Imagine being a delivery driver, and your supervisor wants to add extra items to your delivery. He claims they’re urgent, but you know you have an even more important delivery you need to make first.

If the supervisor decided to deliver the parts himself, would you let him know about all the consequences he could face for not having the right license and documentation, or would you mind your own business and watch the fallout?

In this story, one delivery driver is in this situation. He tries to warn the supervisor, but when the supervisor doesn’t want to listen, he decides to mind his own business and see how it plays out.

Keep reading for all the details.

Supervisor breaks the rules, burns down his life

Several years ago I worked as a local delivery driver for a steel processing plant.

We would take stock units of plate and structural steel and process them into parts out customers could use.

Some processes, such as painting, would go to a third party vendor and then come back to us for shipment to the customer.

Every day was pretty much the same.

I worked on a set routine. Deliver to the paint shop in the morning and bring back the orders painted the day before.

While that trailer was being unloaded, I would hook another trailer and deliver finished orders to a customer about 70 miles away from the shop.

This delivery had a hard appointment time of 2 pm. and I could not miss it.

When I returned after making that delivery, I would finish the day with short deliveries or pickups as needed and then go home.

There was only one problem.

It was an easy, stress free job as long I stuck to routine and made my appointments on time.

Communication between departments was poor though, and it disrupted the entire process.

For example the scheduling department might think a certain production run had been finished and was gone for outside processing when in reality the production department hadn’t even started the order yet.

I spent a lot of afternoons driving around in an empty truck chasing phantom orders that I knew I had never delivered because some office drone wanted me to “check and make sure,” or running “hot” orders out to vendors that were overlooked during my morning trip.

Meet the antagonist of the story.

Enter my main antagonist, one of the first shift production supervisors. I was constantly butting heads with him because he forever tried to hold up my truck for last second add-ons.

This wouldn’t have been a big deal except that they almost always interfered with my 2 pm delivery, the one I had to be on time for.

I kept explaining that I could do his errands in the mornings or afternoons, but he couldn’t mess with the middle of my day.

He was arrogant and condescending with everyone, but he took a special dislike toward me because I wasn’t in his chain of command and wouldn’t bend over backwards to accommodate his wants.

His supervisor wasn’t any help.

It didn’t help that my direct superior was a milquetoast little man that avoided conflict at any cost.

I ended up taking a lot of heat from this production supervisor even though he couldn’t really punish me for meeting my other work obligations.

Things finally came to a head when the supervisor came up to shipping with a large order that needed to go to paint.

I was about to leave for my 2 pm customer and told him so, but I had room left on the truck. If he wanted to load his parts on, I would deliver them on my way back from my primary delivery.

But getting the parts painted was urgent.

This wasn’t good enough for him. These parts were behind schedule and had to get painted immediately. If I delivered them in the afternoon they wouldn’t get painted until the following day which would put him further behind.

To top it off, this order required a special marine grade paint that had been mistakenly delivered to our company location instead of the paint shop and it all needed to go ASAP.

We began our usual back and forth. I had a delivery appointment. I could do what he wanted, but I couldn’t do it on his schedule.

After a heated conversation where he devolved into rudeness and name calling of a nature unbecoming of his position, he said “Fine. I’ll take it myself in the other truck!”

The supervisor really shouldn’t take the truck.

In addition to the tractor-trailer that I drove, we had a smaller delivery truck on hand for occasional use. He decided to drive it on the down low, loading up and heading out without telling our shipping department.

This would have been a grand idea, but driving either truck requires a commercial driver’s license which this supervisor did not have.

I pointed this out to him, to which he replied that he was “only going up the road,” and everything would be fine.

There was another good reason the supervisor shouldn’t do this run himself.

I pointed out that he didn’t have an hazardous materials endorsement to transport the paint.

Again, he was “just going up the road,” and I needed to shut the hell up, write him out directions to the paint shop, and get out of the way since I was “useless anyway.”

So did just that and wrote him out a perfect set of turn by turn directions.

How is that malicious compliance?

OP knew what was going to happen.

Well, this paint shop was about 30 miles up the road. But I knew, and he didn’t, that about 15 miles up the road was a DOT weigh station that always had at least two state troopers inside, and at least one of them was a commercial enforcement officer.

The truck this supervisor wanted to drive wasn’t equipped with an EZ Pass transponder that would allow him to bypass the scale, and I knew given his already demonstrated ignorance he wouldn’t know that he was required to pull in.

I figured he would blow right past and that one of those troopers would put down his coffee long enough to chase him down and find out why.

He was right.

To my great delight, that is exactly what happened.

The troopers saw him drive past and pulled him over.

Then they escorted him back to the weigh station for a thorough inspection.

For those unfamiliar, the transportation industry is highly regulated. Some might say it’s overregulated, but anyone that makes it a career knows it’s best to follow the laws or face some serious consequences.

There were serious consequences.

The supervisor didn’t know any of this, and was like a lamb to the slaughter.

The DOT inspector ripped him to pieces. Among the biggest infractions he was cited for:

-No CDL. $2500 fine, up to $10,000 to the company. Misdemeanor charges, 90 days suspended driver’s license.

-No hazmat endorsement, no documenting paperwork for the hazmat. No placards identifying the vehicle as carrying hazardous material. $50,000 fine to the company, more if it results in illness, injury or death to another person.

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It got even worse for the supervisor.

As a bonus, when the trooper escorted him back to the weigh station, the scalemaster saw him talking on his cell phone. The dude was making a panic call to the company manager.

Using a handheld device is also an big no-no.That’s another $2500, $10-11,000 dollars to the company.

The truck was put out of service at the weigh station until it had the proper bill of lading, hazmat paperwork, and a driver with a valid license.

The supervisor wasn’t allowed to leave himself until someone came to get him.

Here’s the real fallout.

Needless to say, he lost his job immediately.

I suspected that would happen, so I hung around the shipping office after my afternoon delivery. I got to witness his walk of shame as he was escorted out of the building.

I was never officially told just how much his fines were, but an educated guess puts it at thousands to him personally, and potentially close to $100,000 to the company.

I do know the company tried to sue him in civil court to recoup their losses, although I don’t know the outcome.

OP eventually moved on.

I left to take another job shortly after.

I figured that even though I wasn’t the one at fault, my role in the fiasco wouldn’t be looked upon in kind fashion.

The best part though, was that after months of watching him swagger around wearing a big hubris cowboy hat, I was the one that got to swat it off his head.

Wow! All because the supervisor wanted to get the parts painted himself. If only he had listened and hadn’t been so impatient, none of this would’ve happened.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

OP could’ve been seen as a hero.

But one person thinks OP might’ve been seen as a scapegoat.

Exactly!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a dad who can’t understand why his son can sleep in now that he’s not commuting to the office.

The wife of a trucker weighs in.

He handled that well! Sometimes, letting the supervisor get his way is the best thing to do. Although, in this case, it backfired spectacularly.