Working is hard enough without dealing with management tiers that are not on the same page. How is one to know who to please?

In the end, you just have to do your best.

OP was getting mixed messages about what was the priority at work.

My boss has a different priority on the work other than our main one.

Say our job is to check and verify thing client data, his priority is to attend calls that does not concern it (i.e. calls about the football or photography club).

Our main boss is asking a file to be updated by a certain day. That week we are down 2 people on the work so we are swamped with a lot of rush requests.

This file is also used by another team so updating it is a priority.

Then, the big boss let him know in no uncertain terms what he needed done.

The week goes by and it is still not update so the main boss asked me why is it not updated?

I told him that we are missing 2 people on the team so I am not able to reconcile it and have to ask my immediate boss to do it.

Well, what do you know?? He did not do it. We were given until Monday to update it.

But his immediate boss told him no overtime to get it done.

I asked for permission to do an overtime over the weekend but was advised to just enjoy the weekend. So I did.

Come Monday, everyone is going berserk because it turned out that the file contains some errors which resulted into it being escalated the higher ups.

Which was exactly what he told the big boss when he was threatening to roll some heads.

Main boss asked me, why I did not update the file over the weekend.

I said I asked for permission to do it Saturday but was told to just enjoy the weekend so I did not logged in.

We got into a meeting with main boss and immediate boss was called out for not allowing me to render overtime.

This caused a massive reporting issues and hits on the reporting side.

Sorry main boss, I am only following immediate boss’s instruction.

The top comment breaks it down.

Others disagreed about the chain of command, though.

Because people aren’t working for free.

It’s nice when people shoot themselves in the foot.

So much less work for you.