Sometimes the fastest way to prove a point is to follow orders exactly.

After a new boss overruled seasoned employees and insisted on running warehouse fans with the production doors open all weekend, one worker knew the building’s AC system was about to pay the price.

This boss was about to learn a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget!

Read on for the full story.

Boss: “I don’t need your input. Just do what I say”

About 12 years ago, I worked at a manufacturing plant.

The building had two areas: a production and packaging area, and an attached shipping and receiving warehouse.

The employee further explains the setup.

The production area was air-conditioned and heated.

The warehouse was heated, but only had roof exhaust fans and no AC, so it got pretty hot in the summer, but was bearable (we just moved slower).

Being experienced employees, many workers knew exactly what to do already.

On the end of Friday, we closed all the dock doors, shut off the exhaust fans, and closed the overhead door that separated the warehouse from the production areas.

During the week, the overhead door was open but had those plastic flap strips you could drive a forklift through to keep the cool air in production.

But then a new boss came in and refused to listen to reason.

One Friday, the newish manager, who spent little actual time in that building, told us that we should keep the fans on and the separation overhead door open during the weekend to keep the temperature cooler in the warehouse.

Why he cared, I really can’t fathom.

We tried to explain to him that with the dock doors closed, the roof fans would simply suck all of the cold air out of the production area, but he blew us off with the standard, “You will do as I instruct you to do.”

So that’s exactly what these employees did, and soon disaster struck.

So… cue MC.

Monday comes that morning in July, and it was hot as heck in the production area.

The warehouse was the same temperature as always, and the coils on the production AC units had frozen, and we had to have people come out and service them.

All the manager had to say was, “Keep that separation overhead door closed at all times!”

Experience definitely outweighed authority here.

What did Reddit think?

Every bad boss has to admit they’re wrong eventually.

There’s one key element every act of malicious compliance should have.

The quality of any given job really depends on the quality of your boss.

This commenter saw the issue way before anyone else in charge did.

Nothing like a hot mess to cool a boss’ ego.

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.