Rules are there for a reason, whether the reason is safety, for maintaining order, or just knowing what to do. However, most often rules don’t include exceptions, and in life they are inevitable. Sometimes it is more useful to turn a blind eye to a rule to be more efficient or just to be humane towards another person.
Not everyone understands that and wants everything done by the book, no matter the consequences. Reddit user sawser shared his experience with a supervisor that couldn’t break a simple rule to make everyone save time and had to figure out how to fix things herself.
More info: Reddit
Manager's rule of requiring the IT guy to wear his name badge left her finding a solution to the problem herself
Image credits: Rob Lee (not the actual photo)
The Original Poster (OP) was working as a student for a university IT department in the mid-2000s. He had been working there for 4 years already and knew everyone by name and was friendly with them, including the higher-ups.
The IT department had a sister department which was the media center. They would serve the professors when they needed any laptops or other technology on a loan. The media center’s manager was a Karen.
Bored Panda reached out to Sawser and he told us that Karen didn't particularly liked him or his other colleagues. It seems that the OP wasn't very fond of her either.
The story takes place in the 2000s and the narrator was a student worker in the IT department for a university at the time
Image credit: sawser
She had her own ways of doing things and had rules that weren’t necessarily logical. Among other rules, the OP remembers that "Karen would not allow the IT department to image media center laptops. Instead, she would use her own imaging disks. At one point she accidentally left an image disk in her workstation and imaged her device, losing payroll information."
But The most important rule that she never broke was that every employee had to have their name badge on them when they worked on the laptops.
The name badges were there so that the person handing out the laptop could log who had it. The OP wasn’t against the rule. It was there for safety and in any other circumstances, he wouldn’t mind it, but he thought that this time, Karen could have let him slide.
He had been working there for 4 years and knew everyone by name
Image credit: sawser
Once again, this was 2005-2006, it was a Friday afternoon. 4:40PM to be precise. And it was 20 minutes before the end of OP’s work day. He got a call from Karen who needed help with a laptop because an important professor couldn’t log into the network.
The IT guy spent 10 minutes walking to the media center and was immediately asked where his name badge was. Turns out, he forgot it on the jacket he was wearing in the morning. After making sure that this was an emergency, but he still needed to go back to get his badge, the OP left, knowing very well he wasn’t going back.
Image credit: sawser
Sawser explained in more detail what he was thinking at that moment, "I didn't simply explain that it would take longer to ignore the rule because I was incredibly annoyed that she wanted me to walk back across campus when she knew me by name. Our departments were small and she was being petty."
Not only that, but now looking at it, the OP realises that Karen wasn't afraid to show who's the boss, "I was 20 at the time, she was in her 50s and there was a power dynamic that she was trying to enforce. I certainly would have done things differently now that I'm in my late 30s, but at the time it seemed appropriate."
In a sister department there was a manager that you could call Karen as she really liked enforcing necessary rules
Image credit: sawser
Image credits: Tim Pierce (not the actual photo)
When the OP got to his office where his badge was, it was already after his working hours, so he called Karen and told her that his department had a rule of not being allowed to work after hours as a student, so he would fix the problem on Monday.
On Monday, the head of OP’s department didn’t really care about what the student did and the employee kind of expected it, because the boss firstly didn’t like Karen and secondly, he was a reasonable boss.
One time she called the student at almost the end of the day on a Friday asking for help
Image credit: sawser
The OP admitted that he did make a mistake by not bringing the badge and he believed that the rule was there for a reason. But he was called right before finishing work on a Friday and was willing to fix the problem even if it meant staying after hours.
However, Karen had to be so meticulous about the name badge rule, despite knowing the OP as he had been working there for several years. She even greeted the OP by his name, they went to Christmas parties together and he would be doing his job in front of her eyes instead of taking the laptop. So he thought it was fair for him to leave work when his day ended.
Plus, he never really got along with Karen, "Karen did not like me personally, this was far from our first confrontation. She had a whole host of rules that seemed punative towards her workers (men and women were required to use different workstations and those workstations had boot passwords, she refused to use network drives for backing up department files, etc.)"
The IT guy came but wasn't allowed to do his job because he didn't have his name badge on him
Image credit: sawser
This incident didn't help the relationship as Karen had to give the professor her personal work laptop for the week. When the OP came back on Monday, he fixed the problem and it took him less than a minute to do as he had to just delete all the saved wifi connections because they were making the computer’s connection slow.
People in the comments loved how the OP taught Karen a lesson because they agreed that her rule of having a name badge was ridiculous as they knew each other very well and she only needed the name badge to write his name into a log which didn’t require an ID to be scanned or be otherwise logged in.
The manager wanted him to go back and get it, so he left, knowing that by the time he got it, his work day would have ended
Image credit: sawser
It seems that managers sometimes forget to be human and they get detached from reality and the people they are working with. Actually, an IBM survey revealed that employers think they provide good leadership and environment, but only a part of employees agree.
The findings showed that “74% of employers think they help their team learn the skills needed to work in a new way; only 34% of employees agree. 80% of employers think they are supporting the physical and emotional health of their team; only 46% of employees agree. 86% of employers think they provide clear guidelines and expectations for how the organization works; only 51% of employees agree.”
And as a student, he couldn't work after hours, so he called Karen to let her know that he would fix the issue on Monday because rules are rules
Image credit: sawser
Stewart Swayze, a personal branding coach, explains why that could be. He begins by saying that when you go up in your career, you get more responsibilities. Now you have more things to manage and more tasks to complete.
What happens is that “When your breadth of responsibilities expands, there is less time to focus on specific functional tasks. For this sales example, less time increasing sales and delivering on targets. The Sales Leader has to balance his/her time. Trade-offs happen. Less time on one item or person and more time on another – opportunity cost.”
While the student agreed that he made a mistake and rules are there for a reason, Karen could have been more lenient in this situation
Image credits: Vicki Timman (not the actual photo)
The work week was ending, Karen knew who the IT guy was and he came knowing that he would probably have to stay after hours
Image credit: sawser
However, Karen didn't take these circumstances into consideration and had to figure out what to do on her own
Image credit: sawser
However, a leader detached from reality will make the team get lost and may negatively impact their work results. As it happened with the media center’s manager in the story, she wanted to stick with the rules but didn’t evaluate the situation, which prevented the OP from doing his job and the professor getting his computer.
Do you think this was an appropriate place to ignore a rule that was put there for safety? Do you think the OP could have helped Karen despite his work day ending as it was a minor issue? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.