In high-pressure jobs, some bosses believe yelling is a substitute for listening.

So when a factory supervisor explained that a broken thermocouple was causing nonstop alarms, the furious plant manager insisted on being personally notified every single time it went off.

That demand soon came back to haunt him as his phone rang off the hook all night long.

Keep reading for the full story!

I had my employees call and wake up my boss every 15 minutes…

I supervised a glass manufacturing department.

One night, we had an issue with a thermocouple that controls the temperature of the glass.

Because it was creating nuisance alarms, the operator disconnected it and forgot to notify the next shift to monitor it manually.

We lost control of the furnace for a couple of hours and scrapped product.

The boss was quite unhappy about this.

The plant manager came in that morning screaming and ripped the entire staff a new one.

We were trying to explain that the thermocouple needed to be fixed, but instead he continued to yell at us, tell us we were idiots, and told us to monitor it and notify him every time it went into alarm, or else he would fire us.

To further reprimand us, he insisted that we call him at home in the evening every time that temperature went into alarm so he could ensure we were doing our jobs.

But he didn’t fully understand the scope of the issue.

What he did not know, and what we knew, was that the alarm for the broken thermocouple happened about every 15 minutes.

My operator was worried and asked me what he should do.

So the supervisor decided to give this boss a very bad night of sleep.

“Since the plant manager was so insistent,” I told the operator to “wait until AFTER midnight, then call and inform him EVERY time it happened according to HIS direct request.”

The plant manager came into work the next morning very bleary-eyed and sheepishly told us that we did not have to do that again.

He finally listened to us, and we got the problem fixed.

The plant manager just got exactly what he asked for!

What did Reddit think?

This commenter has something very important to say to people in charge.

This industry appears to have a disproportionate amount of terrible bosses.

This commenter can attest to what a stressful job this can be.

This commenter has another tip.

If you demand midnight calls, you’d better be ready to answer them.

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.