An Employee Was Told Not To Work On Something That Wasn’t In Their Job Title, So They Did What They Were Told And It Caused A Whole Lot Of Chaos

Matthew Gilligan

2 months ago

Source: Reddit

Who’s ready for a lengthy story from Reddit that might just remind you a little bit of your workplace…as far as incompetence goes, I mean…

Are y’all ready for this?

Get started now and dig in to the story below!

Only do what is in my job title? Fine, good luck paying employees!

“I work for a construction company as an inventory admin.

My job is to basically schedule counts of our warehouse and input the numbers they give me for inventory.

Then try to see what the problem is when the numbers on the last count and current count don’t add up. There is a little bit more to it but I will not bore you with the specifics.

There’s an issue…

The problem with this job is that when you have been doing it long enough and are good at it, there is less work to do.

In the beginning when counting one rack out of 60 racks of material would take a few days, it was fine because I was always busy.

But now that everything is in order, the entire warehouse can be counted in 3 days. This leaves me bored for most of the time. So, to fix this I studied up on our cloud-based ERP service that we use for all internal and external transactions and have become sort of an expert on it.

Every single aspect of this company uses this ERP service to do their job. Timesheets, HR, Payroll, Accounting, Scheduling, Management, Manufacturing, ordering from vendors, Delivering, Inventory, etc. all runs through this ERP service.

So it is very important that this service is up and running perfectly 24/7.

I became so proficient in this service, that our VP decided to cut ties with our consultants of the ERP because I could do what they did but better, quicker, and MUCH cheaper.

For reference, we were paying these consultants $5,000 a month just to be on standby if we needed them for some sort of problem that could arise from using this ERP and had to dish out more money to fix those problems depending on how many hours of their time was spent to fix said problems.

Not sure on their exact rate but it was something like $200 an hour and they took weeks to fix anything, while I could fix the problem in time for my daily afternoon **** break.

Sounds like it was working out okay…

I never got an official job title or raise of any kind for being an expert on this service. The company just saw me being able to do it and let me fix things that happened so they no longer needed the outside help.

I wasn’t too upset because it gave me something do so I was glad to help the company save money, even if none of that money fell my way.

Skip ahead a few months. We now have a new warehouse manager and someone in the warehouse screws something up in inventory by sending a bunch of materials to the wrong job with no records of it being shipped.

Doh!

We are talking half a million dollar screw up here. In the same day, our ERP had an update that caused a bunch of bugs with our accounting department.

So, I decide to work on the ERP problem first because the warehouse screw up is more of a delay screw up and not actually stopping anybody from doing their job at the moment, while this accounting problem means our bills are not able to be paid. You can guess what kind of issues we will have if bills are not paid.

The ERP bugs turn out to be quite big and numerous so it ends up taking me a couple days to figure out, but I fix it before any bills are actually due and decided to take lunch a little early to celebrate a victory. Crisis averted.

Things were about to blow up.

New warehouse manager storms into my office after I get back from lunch and is LIVID. Apparently, the bosses were pinning the blame on him for the warehouse screw up.

And considering he is the one who oversees shipments and personnel in the warehouse, the blame is rightfully placed.

He starts laying into me asking why I have not fixed the problem yet.

Yelling and screaming like a child.

I tried explaining that I was fixing an ERP issue and have not had time to look at the warehouse problem yet. He gets even more angry and notes that it is funny how I have time to take early lunches but not do my job.

That started to **** me off but I held my tongue and kept calm about the situation.

He then ordered me to ONLY do what is in my job title and to leave the “ERP bull **** to the people competent enough to handle it” as he put it.

Okay, if you say so!

Since this guy was technically my supervisor, I had no choice but to obey.

I asked him to send me that in writing and he snarks and storms back into his office.

5 minutes later I get an email stating that under NO CIRCUMSTANCES am I to work on anything related to ERP unless it involves inventory.

Cue malicious compliance.

I do nothing but inventory from that point forward, knowing well that we would be essentially coasting until we hit a problem that I would refuse to fix.

Sure enough, not even a week later I get an email from HR that some sort of bug in the ERP system was preventing them from accessing payroll to pay employees this week.

I reply an apology that I am no longer able to work on ERP bugs due to supervisor and to refer to the ERP system help guide for further assistance.

I knew the help guide was not going to help her in the slightest, but it was no longer my problem so I was not going to deal with it. Skip a few days later to Friday.

I checked my bank account in the morning before getting to work and laughed because there was no money deposited.

That problem never got fixed. I hurry up and get to work, excited to see the chaos unfold. And what I was expecting was an understatement.

Oh, boy!

When I show up to work, I see the ENTIRE warehouse staff of 50 people walking out of the front door.

I stopped one and asked why they are leaving and they replied with “I didn’t get paid today, so I am not coming back until I do.”

I go into the office and see the warehouse manager in a panic. He has jobs that need material and nobody to load it onto trucks or deliver.

I ask him if he needs help with anything and he just screams at me to leave his office because he is getting phone calls out the *** from superintendents of jobs asking why our material has not arrived yet.

I pass by HR on the way to my office and see a bunch of the bosses huddled up over her computer with her with angry and confused expressions on their face, I guess trying to figure out the problem.

I felt bad for her because it really was something out of her control, but I knew she would ultimately be okay because she had been there for so long that they would never fire her.

When I get to my office, I see the VP waiting for me there. He has a very ****** off expression on his face. When we get inside, he demands to know why I did not fix the problem in HR when she emailed me about it.

Well…

I replied that I am no longer allowed to work on ERP problems as it is not in my job title.

He has the most shocked look on his face and asked why all of a sudden I had a change of heart.

I show him the email from warehouse manager and I could see the dots connect in his head.

He immediately storms out and I see him heading straight to the warehouse managers office.

They were in there for a few hours but eventually he comes back to my office.

He seems calmer now and asks me politely if I can fix the problem in HR and if I can resume fixing the ERP if needed.

At this point I liked the relief of responsibility and told him I would only do it if he put it officially in my job title along with a raise.

His calmness turned to anger again and he says “I cannot believe you!” as he storms out and returns to his office.

A few hours later, he sends out a mass email that he has hired the old ERP consultants to fix the problem and that next week, everyone would be paid for the money they are owed, along with the money they earned if they return to work.

This one surprised me as he would rather pay over $60,000 a year to consultants than give me a few extra bucks an hour for better work.

I think he expected me to change my mind and just do it for my own paycheck but I decided to wait because I knew how these consultants were and if they managed to fix this problem in a week, I would streak naked through the office.

Most of the warehouse staff agreed to return but were still upset about not getting paid.

It wasn’t over yet…

Sure enough, next Friday comes around. Nobody gets paid again.

At this point it is becoming a real problem and the entire staff is becoming agitated. They have bills to pay.

I even heard a bunch of the warehouse talking about some competitors nearby they could go work for.

At this point, I even considered just fixing the problem because the warehouse didn’t deserve to be treated like that due to poor management.

Maybe I am the jerk here for this but I am severely underpaid and can barely afford my apartment, there is no reason I should do extra work for free.

That same day, the VP returns to my office and hands me papers.

These papers said that I would be promoted to a newly created position that dealt with inventory/ERP upkeep.

It would be its own department and he would be my direct supervisor, also came with a hefty raise.

All I had to do was sign and agree. I looked up at him after reading the paper and he had the saddest look on his face.

“Please just sign it, the consultants said it would take them weeks to get around to fixing it due to the high volume of clients they have taken on and we cannot keep skipping paychecks.”

I happily signed it and immediately got to work on the HR issue.

Managed to even fix it that same day. It was just a simple problem with the permissions of HR and payroll in the ERP due to the update.”