Being bored at work is the worst. It makes it seem like time stands still and the work day drags on forever. Being busy is so much better.

In today’s story, one employee literally has nothing to do at work and tries to get her manager to giver her something to do.

The manger won’t listen.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

I can stand longer than you can sit.

I used to work for a Pharmaceutical compounding company.

Pharmaceutical compounding factories are made up of several rooms of varying cleanliness, graded D–A (D being the least “clean”).

These rooms are thoroughly cleaned each day but require special “deep” cleans at least once a month.

It was impossible to get work done on this particular day.

I was scheduled to work in the de-box room (grade D), where I would take drugs, diluents and devices out of their boxes, record the relevant numbers from each individual item before cleaning with 70% alcohol and sending through an airlock hatch into the grade C room.

However this day, the grade C room attached to de-box was being deep cleaned and couldn’t be used until the next day, meaning there was literally nothing to de-box.

I asked my manager where they wanted me to work, the conversation went as follows:

She stated the problem.

“Hi Lisa, since there’s nothing in de-box should I go and help with the deep clean or go to unit a/b? (a different set of clean rooms)”

“What does it say on the schedule?”

“It says de-box but there’s nothing in there and I don’t want to spend hours standing around.”

“If it says de-box then go to de-box.”

The manager clearly didn’t understand.

“Lisa, there’s a deep clean happening, there’s literally nothing to do in de-box.”

“There’s plenty to do in there so go and do it, I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with you, just do as you’re told!”

So I went into de-box, the contents of the room were an empty bin, a bottle of 70% alcohol, some wipes and myself.

So I cleaned the room with the alcohol, (it’s a small room, it took 15 minutes) then stood still for two hours.

The coworkers weren’t surprised.

Over the intercom, the people doing the deep clean asked what I was doing.

I relayed to them the conversation I had with the manager, got a laugh and an “honestly, not surprising, Lisa’s a jerk”.

I then proceeded to stand still for another hour.

Lisa finally realized she wasn’t doing anything.

After being standing stationary for three hours, Lisa barged into the room and hissed:

“What on earth do you think you’re doing!? You’ve done nothing but stare at the wall for three hours! What makes you think you can get away with doing nothing when everybody else is working so hard?!!”

“I’m doing what you asked me to Lisa, you tol..”

“THIS IS NOT WHAT I ASKED YOU TO DO, I TOLD YOU TO COME IN HERE AND DO YOUR WORK!”

Her manager clearly doesn’t understand the situation.

“And I told you there was no work in here to do and asked to go somewhere where there was work”

“THERE WAS WORK TO DO IN HERE WHEN I SENT YOU HERE!”

“No there wasn’t, I wouldn’t have asked for something to do if there was”

“GET OUT AND GO TO UNIT A. IF YOU EVER REPEAT THIS STUNT I WILL INVESTIGATE YOU FOR GROSS MISCONDUCT!”

“If doing what you asked is gross misconduct you should probably investigate this particular incidence.”

Her manager had been watching her.

At this point I walked past her and went and did my job in the other units.

Later I was chatting to the supervisor who had been sat with her on the monitoring station.

They told me that she had watched me on the camera for the entire three hours getting progressively more and more wound up.

There never ended up being an investigation and that manager entirely stopped talking to me until she tried (and failed) to fire me for totally different reasons.

Why did it take Lisa three long hours to realize they didn’t have anything to do?

How do people like that even become managers?

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

The manager is not making sense.

The manager clearly wasn’t working either.

What a horrible middle manager!

She might’ve had an ulterior motive.

HR really needed to get involved.

All she did was follow orders!

Can’t fault her for that.

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.