Imagine working for a small family business where your supervisor is the owner’s teenage son. If you were told to report all problems to this kid instead of to the owner, would you do it, or would you assume there are some problems where you’d need to go directly to the owner?

In this story, one cheesemaker is in this exact situation, and he assumes his teenage supervisor will report any problems to his parents.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

I now have a younger supervisor, with less experience, you want me to keep informed? You got it

Being that it was a family business for them, the whole family worked in various jobs around the farm.

While I was the head cheesemaker, the youngest son was the one the family wanted to take over my job at some point.

So as he was school age, I trained him sometimes for his work experience so he could eventually fill in when I was sick of management and left.

This is ridiculous!

Now, I had been daily reporting to my manager (the mother), and they wanted a bit of change.

The kid was out of school, and working on the farm and plant more now. So he was instituted as a “supervisor” in the plant. Literally, to keep an eye on me and my speedy work.

It was a pain, as he would go home after work and nit pick that I was doing something wrong, or this and that.

Let me reiterate that I trained him and had a few years experience, and this guy was 17.

The mother didn’t want to hear about his problems anymore.

So I was reporting to my manager, and she said finally ” you can just tell my son the problems instead of me”.

I mentioned that hes a kid,she’s the owner and we are dealing with a pricey food product.

She insisted, so cue compliance.

We started to find some black specks. Nothing major,but a little bit of our impellors for mixing or something was breaking down.

He assumed the kid would report back to his mother.

I told the “supervisor”about it, and we started to look for the cause.

For about two weeks we had this issue on and off, and me nor him could find anything.

I was under the full impression that he was telling his mom about this as I was suppose to report to him now, and they lived together.

Well after about three weeks of this occasional issue I just happen to casually mention to my manager that we havent found the cause of the specks yet.

Apparently, the kid hadn’t told her.

She freaked out at me.

She had not heard a peep about a quality issue with the cheese,no one had told her, and how dare I not mention it to her….

I referred back to her kid being my “supervisor” and that I was suppose to tell him….

She was pretty peeved,and I got reamed out for following her instructions. That was more or less the straw that broke the camel’s back and I left to do my own thing…. Their cheese isnt as good as mine was now.

It can be really hard to work for a family business, especially when the kids are being trained to replace you! I’m glad he got out of there and works for himself now.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

The mother clearly overestimated her son’s competence.

Companies are nothing without their employees.

This would make more sense.

Maybe they never found out.

It can be hard to work for a family business.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.