Managing people is so much harder than most folks want to think – and consequently, there are probably more people who do it badly than do it well.

OP had been working in a specialized position for the same company for several years. He was one of 5 or 6 other people tapped by the CFO to come in on a weekend to fix an order that was completely wrong.

This happened a few years ago, I was working for a company doing special projects that had to do with building certain products.

One Friday evening I get a call from the CFO (this guy never called me before I didn’t even know he had my number) who liked playing at project management sometimes.

He tells me there has been a huge mess up in a project, I asked him if it was a project I was involved in? no no it had nothing to do with me and they desperately needed people to come in on Saturday and Sunday and work because this project needs to be delivered to the customer on Monday morning and would I be able to go?

OP knew everyone else except for the woman the CFO put in charge. Immediately, they could all tell she wasn’t going to do much except get in their way.

I say sure! (In this company any work on Saturday and Sunday was overtime from the first minute and the overtime rate was very good), He told me I would be joined by 5 of my colleagues – Almost all of them a delight to work with and one more person that is also a colleague but has all the information regarding this project so she would “lead” it and tell us what’s needed to be done – lets call her wannabe genius boss lady (In a cynical way of course, she is not in any way shape or form a genius) or genius in short.

Everybody working on this project has at least 3 years experience in the company, some have more than 10 so there wasn’t any need for a babysitter, this fact matters for the rest of the story.

Saturday morning rolls around and I get to location, we all meet and have some coffee and homemade cookies that my wife made for us.

Genius comes in, asks us to gather around and explains that this project was done wrong from the get go, the company spent hundreds of man hours on it and it was all done wrong and we 5 have to in 2 days work not only disassemble everything that was done but re do it from scratch in the correct manner.

That not only involved putting it back together but also re fabricating parts that were done wrong.

Then she goes on to say in these exact words: “I’m the boss, you do what I say, I have all the schematics in my head if you don’t know something ask me and I’ll tell you how to do it.”

Toward the end of the first day, the CFO checked in and said that no one was to work more than 12 hours in a day. They all heard him and the manager promised the project would be done.

We all look at each other with a puzzled look but just shrug our shoulders, then she quickly and i mean QUICKLY lay down some rules that she wants us to follow, stupid things that just interfere with our jobs but no one actually caught all of them.

So we start working, like I said we are all experienced, we work in another facility that the company owns and were brought especially to fix this facility’s screw up.

All through the job genius does NOTHING, except get in our way, asking stupid questions,drinking coffee, taking smoking breaks, treating people badly and making up stupid rules as she goes, at some point the CFO comes in and starts talking to me and in the conversation he says these words

“No matter what, no one works overtime – no more than 12 hours a day NO MATTER WHAT” (Because its a Saturday the rules allows us to work up to 12 hours but more than that and the company can get fined), genius promises the CFO that the job will be done no matter what within those 2 days of 12 hours.

At the end of the second day – after being berated by the woman while she didn’t do much to help – they tried to tell her they weren’t going to be able to finish in time.

Saturday’s work is done after 12 hours we all say goodbye and leave coming back the next day, we get to work again with her making the atmosphere worse and worse by the minute, not trusting us when we say were gonna do something, hovering over us and generally being a nuisance.

As the day goes we can see that we are not going to make it on time, we try to tell her that but she is adamant that this will be done on time, I tried to explain to her a few times that seeing how much work there is and her INSISTING we do not use automated tools – its not possible to finish this in the 5 or 6 hours we have left.

There was a lot more crap that she pulled but I won’t name all of it to save time on this already long story and maybe try to keep a bit of anonymity just in case someone recognizes this story.

She won’t hear it, she says the job will be done.

I’m like whatever dude I’m just gonna do what I can since you won’t listen.

They all left after 12 hours despite her trying to order them to stay.

1 hour before end of day comes around, we have all been working for 11 hours – genius finally realizes this isn’t going to work, she calls a real project manager – her friend and starts talking to him, I hear her talking on the phone and she is blaming us for not working fast enough or whatever and tells him she promised the CFO to have this done (I’m assuming she was betting on riding this success into a promotion or something) and she doesn’t know what to do.

Then she walks out of the building and continues talking out of earshot.

After a few minutes of conversation she comes back in all guns blazing telling us to round up again so she can talk to us, with fire in her eyes she goes “Ok, you (points at a guy) don’t leave until this (points at one part of the project) isn’t done, you (points at me) don’t leave until that (another part) is done, and continues doing this until she counted off everybody” and then she walks off, I’m assuming for a coffee or smoke break or whatever.

Cue malicious compliance – Exactly 12 hours after arriving we all put down our tools and start heading out the door – she is SHOCKED asking us “where are you going???” we all say “We’re going home, we have been here for 12 hours”.

She says: “I told you that none of you leave until your parts are finished and tested”

To which we reply: “No more than 12 hours no matter what!” and we leave.

She couldn’t finish it on her own and the customer wasn’t thrilled the order was late.

Later on I found out that she stayed by herself until 04:00 in the morning to finish it all by herself, she couldn’t do it and had to go home as well, her Project manager friend came in on Morning to help her finish the job, the project was late, customer came in to pick it up and wasn’t happy to see it still not packaged and ready to go.

OP let the CFO know they would have stayed to help her finish if she hadn’t been so awful to them the entire time.

Just as a side note – with the exception of genius, I’ve known each of the people working on this project for a few years, all of them would have GLADLY stayed longer to help finish the project. They have done so many times in the past when called upon.

If she didn’t treat us so badly, we made sure to make management aware of this and she was NEVER given another opportunity to manage anything.

So she got what was coming to her eventually.

The top comment says it’s a sad state of affairs if cookies couldn’t fix it.

They say it’s probably a good thing this woman didn’t manage anything again.

This is a good one.

It really is a rare skill.

Sometimes you have to get out of the way and let your employees do their thing.

I wonder if this woman will ever get a chance to put that into practice.

Thought that was a crazy story? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were travelling for business.