It’s amazing how quickly a workplace can change when the person in charge stops showing up.

One retail worker had seen her fair share of bad managers, but when this one kept taking extended “vacations,” it left her as the only capable employee of a busy store.

So when this manager had the nerve to discipline her over her behavior, she was just one shift away from losing her patience completely.

You’ll want to read on for this one.

Manager tries to give me a stern talking to over a customer compliment

I work in a godless palace with yarn.

When I transferred in, we had a manager who was a total hard***, and I thought she was great.

She didn’t mess around, expected everyone to do their jobs, and wasn’t shy about calling people out for laziness.

She also didn’t allow customers to treat us poorly.

Well, she moved to another state…

But when another manager took over, everything got worse.

J took over the store, and things immediately went downhill.

After less than a month, she was on a ten-day vacation. Less than a month later, another ten days. It’s a constant thing.

Then the lunch breaks started. Managers, including the store manager, get a 30-minute lunch.

A standard day with J consists of her leaving for lunch around noon and coming back to the store roughly around 3.

Her absence was very quickly felt by this employee.

A few weeks ago, it was a busy-as-heck day — huge lines and all that. We all have radios to call for whatever we need, and in my case, they’re used for calling for backup and change.

Everything else, I have covered.

Our floor people don’t come in for a while longer because the manager doesn’t schedule properly. Ever.

It’s making her job ten times harder.

So I end up calling for backup. No response. I take a few more customers and call again. No response.

Over the course of 40 minutes, I keep calling with no response. The customers are obviously annoyed, but none take it out on me. They can see I’m doing what I can and somehow still hauling through all the transactions.

Finally, I clear the line with no backup about ten minutes before the floor people arrive.

Apparently customers took notice and sung her praises, but this manager still found a way to make it negative.

The next day, the manager calls me into the office and shows me a customer comment about how well I handled myself under pressure with a huge line and no backup.

She then tries to lecture me about not calling for backup.

Me: I called for backup. Everyone just ignored me. Again.

Finally, this employee has had enough.

I’ve already had corporate talk to this woman before for ignoring the radio.

Looks like it’s time to do it again — and this time, maybe they’ll find out about her three-hour lunch breaks and how she leaves a few hours early every day.

The manager wanted to talk about “teamwork,” but it was hard to take that seriously from someone who vanished for hours.

What did Reddit think?

Their manager is definitely breaking all kinds of rules here.

Some bosses just use their power to take advantage of everyone.

It couldn’t hurt to try and escalate this issue as high as they can.

Maybe they can use their past connections to make it happen.

It wasn’t about the praise or the complaint anymore; it was about accountability and everyone else’s utter refusal to take it.

It was clear she couldn’t depend on anyone else at this job.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.