Workplaces often run on unspoken understandings about who does what, until someone decides to get territorial.

So when a seasoned second-shift maintenance worker was told by a first-shift supervisor that he wasn’t “qualified” to fix broken equipment, he stopped doing exactly that — and productivity came to a grinding halt.

Keep reading for the full story!

Tell me after four years I am NOT qualified

From 1994 to 1999, I worked second shift maintenance (1600 – 0400) at a hog plant, and the supervisor for the first shift got grouchy about me repairing some of the instruments that went down during my shift.

The boss had a word or two to say.

He told my supervisor that I wasn’t qualified to do repairs (I had been doing these repairs for three or four years), so I just started placing tags on the “broken” instruments.

The tags would have things like “Production say this stopped”, “Broken” (when that was all a production worker would say), “Production says this is no good”.

It didn’t take long for the boss to learn the error of his ways.

At the start of first shift one day, they were totally out of one instrument and had to repair enough to get started for the day.

The first shift manager stayed late, and I was called into a meeting with my supervisor, the first shift supervisor, first and second maintenance superintendents, and the plant superintendent.

The tech was quick to remind him of what he was told.

When asked why all these instruments weren’t getting repaired, I just reminded the first shift supervisor that he said I “wasn’t qualified as a repair tech for ANY of the production instruments.”

I was told to go back to repairing any instrument that I knew I could so production didn’t falter.

Looks like the tech knew better than the boss on this one.

What did Reddit think?

It’s difficult to want to help someone who clearly doesn’t take their job seriously.

When it comes to reporting a problem, the more details, the better.

“No” is a powerful word.

This supervisor clearly doesn’t know what’s going on.

Funny how fast “not your job” turns into “please fix this immediately.”

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.