There are rules and standards in every workplace for a reason. However, these managers and supervisors wanted to bend the rules and take the easy way out and these workers definitely weren't having it.
“I Was Overlooking The Security Cameras And Spotted”
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“I worked the night shift at a shady motel. I was overlooking the security cameras and spotted a guy breaking into a truck. I called the cops. While on the phone with them, I witnessed the owner of the truck confront the man. The man got all stabby with the owner and got him pretty good in the gut. Stabby takes off so I go out to render aid to the owner of the truck while the authorities came. Once the paramedics took over I called my boss who tells me not to give the cops any testimony or access to the cameras. I figured this was because he was probably doing some shady business, considering how many call girls I encountered during my time at the property. So I did the opposite of this because my boss was a major jerk anyway. He cut my hours and found a bs reason to fire me a few weeks later. I found a great job right after though, so it all worked out.”
“They’re Lucky No One Ever Died”
“I used to deliver furniture. I wasn’t asked to do something just unethical, it was straight up illegal. We were regularly asked to do deliveries well beyond the time the Department of Transportation said we were allowed to be in the truck. I finally printed off several copies of the laws and would hand them to the managers anytime they asked.
I found out after I left they had the new crew work something like a 37-hour shift – driving a box truck. They’re lucky no one ever died.”
When They Found What Was On His Computer, The Owner Wanted To Obstruct The Justice
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“I worked for a little mom-and-pop computer repair shop a few years ago.
Had a customer drop off their computer, it was riddled with viruses, so I recommended a format and windows reinstall.
He asked if we could save his data first – no problem. We had a server that I wrote a software package for that would retrieve, backup, and catalog customer data before a reload, then load all the data back on the machine once everything was back up and running.
Well, I hooked the computer up to the machine and started the backup process. Normally I’d watch it for a minute or two to make sure everything was working, then wander off and do other things while it ran.
While I was watching it, I started seeing filenames like ‘six-year-old-assaulted-by-dog.mp4’ and ‘sexy-toddler-with-bbc.avi.’ I immediately killed the process, then opened the folder it was working on. It was hidden several layers deep inside the windows folder in something just system-y sounding to escape notice if you weren’t looking for it.
So much kiddie smut.
I didn’t open any of the files, because really, who wants to see that, but I did see the file names.
I tagged out the recovery server so nobody else would use it, then took what I had found to the owner.
Owner: ‘I don’t want to deal with that. Wipe the drive and give it back to him.’
Me: ‘Wiping the drive is destruction of evidence. We need to turn this over to the cops.’
Owner: ‘No, too much trouble. I don’t want to get mixed up in this, just give it back to him.’
Me: ‘Then we’re distributing child smut. The only legal course of action is to call the cops and report it.’
Owner: ‘Out of the question. Just give the darn thing back to him and get it out of here, I’ll hear nothing more on it.’
I went back to the workbench and flagged down the other techs. I showed them what I had found and told them how the owner was handling it. The other guys had kids and were completely appalled.
Together we all walked back over to the owner’s desk and told him in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t call the cops and report this, we were all gonna walk out on the spot and he wouldn’t have a tech staff anymore.
Facing the potential of losing his meal ticket, he relented and called our contact on the local sheriff’s department’s ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) task force and asked them to come pick it up.
For the next week or so, the guy called over and over again checking on his computer and asking when he would get it back, even coming in to try to pick it up early one time. We told him it was disassembled at the time and couldn’t give it back to him right that minute.
Eventually, the ICAC guys gave the hard drive back to us and said there wasn’t enough to charge him on. I’m not sure exactly what that meant since there was clearly some very bad stuff on it.
The owner gave him back his unrepaired computer, told him what we had found and that we had given it to the sheriff’s department, and told him never to come back to our shop. The guy didn’t seem surprised by what we had found.”
She Had A Secret Agreement With Her Employees
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“I used to work in management at a fast food establishment. The store manager had all of the truck receiving managers in an understanding that if the food cost numbers were off, then to make things go ‘missing’ from our delivery. It would be whole cases of bacon, cases of lettuce, frozen desserts, whatever we were using too much of that month making food costs too high, then simply claiming we never received said items to get a new box for free. I wasn’t in the loop on this scheme as I had just been transferred to this store, but started to get suspicious when I catch one of my guys hiding a box of a freezer food in our lobby mop closet. I straight out asked him, ‘What are you doing?’ He mumbled some excuse and I made him put it into the freezer where it belonged.
When I figured out what was going on, I told them to immediately stop doing that on my watch and went to the store manager and told her under no circumstances was that okay, it’s stealing from your distributor and I’ll have no part of it. She just looked at me dumbfounded aaaaand that was the last time I was scheduled to unload a truck and I left a couple of months later.
The cover got blown off after I left though–this woman had been with the company for over 40 years but pissed off the wrong new shift leader who went to the franchise owner/operator and also reported it directly to the distributor to avoid an internal cover-up. She graciously accepted their offer to retire a tad early (she was in her early 60s anyway) and keep her pension.”
The Most Heartbreaking Corporate Story You Will Ever Read
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“I was launching a startup and I was training the General Manager of this new facility, we’ll call him Jim. My boss (and his boss) shared with me that Jim is a hard-working guy, but he’s just not cut out for it and that we will be replacing him once we reach steady state.
I understand that not just anyone can take on this type of role, but my job was to develop him, so my thinking was, ‘Why am I investing all of this time and effort into a guy that isn’t going to be around for the long term?’ So it kind of sucked.
Jim was working his butt off. He was trying his best, and he was genuinely making progress. I still had hope that we could get him to a point where we could change my boss’s mind, or maybe even find another role for him. After all, he had the right attitude, he just didn’t possess the right skill set yet.
We were working long hours (as with most startups), and with that came a lot of sacrifices; missed dinners with his wife, working weekends, having to deal with really difficult situations at work, etc.
Then one day, Jim and I were on a call with our boss (who was at the corporate office) and going over some strategy and general ‘plan of attack’ details. My boss tells us that we are going to be changing over to a new software system that evening and that we would need to be on hand to test and make sure it transitions well. Jim tells us that his son has been home from Iraq (military) all week and that he has only seen him in passing and hasn’t been able to talk with him or spend much time with him. He said that his wife had a going away dinner planned for the whole family at their house, and that he really wanted to spend the evening with his son and that he was already in the dog house with his wife. In fact he came in about 2 hours early that morning to make sure he could get out on time.
I said that I could handle it and that it’s really only a one person job anyway. My boss said that he knows it’s a one person job, but Jim really needs to be there so he knows how to do it in the future (this type of thing only happens every 3-5 years and Jim won’t even be here the next time it happens). I could see the anguish on Jim’s face. After what seemed like an eternity of silence, Jim said, ‘Okay, I’ll see what I can do, I’ll be here.’
We didn’t get out of work that night until about midnight. His son left very early the following morning. I kept telling him, ‘Get out of here, we’re almost done, I’ll tell Bob (my boss) that you were here until the end.’ But he kept saying, ‘Nah, I need to know this stuff.’
He got up early the following morning and took his son to the airport. The 30 minute drive to the airport was the last time he ever spent with his son – he was killed in a roadside patrol about 2 months later.
Jim was not the same after that. He was coming into work late, sometimes leaving work early. I could tell that every day was a struggle just to keep focus and keep it together. His appearance declined, wrinkled clothes, often unshaven, looking like he was going on no sleep. It was awful watching someone go through this.
I told him at one point to take a few days off, regroup, and spend some time with his family. My boss agreed with me and approved it but by that time, he sensed that our boss was not his biggest fan, and he wanted to prove he could do it.
Realizing that other people were noticing his struggle, he made a marked improvement. He was on time every day, he started to dress better, he was always clean shaven, etc, but mentally you could tell it was all a facade. But still, he was getting things done. The business started to level off, things started to run smoother, the long hours weren’t necessary anymore, and even our boss commended him on his good work several times.
Once we reach steady state, that’s when I would hand over the keys to the operation and go back home. We were nearing that point, and I thought that Jim might just survive this thing, and he may have…
A guy had left the company about two years earlier as an Operations Director, we’ll call him Rick, and he was a stud. He was very, very good at everything he did and he made it look easy. He left to start his own consulting company which failed and he wanted back into our company. Rick contacted my boss (a VP) and asked if we had any openings. As fate would have it, he had moved about 45 minutes from this new operation and didn’t even know we had started it. My boss offered him the General Manager position (Jim’s position) even though it would be lower than where he was when he left and he accepted it. When I saw the paperwork come through, he was making about $50k more than Jim was making. We wanted him back, and we were paying through the nose for him.
So I had to fire Jim. It was the hardest firing I’ve ever had to do. I knew that even though Jim had improved, he couldn’t compete with Rick and would likely never be on his level in his entire career, so I couldn’t even begin to fight for Jim to keep his job. Knowing everything that he had been through, knowing that I knew this would happen all along, and knowing that he had done a good job and that he was finally in a place where he could reap the rewards of his sacrifices, I had to sit across from him and tell him that he wouldn’t be working for us anymore.
I know it probably makes me sound weak, but I actually cried. I let loose in a way that is very uncharacteristic of me. I told him, ‘These guys screwed you, and they don’t freaking deserve you. They use us like tools and throw us away as soon as it’s convenient.’ Jim and I cried together like idiots, then we went to the bar and drank until we couldn’t stand up.
That was on a Friday. My boss called Saturday morning and asked how things went. I told him ‘Terrible, but it’s done.’ He told me that Rick would be coming in on Monday and that I would need to transition to him over the next month or two. I said, ‘I can’t, I’ve got to go home, I’ve seen my wife and kids probably 8 days out of the last 6 months, I can’t do another 2 months.’ On Monday, I gathered our employees and informed them that Jim was no longer with the company, and introduced them to Rick. I told Rick the situation and apologized for my early departure and by lunch, I was on a plane home and was searching for new jobs.
3 weeks later I took a position with another company. That was about 3 and a half years ago. My old boss apologized profusely and agreed that he went too far this time and that he can’t always keep pushing. He still calls me occasionally to see how things are going and if I would be interested in some position that he has – I guess I’m the new Rick.”
Once The Law Got Involved, Things Got Ugly
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“Someone I know worked in maintenance/property management. He had just switched to a new property, which paid considerably more than the last. The property was older and undergoing renovations, and being an older property, it had asbestos everywhere, and I mean everywhere. According to him, the floors, siding, ceilings, roof, and insulation were all covered with asbestos. This meant that contractors and employees needed to have proper PPE (personal protective equipment), contractors needed to be licensed to handle and dispose it, and areas being worked on needed to be cordoned off and restricted to tenants. The property had none of that. The contractors would even simply throw exposed asbestos materials into the regular dumpster where residents would then throw their trash in.
This guy reported the violations to his company and manager, with both choosing to ignore it with the manager telling him not to report it again. His second report offered them a workaround where he, having been licensed for asbestos disposal would buy the PPE (which should have been provided) and would do all the demo and disposal work himself. He also told both the company and manager that he would give them 6 weeks to get compliant or he would report further to the state. The manager ignored his request and the company sent him a warning.
He reported them to the EPA who investigated and saw all the same things and issued a list of corrective actions to be taken. The manager ignored them and reportedly got uppity (and downright mean) with the agents. The EPA didn’t take kindly to this and launched an in-depth investigation and discovered that the property and manager had been getting kickbacks from the uncertified contractors for years. They found the improper asbestos removal had been going on for longer, and that the county inspectors had been getting payoffs to look the other way by those contractors. This resulted in a multimillion-dollar fine to the county, prison time for the inspectors, fines and potential prison time for the property, contractors and manager. The guy who kicked it off had switched jobs just before the second deeper investigation revealed so much. His old company tried to reprimand him right before he switched jobs as well.”
That’s Not What PTO Is Suppose To Be For…
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“I worked for a major corporation for 7 years. I started working there when I just graduated from college. When you were hired, they told you you were going to make X per year, which was your salary. When you actually started working, you realized it was actually hourly and client-billable, something they never stated in the interviews. Your ‘salary’ was based on you as you were responsible for finding your own work. If it was slow or your project got delayed, you sat at your desk not getting paid. Need that money? You were encouraged to use your PTO (that’s your vacation time) while either sitting in the office waiting for work or sitting at home waiting for work. We did get some flexibility with our schedules and we did get time-and-a-half overtime for working more than 40, so if you worked 50 or 60 hours if nothing got canceled, you could bank the overtime to make up for the slow periods. You also worshiped your internal clients so that they would choose you for their projects in the future, ensuring you made your money by giving them whatever they wanted and putting up with anything they did to you. And all that budget that was saved from not paying us during slower periods? It went to a management bonus based on how much money they saved the company in payroll. We would ask what the policies were and if there was a number we could call; we never received any written policy ever, the managers would only verbally tell us what the policy was so there was no paper trail. If we questioned them, they got manipulative and defensive. In the end, there was a class action lawsuit against them. They settled out of court. I’ve since left that company. It makes me sick to think of the money they took from all of us over the years.”
Flags Go Up Right Away After This Worker Received A Sketchy Email
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“I worked in clothing retail. Some of our jeans were found to contain carcinogenic dye, and we had to box them up and put them in the back room until we could send them away. No problem. We put away like, four, maybe five boxes.
Almost a year goes by and those jeans are still back there. Finally, the head office sends a list of instructions on how to label the boxes in order to send them away. Thing is, the instructions are really sketchy. They weren’t sent using the official HO email and they explicitly tell us not to inform the delivery driver what is in the boxes, that we can’t use the usual delivery labels we use, and not to write anything about ‘RECALL’ or ‘HAZARD’ or anything of the sort on the box.
Anyway, delivery driver rocks up and he immediately knows what’s up because we aren’t using the labels were meant to be using. He tells us he can’t take the boxes, and we say fine. The boxes sit there a bit longer and our area administrator gets on us to force the delivery guy to take the boxes.
I do a little research. Carcinogenic jeans aren’t meant to be transported in the regular delivery truck, our company has to pay for a different service because they’re classed as a hazardous material. The company wanted to save money on the products they’d already lost on by sending it through the regular delivery channels.
Eventually, the area administrator had to come in and pick them up himself. I wish I had told the delivery driver so he could’ve reported the company.”
This Worker Had To Pick Up The Phone And Give Good Students The Worst News Possible
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“I worked as a leasing consultant in college for student housing. We pre-leased apartments for about 11 months before our big wave of move-ins before the new year started. We had a lot of low income/first generation college students come in and lease with us and they bring their parents and family members with them for support and to celebrate such a milestone in the family. Anyway, we had a program where if the kid was getting financial aid through the school to assist with housing, we would postpone their first rent payment until the university issued them their financial aid checks as these usually come within the first two weeks of the semester. Then when the resident got their check, they had to give us 3 months rent in one go. This is sometimes the only way a low-income student can live on campus.
Anyway, cooperate comes down about two weeks before move in to make sure that everything goes smoothly and ‘finds out’ that we have been having these kids and their families sign these documents agreeing to postpone their first rent payments until they got their financial aid. We literally had hundreds of these kids who agreed to sign with us because we had that program. Corporate told us to get on the phones and call every single person and tell them that that document they signed with us (in some cases almost a year ago) would not be honored and that they would not be allowed to get their keys and move in without money up front. Move in was in less than two weeks! THIS SUCKED.
I told my boss to have me do anything else – work with the maintenance team, go out and market, anything as I just couldn’t call these people and do that to them. He threatened to take away my commissions if I didn’t. We got into a shouting match while all my little sheep coworkers made those phone calls. I quit and so did another coworker.”
When His Boss Didn’t Answer, He Had To Make His Own Call
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“I worked physical security on a contract with a multinational insurance company with locations in multiple states, all under the watchful eye of a half-billion dollar alarm and surveillance system.
One night a fire alarm went off in one of the buildings, so I tried dispatching on-site guards to check it out and call 911 if there was an actual fire. Couldn’t get a hold of the guy (because he had gone to Chipotle with his girlfriend and left the building unattended without telling anyone), so I ended up calling fire dispatch for that city and had them respond to the alarm as if it were a real fire (which it turns out it was, but it stayed contained inside a garbage can). Made my required facilities calls and called all the way up to the facility’s director before I was able to contact anyone from the client company to report the incident. Called my supervisor, his boss, and the regional manager (as required) and never got an answer. Wrote up my incident report and sent it up the chain of command with the details of the entire incident and went about my day.
Next two days were my weekend so I didn’t think much of it because I had done my due diligence. I spoke with the facility’s director in person on my way back into work after my weekend, and he thanked me for the report. He also let me know that my supervisor wanted to speak to me about the incident to clear up a few things because there were some differences between his report, my report, and the report of the on-site guard.
My supervisor came into my office and asked me to rewrite my report, leaving out the parts about the on-site guard and my company chain of command not answering the phone. I refused and said that it would be unethical and possibly illegal to change the report as it was my opinion that those details were relevant and that there would then be unanswered questions about the incident if I just edited those details out. My supervisor then demanded I make the changes and threatened to terminate me if I did not follow orders. I refused again, repeating that changing the report would be unethical and likely fraud and if he continued pressing the issue that I would contact the state licensing board. He suspended me immediately.
He then made the changes to my report himself and recommended I be terminated for insubordination. During the suspension investigation, everything was brought out into the light, and a full-blown state investigation of his behavior led to the discovery that he had been routinely changing reports in order to take personal credit for things he had no interaction with, and to shield himself and others within the company from disciplinary and legal action for negligence (among other things). He lost his job, lost his license, did some jail time, and last I heard he manages a fast food restaurant now. I was reinstated, but resigned from the company and moved to a different position with another company as the whole ordeal left a bad taste in my mouth.”
This Manager Figured As Long As Daddy’s Around, He Could Do Whatever He Wanted
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“I worked at a gas station in college. The manager was the son of the owner and basically got to come and go as he pleased- he had it pretty good. The store was open 6 am-11 pm. He would stroll in around 8-9 am and take care of a few things, and most days, he was out the door by 1 pm at the latest.
Then his dad sold the store. He stayed on as the manager but he suddenly had new rules he was expected to follow. He had to drive around town twice a day and report the gas prices from a half dozen other stations in the area (which he never did and always forged). He was expected to work 50 hours a week and, when new ownership found out he was barely working half as much, they made him start clocking in and out despite being a salaried employee.
Well, that lasted maybe two days and he started forging his timecard. He would come in around 8 am, leave at noon, and come back at like 6-7pm just to punch out. That lasted maybe a week and then he started asking employees to commit his timecard fraud for him. He would have someone clock him in around 6 am when the store opened, and he would call the store around 5-6 pm every day and ask someone to clock him out.
Looking back on it, I’m more bothered about it now than I was at the time. I didn’t even realize I could have easily been fired for helping him commit fraud like that.”
He Wanted To Ignore Mother Nature, But This Worker Was Done With His Ignorance
“I worked as a lifeguard in high school. For the most part management was all great. One day around closing time we had a monstrous thunderstorm, I mean multiple flashes of lighting within 2 miles of us every minute. We had finished cleanup (which in itself was unsafe since we had to go outside to do it), except hadn’t gotten the toys (noodles and those foam balls) out of the pool. I was the most senior person there (other than the manager) and decided that we’ll just leave the toys. The only way to get them out was to either get into the pool or to use a 20-foot metal pole with a hook on the end to get them. Either method was too dangerous to do during a thunderstorm just so that the pool will look neater. The manager caught us leaving and told me cleanup wasn’t finished, there was still stuff in the pool. I told him that I’m not risking my life for some foam toys, and he then told me to have the other guy do it. I just walked out instead.
I’m not 100% sure whether he was actively unethical or just dumb because I saw him with the hook as I drove off. I got written up for it.”
This Worker Refused To Commit A Federal Crime And…
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“I used to work for a dry cleaner. Our dry cleaning machine used perchloroethylene and as the building engineer, it was my job to clean the thing out twice a week. This involved cleaning the filters and draining out the waste tank.
This stuff is nasty. It’s thick, lumpy, black, and it smells like Satan’s sweaty butthole during the peak of an especially hot August on the equatorial surface of Venus. Whenever I opened the drain on the dry cleaning machine, babies started crying, pregnant women spontaneously miscarried, and every dog within a five-mile radius started howling like they’d been beaten with a rubber hose.
Well, one time, my manager instructed me to pour that stuff into the storm drains because our storage tank was full and the pickup guy wouldn’t come for another week. This, in case you might not have already guessed, is a federal crime. I straight up told her, ‘I’m not doing that, and I freaking dare you to fire me for it.’ I went out and bought a 55 gal. drum from Home Depot on my lunch break and poured the stuff in there (which was probably also illegal, mind you, but it was better than her idea).
When the owner got back from one of his many vacations, I explained to him what happened. He called her into his office, asked her if what I said was true, then fired her on the spot, wrote me a check for the price of the 55 gal. drum, and said, ‘We’re never talking about this again. If anyone asks why she got fired, tell them she was stealing.’
I’ve had a lot of messed up jobs in my life, and the dry cleaners top them all.”
If This Worker Hadn’t Done The Right Thing, This Homeless Man’s Life Would’ve Taken A Drastic Turn
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“I once worked at a small town drive-in diner type place. One late night shift, a hobo passed out on our picnic table in the outdoor eating area. Being teenage idiots, my manager and I thought he was dead (in our defense, he had passed out with his eyes wide open and gunk coming out his mouth).
Obviously, my manager had no idea how to handle this, so she asked me to help her drag the body behind the sketchy bar next door to get it off our property. I was begging her to just let me call 911 but she insisted that calling the police would get us both fired. Honestly, it probably would have gotten us fired because the diner was run by the dumbest hillbilly cop-hating people you could imagine.
Anyway, in the heat of the argument, I stormed into the bar next door and used their phone to call 911 because I knew it was the right thing to do. My manager was screaming and crying at me that this would get me fired the entire time.
It turns out that the hobo wasn’t dead, but he overdosed on something. I don’t know a lot of details but they managed to save his life and he probably would have died if we had moved him. The owners of the diner never showed up during the debacle and no charges were filed, so my manager and I made a silent agreement to never speak of this again.
I was eventually fired from that job, but it was because the same manager found out that her ex-boyfriend had asked me out (I said no), so she told the owners a bunch of lies to ‘get back at me for fooling around with guys.’ I was not as upset about losing that job as she wanted me to be.”
Despite This Worker’s Fight To Be Right, His Boss Created A Huge Mess
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“My last job I literally spent every single day fighting with my boss and stopping him from telling our workers to do illegal stuff or instructing me to do it. He would try to get me to circumvent government procurement regulations, harassment of employees, safety hazards and environmental violations – it was a nightmare. Just one random horrible thing was the day he was stupid enough to instruct a worker to get the excessive limescale off a piece of equipment with chemicals and let it flow down the storm drain. When I saw this out my window we got into a huge fight and he instructed the employee to continue until I could show proof that this was illegal. I finally did but the damage was done and the driveway was stained green from the runoff. Then one day I found out he had a meeting with the production guys saying that I didn’t have to know everything he told them to do that might save the company time and money. I quit the next day.”