It can be maddening when a manager at work implements a new policy that all the workers know is only going to lead to big headaches.

And this restaurant worker knows all about it.

Check out what happened when he and another employee had to work around a manager’s bad decision.

Start now!

Put a lock on our supplies but forget to leave a key for us? Okay, we’ll just climb over it!

“I work at a resort restaurant that’s located in the main hotel building on the property.

Due to particular things this year I can’t say the name of, our resort and restaurant as a whole have had to go through a lot of changes and needed to adapt to a lot of new and different things.

We’ve also been losing a lot of employees and it’s been affecting our performance and overall motivation.

As a result, the resort hired a new head manager for the restaurant, Samuel, to manage the chaos. Samuel got to work almost immediately, resolving any issues he found or was told about by one of the employees and made changes accordingly.

One of the things he decided to do was put a lock on what we in our restaurant all lovingly refer to as “The Cage.”

The Cage is basically a couple tall shelves surrounded by an iron bar fence and gate that housed all our paper supplies like to-go boxes, cups, and bags along with a few miscellaneous things like crayons and such.

Samuel worried that leaving it unlocked the whole time looked unprofessional and people could easily steal some of our supplies whenever they wanted. He told us during a meeting that he’d give keys to each of the managers so any of them could unlock The Cage if we needed to get in.

Not everyone was on board with this idea.

I was really skeptical of this idea and worried that it could lead to issues. For one, the managers at my workplace tend to have the ability to “teleport,” meaning they vanish 99% of the time you need them and you don’t know where they are.

Sometimes, they’d all be unavailable because of a meeting or something and you’d have to wait or find an alternative answer if one existed. Samuel assured me that I wouldn’t need to worry because he’d have a key everywhere in that case. Well, he IS the boss so…

About a week or so later, I was working the night shift on a Wednesday and was anxiously counting down the minutes till closing. It had been an incredibly slow day so we didn’t have much staff on duty and we only had one manager on duty, Jerry.

Jerry is not one of our main managers but manages a neighboring department and has helped us a lot when we’re short-staffed or if a manager isn’t available.

He’s a lot like our former boss: kind, patient, organized, and a bit goofy, so we all get along with him. Jerry had also been absent from work for the past couple months, with he revealed he had spent on medical leave.

He had been in a bad accident and broke three ribs, but despite being well enough to work, there was still a little pain, or so I remember.

An hour before we were scheduled to close, Jerry asked me to start restocking our EXPO station’s paper goods so we wouldn’t have to worry about it later on. I nodded and headed towards The Cage to collect the supplies.

Guess what happened…?

Well what do you know? The Cage is locked. Guess I’ll have to ask the manager like Samuel said I’d need to.

I told Jerry about the lock and said I needed the key to get in. He was silent for a moment before he turned to look at me with a face that I can only describe as a mix between irritation and disappointment.

“I don’t have one,” he said in a sigh, “Samuel said he was going to give me one, but he never did and I completely forgot until now.”

He rubbed his head and we both walked to The Cage. As he stared at the heavy-duty lock and chains, he told me to go to Loss Prevention (our Security department) and ask them for the spare key they should have.

I did as I was told and left him scratching his head while studying the gate intensely.

Unfortunately for us, no one was home. The door was locked up tight and you couldn’t see any lights on through the windows aside from the TV monitors that played camera footage.

It was likely that all the Loss Prevention officers were busy doing tasks around the resort property. There was no way of knowing where they were or how long they’d be gone for.

I’ve seen times when they’d be gone for hours and tonight, we only had less than one before we really needed to close up everything.

Again, it was a slow day and we all wanted to go home as soon as possible.

This turned out to be a bad idea.

I relayed the news to Jerry and he just sighed again looking up and down at The Cage with a forlorn look.

At this point, I think any normal person would just say “heck with it” and walk away. It wasn’t like we needed to restock that night and could in the morning when Samuel would be there. If we just explained the situation to Samuel, he may have been understanding about it.

Not Jerry though. Jerry was DETERMINED. No lock in the world was going to keep this man from his destiny of obtaining the priceless paper and/or plastic goods beyond that metal prison. Not even his recovering ribs would stop him.

At that moment, Jerry made the executive decision that if we couldn’t go through the gate, he was going to go over it instead.

The thing about The Cage is that the fence is basically just iron bars running horizontally and vertically about two inches apart, so basically there’s enough room for a foot to fit in. The fence was also about 6 feet tall and there wasn’t a roof covering it.

Needless to say, it was possible to jump The Cage’s fence, but it would be difficult and dangerous. I tried to stop him, offered to do it in his place (I’m 5′, 23, and probably wouldn’t have an issue), but eventually caved in and helped where I could.

Jerry wasn’t playing around!

With a few makeshift platforms, collaboration, and a conveniently placed stepladder, Jerry had managed to get in and out of The Cage and we had obtained our paper goods. I convinced Jerry to leave the stepladder inside as I was feeling petty and thought it’d be funny for someone to ask why it was stuck in there.

Jerry told Samuel everything the next morning as they shared the same shift. Jerry said Samuel wasn’t mad, just a bit surprised and a little apologetic. I wasn’t there to see it but I think Samuel got the message and since then, we haven’t had issues with the keys.

Never underestimate the power and determination of a restaurant manager and his petty sidekick.”

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

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Another individual weighed in.

This person spoke up.

Another Reddit user shared their thoughts.

And this reader weighed in.

This was a bad idea by the manager right from the start.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.