December 23, 2023 at 4:36 pm

HR Insists Employees Take Notes Of Everything Said At Meetings. 100 Pages Later Their Toxic Boss Gets Fired.

by Matthew Gilligan

Source: Reddit/AITA/Unsplash/@dylandgillis

You said everything, right? Are you sure about that?

Okay, whatever you say!

Check out how this person dealt with a boss who wasn’t too popular with employees…

Take notes of EVERYTHING you say in the meeting? Okay, but it will get you fired.

“So this happened a few years ago, and I will be vague since I’m still not sure if the dust has fully settled from this fiasco yet…

At my former company, I was the secretary for a small “improvement” team that would meet monthly to discuss issues within the company and brainstorm ways to fix them.

They were very detail-oriented.

Something you need to know about me is that I was given this role because people know I am meticulous at keeping records due to HR-related issues I had at a previous place of employment. I don’t think my boss realized that this careful record-keeping applied to her as well, especially when she appointed me to be secretary of this little committee, but I digress.

There were some problems with safety.

I was a model employee (read: award-winning) and went above and beyond what was asked, as were many others in my department, but we were still having customer complaints and dealt with regular safety issues, due to the company at-large and through no fault of our own.

Their boss wasn’t exactly receptive…

When we brought these concerns to our boss’s attention, emails were left unread, and during in-person exchanges, we were called, “whiny,” “needy,” and were told that we needed to “just deal with it.” Whatever the issue, from items being stolen by customers to people being unhappy with the procedures the boss had set down for us to follow, it was always made to somehow be our fault.

When we sought support from other departments, we were met with cold indifference, since the boss was great to them, and we must be exaggerating the things she said to us.

But they weren’t satisfied with what was going on.

Well, during an improvement meeting at the end of the fiscal year, it all came to a head. Myself and a couple of my team members dug our heels in and were insistent about the unresolved issues the boss refused to acknowledge, and she finally went off on us.

And the boss got all fired up again.

She told us everyone was incompetent, didn’t deserve our jobs, and that maybe customers would like us more if we were more likeable.

When people pressed her on safety issues, she continued to reiterate that we would just have to deal with it, and that if “someone was going to pass away, they already would have, right?”

Time to take note of EVERYTHING that is said!

I, as the secretary, did my duty and took notes of ALL that happened over the course of that meeting. I usually did bullet points, but that night, I was feeling a little more thorough, so I wrote down words. EVERY word that was said. Every awful comment, denial of accountability, and idle threat was recorded in black and white.

Now, a second part of my job was to distribute the notes from the improvement meeting to the rest of the company. So, come the next morning, I ran about 100 copies of the transcript of the meeting and hand-delivered them to every single department in the building, and things blew up.

Uh oh!

People from other departments who had attended the meeting were able to verify that everything I had typed up had really been said, and folks were MAD: threatening to quit, refusing to do their normal duties, browsing Indeed during work, etc.

My boss’s boss (who worked at HQ, so I didn’t get the opportunity to hand her a copy) got wind of these meeting minutes only a few hours after I had handed them out and had an hour-long, off-the-record conversation with me about all the safety issues I had documented, all the concerns I had submitted to management in writing, and all the records I had regarding my boss’s inaction.

It was time to leave this job.

She was very grateful for the 100 pages of documentation I sent over and thanked me for my time. The day after I unleashed Pandora’s box, I put in my 2 weeks notice, took a new job, and peaced out to greener pastures. At first, it seemed like things were calming down after I left, but the following year, the company did not renew my boss’s contract…

Only following orders…

I still feel a bit bad because I wasn’t trying to get her fired or ruin her life – I was just desperate for some accountability thrown her way to create some positive change in the company.

But at the end of the day, I just did what she had asked me to do.”

This is what people had to say.

This person thinks the boss needed to be fired.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Another individual was impressed by what happened.

Source: Reddit/AITA

One reader talked about Cover Your *** situations.

Source: Reddit/AITA

This person said they now get everything in writing.

Source: Reddit/AITA

And this reader shared what they do in meetings.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Hey, they said EVERYTHING, right?

Whoopsy daisy!

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.