It never ends well when someone insists you “stick to your job title.”

So, what would you do if your supervisor demanded you stop helping with the one system that keeps the entire company running?

Would you push back and help anyway? Or would you follow instructions and let him deal with the fallout?

In the following story, one inventory admin finds himself in this situation, and it doesn’t take long for them to come back begging.

Here’s what happened.

Only do what is in my job title? Fine, good luck paying employees!

So, I work for a construction company as an inventory admin. My job is basically to schedule warehouse counts and enter the numbers they provide for inventory. Then, try to see what the problem is when the numbers on the last count and current count don’t add up.

There is a little bit more to it, but I will not bore you with the specifics.

The problem with this job is that when you have been doing it long enough and are good at it, there is less work to do.

Once he learned the ERP, the company got rid of the consultants.

In the beginning, when counting one rack out of 60 racks of material would take a few days, it was fine because I was always busy. But now that everything is in order, the entire warehouse can be counted in 3 days.

This leaves me bored for most of the time. So, to fix this, I studied up on our cloud-based ERP service, which we use for all internal and external transactions, and have become sort of an expert on it.

Every single aspect of this company uses this ERP service to do its job. Timesheets, HR, Payroll, Accounting, Scheduling, Management, Manufacturing, ordering from vendors, Delivering, Inventory, etc., all run through this ERP service. So this service must be up and running perfectly 24/7.

I became so proficient in this service that our VP decided to cut ties with our ERP consultants because I could do what they did, but better, quicker, and MUCH cheaper.

He was just happy to save them money.

For reference, we were paying these consultants $5,000 a month just to be on standby if we needed them for some sort of problem that could arise from using this ERP, and had to dish out more money to fix those problems depending on how many hours of their time were spent to fix said problems.

Not sure on their exact rate, but it was something like $200 an hour, and they took weeks to fix anything, while I could fix the problem in time for my daily afternoon restroom break.

I never got an official job title or a raise of any kind for being an expert on this service. The company saw that me being able to do it and let me fix things that happened, so they no longer needed the outside help.

I wasn’t too upset because it gave me something to do, so I was glad to help the company save money, even if none of that money fell my way.

He decided to fix the accounting problem before worrying about inventory.

Skip ahead a few months. We now have a new warehouse manager, and someone in the warehouse messes something up in inventory by sending a bunch of materials to the wrong job with no records of it being shipped.

We are talking half a million dollar mess up here.

In the same day, our ERP had an update that caused a bunch of bugs with our accounting department. So, I decided to work on the ERP problem first because the warehouse mistake is more of a delay and not actually stopping anybody from doing their job at the moment.

But this accounting problem means our bills cannot be paid. You can guess what kind of issues we will have if bills are not paid.

His supervisor was angry and let him know all about it.

The ERP bugs turn out to be quite big and numerous, so it ends up taking me a couple of days to figure them out, but I fix them before any bills are actually due, and I decide to take lunch a little early to celebrate a victory. Crisis averted.

The new warehouse manager storms into my office after I get back from lunch and is LIVID. Apparently, the bosses were pinning the blame on him for the warehouse mistake. And considering he is the one who oversees shipments and personnel in the warehouse, the blame is rightfully placed.

He starts laying into me, asking why I have not fixed the problem yet. Yelling and screaming like a child. I tried explaining that I was fixing an ERP issue and had not had time to look at the warehouse problem yet.

He gets even more angry and notes that it’s funny how I have time to take early lunches but not do my job. That started to irritate me, but I held my tongue and kept calm about the situation.

Then, HR needed help fixing another issue.

He then ordered me to ONLY do what is in my job title and to leave the “ERP ******** to the people competent enough to handle it,” as he put it.

Since this guy was technically my supervisor, I had no choice but to obey. I asked him to send me that in writing, and he snarks and storms back into his office. 5 minutes later, I get an email stating that under NO CIRCUMSTANCES am I to work on anything related to ERP unless it involves inventory.

I do nothing but inventory from that point forward, knowing well that we would be essentially coasting until we hit a problem that I would refuse to fix.

Sure enough, not even a week later, I get an email from HR that some sort of bug in the ERP system was preventing them from accessing payroll to pay employees this week. I reply with an apology that I am no longer able to work on ERP bugs due to my supervisor, and to refer to the ERP system help guide for further assistance.

When he got to work, everything was a mess.

I knew the help guide was not going to help her in the slightest, but it was no longer my problem, so I was not going to deal with it.

Skip a few days later to Friday. I checked my bank account in the morning before getting to work and laughed because there was no money deposited. That problem never got fixed. I hurry up and get to work, excited to see the chaos unfold. And what I was expecting was an understatement.

When I show up to work, I see the ENTIRE warehouse staff of 50 people walking out of the front door. I stopped one and asked why they were leaving, and they replied with “I didn’t get paid today, so I am not coming back until I do.”

I go into the office and see the warehouse manager in a panic. He has jobs that need materials and no one to load them onto trucks or deliver them.

He felt bad for her, but there was nothing he could do.

I ask him if he needs help with anything, and he just screams at me to leave his office because he is getting phone calls out of the *** from superintendents of jobs asking why our material has not arrived yet.

I pass by HR on the way to my office and see a bunch of the bosses huddled up over her computer with angry and confused expressions on their faces, I guess trying to figure out the problem.

I felt bad for her because it really was something out of her control, but I knew she would ultimately be okay because she had been there for so long that they would never fire her.

Eventually, the VP came back.

When I get to my office, I see the VP waiting for me there. He has a very angry expression on his face. When we get inside, he demands to know why I did not fix the problem in HR when she emailed me about it.

I replied that I am no longer allowed to work on ERP problems as it is not in my job title. He had the most shocked look on his face and asked why all of a sudden I had a change of heart.

I showed him the email from the warehouse manager, and I could see the dots connect in his head. He immediately storms out, and I see him heading straight to the warehouse manager’s office.

They were in there for a few hours, but eventually he came back to my office. He seems calmer now and asks me politely if I can fix the problem in HR, and if I can resume fixing the ERP if needed.

The company decided to rehire the consultants.

At this point, I liked the relief of responsibility and told him I would only do it if he put it officially in my job title, along with a raise. His calmness turned to anger again, and he says, “I cannot believe you!” as he storms out and returns to his office.

A few hours later, he sends out a mass email that he has hired the old ERP consultants to fix the problem and that next week, everyone would be paid for the money they are owed, along with the money they earned if they return to work.

This one surprised me as he would rather pay over $60,000 a year to consultants than give me a few extra bucks an hour for better work.

I think he expected me to change my mind and just do it for my own paycheck, but I decided to wait because I knew how these consultants were.

Most of the warehouse staff agreed to return but were still upset about not getting paid.

Needing money, he considered just fixing the problem.

Sure enough, next Friday comes around. Nobody gets paid again.

At this point, it is becoming a real problem, and the entire staff is becoming agitated. They have bills to pay. I even heard a bunch of the warehouse workers talking about some competitors nearby that they could go work for.

At this point, I even considered just fixing the problem because the warehouse didn’t deserve to be treated like that due to poor management. Maybe I am wrong for this, but I am severely underpaid and can barely afford my apartment; there is no reason I should do extra work for free.

Being patient really paid off for him.

That same day, the VP returns to my office and hands me papers. These papers said I would be promoted to a newly created position focused on inventory/ERP maintenance.

It would be its own department, and he would be my direct supervisor, which also came with a hefty raise. All I had to do was sign and agree.

I looked up at him after reading the paper, and he had the saddest look on his face. “Please just sign it, the consultants said it would take them weeks to get around to fixing it due to the high volume of clients they have taken on, and we cannot keep skipping paychecks.”

I happily signed it and immediately got to work on the HR issue. Managed to even fix it that same day. It was just a simple problem with the permissions of HR and payroll in the ERP due to the update.

Yikes! That warehouse supervisor sounds like something else.

Let’s check out how the folks over at Reddit relate to this situation.

This is a good point.

According to this comment, he should update his resume and move on.

This person thinks the story is crazy but believable.

Here’s some advice from this person.

He should take his experience and run. There’s no doubt another company will appreciate and pay him more.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.