When you have to deal with government regulations, it can be a very slow and annoying process.

What would you do if your boss told you to go down to a government office to drop off some paperwork to a specific person and not to leave until it was done?

That is what happened to the employee in this story, so he stayed at the office from 8AM until after 3PM when the person finally arrived, making his boss upset for wasting so much time.

Check it out.

I don’t care if you have to stay there all day!!

So a bit about my job first. I work as a Rental Manager for a pretty well known and well-off person in my community we’ll call them BB for Big Boss.

Currently BB has over 50 rental properties and buying 3-5 a year since I’ve been working these last couple years.

My job is simple.

At the beginning of the month I collect Tenants rent, update their files and on the 6th whoever hasn’t paid gets a 3-day notice of eviction.

The eviction notice is the real deal that I post on the door or hand to the Tenants if they are home but my boss is pretty lenient as long as you pay by the end of the month (although repeat offenders tend to only pull this off for a few months at most).

He sounds like a pretty good landlord.

If you give us a date you can pay, or arrange paying X amount each week or so as long as it pays your balance off by the end of the month, BB will let you slide.

On to the Story:

So, BB recently bought a mobile home for a lot they bought and cleared about a month back.

Now we can’t just rent this out as it doesn’t have: Running water/sewage, any form of heat or air, power and a few other miscellaneous permits, but for the most part these 3 are the biggest.

Once all of this is done you get a Certificate of Occupancy by the local Building Department and you can rent it out to Tenants.

What a hassle.

It has taken 3 months to get just these 3 items set up as we had to dig a well (no water lines close by offered by the city), get our plumber (that is a friend and works personally with BB) to hook up the pump, get the A/C company to put a unit in

(after several failed attempts due to elevation issues causing our Elevation Certificate to be turned down multiple times), and the electric company putting up the wrong size power pole (yes there are actually city/government regulations for power pole heights).

Fast forward 3 months and finally we just have one more miscellaneous permit to get out of the way (Driveway Permit).

At this point of course BB has been through several temper tantrums (understandably so) to the point of yelling at the Building Services inspector.

Well, the inspector passed us and we just need to take a copy of the Driveway permit to the Building Services.

BB tells me to specifically hand it to a lady we’ll call Alice even if I have to stay there all day!

Now Alice has walked us through the process multiple times and been extremely helpful since the start of this mess, but Alice also happens to be a sort of manager there and is often in meetings or not in her office.

This is going to be a very long day.

Now, I work 8am to 5pm and this was around 8:45 ish in the morning.

I drive over to the Building Services, permit in hand, and ask for Alice that has been working with BB for –Property Address–.

The lady at the counter tells me she will be out for most of the day and wont come back until after 3pm.

I tell her I was specifically told by my boss to wait for her even if it took all day.

They tell me I’m welcome to come back and I politely say I’ll wait in the lobby since my boss insisted I wait for her.

I then pulled out my phone and some earbuds and sat in the lobby enjoying some music.

I even take my standard 1 hour lunch break at 12pm. 2pm rolls around and my boss finally calls.

I mean, what did he expect?

BB) WHERE ARE YOU ITS BEEN 5 HOURS IT CAN’T HAVE TAKEN THAT LONG TO GET A SIMPLE CERTIFICATE

Me) Well Alice is out until 3pm so I’m sitting here waiting for her as you instructed

BB) WHAT!?!? YOU COULDN’T HAVE COME BACK AND TOLD US THIS OR ASKED ANOTHER EMPLOYEE FOR HELP?!?!

Me) You insisted I wait for Alice even if it took all day!

BB) I- I.. *stammering followed by long silent pause* You said she’ll be in at 3?

Me) That’s what I was told.

BB) You’re already there so just get it from Alice when she comes in *hangs up*

Its good that they all got a laugh out of it.

3pm Alice shows up and is utterly speechless and confused when I tell her my instructions until a long burst of laughter by her followed by a few others in the office.

I ultimately wait some more for her to gather the documents, print them, take them to get signed (its upstairs by some government official) and return to BB’s office at 4:50pm with the Certificate. Clocked out at 5:07pm.

He was just following instructions, if the big boss didn’t want him to wait, he should have been more clear.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about this.

Good point.

This commenter thinks he will be fired.

This is very interesting.

This person says the boss was under enough stress.

Yes, he was doing what he was told, but he should have known that wasn’t what his boss meant.

That being said, he got the job done.

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.