In the business world, there are many expensive trainings for senior management where they are clearly told how to build an effective company development model, how to achieve fruitful staff teamwork, which goals and KPI to set, what to do to achieve strategic success…

In fact, this will not work at all if the company has a problem with middle managers. Indeed, the owner and the board of directors could implement any kind of advanced and effective decisions and ideas – and just one incompetent employee in their position could literally negate the entire positive effect. In the end, as the ancient oriental proverb says, “the caravan moves at the speed of the slowest camel.”

Here’s some visual proof, by the way – this post by user u/kdpowpow in the Reddit Malicious Compliance community. Published about a year ago, today this story can boast over 15.6K upvotes and almost 600 different comments. Enough to break it down in more detail.

More info: Reddit

The author of the post once worked at a grocery store in the bakery/deli department

Image credits: Grand Canyon National Park (not the actual photo)

So, the author of this post worked at a well-known grocery store in the bakery/deli for a full three years. They’d been in management, and recently announced their upcoming resignation, deciding to focus on college. It was, as the OP recalls, in early July, and August 13 was supposed to be their last working day.

Image credits: kdpowpow

The employee decided to quit to focus on college, so they handed in their 2-week notice and just went on working

Around the middle of July, an audit began at the store, and all the employees, of course, were incredibly tired from constant checks. The problem also was that store management preferred to hire part-time employees, so the OP was effectively the only full-time worker in their department. In their own words, this did not bother them at all, since they liked to work alone – however, the audit, of course, was exhausting.

Image credits: kdpowpow

An entitled customer came late as the department was already closed yet demanding to get served anyway

That evening, as the OP recalls, the management allowed them to close early in order to have time to clean everything, and noted that by 7:30pm, they would send someone to help with the cleaning. Around 7pm, a woman came into the store and asked the OP to slice her some meat. The employee politely explained that they were already closed, but the customer objected that she always came at this time and the store was usually open.

Image credits: kdpowpow

The manager told the author to serve the client and gave their helper some additional tasks so they had to close everything once more on their own

The OP said that they had to close early now due to lack of staff, and that they had already cleaned the slicers for the night. The woman left and the OP decided that the situation was settled – but no such luck! After some time, the customer returned with the manager, who demanded that the employee still serve her. None of the arguments worked on that guy and they simply demanded that the OP “just stop being difficult”.

Image credits: Todd Dailey (not the actual photo)

After the customer left, the OP realized that they needed to clean the slicers again and close everything, and went in search of their promised helper. They managed to find him, but that worker told them that he could not help right now because the same manager had loaded him with many additional tasks.

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Image credits: kdpowpow

So now, after a tiring day at work alone, going through an audit, working overtime at the request of the entitled manager, the Original Poster had to, again alone, clean the slicers once more and close the department. No wonder the OP found this completely inappropriate and outrageous. But all they heard from the manager about the situation was just one more demand to “stop being difficult!”

Image credits: kdpowpow

After listening to the employee’s fair reproaches, the manager started threatening to fire them, so they simply decided to quit immediately

Now the OP was even more upset. They went to the manager and said that they were going home in about half an hour. The boss was indignant, claiming that the OP should clean everything, and until they cleaned it, he would not let them go home. Threats of dismissal followed, and the OP, not wanting to work in such a toxic environment anymore, decided that a few more days would not solve anything. As a result, they quit literally on the spot.

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Image credits: kdpowpow

According to the author’s own words, the whole company almost ended up poorly due to such incompetent management

As the OP recalls, this did not lead to anything good for the company. Being completely understaffed, the department failed the audit, and this was followed by several successive layoffs of the rest of the employees. However, according to the author of the post, it is not surprising that with this kind of department management, people literally left one after another – actually, a toxic workplace is definitely not one where you want to work at all.

Image credits: Scott Brenner (not the actual photo)

We’re pretty sure you already have a point of view on this particular story, so please feel free to write it below, and if you’ve ever worked in a similar kind of team, we’d love to hear your own story as it promises to be really exciting.

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