“Switch Off the Lights When You Use the Restroom!”—Inside an Unhinged Manager’s Absurd Cost-Cutting Demands
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Anyone who grew up in 90s or 00s Britain will be familiar with the trope of a dad wandering around the house turning off the lights and uttering the phrase, “It’s like Blackpool Illuminations in here.” Referring to the iconic light display that stretches the full length of the promenade of the North-Western English coastal town of Blackpool every autumn, the Blackpool Illuminations use over one million lights over a six mile stretch, which families have flocked from all over the UK to see for over 140 years. It’s a very British tradition.
Of course, no millennial’s household literally had one million light bulbs switched on, but back in the days before LED light bulbs were mainstream, dads were notorious for walking around the house and turning off lights, chiding their kids for leaving them on – because back in the day, light bulbs did cost a (still relatively small) amount to run – not to mention they burned out after a certain number of hours.
Nowadays, LEDs cost basically nothing to run, even if you have them on all the time, and since they don’t get hot nor burn out (LEDs can last decades!) there’s very little to complain about. But that didn’t stop the manager of the employee in this story.
Read on to find out what happened here.
Manager is behind me to switch off the lights everytime I leave the room and its driving me crazy
My manager (who also owns the company) is constantly behind everyone about switching off lights the second we leave a room.
And I get it for meeting rooms, washrooms, pantry, whatever. If nobody is using the room, obviously switch it off.
But he expects us to switch off the lights in our own office rooms/cubicle areas even if we’re literally just going to the washroom for three minutes or stepping out for a meeting and coming back.
If he walks past and sees an empty room with the lights on, you’re going to hear about it.
And it’s starting to really bother this employee.
At some point I’m like… you run an office. Electricity is an operating expense.
If keeping the lights on while someone goes to pee is breaking the budget, maybe get an office with bigger windows and natural light??
Today I watched him berate another colleague for charging his PHONE at work. His phone. How much electricity can that possibly be costing the company?
Printer usage is monitored too. If you cross a certain limit you have to send proof/explain what you printed and why, which honestly feels like it wastes more employee time than whatever they’re saving on paper and toner.
Now, they’re just anticipating things getting even worse.
I’m waiting for the next policy to be a spreadsheet tracking how many times we flush the toilet and how many tissues everyone uses.
I understand avoiding waste. I really do.
But there’s a point where cost-cutting turns into micromanaging every tiny thing employees do, and this feels like we crossed that line a while ago.
Yikes. This boss does not sound fun to work for.
The actual cost of using normal light bulbs on a daily basis is so negligible that it shouldn’t even matter.
This is a classic case of a boss assuming something is true but not actually doing any research so making a fool of himself.
Let’s see what folks on Reddit thought about this.
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This person came up with a great solution.
While others thought it was a sign the employee should be looking for work elsewhere.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a cashier who got annoyed with a group of friends who insisted on returning their items separately.
Meanwhile, this Redditor pointed out that this should be going both ways.
Clearly either the boss is mentally unwell or the company is sick if the negligible cost to run a light bulb is a concern to the point that it needs to be switched off when someone leaves the office for less than a minute. Because honestly, that level of cost-saving, which literally won’t even save any money, is downright unhinged. And it’s creating a truly hostile work environment. Because when someone isn’t even allowed to charge their phone at work, and gets yelled at for doing so, no one is going to want to work there for much longer.
So this kind of obsessive penny-saving is probably a good sign that the employees should be looking for work elsewhere. Because this is going to go one of two ways. Either the manager keeps behaving like this and tracking even more of the ways in which his employees ‘waste’ company money, or the company will go bust altogether. Neither of these options sound appealing at all, and honestly this does not sound like a nice place to work.
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