There is a reason experienced supervisors go out of their way to keep their crew happy, because when they don’t, things get ugly.

When a cocky new boss walked onto an auto manufacturing floor and made it clear he had zero interest in earning anyone’s respect, his crew made a mental note and got back to work.

So when the line went down, the employees sat back and watched their boss struggle to do the job he seemed convinced was so easy.

Keep reading for the full story.

Another long winded auto worker story, new boss will only do exactly what he has to

So I’m working in an auto manufacturing plant on the night shift as the “A” specialist — a job that supports 22 people doing their jobs. I have to know how to do every job in my area.

The specialist describes how things usually work.

We’re a union shop, and you bid to very specific jobs, which have very specific Standard Operating Procedures. You can’t just be taken from one job and put on another.

We have a line that puts the rear end of the car onto a pallet that moves with rollers. This job uses a big hoist to lift some 350lbs of rear axle, differential, crossmember, and rotors.

Precision is very important in a job like this.

It needs to be very carefully lined up with some 9-inch locating pins so that everything else will fit properly.

The line goes about 70 feet, then turns 90 degrees and continues down the main line going under a walk bridge. This bridge prevents the operator from seeing down the line — this is important in a minute.

Occasionally the line will stop for various reasons and the operator might turn his back to the line, either to look at his computer monitor or something.

But of course, errors happen.

It’s possible that he may not notice that the line starts running again, because it’s always noisy and unless you physically are looking at the rollers you might miss it.

So now the operator turns around, sees the next pallet in his station, uses the hoist, and puts the next rear end onto this pallet — which screws up the order and allows an empty pallet to go around the corner.

Needless to say, when it gets down to the next operators they start yelling like crazy and the line gets shut down.

Luckily, there were good bosses there that made sure everything got back on the right track.

Because our supervisor was a cool guy, I would grab 8 of my guys and we would go lift the rear end up off the pallet and down the line to the proper pallet so that we could get up and running.

With my direction, we would gently lower it onto the pins as safely as we could.

I only mention my direction because none of the operators down the line know how to do the job where the rear end gets put on — while I do. This little piece of knowledge is important, as you’ll soon see.

This boss made sure his workers felt appreciated for their hard work/

Our previous supervisor would walk the line and hand each person their pay stub and thank them for their work that week, and he was genuine about it.

He admitted to me that he knew the line operators could make his job heaven or ****.

They take matters like these very seriously.

Line stoppage is a big no-no — it costs lots of money, and whether the line goes down or not can come down to just how much extra a person was willing to work.

These jobs have to be done about every 50 seconds, some 500 times a day. If someone was having a rough night, he might show up with a coffee for them, out of his own pocket.

But then a new boss came onto the scene.

New supervisor comes into the area, fresh off the street, and he has the attitude of “they’re paid good money to do their jobs, they should do their jobs exactly, and I’m not doing anything extra for them.”

If he caught someone doing something even a little off the script, he would try to write them up. Needless to say, we didn’t feel the love!

Malicious compliance…

So when a mistake inevitably did happen, things got dramatic.

Sure enough, our operator at the top of the line misses a pallet, and it comes around the line empty.

I shut the line down and told my guys I would go inform the supervisor — instead of rallying the troops as I used to do. So they went and sat down at the table near the line.

I get to the supervisor’s desk and inform him of the problem. He goes running to the guys sitting at the table and says, “Ok guys, I need you to come lift this rear end for me!”

So the specialist finds it the perfect time to throw some familiar words back at him.

The guys look to me, and I’m grinning at them. Then they say, “Sorry, that’s not our job, and it doesn’t look safe.”

The supervisor freaks out — we’ve been down over 5 minutes by this time. He looks at me to get them going, and I shake my head. Nope, I’m not going to ask them to do something that dangerous.

Pressure is starting to mount.

*TICK TICK TICK TICK*

Now his walkie-talkie is blowing up, other supervisors calling to ask why we are down. He calls out for the other supervisors to come help lift the rear end.

*TICK TICK TICK TICK*

The bosses aren’t exactly dressed to do any manual labor themselves.

Now you have to realize that the supervisors wear dress clothes and dressy steel-toe shoes, and the pallets are greasy with various spills and have many sharp protrusions that hold specific parts at specific heights.

They don’t have gloves on, so I get asked to get them all gloves, which I do.

The boss was pretty ticked, and the clock continued to run.

There are a lot of bad words coming out of the other supervisors’ mouths — they were not happy leaving their lines to help him with his problems.

*TICK TICK TICK TICK*

Downtime is adding up, everyone is agitated, and it begins to look like the Keystone Cops.

The whole thing has turned into quite the sight.

A dozen supervisors trying to lift this very heavy piece up and bring it down the line.

Now this line has a center median that is about 15 inches above the ground where the rollers are — they have to step up and over while avoiding the rollers and the pallet in front, which is about 2 feet away. The rear end is at least 4 feet deep.

Needless to say, these men don’t have any idea what they’re doing.

They haven’t got a clue where to place it, and now more than 30 people are standing around enjoying the show.

You can see the sweat dripping down the forehead of our supervisor, and no one on the line is giving him any direction.

Finally, he calls to me to ask why it isn’t sitting properly.

But this specialist isn’t going to let this boss off the hook that easily.

*TICK TICK TICK TICK*

I say, “Just line it up with the pins like we do” — a perfectly accurate answer that does nothing to help him.

*TICK TICK TICK TICK*

I walk over after being asked again for help, and point to the holes in the suspension crossmember where the pins are to go.

“Just line the shaft up to the hole and put it in.”

*TICK TICK TICK TICK*

All of the other line workers were getting a massive kick out of this.

Lots of laughs from the line workers standing around, since they’ve been feeling like they’ve been given the shaft lately by that supervisor!

In the end, we were down for over 40 minutes, costing thousands of dollars.

This boss was now severely outnumbered.

We all knew that the guy who missed the pallet was going to get disciplined, but we were going to make it hurt as much as possible for the miserable supervisor.

The operator — we’ll call Bob — gets hauled up in front of the supervisor and union steward, and gets awarded a one-day suspension.

Bob gets up and thanks the supervisor for the one-day suspension. He says in a very loud voice, “Thanks very much, I’ve been trying to book time off to get my deck built, but you haven’t been granting me the time off work — this will work out great!”

But consequences were coming for the rest of them too.

The saving grace is the union shop. The supervisor attempted to write at least 8 of us up for the problems.

But then the union got involved.

I simply went first, called my union rep, and explained: “These people were asked to do work outside of their Standard Operating Procedures.

Secondly, they felt the work was immediately liable to injure them.” This line is in our contract, so they were double covered.

None were disciplined in any way.

This boss made several big mistakes.

Act like a jerk at your first supervisor job, alienate your people, destroy morale, and then expect anyone to help you? Are you mental?

Now cars are not coming off the end of the line to go to consumers — that cost all of the profit from those vehicles, and he will have to answer for it.

How was that as an answer to the smarmy line “just do your job properly?”

Oh, and every supervisor and manager now knew that he had no control over his line and is in for a very tough 6 months. 😎

What a saga.

What did Reddit have to say about all this?

Bosses should at least have some working knowledge of the jobs of their subordinates.

This commenter is ready for more!

This commenter seems to be on the boss’ side.

This boss learned a very valuable lesson that day: Never tick off the people who actually keep the business running.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a staff who hated their new assistant manager so much they banded together to get him fired.