Have you ever had a supervisor who really didn’t understand your job? In that case, the supervisor might make assumptions that are completely wrong.

In this story, one employee was in a situation like this. His supervisor thought he was being lazy, but he was actually making a smart decision.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

If you think that you can go home

This happened about 15 years ago.

I was a Tool and Die maker by trade then and was working an overtime shift at a Tier 1 supplier automotive stamping plant on a Saturday morning at 6am.

Waiting to start working made sense in this case.

Usually if anything is going to wrong it will happen in the first 30 minutes of a press start up since they have to align the coil and get the strip through the die.

Once the presses get going then you can start to look at what dies are scheduled to run next and check them accordingly.

But if you start to work on a due and a press goes down it will most likely involve packing up whatever you have taken out already and rolling your toolbox to the press.

This is why I was waiting 30 minutes before starting any shop work

The supervisor didn’t understand.

My Supervisor at the time (We’ll call him Rude-e) came into the tool room saw me reading paper and came over and asked what I was doing.

I explained to him what I stated above to which he replied ” what’s next you want me to put a bed upstairs also”.

I said if he did that I would support him %100 and laughed.

I guess he wasn’t amused because he said “if you think you are gonna come in on OT and stand around reading the paper for 30 minutes you can go home”. Rude-e then stormed off out of the shop.

Might as well take him at his word.

Enter Malicious Compliance, after he left I started locking up my boxes and putting my shoes on.

My co-worker on shift asked where I was going?.

I told him Rude-e said I could go home.

Rude-e found out what happened.

About 20 minutes later Rude-e comes back into the shop looking for me, he asks my co-worker where I was.

My co-worker told him that you told him he could go home.

He then told my co-worker to come with him and he was stuck at a press for 3 hours alone.

If only he had been patient and trusted my judgement he would have had 2 guys on a press call and not 1.

It doesn’t sound like he lost his job over this stunt, so no harm done. This is another great example of why supervisors really need to know the ins and outs of the jobs of everyone they supervise.

Otherwise, they make stupid judgement calls.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This is basically what happened.

Another person shares a story about refusing to work overtime.

Here’s another story about leaving work early.

I assume this person means the supervisor was mean.

Don’t dare an employee to go home early!

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.