Imagine having a supervisor who refuses to listen and assumes he knows everything.

If you knew he didn’t understand how to do something that was important for him to know how to do, would you insist on explaining how the process works, or would you let him suffer the consequences for refusing to listen to you?

In this story, one man is in this exact situation, and he decides to let the supervisor suffer the consequences. He never expected the consequences to be so extreme!

Let’s read all about it.

Supervisor insists he does not require instructions, for the “most simplest of tasks”

I’m not usually one for malicious compliance, But a few months ago we got a supervisor who’s just a jerk. He shifts all his work onto others and then complains about how hard his job is.

Lets just call him Gary from here on out.

My work operates two sites about 30 miles apart. Being in security we are responsible for both sites.

Last night one of our night shift guy’s up and quit due to Gary’s never ending BS and as Gary implemented overtime restrictions there was no one to cover the shift, which meant Gary had to as the contract requires a minimum amount of staff at all times.

Gary made a really stupid decision.

As part of the night shift, 1 guard is required to drive over to the second site and do a routine patrol 3 times during a shift.

Gary of course decided, he’s wasn’t done with his BS and made the “executive decision” (i told you he was a jerk, who says that?) that rather then “wasting time” driving between both sites 3 times, 1 person would drive over and stay there overnight.

This of course was a bigger waste of time as there’s nothing to do but make sure the building is secure. You just need to check doors and fences which leaves the rest of us a man down for all the mainsites duties.

So Gary decided he’d be the one going to the second site and wanted to sign out a work vehicle. Gary of course decided that since he wasn’t “officially” on the gatehouse duty, i would have to do the checklist and sign the vehicle out for him.

There’s something Gary probably didn’t understand about this vehicle.

As i went over the vehicle i noticed the tank was low, so i checked who’s previously signed the truck out and low and behold it was Gary, because of course it was.

Now our work vehicles are all propane powered, they were not factory made like this and were instead converted. The conversion left the old fuel tank and fuel fill point in place (i’m sure you can all tell where this is going) so i went and got the book which tells you exactly where and how to fill the truck up and try to hand it to Gary.

Gary ask’s “whst is that” and i begin to tell him it’s to show him how to refill the vehicle.

But he cuts me off insisting he “doesn’t need instructions for the most simplest of tasks”.

Gary was really impatient.

I ask Gary if he’s ever refueled one of the work vehicles before to which he replied “i’m sure i’ll manage” and he pushes the book aside.

Now i could have easily just interjected and told him how to fill up but i decided forget it, i had it with his nonsense.

I very slowly started going through the checklist item by item starting with the ignition switch, by the time i got to tire readings Gary yanked the checklist from me and signed off on everything (including that he had read and understood auto-gas refueling procedures booklet A) and told me to “open the freaking gate”, so i did.

He assumed Gary would call for help.

I never saw or heard from Gary again for the rest of the night, honestly i thought it would just be a bit of inconvenience. He’d be unable to workout how to use the auto-gas pump and he’d have to call me or one of the guys and ask for instructions.

I actually forgot all about it by shift end.

But that was not what happened.

Here’s the fallout.

I was called into work before my shift today for a meeting as the security manager wanted to know how it came to be that Gary ended up stuck on the side of the road out of gas after he Pumped 26 gallons of gasoline into the old tank and drove off and somehow didn’t know notice fuel pump indicator light on the dashboard until the truck sputtered to a stop about 10 miles from the second site.

The union rep had my back which was great and Gary has been given some leave after he was informed he would be paying the cost of the fuel and the tow.

I didn’t intend for a minor bit of malicious compliance to end up this serious, but 2 weeks without Gary is going to be great.

Gary deserved that! All he had to do was listen instead of assuming he knows everything.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person shares a story about another Gary.

Yet another person knows a Gary.

I’m sure there are good Garys in the world.

This person doesn’t think Gary’s idea was stupid.

Assuming you know everything can cause big problems.

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.