When you are at work it is always important for you to follow the rules that are put in place by your supervisor.

What would you do if you were asked to break a new rule, and when you said no, the person reported you to the supervisor who made the rule and she actually fired you for following it.

That is what happened to the admin in this story, but rather than having to go home after being fired, they actually asked her to keep working until they could find a replacement for her. Of course, she was happy to keep her paycheck, but you can imagine just how hard she was working after that point.

The best part of the story is how she was able to find a new job before they found her replacement, so she was able to quit on the spot since she was technically fired already.

You are fired for obeying my rules, please stay until we can replace you though

It was 2005 and the lady I had met over the Internet, having visited me in Australia and me visiting her in the USA and meeting her folks and all that, she had now come to be with me and we had married.

These are the types of things that you often don’t realize will cause problems when you move to another country. Let’s see how she got through it.

But since arriving to stay she had had a lot of problems as her Vocational College Degree was not recognized in Australia, leaving her with difficulties getting a job.

She was determined and flexible though and did some temp jobs, clerical, receptionist kind of things, using skills she had leaned while working at college as a librarian.

Persistence and hard work almost always pay off, and it seems it did this time too.

She finally got a ‘real’ job as a receptionist/clerk at a company that brokered loans and she got on with things.

One thing that was always a problem was that sales rep/sharks would have their clients come in and they would tell the women to make coffees for them. That wasn’t part of their role.

Ok, no big deal. It sounds like this issue was handled.

So, my wife and co-workers were told that they were not to do that, it was up to the salesperson to make the coffee for themselves and clients. This was part of an initiative to try to retain women in these roles as they didn’t tend to say long in what was something of an anarchic office.

So, my wife is working and a salesman’s (they called them Financial advisors but they were the credit business version of the used car salesman class), client comes in and she buzzed the guy.

Apparently this guy didn’t get the memo. But why did her supervisor go against the new policy?

He comes out and says to her to make them both coffees. She tried to be discrete but said that he knew she couldn’t do that. He blew up, went to her Supervisor and she told my wife to make the coffees.

What? This is absolutely ridiculous.

Later she had her in the office and fired her !

Yep she was fired for trying to do as she was told, the opposite of malicious I guess, but the Karma comes in anyway. She was fired but asked to stay on until they got another person to replace her !

Working at a place that you have already been fired from must be easy. You don’t have to worry about making people mad or doing a good job. Let’s see how she handles it.

For the next two months she continued to go to work, now able and ready to refuse anything she didn’t want to do, especially the coffee making. The same guy tried once, she said no, so fire me. lol

They could NOT find a replacement, word of their issues at that company had got around the receptionist/clerical field locally.

They may not know how to fire her, but she sure knows how to quit.

Then she was offered a much better job with some real responsibility and standing (and almost 30% more salary), walked in the office next day and told them she was leaving at the end of the day.

No notice required of course and they had still not got a replacement and did not find one for months more, by which time they were trying to replace two of them.

Finally, the company figured out where the real problem was and addressed that.

Eventually the company let the woman supervisor go and initiated sensible rules.

My wife never looked back but we still have a chuckle 18 years later at how well getting fired worked out for her and how badly it ended for the supervisor who fired her staff for obeying the rules.

It is always funny when a company says that you are fired, but they expect you to keep working until they find your replacement. Surely they must know that you aren’t going to be giving 100% (or even 50% for that matter). As an employee, it gives you some extra time to find a new job though, which is nice.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about this unusual story.

Now this would have been ever so satisfying, what a great story.

I think that this commenter is spot on. The supervisor thought she was too good to make coffee.

Here is someone who has worked for a car loan company and can confirm that they are terrible places to work for.

Well, this is interesting. Little cultural differences between countries are festinating.

I would bet that his wife loved every second of doing her job when she knew they had no leverage over her at all.

Why would that supervisor even make a rule if she didn’t want people to follow it. I have a feeling she just didn’t want to make coffee for other people, but she didn’t mind if her employees still had to do it.

At least this worker got a few extra paychecks while slacking off at work, and then she got to stick it to the company one last time by quitting on the spot.

This really didn’t go the way her supervisor thought it would.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a carpenter who was shocked to find the police waiting for him after his last day of work.