Imagine working for a supervisor who is horrible but an owner who is awesome. Would you put up with the supervisor’s nonsense since the owner is a good guy who will put the supervisor in his place, or would you eventually quit so you didn’t have to deal with the drama?

In this story, one payroll employee is in this situation, and she ends up dealing with the drama. It’s actually quite entertaining!

Let’s read all about it.

Overtime is no longer allowed? Okay!

The players (fake names):

Owner: Jack

Direct Supervisor: Will

Colleague: Paula

Myself

It’s great when you find something you’re good at and enjoy doing at a young age.

Backstory:

I began working payroll at 16 years old. I am incredibly good with numbers, as well as dealing with clients. Suffice it to say I am wonderful at what I do.

Many years ago I began working with a very small payroll company with only 4 workers. I really liked the owner, Jack, and honestly still do. He is a decent dude. I also really liked the work and the clients.

However, I was not fond of Paula or Will. Paula missed so much work and I’m pretty sure no one has 5 grandfathers that died within 3 years. She doesn’t figure much into this story, other than to showcase that she was not a good employee.

Wait until you hear about Will!

Will was the worst supervisor I have ever had.

He took smoke breaks every 30 minutes, he always thought he was right, he was very judgemental, and boy he loved to talk.

There were times where he was monologging to a client who had hung up 30 minutes prior (no I am not exaggerating).

However, he was the owner’s father in law whose prior business went bankrupt. Basically, he was never going to be fired.

In that work setting I absolutely shined. I was the best employee by a huge margin.

But Will found a reason to complain about her performance at work.

The malicious compliance:

Will calls me into his office and lets me know that I am getting too much overtime. This was a small business and I needed to be careful.

Now I never took much overtime. Overall I usually had around 2 – 5 minutes by the end of the week. Simply because I lived 5 minutes away and clocked in when I got in and settled, even if it was a minute early.

I agreed to the new rule with a bit of glee.

Will seriously doesn’t seem to know the law very well.

From then on if I got in early I would get ready to clock in and then play on my phone or read for 1 minute before clocking in.

This drove Will absolutely crazy.

After I did this for a few days he called me back into his office. He told me about the good old days when people would work even without pay in order to excel at life.

I politely reminded him that we were a payroll company so he should be aware that it is illegal to not pay workers for time worked.

From that point on he would simply mutter under his breath and glare at me.

Will tried to get her into trouble.

The aftermath:

After 3 – 4 weeks the owner, Jack, calls me into his office. Apparently Will had been complaining about me, about how I wasn’t working hard, and was being disrespectful.

I explained the situation to him and pointed out that no clients had ever been unhappy with me, that I showed up to work every day on time, and that I had the most duties with the least problems.

Basically, I reminded him I was his only good employee.

Jack handled this situation really well!

Jack was a little shocked/annoyed that my tiny amount of overtime was the reason I was sitting in his office.

He told me that if I needed it I could have up to 30 minutes of overtime without needing it to be approved, and he also gave me a small raise for being such a hard worker. Finally, he told me that if Will ever gave me another rule that I disagreed with I should go directly to him.

Jack then called Will into his office and I heard quite a bit of yelling. When Will came back out he looked like he had just sucked a lemon.

It is my fondest memory of Will.

Thankfully, Jack believed her. He sounds like a great guy. It’s too bad Will can’t get fired.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Here’s a good summary of what happened.

This person has a good question.

Paula may not have been lying.

This is a good point.

Working for a small family business can be challenging.

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.