Have you ever worked a salaried job that really pushed you to the limits and didn’t respect your time and your working hours?

If so, then this story will sound familiar.

A worker talked about how every company out there has a “Todd” among its ranks…

You are salaried right? Just stay up for this meeting.

“A brief bit of backstory.

I have found that every company has a Todd. You will know who your Todd is, because he is who you call when you don’t know who to call.

When the unthinkable happens and everything is on fire and there is no hope of salvation, Todd steps in to fix it. Todd spends his entire time just fixing the unfixable. He has been with the company since the dawn of time, knows the true names of several demons, and was in the room when the old magic was written.

And Todd is NOT to be questioned.

Our Todd has an elite team to be on call when stuff breaks. Each team member is the highest authority in the company for one specific thing or another. They are the elite. Their word is law and to question them is to question Todd.

Our story begins shortly after I had accomplish greatest goal, and became the newest member of Todd’s team.

Now my company works with point of sale. We sell computers, software, printers, card readers, and pretty much anything you need to take money from someone else.

After years working in the call center, I proved myself worthy of Todd’s attention. I interviewed, tested, and became the specialist of Third Party Integration. My focus is the connection between our product, and whatever weird stuff your company wants to use.

Examples of this include getting smart lights to change on command from ordering kiosks, letting the staff control the new jukebox you bought with their employee ID cards, or getting the sales data for the day to report to your canadian counterparts in both French and English, but only if someone buys the poutine-saurus surprise that day. And other fun conundrums that only the client can fathom.

This person’s position at work changed.

It is important to note that during my time in the call center, I was paid hourly. As a specialist, I would be made a salaried employee, and would be on call. After accepting the position, I was told that I would have a trial period of one month to prove myself.

I would remain hourly, but would have a pay increase to more closely match my expected rate as a salaried employee. I would have the title change and new responsibilities of my job, but I had this month to prove I was worth the extra denaro.

Then the first day of the new gig rolled around.

The first day of my new job. We get a call from one of our more needy clients. They lay out a series of demands:

all of their stores must be upgraded to Windows 10.

as each store makes about $10k a day, taking them down for a remodel is not acceptable.

All of these upgrades must be done overnight while the store is closed.

if the upgrade fails, the store must be rolled back that night so thet can open hourly.

the window of time to do one of these upgrades is eight hours

the fastest they have been able to do one is ten hours.

So they wanted to prove they were ready for the challenge.

All of this means one thing. They need a specialist to do the upgrades. One that knows their integration. I give Todd the “Put me in Coach” nod and a deal is struck. Todd is about to leave on vacation, which leaves me under the control of Steve, the director of The Support Center, who used to be my boss before i worked for Todd.

I am now on overnights. Four nights a week I upgrade these stores. I supervise two to three technicians who are on site in seperate stores. I do all the software. They do the hardware.

This process is staggered based on time zones, so I generally am pulling twelve hour shifts. The OT is amazing, especially paired with the raise I got.

But things didn’t get off to a great start.

Fast forward a week or two. The initial batch does not go the best. I have a 40% failure rate. This is due to scripts provided to both the client and me by the various third party companies used by the stores, including their music, food delivery, and credit card processors. Everyone on their side knows who is the bad guy here. Talks are in place and we are moving forward.

A meeting between the client and us is scheduled near the end of the week, right in the middle of my off time. As I said I am working twelve hours a day. I live a full hour from work, and for security reasons can’t do these upgrades outside the office.

And a lot of demands were being put on them.

I have ten hours to eat, sleep, get up, and eat again before work. Once I get to work, there are no breaks on the upgrade train. No lunch, no stopping. So i get home around 11 am each day. The meeting is set for 4 PM. I can’t get any reasonable sleep, before the meeting or after. Steve demands that I be there to account for my failures.

I already have another specialist designed as my proxy for these sort of meetings, because sleep is a thing. I also explain that I am still hourly, but he wont hear it. He insists that I need to be there to explain why the project is going so poorly, and that my explanation better not just be throwing other people under the bus.

He tries to explain that i am salaried and therefore need to be there when the company needs me. Especially when I am the one who is screwing up. Again I try to remind him of my probationary period but he won’t listen.

And then it was malicious compliance time.

And there my friends, begins the malicious compliance.

I clock in at 10pm the day before the meeting. I do my upgrades, all three of which are successes, due to what I assume is a change in the third party back end. The scripts I am provided with work perfectly this time, and all goes well.

The corporate contact I report to in the morning tells me the meeting is just to go over the new changes to procedure we went through that might, and I will get the cliffs notes in my email. No need to attend the meeting.

Then it was time to show up at the meeting, to everyone’s surprise.

I thank them and sign out. Then I sit. For six hours I twiddle my thumbs, take a lunch break, (and a car nap) and wait for the meeting. When it’s time, I walk upstairs to the top floor and the conference room, where everyone but Steve is shocked to see me. I calmly take my place and wait for the meeting to start, stating that I was asked to be here.

The meeting lasts 30 minutes, and consists of the new procedure, praise for my dillagence, and a quick overview of how the time table will change because of the past failures. It is noted that my performance has prevented a lot of the sites from failing when they would have otherwise, and the client is pleased with my work.

Steve, who had previously blamed me for the failures, sheepishly agrees that I was a good fit for the project. Then the meeting ends with the best part. The person giving the talk states that she knows I am asleep right now, so she will go over the changes with me personally when I get in tonight.

Meanwhile, the guy I asked to sit in on the meeting for me will work with them to set up the changes to be deployed, (about three hours of work) so that it’s all ready when I get in at ten. The meeting ends.

And they were once again ready to get going.

Steve makes a comment about the changes being done by someone with more experience and hints that it should be my responsibility. I cheerfully say that rather than waste my co-workers time, I will just do the changes myself. I have my third or fourth wind by now, and am ready to go.

At the end of day two, I have spent 36 hours at work. Caffeine is my only salvation, and we are almost done. Near the end, I am basically waiting for a technician at my last store to finish testing, so I tell him to call me, and shut my eyes for about half an hour, just to rest a bit.

All is well. I get called, everything is green. The vigil is over. Two of my friends insist on driving me home, where I promptly pass out into the most heavenly sleep I have had in ages.

And then…an email from HR.

I wake up to an email, asking me to head into work for a meeting with HR. It is my day off, so I am kind of perplexed. I head on in, and apologize for being fashionably late. The meeting is with the head of HR, who has a report that I was sleeping on the job. There is camera footage of my 30 minute power nap.

But they had an ace up their sleeve.

I calmly explain that Steve had asked me to show up to the meeting, and then asked me to stay later to set up the changes, and by the time I took my nap (during what I called my paid 30 minute break) I had been in the building for 35 hours. I politely remind the HR head that I am on my trial period, and will be expecting overtime pay for that time. It came out to about 33 hours and change, due to my extended lunch break.

And it all worked out for them in the end!

Todd returned from his vacation and tore Steve a new definition of duties. From then on he would not be given control over Todd’s team when he was away, and we would report directly to the CEO. The project completed without much incident. And I passed my probation with flying colors.”

Here’s what people had to say.

This reader wants to find the Todd in their company.

Another Reddit user said they used to be a Todd…

This individual learned a lesson about being a Todd the hard way.

This person said they realized they used to be a Todd, too.

And one reader said being a Todd can be life-sucking.

That’s how it’s done!

Let’s all tip our hats to this person!