdfury83
