What would you do if there were multiple problems in your workplace, including safety issues, but the boss didn’t seem to care at all and even blamed the employees for the problems?

Would you try to ignore the problems just like the boss, or would you make sure everyone knew about the boss’s bad work ethics?

In today’s story, one employee is tasked with taking meeting notes, and she takes this especially seriously when the boss blatantly ignores safety concerns again.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Take notes of EVERYTHING you say in the meeting? Okay, but it will get you fired.

So this happened a few years ago, and I will be vague since I’m still not sure if the dust has fully settled from this fiasco yet…

At my former company, I was the secretary for a small “improvement” team that would meet monthly to discuss issues within the company and brainstorm ways to fix them.

Something you need to know about me is that I was given this role because people know I am meticulous at keeping records due to HR-related issues I had at a previous place of employment.

I don’t think my boss realized that this careful record-keeping applied to her as well, especially when she appointed me to be secretary of this little committee, but I digress.

The boss was not helpful.

I was a model employee (read: award-winning) and went above and beyond what was asked, as were many others in my department, but we were still having customer complaints and dealt with regular safety issues, due to the company at-large and through no fault of our own.

When we brought these concerns to our boss’s attention, emails were left unread, and during in-person exchanges, we were called, “whiny,” “needy,” and were told that we needed to “just deal with it.”

Whatever the issue, from items being stolen by customers to people being unhappy with the procedures the boss had set down for us to follow, it was always made to somehow be our fault.

When we sought support from other departments, we were met with cold indifference, since the boss was great to them, and we must be exaggerating the things she said to us.

The boss still refused to take their concerns seriously.

Well, during an improvement meeting at the end of the fiscal year, it all came to a head.

Myself and a couple of my team members dug our heels in and were insistent about the unresolved issues the boss refused to acknowledge, and she finally went off on us.

She told us everyone was incompetent, didn’t deserve our jobs, and that maybe customers would like us more if we were more likable.

When people pressed her on safety issues, she continued to reiterate that we would just have to deal with it, and that if “someone was going to die, they already would have, right?”

She took detailed notes.

I, as the secretary, did my duty and took notes of ALL that happened over the course of that meeting.

I usually did bullet points, but that night, I was feeling a little more thorough, so I wrote down words.

EVERY word that was said.

Every hateful comment, denial of accountability, and idle threat was recorded in black and white.

She handed out the notes to the entire company.

Now, a second part of my job was to distribute the notes from the improvement meeting to the rest of the company.

So, come the next morning, I ran about 100 copies of the transcript of the meeting and hand-delivered them to every single department in the building, and things blew up.

People from other departments who had attended the meeting were able to verify that everything I had typed up had really been said, and folks were MAD: threatening to quit, refusing to do their normal duties, browsing Indeed during work, etc.

She eventually moved on, and so did her boss.

My boss’s boss (who worked at HQ, so I didn’t get the opportunity to hand her a copy) got wind of these meeting minutes only a few hours after I had handed them out and had an hour-long, off-the-record conversation with me about all the safety issues I had documented, all the concerns I had submitted to management in writing, and all the records I had regarding my boss’s inaction.

She was very grateful for the 100 pages of documentation I sent over and thanked me for my time.

The day after I unleashed Pandora’s box, I put in my 2 weeks notice, took a new job, and peaced out to greener pastures.

At first, it seemed like things were calming down after I left, but the following year, the company did not renew my boss’s contract…

She really wasn’t trying to get the boss fired.

I still feel a bit bad because I wasn’t trying to get her fired or ruin her life – I was just desperate for some accountability thrown her way to create some positive change in the company.

But at the end of the day, I just did what she had asked me to do.

That boss deserved to get fired.

She wasn’t a very good boss if she didn’t take legitimate concerns seriously.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person doesn’t think OP should feel bad that the boss got fired.

Another person is impressed by the detailed meeting notes.

Here’s another vote for the boss deserving to get fired.

This is probably true.

This is a good way of looking at it.

She did what she had to do.

And then she just walked away – how satisfying!

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.