Nothing burns employees out faster than getting screamed at for things completely outside their control.

This woman worked a front desk job for years and genuinely liked where she worked, even though the pay wasn’t great. Then her company opened a second location inside another business, and both companies started sharing the same front desk.

At first, the other business had somebody there helping their own customers. But once they stopped staffing the desk, all of those frustrated customers started getting sent to her instead, even though she couldn’t even access the other company’s system.

So after spending shift after shift explaining the same thing, she finally put up a simple sign saying she could only help customers from the company she actually worked for.

That’s when management suddenly got upset.

Read on to see what happened next.

AITA for putting up a sign that says I can only help customers for the business I work for and not the other business who shares a desk?

I have worked at this place for years. I obviously held other jobs while doing this job since it pays so little. I only kept this job because I liked my coworkers and I liked the industry it’s in and found it fun.

About four to five months ago, we opened a second location inside of someone else’s business. So the front desk (where I work) is being shared by both businesses.

The other business had an employee at the front desk handling their customers, but about a month after I started working at the new location, the other business decided they weren’t going to pay for someone to be at the desk helping their customers.

Each day, she deals with a line of angry customers.

Ever since then, my workload has basically doubled. I get screamed at by their customers because I literally can’t help them since I don’t have access to their system or information.

I get a line of customers and only about two or three of them are actually there for my company, yet I still have to constantly explain to a line of people I can’t help them. People are super mean to me when I tell them I don’t actually work for the other business and that I can only help them with things related to the company I work for.

I’ve brought this up to my boss, and he said he will look into it.

Two weeks ago, the other business said they want to hire me to help with their customers too, I assumed since my work would double, that I would be making more than minimum wage. I was wrong. They never actually hired me or set me up on their system so their plan wasn’t put in place yet.

Now, both managers are angry at her.

Yesterday was a super busy day, and I was getting yelled at more than usual, so I put up a sign that said, “I am only able to help customers of X. I am sorry! I do not have the ability to use the system for Y so I can’t help you but someone inside of the store can! :)”

Well when I got off my shift, apparently the manager of the other business took a picture of my sign and sent it to my boss. They are both mad. I got angry texts and some phone calls I ignored because I was too nervous to pick up the phone.

My coworker said my boss is coming in today to yell at me. I feel like I’m being used for free labor. I was so loyal to this company and did everything to make a great experience for customers and now this. I keep dodging his calls, and am not sure if I should just quit or not.

AITA?

Yikes! The whole situation is very unfair.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who turned down a promotion because they don’t believe the additional money is worth the extra responsibility.

Let’s see how the readers over at Reddit feel about it.

Here’s someone who likes the sign idea.

For this person, she tried enough times.

According to this person, she needs to negotiate wages.

This reader thinks she needs to escalate the issue.

The whole situation sounds terrible. It’s kinda crazy that two businesses think one employee will just take on double the work like that.

As for her, none of this is her fault. She already brought the problem up and tried explaining how stressful and confusing the whole setup was. But nobody really seemed to care until she put up a sign that made customers notice how weird the system actually was.

That’s probably what really upset management more than anything else.