Sometimes just following instructions can lead to a great pay off!

This employee knew her new director wasn’t making sense when he picked the time for a daily meeting, but she did what he told her to do anyway! Eventually, her boss had to intervene.

Check out what happened next…

Everyone else wants the meeting first thing in the morning? Okay!

So, this story is being stolen from my girlfriend.

She works at a company that provides warehousing, product prep, and direct to consumer services to other companies.

She works in their office dealing directly with several key accounts, but also has a few lines that she manages.

Everyone’s roles were well defined!

The lines are responsible for prepping and building shipments. The line workers will gather in the morning and wait for their daily assignments, as well as any direct to consumer orders, from my girlfriend.

This detail is important.

The other office workers help manage some accounts, but do not manage the lines or direct to consumer orders, nor do they know how to.

UH OH… We can smell the trouble!

She comes into work one day and finds out they have a new director, and he wants to start organizing, streamlining, etc. Ya know, the things the new important person does to make it look like he’s giving it his all.

His first order of business is to have a mandatory daily meeting at 8am with everyone in the office that “will take no longer than 15 minutes”.

That’s right! They knew it would fall apart…

My girlfriend requests that the meeting starts at 9am instead, as the warehouse workers will be doing nothing but waiting around for their assignments otherwise.

The director, probably not wanting to look like he’s playing favorites on his first day, puts this to a vote, and *surprise* the other people want to start first thing in the morning, as they have nothing else to do at that time.

So my girlfriend says “Okay, if they want to start first thing in the morning, that’s no problem!”

This is where it gets interesting…

Next day, the meeting begins as soon as everyone arrives, and as they gather and the director begins talking, they hear the various lines start calling my girlfriend’s name over the radio in the distance.

Five minutes go by, and now people begin wandering into the office.

Ten minutes and a small group forms.

Fifteen minutes, and people are coming and going patiently waiting for her, as she is ferociously tapping her pen on a clipboard.

She just did what she was supposed to!

At this point the director pipes up with a less than sincere “Well, you look rather anxious, so if you have someplace to be, you can go if we’re keeping you.”

She responds with a candid and rushed “thank you so much.” and runs away to take care of her lines and process consumer orders.

The new director, after this conversation, spoke with the owner of the company.

That’s right… He got back on track!

To his credit, the director later that day sought out my girlfriend and recapped what she missed at this meeting, which ultimately ran for over 45 minutes.

He also explained that the owner of the company informed him that she has the most responsibility of anyone in the office, generally can be relied on for anything, and is hands down his best employee.

The meeting is now at 9am.

That was refreshing!

This guy’s girlfriend simply followed instructions and ended up getting her way!

Let’s find out what folks on Reddit think about this story.

This user is confused about the girlfriend’s job description…

This user thinks the manager is a good guy for fixing his mistake instantly!

This user thinks other workers are at fault here.

This user thinks the manager needed a training session!

This user knows it might get worse…

If the manager should’ve listened to her!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.