Isn’t it insane how some companies make the worst mistakes, but blame their employees and workers for everything?

This guy was blamed for doing something that he was literally asked to do, and he wasn’t about to let the company get away with pinning the blame on him.

Check out the full story.

Changing the building’s tone(r)

I work IT support for an engineering consulting company.

As much as we like to believe we are heading towards a paperless world, this place proves that pretty incorrect.

This guy knew things weren’t getting any better anytime soon.

With all the printers around here being used to print stuff just so people can mark it up manually I don’t see this industry going paperless any time this century.

All these printers however leads to a lot of printer problems.

One of these problems is waste toner.

Sadly even our fanciest plotter or printer doesn’t use every bit of what we put into it and as such produces waste.

He was so done with the people at this company…

One of these printers waste collection is… dumb.

Just plain dumb.

Its a single, large reservoir that has four entrance holes, one for each colour of toner. When you take the collection container out, you need to carefully seal those holes by pulling back the foam around the seal and closing it up.

In theory, quite simple. In practice it can be annoying.

This is where it gets bad…

So the other day I have a user show up at my desk with a box. This well meaning guy brought the waste toner to my desk with a big smile expecting a thank you.

Except, I see what can only be described as a clown vomit gunpowder trail leading behind him from the box he’s carrying.

I practically jump out of seat to get him to hold it correctly for a moment while I scramble to get a box that wont leak and hold the toner.

Mission accomplished, further spills contained, and I grumble as I have to slowly vacuum up this huge mess.

He was trying to solve the issue!

Of course, this presents a problem: what to do with this box? Thankfully, our building provides ‘e-waste bins’ in the loading bay that we can dump this stuff into.

Perfect.

I load up a cart with this box and several other old toner containers (from better manufacturer printers) and head on down.

These bins were near full, so I set everything in them at the top, do a quick check to make sure its good, and head upstairs.

UH OH…

Not good though.

We get an email 15mins after I’m finished and it gets forwarded to me. It basically reads ‘Can’t put cardboard in the e-waste bins, and they’re quite full. Come fix this.’

So with a sigh I get out of my seat and head down. Why this hasn’t been an issue before? I don’t know.

I get the dude who runs the place normally to talk me through what he wants.

He disliked this guy through and through…

Now, I’ve never liked this guy. He seems like the kind of guy who’d be hanging around outside of a club skeeving on girls well below his own age.

He’s got a haircut and faded beard resembling Drake, and wears the same sort of attitude as well. Only problem, he’s not a world superstar in his home city, he’s a loading bay manager who just happens to be in Toronto.

He gives me the run down. ‘Ya bro’ gets said about 10 times in the first 2 minutes.

I explain to him ok, I can take the excess cardboard around some of the containers and toss it into the compactor, but under no circumstances am I putting the box practically soaked in waste toner in the air.

He knows how troublesome toner can get!

If you don’t know, toner is a very, very fine powder that aggressively sticks to whatever it touches. Its so fine, the vacuum I had to use earlier has an air filter on it to keep that stuff from getting in the air so it doesn’t enter your lungs.

Toner is bad stuff.

He wanders off to get his manager, who I relay the same information to.

Thankfully his response doesn’t include the word bro every few words, but I get told ‘Ok, just empty the toner into the bin, and put whatever boxes you can into the compactor.’

Now, I do this. I’m tired of dealing with what hasn’t been an issue in the past and do as he says.

He did his job under supervision…

The two of them watch me carefully pour the toner out of the box into the larger e-waste bin, covering the stuff below it and mainly the other toner cartridges I put in there.

With the good cardboard tossed into the compactor I head back up. For another 15min of peace before yet another email comes in.

This email effectively read ‘You made a mess with toner, we are charging you to clean it up. Toner also does not go in these bins, that is a separate toner, we are charging you.’

He wasn’t taking any more of this!

I’m mad.

I get this email through our HR who communicates with building management. I did everything they asked, and they still want to mess with us?

This guard has always given me bad vibes, and I’ve even had contractors coming up through the loading back to remodel the office comment on him. And he wants to try and stick this on me? Nah, bro.

He knew he didn’t do anything wrong!

I fire an email back to HR, detailing the encounter.

I tell them what I did to start, the previous email we got, and how under direction from the dock manager and direct supervision they watched me do this with no complaint.

How I was never informed that this wasn’t correct, and there would be a charge for these things.

I sit and stew for 20mins.

It’s hard to focus and do work in this time as I’m real upset about this. Thankfully, HR had been working in the meantime.

They had to apologize for their mistake!

I get a response from them, a forward from the building, issuing an apology and that they were dropping the charges, and included a copy of their policy on e-waste.

While minor in the grand scheme, being able to stick it to them and that one guard in particular felt great.

I don’t think Ill be heading down there any time soon.

GEEZ! That’s so much trouble!

We’re happy this guy could get out of this situation without paying the fine.

Let’s find out what the Reddit community has to say about this one.

This user knows can picture the kind of guy in the story.

This user wants to avoid buying this annoying brand.

This user wants to know which printer this is.

Exactly! This user wants this guy to rethink his job.

It’s too bad the company ever bought that type of toner.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.