Imagine getting hired for a new job, and your boss tells you that she’s the only one who lets you know if you’re working and that you don’t take orders from anyone else. What would you do if someone else told you to come into work the next day? Would you comply, or would you refuse to work until the boss told you to work?

In this story, one employee is in this exact situation, and she chooses to follow the boss’s rules. The problem is that the boss doesn’t seem to follow her own rules.

Keep reading for the whole story.

Some bosses flag themselves as unfit.

Several years ago I was looking for a job and a friend suggested to me to work for the same company she worked for. It was one of those flagging companies you see holding up traffic for construction sites.

She’s telling me how great the job is, how awesome the co-workers are and how great the boss is.

Sounded like an ok job really.

It was definitely better than nothing.

At this point I have no other leads for jobs (I’ve applied to a bunch of places already, but haven’t heard back from them and it’s too soon to call them yet). So I decide to take her up on the offer.

The pay is not bad (I don’t recall exactly what it was, something like 16 an hour.)

I go through the hiring course and get through easily.

The boss laid down the law.

A few days later the boss then calls me and tells me that I work for her and that I’m to do as she says. Furthermore that only she has the authority to tell me when I work. With the “lovely” aspect that she will call me before 8pm to let me know if I’m working the next day and that if I don’t hear from her then I’m not working.

I say fair enough.

She then tells me she wants me to meet so I can be given the requisite gear.

Normally this wouldn’t be a problem but at this point I’ve only just gotten my license and according to my local laws I can’t drive between midnight and 5am yet.

She was not willing to break the law.

The boss, of course, wants me to meet her the next day at a job site at 4am.

While there is a special permit new drivers can get… it takes a few days to actually get, fill out, be processed and accepted. So it wouldn’t be possible to have it done for the next day.

I told her that I wasn’t going to break the law for her.

And she got mad but then eventually relented. Meet at 5:30 then… Which was doable for me.

I end up working a shift that day as well.

She didn’t get a lot of work.

A couple weeks pass and I’m getting no shifts at all. Sitting by the phone a lot waiting for calls that aren’t coming in. (I haven’t given up the job search either though.)

Until one night I do get a call…

The next day I’m on site at a location and the manager there says for me to be back the next day at the same time.

I tell him that I’m not allowed to follow that order, he’ll have to speak to my boss and she’ll determine who gets sent out.

He says he understands and that he’ll speak to her.

But did he understand? Did he?

I get off work and arrive home right around 7:45 pm. I check my voicemail and there’s been no messages left. I check to see if the boss has called yet and she hasn’t.

8pm comes and goes and I go to bed with a clear conscious.

At 7:30 the following morning my phone rings. It’s the boss calling.

“Where are you? Why aren’t you at ? Didn’t speak to you?”

Actually, it was the boss who didn’t comply with her own rules.

At which point I respond with:

“Yes, he did. But I told him to ask you. Remember what you said? To never take orders from anyone but you? That you would call the night before by 8pm to let me know if I worked the next day? I didn’t get any phone calls last night. I did exactly what you asked.”

The boss didn’t like that, she hung up the phone on me.

I never bothered to try calling her back. The next day I turned in my logbook and quit the company before she could fire me.

A few days later I got hired at another job, though the pay wasn’t as good, the fact there were steady hours meant I was making a lot better money.

The boss shouldn’t have been so adamant about the rules if she didn’t actually intend to follow them.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

One person shares how their boss handles scheduling.

This would’ve been another way to handle it.

Another person explains the problem.

This might be worth looking into!

She’s better off somewhere else.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.