It can be super annoying when a boss acts likes they know better than their employees.

We all know that usually, it’s the other way around.

Sometimes letting the boss get their way is the only way for them to learn better.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

I’m very bad at this job I guess.

I work at an auto manufacturer, and a previous job I held had me making hoods for two styles of car, that we’ll call A and B.

I had worked at this spot, at this point, longer than anyone else on the team, and was well aware of how to keep it running.

We put parts in a machine, press a button, put more parts in another machine, press a button, repeat ad infinitum.

A quirk of the robots is that they don’t like to work on A and B at the same time.

So if you swap, you’ve gotta run out all the in process parts before you start new ones.

Eight hoods fit on a rack, so you finish a rack before swapping, obviously. The system doesn’t deal with partials.

The task of swapping was up to the person working, usually, and unless things got wonky, it was pretty easy to anticipate how often you switch(or you could go check the line).

Most management accepted this because if the line is moving, they’re happy.

Nobody likes Wayne.

Introducing Wayne.

Wayne got hired from the line as per diem, which is to say he gets a small pay raise and the anger of the rest of us union members for selling out.

Wayne wants to make a name for himself, so he does little checkups on people working on hoods.

He’s lucky enough to catch me sitting around waiting for parts to run out not once, but three times in about two weeks.

He complies with Wayne’s request.

This prompts him to puff himself up and tell me I need to keep moving so we don’t run out of parts, I can’t just sit around waiting.

I shrug and say okay.

So while he watches, I start putting A parts in while B parts are still cycling through. Immediate faults. I sit down and wait for skilled trades to come fix it.

Few minutes later, I’m moving. I put more parts in, faults again. Skilled trades comes back.

He puts the blame on Wayne.

By now the B parts have finished going through, and skilled trades asks why I’m not waiting.

I shrug again and gesture to Wayne.

Wayne: did you know it was gonna fault?

Me: shrug just doing what you told me.

He shares another story about Wayne…

Part 2:

Wayne is still my manager, and hasn’t learned much.

He decides that since we ran out of A hoods once, he needs to be more involved in telling people when to swap between A and B.

Note: this happened because we had a new team member who hadn’t quite gotten the hang of it. They caused less than a minute of downtime because they swapped too late.

People frequently tried to do mass builds of A then B, rather than swap more frequently.

He complies with Wayne’s request…

So Wayne tells us that we don’t switch unless he or the team leader says so.

You got it boss. So I happily build A parts.

It must have been a busy day, because I don’t see my team leader or Wayne for hours.

Wayne FINALLY comes back.

One of the drivers comes back to ask me if I’m gonna build B parts and I explain what I’ve been told.

She tells me, “well I’m running out of racks, but whatever.” She’s been there a while, has seen it all, and is down to let it ride.

Finally, Wayne comes back in a rush to tell me to switch to B hoods.

Sure thing boss.

Complying with Wayne caused a big problem.

Unfortunately, Wayne is just a little too late.

By now, the line has zero B hoods, and zero empty racks. The robots are chock full of A hoods as well.

No racks can be emptied because the line can’t move (unless they wanna shove them in the repair hole and attach hoods later), and I can’t get my B hoods out because my robots are full.

The line stops for a full 20 minutes and we’re told to “use our best judgment” in the future.

I just shrug and go back to work as usual.

Wayne obviously has no idea what he’s doing.

Hopefully he’s learned his lesson by now.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

This reader shares advice for managers.

Another reader is surprised Wayne didn’t “know better.”

This person points out how impossible it seems to find a “competent” manager.

Another person had a question…

Wayne is eventually going to learn that his advice is the source of the problems.

He just wants to learn the hard way, I guess.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.