Know your rights at work, folks!

Because it’ll make your life a lot easier AND you can also stick it to The Man once in a while!

Take a look at what happened in this story from Reddit!

We think you’ll be impressed.

I know the rules, do you?

“This happened years ago while I was working in retail.

I had been at this place for three years, was cross trained in every department, had never had a sick day, and was always available to cover shifts when they called me. The important thing to say is that we were also unionized.

I would soon be getting married and moving across the country, so being the good employee I was I gave my store manager my termination notice a month before my last day instead of just two weeks so he would have plenty of time to hire someone new.

Here is the good part.

Ouch!

A few days after I turned in my notice, I broke my foot in an act of stupidity (three avulsion fractures, they couldn’t cast it).

Doctor gave me some pain meds, and a note saying I could continue to work as a cashier as long as I had a stool or something so I could help keep the weight off my foot.

The next day I grab my cane and walk to work with my note. I explain the situation to my supervisor and union rep and they pull a bar stool from the furniture section and put it in my cash booth. I spend the day working without a problem.

The next day my store manager sees my sitting on the stool and calls me into his office. I go in and he wants to know why I have a stool. The conversation goes roughly as follows.

Manager: Why are sitting down while on shift?

Well…

Me: Because I broke my foot and the doctor says I cannot be standing on it all day. I have the note and the unions approval.

Manager looks over the note and notices the cane beside my chair.

Manager: I can’t let you keep the stool, if I did we would have to make accommodations for everyone who got injured outside of working hours. Plus it doesn’t look professional to have you sitting at the front of the store.

Now I know he isn’t allowed to do that and that I could have taken this up with the union and won the case, but with only three weeks left with the company I would be lucky to have it resolved before I left.

So I get a bright idea.

Me: Okay, I will make you a deal instead of bringing this to the union. I will give up the stool but in return you need to make sure that every shift I work from now on is as the garden centre cashier.

My manager quickly agrees and thanks me for being understanding. He walks with me out to the garden centre and explains to the current cashier that I will be taking over for the rest of the month.

Now being unionized is not always a great thing, but if you know the rules you can get away with a lot without being fired. With my union the key was to do exactly what was in in your job description, so long as it didn’t put you, your coworkers or the company at risk.

Since most of us liked our jobs and respected the store’s owner (not the manager) we always went above and beyond. But I was on my way out and after my talk with manager I no longer cared.

A few days later manager comes out to let the supervisor know that a shipment of flowers will be arriving sometime today. He apparently decided to check up on me and was completely speechless when he saw me. There I was sitting on my registers counter, reading a book.

Here we go again…

Manager: What on earth are you doing?

Me: Waiting for the next customer to come up while taking the weight off my foot, why?

Manager: You know I could fire you for doing this, right?

Me: My job is to be a cashier, which I am doing when ever someone comes up. There are no additional duties like cleaning or stocking for the garden centre cashier. So between customers I am talking the weight off my foot as per my doctors note, minus the stool of course.

Manager: I could still fire you for reading on the sales floor.

Me: Please do. Since I have never received a warning or been written up that would mean you were firing me for a first offense, which is not sufficient cause for the union. That would mean you would owe me 5 weeks severance, my unclaimed vacation time, and the pay I would miss between now and my final day. Now you could also spend the next 2 weeks trying to catch me reading, that way you could issue me the required three warnings, followed by the required three write ups, but that would eat up a lot of your time and I am pretty sure I could have someone inside call to warn me if they see you coming this way.

At this point a man with a cart full of bags of dirt starts heading my way and I hop off the register onto my good foot and hop around the register so I can serve him.

Manager never came to see me again.”

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

This person weighed in.

Another individual was impressed.

This Reddit user spoke up.

Another reader shared their thoughts.

And this person chimed in.

It pays to know your right in the workplace, folks!

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.