Nothing ruins a morning faster than a boss who decides everyone else should suffer too.

So what would you do if your supervisor got annoyed about being searched on the way into work and retaliated by forcing the entire security team to search every third car during peak traffic? Would you push through quickly? Or would you follow the orders perfectly and take your time while doing it?

In the following story, one security team finds themselves in this scenario and does as they’re told. Here’s how it played out.

“You Will Search Every 3rd Car!”

So I worked security for a major military contractor at one point.

Our supervisor liked using our ‘random’ search number as a tool for punishment for perceived grievances with us.

Normally, our search number was something around 15-25. Meaning we would only pull over and search every 15th car, and every contractor truck.

It was very cold, and very miserable in the mornings when we would suddenly have a couple hundred employees and contractors show up between 0500-0800.

The supervisor set the daily number at three.

This day, our supervisor got upset when he came in at 0400 for his day shift. He was the 15th car.

Deciding that he must now ruin everyone else’s day, even though we did our best to search his vehicle promptly and completely, so he couldn’t say we weren’t doing the searches thoroughly. So he set the day shift search number to 3. So we complied.

There was only enough room for 3 cars/trucks to be pulled over at once, and once that was done, we would usually stop searches until the others were completed, keeping traffic moving.

Not today.

Unfortunately, the line got way too long.

This time, we filled the search area, and then stopped traffic until all 3 vehicles were cleared, then allowed two cars through, pulled over the third, allowed two, pulled the third, allowed two, pulled the third, stopped all traffic, and started searches.

We ended up with a line of cars waiting to get into the plant that stretched 2 miles.

It got so long that the local police got involved up the road as people were blocking traffic in some intersections.

The supervisor was almost fired.

Then came the phone call from a 3-star general who was stuck in that traffic a mile up the road. Suddenly, we were called to cease all searches for the morning.

I later heard that it had been too little too late to cancel the ridiculous searches, and our major military contractor lost a billion-dollar contract out of the deal. And that supervisor was initially going to be fired, but negotiated his way to just being busted down to a regular guard.

We were unionized, so he started at the bottom of the seniority chart, and got stuck working all the mandatory overtime, and all the worst posts, including the one he had made miserable that morning.

Yikes! Imagine getting mad over someone just doing their job.

Let’s see what the fine folks over at Reddit think about what happened here.

This person’s car got searched.

Here’s someone mocking the general.

Here’s someone who tries to rationalize the number system.

Interesting way to look at it.

They did what they had to.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.