Imagine working for a boss who tells you to do your job and nothing more. If you were doing your job and noticed a big problem, would you point it out or ignore it since pointing it out isn’t really in your job description?

In this story, one employee is in this situation, and she decides to ignore the situation since even though she knows it’s a horribly costly mistake.

Keep reading to see how the story plays out.

Shut up and do my job? Fine. That’ll cost the company $20,000

I was 25F at the time. My boss 34M. Not that it matters too much just for context.

I work in construction consulting and our job is to make sure that all dirt materials are stable for building or pouring concrete or asphalt on.

We have three different labels for dirt. Type one. Type two. And type three. We very rarely interact with type three except in very specific circumstances.

She knew what type 3 was like.

One of my first few weeks of the job there was an underground foreman that was trying to use type three material that had not been approved. Type three needs approval for use and can only be used to surround sewer pipes and other utilities.

Because of this incident I was exposed to type three. My average coworker could go two years without ever seeing it.

Fast forward a year and a half later and my boss and I keep getting in tiffs. He’s asking me to drive across town (in my personal vehicle) and I’m telling him no, which I was perfectly within my right to do.

And there were just other random little things that he was getting mad about.

She didn’t want to work overtime.

He decided he had had enough of me when he approached me one morning asking me to go to a job site on the other side of town as an overtime job in the afternoon. He stated that if he sent one of my other coworkers they would complain so he needed me to go.

I had the next day off for vacation and he knew that. He also knew I had a six hour drive that night through the pitch black desert of Arizona.

So I told him I wouldn’t go.

If I was in the wrong here or not is irrelevant. I was only required to work my forty hours as an hourly employee and did not have to do overtime.

Here’s how the boss reacted…

But he was mad.

I got called into the office that afternoon and had a stern talking to about how my attitude needed to change.

While I went back and forth with him saying he can’t expect me to do things he doesn’t expect of my colleagues he decided the correct answer was “I need you to just shut up and do your job when I tell you to.”

Well alright then.

She noticed a big problem.

A week and a half later I arrive at a job site to test what is supposed to be type two for underneath asphalt. The ONLY material allowed under asphalt per our building codes is type two.

I looked up this specific material on the county approved material listing to find it was labeled for type three use only. So about half a medium sized neighborhood worth of street is currently filled with the wrong material. And I am well aware of this.

It’s about 12,000 cubic yards of material that was placed and treated. This takes hours and hours to do and dozens of rock trucks full of loads of rock.

I have two options when I realize this. I can call my boss and let him know that the contractor placed the wrong material. Or, I can just do the testing that is asked of me and be on my merry way.

I can probably guess which one she chose to do.

So I did the testing.

I did everything I was supposed to do. Gave my paperwork to the contractor and left.

The county building department then shows up to have a look at the material and my paperwork.

There were a lot of phone calls.

The following Monday County calls my office asking why I tested type three

. The contractor calls my office saying this is going to cost $20,000 to fix and that we should’ve caught their mistake and so we have to foot the bill.

My boss calls me and requests we have a meeting.

A lot of my coworkers were mad about me getting in trouble the previous week so one calls me to let me know that my bosses actually didn’t know what the proper code was for this situation and had called another coworker who had been in the industry for 25 years.

She knew something her boss didn’t.

I had also already accepted a job with a new company but I hadn’t given them my notice yet so I wasn’t really worried about what the outcome of this would be.

My boss is yelling at me for allowing this material to get through to county and that I need to do better and why didn’t I call him.

I told him I was doing my job like he had told me to do. That he had told me not to ask questions and to just do what I was told so that’s what I was doing.

He didn’t want to hear this and kept saying how I was better than that and that I should’ve known better.

She made a good point.

At which point I’ve checked out of this conversation and am thinking about anything else.

I calmly let him know that any of my coworkers would have also made this mistake except for possibly the very one he called that afternoon to ask about the code.

He told me that that wasn’t true and that everyone else would have known.

I said okay okay sure yeah whatever. And that maybe you should’ve trained us better because No one knows what type three even is.

The boss’s boss entered the conversation.

At this point his boss comes in and says how we will probably be the ones to foot the bill for this situation and how it’s a very costly mistake and we need to do better. He says it’s going to cost about $20,000 and that it looks very bad for me as I signed this paperwork.

He’s rambling on about possible repercussions for me and that if there was a lawsuit I would be liable.

I’m not the person of competence for this job site and I didn’t do anything wrong in terms of lying about the situation which would actually put me at fault.

But the bosses keep talking about this and tell me I can leave.

The boss realized he was wrong.

Two days later we have a department meeting about this situation.

Not a single one of my coworkers rose their hand when my boss asked if we knew what type three was other than the coworker he had called.

He got pretty red and said “we will have more training on this soon”

I put my two weeks in that Friday and was walked out on Monday. Felt really great about that.

She did exactly what her boss told her to do. Having another job lined up really made it perfect timing.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person thinks the contractor is to blame.

Another person shares a story about her ex.

Apparently, there are a lot of shady contractors.

This person is not on OP’s side.

Bosses need to think carefully before they tell employees what to do.

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.