When you work a job day-in, day-out for years, you become very knowledgeable about it.

You’ll be so knowledgeable, in fact, that you likely know more about the day to day intricacies of your role than the person who hired you in the first place, presuming they’re not a specialist in your area.

So when the bakery supervisor in this story was confronted by the bakery owner on a decision, they were sure to stand their ground, given the years of knowledge they’d amassed in the position.

But when the owner insisted, they had to comply.

Read on to find out why this was a bad move for everyone involved.

Absentee boss wants me to increase the daily order against my suggestion? You got it.

I used to work at an upscale-ish cafe. I was a supervisor and in charge of the bakery section (there was also a kitchen and a coffee bar).

Now Mother’s Day was our biggest day of the year by a huge margin. Like it would be close to triple our daily sales for a regular Sunday.

Most mid-grade holidays would also be busy. And after every big holiday sales day, the sales the next day would be around 50-60% of normal, so I would order about two thirds of my regular order for that Monday.

Let’s see how this routine became an issue.

Now our owner was somewhat absentee from our store. She owned five locations, four of which were in the same city. Ours was the outlier, in a smaller location about two hours away.

She spent almost all of her time at the four locations and maybe visited us once a month.

This month, she just happened to come on the day after Mother’s Day. I can add that of all the employees, only the assistant manager liked the owner. Even the manager couldn’t stand her.

She saw that my bakery case was somewhat low and asked why.

I explained that the day after holidays was always slower, and I ordered less because I didn’t want to waste money.

Read on to find out how the owner responded to this smart idea.

She told me never to do that again. She in fact told me to double my normal order.

Now, I had been in this job for four years by this point and I knew that bakery section inside and out. Also at this point, only the manager and one of the cooks had been there longer than me.

Even the manager told me that things were always better when I was there. I always stayed late to cover call-ins, often came in on my day off if they needed me.

I even once drove a catering delivery 90 minutes each way to satisfy a loyal customer.

So they decided to stand their ground with the owner.

I told the owner that today was a special circumstance and that doubling the order would lead to a lot of food waste and recommended that we not do it.

With my regular daily orders, we usually ran out only near the end of the day, barring unforeseen circumstances (like someone coming in and doing a big pastry order without notice).

This was from a lot of trial and error over the years, and I changed my order up whenever things looked like they were changing.

But she insisted, even after the manager also told her that our regular order was fine. I tried again to tell and she just told me to do it. My manager also said it by that point.

Outnumbered, the supervisor decided that they could only do one thing.

So I did it. I doubled my regular order.

Then, after about two weeks, she emailed me and asked why we were throwing out so many pastries every day.

I told her that she told me to double my order.

At that point, my boss says, she wanted to fire me.

My boss convinced her that she needed me to help run the store (which she probably did). So I wasn’t fired, but I lost my position as bakery lead.

I was still a supervisor who mostly worked the bakery section, but I no longer ordered product. Still the same wage, but I was switched from mostly mornings to mostly nights.

Let’s see how this shift in responsibilities altered this employee’s working life.

While I did miss my morning regulars, I also enjoyed making the same money for less responsibility.

About six months later, the manager quit to go back to school and the place went downhill fast.

As I said, everyone working there hated the owner (except the assistant manager, who had quit about a month before this for a new job).

As soon as this happened, I started looking for a new job even though I hated changing jobs. So did a number of others. Everyone was loyal to the manager, nobody to the owner.

I took a supervisor job at a nearby restaurant and never looked back. I’m told by some coworkers who are still there that it became difficult to get through the day without me and the manager there, and we lost lots of sales for over a year before they started picking up again.

Yikes! This is a clear case of someone being in charge without having any idea about what they are really doing.

When companies end up like this – with the higher-ups having all the power, but their employees being the only ones who actually know the minutia about how the company runs – you know things aren’t going to go well.

And the bakery owner got what was coming to them, when the mass exodus of staff ended up causing problems within the business.

Let’s see what the Reddit community had to say about this.

This person pointed out just how unfortunate this situation was for the employee.

While others thought that the owner only had herself to blame.

Meanwhile this Redditor, who’d had similar experiences, thought that managers could learn a lesson from this.

The least she could do was be humble.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.