There is nothing worse than working for a manager who doesn’t respect you and is constantly barking demands, especially when they think they run the whole company even though they are just a shift manager.

What would you do if you had an extremely busy day and then then next shift manager got upset that the work wasn’t 100% done and demanded that you keep working until it was finished, even though the store manager said overtime was not permitted.

That was the situation that the worker in this story was in, so he did what the shift manager wanted and kept working for several more hours trying to get everything caught up for the day. When the third shift team went on lunch and stopped working, however, he took the opportunity to leave. When he was walking out, the shift manager said he was fired for leaving before the work was done.

You’ll have to read the whole story to see what happened next, but suffice it to say that the store manager wasn’t happy with how it was handled.

Gets fired, ends up with promotion instead

This story comes from when I used to work for a global big box store that may or may not start with a “W”. As an aside they also aren’t known for how well they treat staff either.

People who work in these areas always seem to know everything that is going on in the facility.

At the time this happened I worked in the store room unloading trucks and bringing stock to the floor to be stocked by the overnight crew.

Our shift at the time was 3:30pm-12am. Our store manager made it clear that no overtime was permitted to be worked (anything over 9 hours by company policy). This meant at the latest we had to leave by 1230am. We usually cut it close because we were chronically understaffed for various reasons.

Once you’ve been working somewhere a while, you get a feel for when things aren’t going right.

I knew this night was going to be bad the moment I arrived. We had 6 workers scheduled, yet 2 called in sick including the shift lead. This meant that I was put in charge as I had the most experience and the dayshift managers all loved me cause I worked my butt off.

I then checked our delivery scheduled and it showed 2 semi trucks both with over 2000 items each that needed to be unloaded. In addition to another truck that was expected to have 20+ pallets of stock. This meant we had over 4000 items that needed to be unloaded by hand, with only 4 workers to do it.

He isn’t kidding. This is going to be a very busy night for the whole team.

In addition we were also responsible for scanning items out of overstock bins and bringing them to the floor if the system detected an item needed to be restocked.

Needless to say the shift sucked. We didn’t get our first break until almost 10pm. And around 7pm the system dropped about 350 items that needed to be scanned out of the overstock bins (and there were almost 200 bins we would need to search for this stuff. As the shift lead the fact we were so behind was my fault. Definitely didn’t have anything to do with being overworked with unachievable time targets.

Surely the overnight managers understand that they are understaffed.

So, the overnight managers arrived at 1030pm and one of them went ballistic and yelled at me. Cool whatever, I don’t care. I’ll just leave at 12am.

So, here’s where the compliance comes in (to a point). 12am comes around and the manager refuses to let us leave (doors get locked with keys only managers have and alarms are set).

They can’t just lock people in the building and force them to work.

One of the 4 of us is a college student and has an exam at 8am so they let him go. 1230am rolls around and we start to leave, again not allowed to leave by manager.

Keep in mind overtime is not allowed, and after 1230 we were in overtime. One of the 3 remaining of my crew has childcare issues so they let him leave.

As soon as the doors opened I would be running out.

At 1am the overnight crew goes on break and the doors are unlocked so manager can smoke. My only remaining crew member just walks out, and manager lets him go without argument (I was working so didn’t know until after doors were relocked).

3am roles around and night crew goes for lunch. I’m fed up with managers attitude as he’s been harassing me for the last 2 hours about not being done, without offering any help… I decide that I’m going home. As I walk out the doors, manager is standing there:

He should have been done hours ago.

Manager: Where are you going? Are you done?

Me: Nope. Still about 20 pallets to go out and about 80 overstock items to be picked from the bins.

Does he not know that overtime is not allowed.

Manager: Go back and finish, you can’t leave.

Me: I’m already 2.5 hours into O/T, I’m going home.

Wow, this guy sounds like a real jerk. I would hate to work for someone like that.

Manager: Do we need to go into the office and talk about your poor attitude and lack of work ethic?

Me: Screw you Manager, I’m going home.

Manager: Don’t come back, you’re fired.

This is not going to end the way the manager thinks it will.

Me: Have fun explaining to Store Manager why you fired me. I’ll be sure to tell him all about the shift tonight.

I then left and went home.

Let’s see how this all plays out. Hopefully the truth will be revealed.

About 5ish hours later (8am), I get a phone call from the store. It’s the Store Manager and he wants to talk to me. Can I come in for a meeting at noon? I say sure I’ll be there.

I get to the store just before noon and get escorted into the Store Managers office by one of the Day Managers.

Oh, he would love to explain exactly what happened.

SM: I hear you had some overtime last night. Care to explain why?

Me: Explains everything that happened above.

SM: So you left at 3am?

Me: Yes.

So far, so good.

SM: And Manager said you were fired, correct?

Me: Yes.

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The store manager seems like a great guy who knows how to run the team. Maybe he should just fire the other manager instead of trying to retrain him.

SM: He isn’t allowed to do that. What you told me matches what the other night manager said happened. As a result Manager is being moved to dayshift for retraining. You also are not fired. We need a new overnight stock room lead, and I’d like to offer it to you. It comes with a $1/hr nightshift bonus, and a $1/hr raise.

Me: I’ll take it! (I had been trying for this position anyway). When do I start?

Amazing. It is great when things work out the way they are supposed to.

SM: You start tomorrow night if you want.

Me: Great, thank you Store Manager.

Everyone is happy for him.

I then went home and told my family who were quite happy with the turn out. Especially my mom who also worked at the store and was rather mad about what happened.

Some managers end up going on a power trip and thinking that they need to tell everyone what to do at all times. It is much better to try to work with people to get a job done, but apparently this guy wasn’t willing. Fortunately in this case it ended up working out for the best in the end. Also, I have a feeling that the bad manager isn’t going to last too long at this company.

Oh well, let’s stop and take a look at what some of the other commenters have to say about this story.

Good thing he got his overtime, although if the store manager didn’t pay him, he could have gotten sued.

This commenter is spot on right. Bad managers can really ruin a whole workplace.

This commenter says he had similarly bad managers at hardware stores. And that he put up with them for too long.

I agree with this commenter, calling the cops would have been a good decision.

This commenter thinks he should have taken things a lot further. Getting the police and a lawyer involved would have been the right move.

It all worked out in the end, but the shift manager deserved to be fired. What he did was not just bad management, but it was actually illegal.

You can’t just lock people in the building and force them to keep working.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a carpenter who was shocked to find the police waiting for him after his last day of work.