He Covered Two Managers’ PTO On Top Of His Own Job — And Proved The Plant Ran Just Fine Without Them
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Every company has a chain of command, and sometimes the chain only holds because one person at the bottom keeps it from snapping.
One foreman at a plant for a company worth over $100 billion learned that when both the plant manager and the assistant plant manager took PTO the same week, leaving him to cover their jobs on top of his own.
The area operations manager promised to be on site to help, but then skipped the whole week and sent a new excuse each day, from a broken-down truck to a sick dog.
Regardless, the experienced foreman kept the place running anyway, and the week ended with zero issues. It left him wondering whether his bosses were really as integral to the operation as they seemed.
Keep reading for the full story.
Managers on vacation, Ops manager never showed up to cover. It was fine.
I’m the foreman at a plant for a good-sized company ($100 plus billion market cap).
We have an assistant plant manager and a plant manager on site. Above them is an area operations manager.
Both managers were out on this particular week, and that fact was about to cause some trouble.
The two on-site managers had PTO this week (the APP was promoted this year and already had PTO scheduled before the promotion).
So instead of reorganizing their PTO as managers, they let it fall on me to cover for them. That’s fine, not the first time it happened to me.
I’ve been with the same company for about 24 years, foreman for maybe 12+.
But here’s where things started getting messy.
They said the AOM would be on site to assist this week. He never showed up. I’d get an email each day with an excuse saying his truck broke down or his dog was sick, etc.
We still got everything done, and there were zero issues.
Now the foreman is starting to ask questions.
Obviously, I had a lot to do with it, and I’m not asking you folks for a raise. But if I can do 80% of their job and 90% of my regular job, it either says a lot about me or a lot about them.
It’s a union shop, and I do make decent money. It’s just hilarious to me that the company would allow all management to just be gone for a week.
What a story.
Redditors chime in with their thoughts.
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Many bosses come to expect exemplary work for free.
This commenter questions how this was ever allowed to happen in the first place.
It kinda seems like this foreman should be the one in charge.
Few things expose the integrity of an org chart faster than a week with nobody on it.
Three managers took the days off, and the plant kept shipping like nothing happened, because the foreman kept the machine oiled and the people informed.
His good humor about it is the best part of the story, since he could have been furious and chose to laugh instead. The area manager’s excuse parade, from the truck to the dog, almost reads as one big, elaborate joke.
If the job titles above him were load-bearing, something would have cracked. Instead, the plant stood up straight all week all thanks to him.
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