June 30, 2025 at 10:35 pm

Boss Changed Everything About An Employee’s Department, But Expected The Same Outcome. So This Guy Decided To Play Along And Showed Them How Terrible His Schemes Were.

by Sarrah Murtaza

Man in white shirt talking on call in office

Pexels/Reddit

Some bosses can be really dumb at times when it comes to leadership.

If you knew your job description and the company policies better than your boss, would you still do as told, or would you use your knowledge to your advantage?

This guy shares how his boss ruined his department’s work ethic and made everything really chaotic.

Let’s see what he did about it.

Dissolve my department, demote me and expect the same output ? You got it boss

I work in a highly specialised field, where it’s very difficult to find and train suitable personal.

By pinching pennies and not holding his promises about pay grade changes, my boss successively drove away the three specialists working in the department I led.

This is where it gets tricky…

Right before the last one put in her notice, he argued that a 2 person department didn’t justify a leadership position and demoted me, and we were integrated (on paper) to another department.

This was done outside of any legal framework and with a one week notice, which is illegal.

During the reorganisation, the manager of the department we joined was assigned to R&D, and another manager and his deputy promoted to lead the department’s daily business.

UH OH!

We effectively had no less than 3 supervisors, all of them lacking managerial training and technical knowledge about the duties of our now defunct department (and only one of them can read the language in which 50% of our reports are written).

Right after the reorganisation, I was granted one last meeting with the boss, where I pointed out that several of my duties cannot be bestowed upon the mere foot soldier I had become, nor taken over by the new leadership.

He answered that his decision was final, I was to revert to my previous job description and take up any future matter with my new supervisors.

He was not expecting that!

I did just that, and some more: I read the state law and ordinance about state and university employees (should have done it earlier, in hindsight).

I discovered that :

The illegal move by my boss doesn’t carry any penalty, so there’s nothing I can do legally

I’m allowed to take on private mandates for anything that is not explicitly mentioned in my job description (it’s a gift normally meant for professors)

I get to take up to 15 days of additional paid leave per year to hold a public office

The pay grade I reverted to doesn’t match my responsibilities today, even excluding the absence of leadership position, and there’s an independent procedure with state HR to reevaluate the pay grade

That’s INSANE!

The kicker?

My old job description that dates back to 7 years before is short, to say the least:

3 lines that don’t even cover 50% of what my duties in the last seven years consisted of.

And I have a side gig as a retained firefighter and fire instructor for which I used to take vacation days. This counts as a public office according to state law.

The fallout

Finally the cherry on top!

My new managers both signed the authorisation to take on private mandates and public office without understanding the implications.

I used all of the 15 days, where I legally get paid by the FD and my employer at the same time. I took on several private mandates totalling nearly an additional month of salary for 4 days of work.

And the pay grade reevaluation has brought me back to the same income as with the previous leadership position.

Oh, and since my speciality now has a bus factor of one and my new supervisors have been unable to staff the open positions, it was very unlucky that I fell ill at the time where I had to submit paperwork for a research grant, costing the institution 30’000$ in lost research funds.

YIKES! That was fun!

Talk about horrible work policies, but he made them work to his advantage!

Let’s find out what people on Reddit think about this one.

That’s right! This user has a great suggestion for this guy!

 

Screenshot 2025 06 11 150116 Boss Changed Everything About An Employees Department, But Expected The Same Outcome. So This Guy Decided To Play Along And Showed Them How Terrible His Schemes Were.

This user is happy that this guy did his research.

Screenshot 2025 06 11 150129 Boss Changed Everything About An Employees Department, But Expected The Same Outcome. So This Guy Decided To Play Along And Showed Them How Terrible His Schemes Were.

This user thinks the company that this guy works for is a horrible one.

Screenshot 2025 06 11 150138 Boss Changed Everything About An Employees Department, But Expected The Same Outcome. So This Guy Decided To Play Along And Showed Them How Terrible His Schemes Were.

This user is a little confused about the technicalities in this story.

Screenshot 2025 06 11 150150 Boss Changed Everything About An Employees Department, But Expected The Same Outcome. So This Guy Decided To Play Along And Showed Them How Terrible His Schemes Were.

This user knows that management can often be really dumb!

Screenshot 2025 06 11 150206 Boss Changed Everything About An Employees Department, But Expected The Same Outcome. So This Guy Decided To Play Along And Showed Them How Terrible His Schemes Were.

Someone’s being really clever here!

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.