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Employees Are Told Their Meeting With The CEO Counts As Lunch, So All 60 Of Them Maliciously Comply
Decision-making is an essential business skill that drives organizational performance. In fact, a survey of more than 750 companies by management consulting firm Bain found a 95 percent correlation between decision-making effectiveness and financial results. (Their data also showed companies that excel at making and executing decisions generate returns nearly six percent higher than those of their competitors.)
However, not every manager is capable of figuring out what is best for the company. Like the one in charge of Reddit user Zorggalacticus and their colleagues. Recently, the whole team had to go to a meeting with the CEO, but the manager said it will count as everyone’s lunch break. Not to be outdone, the workers devised a plan on how to inform the boss without actually saying anything. Continue scrolling to read about it in Zorggalacticus’s post on the subreddit ‘Malicious Compliance.’
This manager told the employees that their meeting with the CEO will count as their lunch break
Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)
So all 60 of them came up with a way to let the boss know about it without actually saying anything
Image credits: Yan Krukov (not the actual photo)
Image credits: zorggalacticus
We managed to get in touch with Zorggalacticus and they were kind enough to provide us with a bit more context.
“I have been with this company for 11 years. Much longer than he’s been a supervisor,” the Redditor told Bored Panda about their manager.
“I’ve liked it so far. The pay is good for our area, and the work isn’t rocket science. Our HR department is awesome and usually backs up their employees, which isn’t usually the case in a lot of companies.”
Which the company can be proud of. After all, happy workers are 13% more productive, so keeping them content is in their best interest too.
However, Zorggalacticus said that their manager is “entirely incompetent”.
“He takes the simplest things and needlessly complicates them with no real benefit at all. Most of his ideas fail miserably, but he’s constantly rolling out new ones to the point that when I go on vacation, I pretty much have to relearn whole segments of my job. Getting yelled at for doing things we’ve always done, but he changed the rule last week and didn’t tell anybody,” the Redditor explained.
This is really toxic for a variety of reasons and has negative effects beyond the workplace. According to the State of the American Manager report, “Having a bad manager is often a one-two punch: Employees feel miserable while at work, and that misery follows them home, compounding their stress and putting their well-being in peril.”
Zorggalacticus’s company likely makes a significant investment in benefits programs aimed at employee retention and lowered healthcare costs.
In fact, US businesses spend hundreds of millions of dollars in this area, but the actions of a poor manager negate the positive effects the benefit programs might have.
When employee health suffers, the company suffers. Unhappy, unhealthy employees affect:
- Absenteeism;
- Performance;
- Customer ratings;
- Quality;
- Profit.
The original poster (OP) provided more details on what happened in the comments
“I don’t think there was any way [our manager] could’ve pulled this off,” Zorggalacticus said looking back at the plan to convert their lunch break into a meeting. “He was the only supervisor out of 17 departments that even attempted it, so he would’ve stuck out like a sore thumb anyway. He was an office clerk in another department who applied for a supervisor spot in our department and it’s pretty obvious to most people other than him that he’s in way over his head.”
“Just this last week, he flubbed up again,” the Redditor added. “He waited to drop the orders until the second half of the day. Had us running around helping other departments. Then expected us to do 8 hours’ worth of work in 4 hours. As long as we meet our production requirements, he can’t do anything about it, so guess who got four hours of overtime in 1 day?”
A 2018 Udemy study found that nearly half of employees surveyed had quit because of a bad manager, and almost two-thirds believed their manager lacked proper managerial training. I think it’s about time their company starts keeping a close eye on this guy.
And people thought the manager had it coming
Some also recalled similar experiences of their own
Others described how this situation should’ve been handled
What do you think ?
William Teach 1 year ago
If a true story (and I'm never sure when it comes to the Internet), the Fair Labor Standards Act doesn't allow this in the least, and would require, at a minimum, that they be paid for the time.
karma rose 1 year ago
You see that's the thing most everyone knows that these laws exist but a lot of time the place of employment manages to break the law anyway because people are afraid to complain. I know someone who works at a factory and the machine that she works has to be completely shut down if you walk away from it. She wasn't allowed to have water near the machine (even though the roof leaks water on her when it rains) and they decided that they were no longer going to run the air conditioning on the shop floor only in the office, 90° day plus standing in front of a machine that melts plastic so very hot. If she shuts down to get water production goes down because it takes time to shutdown and start back up. Do they have water coolers around? Yes but too far for her to get water without shutting down. It's a "tell the employee they aren't allowed to drink water without telling the employee they aren't allowed to drink water" scenario.
Load More Replies...
Jennifer Germain 1 year ago
Worked for a company that would do lunch and learn, they bought us lunch. I was so sick of it, i told the rest of the people in my department that I don't care if they bought us lunch, it is still unpaid time and lunch they provided was well under our hourly wages. In Canada and it is mandatory to provide a 30 minute minimum lunch. I suggested we take our lunch break (1 hr unpaid) after the meeting as they owe us back that time. Got to management and they stopped it. I don't care if you provide me lunch, you are still expecting me to work on my unpaid time.... If you can dock me 15 minutes pay because I was 10 minutes late (very rare that I was) you do this on paid time and keep your lunch.
Jamie Mayfield 1 year ago
We hosted these trainings called 'brown bags' where we told people they were welcome to bring their lunch for the education session. This was for outside departments and they were not mandatory. Regardless I hosted one and a person from oncology had some questions but said their lunch hour was almost up. I told them it was called 'brown bag' because we didn't mind if they brought a lunch, but it still counted as work so they should take their lunch hour to do whatever they wanted. I asked if they were exempt or non-exempt, found out they were hourly and told them if they didn't take an hour lunch they would be in violation of federal labor laws and they needed to take the actual lunch break to prevent the university from being sued. Their boss and I had a long conversation about it with HR. I work regulatory compliance so I am not the right person to leave a nasty voice mail with when it comes to violating federal regulations.
Load More Replies...
William Teach 1 year ago
If a true story (and I'm never sure when it comes to the Internet), the Fair Labor Standards Act doesn't allow this in the least, and would require, at a minimum, that they be paid for the time.
karma rose 1 year ago
You see that's the thing most everyone knows that these laws exist but a lot of time the place of employment manages to break the law anyway because people are afraid to complain. I know someone who works at a factory and the machine that she works has to be completely shut down if you walk away from it. She wasn't allowed to have water near the machine (even though the roof leaks water on her when it rains) and they decided that they were no longer going to run the air conditioning on the shop floor only in the office, 90° day plus standing in front of a machine that melts plastic so very hot. If she shuts down to get water production goes down because it takes time to shutdown and start back up. Do they have water coolers around? Yes but too far for her to get water without shutting down. It's a "tell the employee they aren't allowed to drink water without telling the employee they aren't allowed to drink water" scenario.
Load More Replies... Jennifer Germain 1 year ago
Worked for a company that would do lunch and learn, they bought us lunch. I was so sick of it, i told the rest of the people in my department that I don't care if they bought us lunch, it is still unpaid time and lunch they provided was well under our hourly wages. In Canada and it is mandatory to provide a 30 minute minimum lunch. I suggested we take our lunch break (1 hr unpaid) after the meeting as they owe us back that time. Got to management and they stopped it. I don't care if you provide me lunch, you are still expecting me to work on my unpaid time.... If you can dock me 15 minutes pay because I was 10 minutes late (very rare that I was) you do this on paid time and keep your lunch.
Jamie Mayfield 1 year ago
We hosted these trainings called 'brown bags' where we told people they were welcome to bring their lunch for the education session. This was for outside departments and they were not mandatory. Regardless I hosted one and a person from oncology had some questions but said their lunch hour was almost up. I told them it was called 'brown bag' because we didn't mind if they brought a lunch, but it still counted as work so they should take their lunch hour to do whatever they wanted. I asked if they were exempt or non-exempt, found out they were hourly and told them if they didn't take an hour lunch they would be in violation of federal labor laws and they needed to take the actual lunch break to prevent the university from being sued. Their boss and I had a long conversation about it with HR. I work regulatory compliance so I am not the right person to leave a nasty voice mail with when it comes to violating federal regulations.
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