Working as a security guard means dealing with all sorts of challenging environments and strict rules.

When a power-hungry middle manager establishes a strict new policy, a maliciously compliant subordinate helped them see how their own rigid system would come back to bite them.

Read on for the full story!

no externals without permission? sure!

I work in security and our company has many different clients and no fixed posts, so I jump from site to site.

The site in question (client) is one of the more complicated sites for us and has an awful work atmosphere.

We man the gates and next to the normal truck traffic, there are also multiple visitors coming.

Some of them come so often you basically know them by name and we just open the gate for them, because they are here every day.

One of the managers is a big reason the work atmosphere is so terrible.

One of the middle managers (Power) from client is one of those people that think they are the most important person in the world as soon as they get a little bit of power.

For example, when power got into middle management. Power decided that this way, everybody could just come and go in.

So we got the new order to not let anyone external in without getting the okay from the person “responsible” for them.

Every external you say? Oki-dokey!

The policy was unpopular from day one, but at first the stakes were low.

This alone made DHL, UPS and so on unhappy, since we stopped them now and first called the people who take the packages from them, making them also really annoyed.

Then it happened.

But then they quickly got higher.

Some very important people came for an appointment with Power first thing in the morning. Something a lot of money was hanging on.

The good girl I am, I tried calling power for 15 minutes. No answer.

Welp, guess I can’t reach Power. Which means I can’t let the very important people in.

I told them, so, so sorry. Obviously they were not amused, but my idea that they could bill client for their wasted time made them less un-amused.

Finally, Power showed up. He wasn’t happy with what his subordinate told him.

Power came 15 minutes later. His car had issues.

He told me that he has an very important meeting and if very important people come, they can go directly to him.

I then told him the sad news that they were here already and I tried to call power for 15 minutes, but after I couldn’t reach him I did send them away, as our new instructions demand me to do.

The instructions were very quickly withdrawn to the earlier system, where we could let people in if we know who they are without needing to ask first.

Funny how quick leaders change their minds when the company misses out on a buck.

What did Reddit have to say?

The workers on the job usually know best.

It’s clear this company doesn’t have the right people in charge.

This user still doesn’t understand the boss’ logic.

This manager should be a little more responsible with their authority next time.

Rigidity isn’t always the best policy.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.