Sometimes bosses don’t take the time to learn why an employee does something a certain way. It usually backfires.

In this call center agent’s case, he only took breaks after his current call was over, but when his boss scolded him for not taking his breaks at the allotted time, he complied.

If only his boss had listened!

Let’s see what happened.

Only Take Breaks When I Tell You to. Sure, No Problem

I used to work at a call center where we would get flooded with calls constantly.

A very stressful environment was about to get even more stressful.

This is a story of how a busybody boss thought they understood everything since they were in charge.

At the work we were given two 15 minute breaks and one 45 minute lunch break.

The breaks were scheduled into our day so you could see when they would be, but this would change day by day.

That’s annoying.

My role was a bit different than the normal agents as I was specifically dealing with the higher issue calls.

These calls could take up to 1 hour to complete and the caller would need to stay on the line, unless they were fine with a call back later but this was rarely the case.

Since I never knew when I would be getting these calls, my break times were a shot in the dark if I would or wouldn’t be on a call.

I would just take them as soon as the call was done if they ever intersected, which they did 99% of the time.

But he was enduring this daily inconvenience, until his boss intervened.

Enter my boss.

During a performance review I hit all the marks except for “Attendance”.

I asked about this as I know I missed a few days, but always with a reasonable update for time frame and never had a no show day (where there is no warning that I’m not coming in).

My boss stated that attendance also applies to break and lunch times and since I rarely took them at the requested time, I was getting written up.

Wow. His boss expected him to work without any breaks, basically.

I explained my role, that they hired me for, and the challenges involved.

They did not care and stated I needed to take breaks when I was told to.

I asked for them to send me an email so that I could print it out, put it on my desk and never forget again.

My boss smiled ear to ear, probably because they thought I was groveling at that point, and sure enough they did stating in the email:

“You must take the your breaks only when the schedule tells you to, no time else. There is no excuse.”

That last sentence was unnecessary. Time to let him learn!

I saved his email, printed it out, sent a copy to my own email and followed it to the letter.

Next call that happened that same day, and of course, I had the ‘long call crossing over with a break’ issue.

I asked the customer if it would be ok for a callback, they said no.

I stated that unfortunately, I could not stay on the line as I was required to take my break.

Oh well. Break time!

They became enraged and demanded to speak with my boss.

I told my boss and they said that I needed to apologize and finish the call.

I showed them the email they just sent to me and said:

“You told me to take my break at this time no matter what.”

“I’m just doing what you told me to do. I’m taking my break, would you like the customer transferred over?”

“Or should I just hang up?”

He wanted him to work without any breaks, preferably.

They took the call over and from that day on I never had a missed attendance mark.

God, busybody bosses are the worst.

Now their unreasonable rules were also affecting the boss and the company.

Let’s see what Reddit has to comment on this.

A reader shares a similar story.

Someone shares another experience.

He really played them there.

Not a nice work environment.

Another reader chimes in.

Yup.

His boss should walk a bit in his shoes (or at least listen to him) before treating him like a slacker.

But he probably didn’t even really learn his lesson.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.