Imagine scheduling a meeting with someone and not showing up at all. I don’t mean just showing up late. I mean not showing up for work the entire day.

That’s just one crazy thing the manager in this story does, and an electrical contractor who had to work with him decided to teach him a lesson through malicious compliance.

Keep reading to see what he did.

“Well, if I’m not there at 9, why don’t you break in and start without me.”

A few years ago in rural Australia there was a small empty government office building, and “Gary”, a Government Department Manager.

The building had been vacant for about 8 months while committee after committee tried to decide what they were going to do with it.

Gary was the Manager of the Infrastructure Department, which was responsible for the upkeep and any modifications to the building.

Everyone tried to avoid working with Gary.

Gary was not an efficient manager.

One of his favourite sayings was “Flick me an email”, which was strange, because outwardly, he didn’t seem to ever read them.

He also had this knack of never being on time for an appointment.

Not many construction industry people I spoke with seemed to take joy in dealing directly with Gary. Where we could, we’d go though everyone else in the department to get stuff done, so Gary became known as “Speedbump”. Something to be avoided if you could.

But he ended up having to work with Gary.

Now, because I’m an electrical contractor who wears a few different hats, has been to a number of different rodeos over the years, and is afflicted with the curse of competency, I got roped into assisting Speedbump with this buildings future use.

He asked for a 9am meeting at his office one day to discuss the building.

Arriving at the outer reception 10mins early, I asked “Jen” the receptionist to let him know I was there.

Jen comes back to me and says, “Gary’s running late. He said to wait for him.”

He wanted to teach Gary a lesson.

About 30mins later I asked Jen to remind him I was waiting.

After a couple of phone calls Jen says, “I can’t get through to him in his office or on mobile. His office thinks he’s left the building. No one knows where he is.”

I guess a reasonable person would’ve just called it quits and left at that point, or called/emailed him, or left a message with Jen, or something. But I was sick of Gary’s nonsense.

I’d learned ages ago that one way to help people with their timekeeping skills was through their wallet.

He got to work.

So I went out to my work vehicle, got my laptop and a bottle of water, then went back in to the reception area and set up camp in a corner.

I’d planned an office day anyway to work on quotations and project planning, so Gary could pay me to to do it. My chargeout rate at the time was $110 an hour.

Seven and a half hours of very productive spite-fuelled work later, I called Gary on his mobile, got message bank, and left a message saying I waited for him and maybe we should reschedule.

He wasn’t too confident that Gary would show up for the next meeting.

The next meeting was arranged for two days later, on-site at the empty building at 9am.

During the phone call to arrange this, I lightly mocked Speedbump by asking if he meant 9am human time, or Gary time.

He may have thought we’d built some kind of convivial rapport, and was just being funny when he said, “Well, if I’m not there at 9, why don’t you break in and start without me.”

I was on-site 10mins early and waited until 9.05 to put the battery in my angle grinder.

Apparently, Gary didn’t REALLY mean to start without him.

The stainless steel security mesh over the window made a satisfying sound being cut. After duct taping the whole window, the hammer tapping the glass edges was less satisfying. The best sound that day, after gaining entry, was the security system siren.

I was outside having a smoke with the security response guard when Gary turned up.

The wind kinda left his complainy sails when I shrugged and said, “Well, you did say..”

Gary didn’t really learn his lesson.

I’d like to close this tale by saying that Gary learned from my interactions with him. But, as you’ll probably know, speedbumps don’t change. You either have to just go around them, deal with them, or remove them. And Gary just continued being a speedbump for some time to come.

I didn’t cop any serious nonsense over the 7.5hr invoice or the damage. However, Gary did delegate one of his staff to work directly with me a lot more after this.

It was a small win, but you have to savour those, I reckon.

At least OP didn’t have to work with Gary much after that. It does sound really hard to work with Gary. I can’t imagine scheduling a meeting and not showing up for the entire day!

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

One person knows what it’s like to work with someone like Gary.

Another person shares their favorite part of the story.

This is a good joke. I feel like there needs to be a drum sting at the end of it.

Everyone loved the story.

Don’t schedule a meeting if you’re not going to show up.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.