Imagine getting fired for following the rules. It sounds ridiculous, but in today’s story, it actually happens.

If you were fired just for doing what you were told to do, would you fight it, or would you walk away?

The woman in today’s story is pretty smart about how she reacts. Let’s see what she does.

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.

But since arriving to stay she had had a lot of problems as her Vocational College Degree was not recognised 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.

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

There was one problem.

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.

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.

His wife refused to make coffee.

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.

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. Later she had her in the office and fired her !

She was fired, kind of.

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 !

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.

That sounds like a horrible place to work. I hope she eventually found a different job, but that’s great that she refused to give in and make coffee.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person feels old.

This is probably true.

A former loan company employee weighs in.

This person would’ve left after getting fired.

It would be hard to work in that toxic environment.