Sometimes the people in charge are so convinced you’re “making excuses” that they don’t stop to think about the consequences.

So what would you do if you showed up to run a blood drive and realized the building was already creeping past the safe temperature limit, but your manager accused you of trying to skip work instead of listening to a legitimate safety concern?

Would you push back? Or do as she says?

In the following story, one blood bank supervisor finds herself in this situation and does as she’s told.

Here’s how it all went down.

Want us to keep working? I’ll make the entire workday null and void

Worked as a supervisor for a blood bank many years ago. We would travel to set up local blood drives in various towns/locations.

Went to a community center about an hour away and found out their HVAC system was broken. It was supposed to be a hot day, somewhere in the mid-90s.

The FDA regulates the blood donation/collection industry, and they have strict rules in place.

The manager doesn’t want to cancel.

One of them is that the temperature in the collection area at a blood drive cannot exceed a certain amount. This is to prevent bacterial growth in the blood collection process, and to prevent donors from having a bad reaction during/after donation (fainting, vomiting, etc.).

I called our manager (Jess) and said, “Hey, there’s no AC in this building, and it’s already getting close to the cutoff temp. I think we should cancel and reschedule.”

ABSOLUTELY NOT.

After arriving, the manager takes the temperature and says it’s fine.

Jess thinks we’re just trying to get a day off work. Like, we didn’t already load all the equipment up and drive out here to waste our time, but whatever.

She gets in her car and drives out to the site. She then takes the QC thermometer, which was already out of range by the time she got there, and places it on a window where a fan was blowing.

After a minute or so, the temp drops just below the threshold, so she says, “It’s fine, set up the rest of the site and continue with the blood drive.”

She tried to push back, but the manager wouldn’t listen.

I try to tell her, “Well, the temp needs to be taken in the collection area, not on the other side of the building by a window.”

She responded, “The temp is fine; you all need to stay here and do your job.”

She gets in her car and leaves.

Ok, let’s do the blood drive then. She’s the boss!

Each unit of blood had to be destroyed.

After each unit of blood is collected, I sequester  the units and fill out the proper paperwork per SOP guidelines. We get back to the blood bank that evening, and I hand off the coolers of sequestered blood to the lab.

They ask me if I really sequestered an entire blood drive, and I say, “Yep.”

So, they document and incinerate each unit of blood. A 10-hour workday with travel expenses, medical equipment, staff, etc., all thrown out the window. Not to mention wasting the time of all the people who donated.

The site director was not happy about what happened.

The next day, the site director calls me into her office, I assume to chew me out. She was actually confused and wondered if something had happened at the blood drive that caused every unit to be sequestered.

I told her the reason and about Jess. Not sure how the conversation went afterwards, but unfortunately, she was only able to keep her job for a few weeks before being fired.

Don’t make rules if you don’t expect people to follow them.

Yikes! What a giant waste of time and money.

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit have to say bout this situation.

This is a good point.

Here’s someone who’s not impressed.

According to this person, HR let her stay to get their paperwork in line.

This person would’ve done the right thing.

It’s pretty clear who dropped the ball. Rather than being so petty, the manager should’ve listened and canceled the event.

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.