Some workplace superiors are straight out of the movie Horrible Bosses.
They get one iota of power and responsibility and it goes directly to their ego-filled heads.
This story shows the literal night and day difference when the dark veil of one bad seed is lifted.
I had recently partnered with a small production facility in my area. Our contract was based on capital investment along with designing/implementing new automation processes (2yr outlook finished in 8mo).
Was a typical small production facility comprised of 50 production workers through 2 shifts of 12 hours that ran 2 days on then 3 days off. Also had 2 production supervisors for each shift and 1 maintenance supervisor for each shift.
The people and their attitude is ultimately what led to my decision to be more than an outside contractor for this company until I worked the night shift for a week due to shutdowns that needed to occur to implement certain line upgrades.
OP goes on to identify the superior with the superiority complex. And what a brilliant name he’s dubbed him.
This is where I met him. We will call him Richard Head.
Richard seemed like a nice guy in our first few encounters, and then I heard him in his element directing his maintenance crew at night over the radio.
He would belittle this group of guys who were there to do a set task list every night for whatever machinery they were doing preventative maintenance on. Unless something broke on the line which would require attention first obviously.
Some of the abhorrent names and epithets he called his workers are inexcusable in any setting, let alone a professional one.
I have never heard grown men spoken to like this and never heard any nasty remarks back or defending themselves. He would call them stupid on the radio if they were having trouble troubleshooting a problem, call some fat and lazy, called one black guy “The ******”.
The guy had been there since they opened the doors and to be honest made me want to rescind any commitment I have ever made to this company.
He notified management about what he’d seen and heard, but it fell on deaf ears.
When I escalated this up to the plant manager he assured me that it was friendly banter and they rarely had complaints against him.
True because anyone who ever did so in confidence of anonymity was always outed and then singled out until they were terminated by him.
OP was forced to take it upon himself to gather evidence.
Since no one was going to listen to me I decided to do my due diligence and started to document everything I heard on the radio with a date/time, witnesses to the treatment, and what rights the individual was having violated due to our state and federal outlines.
I made this spreadsheet my entire time in the shift documenting every personal account I witnessed as well. Harassment is a major problem with industry work, but the one that I have learned is the company killer is retaliation. If you can prove that then they stand no chance.
He almost lost it after one incident, nearly giving up his fact-gathering progress.
I saw him one night tearing down this 50 year old man who requested 2 days off to the point I wanted to lose my cool, but knew it would ruin all the information I was gathering.
Days off were bc his nephew was just in a car accident 2 days prior and had to have multiple reconstructive surgeries scheduled. I knew that now was the time to move on everything I rounded up all the maintenance guys and shared all my documentation with them.
The other staff, when told about his plans, were skeptical at best; conditioned and beaten.
They didn’t realize the importance of this information like I had. They just said nothing will change. Nothing changed Bc no one treats an issue as an issue if you come with incorrect non-detailed information.
The fact that he used the radio so much was a godsend that they didn’t see as well.
OP used the very means of communication against the offender, and is what likely sealed his fate.
When he spoke this way to people he must not have ever realized that there are other supervisors on shift, and that they in fact they unintentionally became the strongest witness in the cases especially when you have some audio recordings verifying the accounts.
They have no choice but to acknowledge what they have heard. Each worker took their logs and even though I have a capital/time investment in this facility
I urged them at a minimum to petition to have this man removed or to threaten legal action.
Cue heroic 80s montage.
Once they coordinated a day to expose all this it was like watching a sports movie when the underdogs take the championship and get the girl at the same time.
Not only did the man finally get fired but the entire atmosphere around the place changed more than I could imagine.
Older machines ran the best they have ever ran in my time there, and people loved coming to work again.
They also put a placard on my door for when I came in about a week later.
It said “#1 Boss” but the boss was crossed out and hand engraved under it was the word BAD***.
I obviously removed it from my door but I put it in my home office and is probably the best thing I have EVER received from a facility.
Perseverance, a sterling sense of right & wrong, and radio communications ftw.
Good guys win.
Let’s see what folks thought of the saga.
This person saw the humanity in sticking up for the downtrodden.
One commenter saw the major importance in documenting harassment.
While another raised some eyebrows about that communication!
This comment from the OP himself sums it up perfectly.
Not all heroes wear capes.
Some of them use Excel spreadsheets.
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.