Some bosses ask for the moon and then get annoyed when you can’t deliver it.

Fortunately the worker in this story knew how to handle this kind of boss.

See how he played his cards in this story.

New boss gives angry me an impossible task

I used to work for a big IT consulting company notorious for not paying overtime.

I worked for a client’s migration project for almost 1 1/2 years leading the functional migration team.

The three of us worked for the client 3 years before the start of the migration project, so we knew the data we had to migrate, all the nuances and, 2 weeks before the migration date, 99% of the data was already migrated and validated.

We only did the day-by-day new data and sag off pretty much those 2 last weeks.

It’s pretty chill at first.

The other manager (who outranked me) became extremely angry about our calmness, because the part she led was behind schedule due to bad scheduling and everyone was being overworked because of her mishaps.

Come Saturday, the migration date, everyone was expecting long long hours of work but we clocked out at noon with the data validated with the client and the go ahead signed, sealed and delivered.

My team got a written commendation from the client.

The manager’s team spent the entire weekend there.

She got a complaint letter from the client.

The manager complained about us and made me and my senior analyst spend the next month waiting for incidences/bugs/complaints.

We got 5 in the whole month.

My senior analyst spent 8 hours a day studying a new language, I took the chance to update my CV (I wanted out) and pretty much help a couple former colleagues that needed to solve bugs and problems within the manager’s team responsibilities.

Here’s where things get tense.

A couple weeks later, evaluation time. At the IT company, everyone was graded A to D. A being “exceeding expectations,” D being “you’re out of here,” B was good, C was pretty much “I’m starting to think you might not be good to work here”.

Given the commendation from the client, I was expecting an A.

My evaluation was done by the manager and my mentor (close friend with the manager).

They gave me a C because “We didn’t see any pressure on your work, and you certainly lack motivation”.

I complained and took a long overdue already planned month long vacation.

This was June.

After that, back at work, I was assigned to a project on another client led by manager’s husband.

He wanted me to prepare 122 integrations with different systems in 4 months.

I told him that, in the previous project, led by his wife, they took 2 years to have 12 integrations ready, but I would give it a shot.

I even emailed him the planning where it clearly showed the time they took.

Two of those months were July and August, months were pretty much everyone on the client goes on holiday.

Manager and wife also went on holiday pretty much all August.

I spent those two months chasing people around the client’s office, but, starting September, 6 integrations were closed and 6 more were almost closed pending validation.

Things came to a head and he used his trump card.

The manager came back from holidays and was furious.

He called me a slacker and started telling me that his wife was right, that I lacked motivation and that I would need to spend the rest of the project duration working till midnight to make up for loss time.

And I said “NO, I won’t do an hour more than what you’re paying, I told you that your expectations were unrealistic and you went ahead with them anyways.”

He went ballistic.

I replied “I just lack motivation to work in your project, I want out of the project.” I was out of the project in no time.

I got a call from my mentor, she said that they were evaluating firing me without pay because of this.

I told them about the unrealistic planning, she said that I was being unrealistic, and that the planning was good.

I produced the email I sent the manager. My mentor went quiet. A minute later she told me “What do you want?”

“If you can’t guarantee I won’t do an hour of overtime ever again, I want out, full severance and then some and I want the company to make it look like I quit, not that you fired me.”

She went quiet again.

She said she’ll see what she could do.

I was out of there, smiling, by the end of the day.

Here is what people are saying.

That’s what I was thinking.

It’s absurd. What a terrible place to work.

I was also hoping he would plan to leave.

It’s true! Keep your records.

Haha seeds were sowed.

I’d love to see the Glassdoor reviews of this place…

I bet they’re pretty entertaining.

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.