Every year, companies spend millions of dollars on a variety of employee training. These training programs can be incredibly useful, they can be questionable, but they are all completely unnecessary if one of the managers is so badly entitled.
Napoleon Bonaparte once said: "Even the most carefully worked out battle plan collapses literally after the first collision with the enemy." The great emperor today would have succeeded in business as well - after all, he perfectly understood that simply one incompetent manager was enough for corporate policies and expensive trainings to go down the drain. And here's some clear proof of that.
This story first appeared on the Reddit Malicious Compliance community a few weeks ago, and has already racked up over 3.4K upvotes and almost 200 different comments, most of which are only praise for the team that managed to effectively get rid of a toxic manager. However, let's talk about everything in order...
More info: Reddit
The author of the post once worked at a big company with great colleagues and managers, except for just one person
Image credits: Pixabay (not the actual image)
So, the author of the original post once worked in a fairly large company, in a sub-department of four to five people who ensured the stability of all company systems, as well as control over the servers that were connected to them all. In other words, one of the most functionally important departments in the entire organization.
Image credits: u/koldtee69
The original poster admits that the staff at the company was very good and friendly, and the management was a match for them - with the exception of only one person named "Judith". This Judith was just an assistant manager, but she behaved completely unbearably, writing employees up for the slightest infractions (from her own point of view). And these offenses often looked completely ridiculous.
Image credits: u/koldtee69
That manager, "Judith", used to write employees up for literally the pettiest things
For example, one of the OP's colleagues received a fine for using a smartphone during work hours, and another one left a water bottle on the desk for about an hour - and was written up for "creating a non-green atmosphere in the office." What can we say about punishments for the smallest delays - as soon as an employee was a couple of minutes late, one could expect a write-up from Judith.
Image credits: u/koldtee69
In general, as the author of the post says, Judith was a completely entitled person - and it’s very good that all her lists of write-ups had to be approved by her superiors, who, to their credit, rarely supported such an initiative. The main manager, "Bob", was an easygoing person, and often simply ignored his assistant's demands to fine someone from the staff.
Image credits: u/koldtee69
The regional manager, "Joe", turned out to be a wonderful person as well. Being a very rich guy, Joe could often take employees all out for beer on someone's birthday and would approve literally any vacation requests if you were on the right side of him. As the original poster admits, Joe was probably one of the best bosses they've ever seen.
Image credits: u/koldtee69
One day the higher-ups told the staff that for several days, Judith would be the only boss for the whole office
And so, now we come to the main action of this story. It so happened one day that Bob took a vacation to celebrate his 35th anniversary, and Joe was sick in hospital. Before leaving, Bob warned everyone that this time, any penalty imposed by Judith would not need his or Joe's approval, so the OP knew right away that they and their colleagues were going to have some difficult days ahead...
Image credits: u/koldtee69
So, Judith's reign in the office began with the fact that, having arrived at exactly 9am, she fined everyone who was not in the building at that time. Luckily for themselves, the author of the post admits that they made sure to arrive early for work. The OP tried to remain inconspicuous, calmly going about their work duties and talking with a colleague about some work issues as well.
Image credits: u/koldtee69
Judith kept criticizing one of the workers and when she answered not so politely, arranged a whole meeting about this
Judith chose another employee as her main target that day - "Michelle", who, as the OP admits, was "the sweetest person in the world and would never do anything to hurt or ruin anything of anyone's, so just a genuine and sweet person". At some point, being fed up with the boss' nagging, Michelle said that she had no idea what Judith wanted from her, for which she immediately received a write-up for "backchat". Immediately afterwards, the assistant manager announced a general staff meeting for all departments.
Image credits: u/koldtee69
That night the author came up with an idea of a silent treatment for the nasty boss
During the meeting, Judith demanded from the employees "to stop being so rude to her just because she's a woman", in fact accusing her subordinates of blatant sexism. It was too much, and that evening, the original poster wrote in the general staff chat (where there was no access for the authorities) that the best way to avoid a fine for everyone was to simply ignore Judith and stop talking to her altogether. Their colleagues enjoyed the idea.
Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual image)
Facing the silent treatment, Judith got mad and then suspended an entire department "for being sexist and disrespectful"
The new day began with none of the employees being late, so this time Judith didn't punish anyone. She, in turn, tried to find fault with someone from one of the departments, but was extremely surprised that no one paid attention to her criticism. The assistant manager tried in every possible way to attract the subordinates' attention - but she was ignored in the most banal way. Then Judith announced that she would now suspend the entire department "for being sexist and disrespectful."
Image credits: u/koldtee69
As the OP says, their room was next to the "rebellious" department, so they saw that at the moment Judith announced the suspension, all the employees en masse stood up, took their things and simply left the office. She was livid, and the author's room was next on her way... Here the story repeated itself, with one exception, that the boss demanded that the employees do their suspended colleagues' job. No one in the room even batted an eye. Judith, beside herself with anger, started the countdown from ten - and when she got to one, all the employees, including the OP, also got up and left in unison.
Image credits: u/koldtee69
Judith ended up suspending almost all the staff and her decision also cost the company around 50K
Guess what happened next? Yes, Judith suspended five of the six departments one by one, leaving only customer services employees in place. Everyone else, including, for example, the financial department, was dismissed by this petty tyrant. Moreover, as it turned out later, some of the company's vital systems went down in the six hours they were left without being switched onto auto mode - simply because there was no one to do it. So Judith's rash decision cost the company almost 50k.
Image credits: Complete Interior Design (not the actual image)
Upon coming back to the office the next day, the main manager was absolutely furious with Judith's decisions
But it turned out that the next day, none of the staff showed up for work. Only Bob arrived, being incredibly surprised when he entered the empty office. The manager wrote to the staff, asking where everyone was, and found out that his assistant had literally suspended all of them. Finding out the true cause of the conflict, Bob became furious. He called all the employees back, announcing a "staff meeting" as well. In the original poster's own words, it was really front row tickets to Judith's downfall...
Image credits: u/koldtee69
Judith was told off in public and then got fired, to everybody's satisfaction
The OP's expectations were fully justified! Bob gave the negligent deputy the most severe scolding, criticizing her for all her false write-ups, accusations and how she had done barely any of the roles that the assistant manager should be doing. And when it turned out that due to Judith's negligence, one of the vital systems failed and repairs would require a lot of money, Bob simply fired her, saying that she should in fact be glad that the company had not gone to court for this.
Image credits: u/koldtee69
The end of this story can be called happy, but with a little bit of sadness. As the original poster says, Bob made them turn all the systems onto auto mode and gave employees Friday off. And then Joe returned from the hospital - but a few months later he, alas, passed away from liver cancer. However, by that time, the OP had already quit their job, so they don't know what happened to the company next. We hope they are all right!
Image credits: u/koldtee69
If you're interested in the topic of entitled managers, then you might also like this post of ours about an employee who cleverly took revenge on their superior for humiliation in front of a client. You can also check out this post about how a resourceful employee managed to capitalize on a reckless new corporate policy. However, not before you leave your opinion about this particular tale in the comments below.
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