I work for a beverage distribution place in a very ritzy resort area. One client’s assistant shows up and says he needs a pallet of [Bottled Spring Water] for his boss’s house.

No problem. We load it on the truck, drive it up to his house, and unload it.

Me: “Where do you want this, sir?”

He leads us into the garage.

Client: “Can you help unload it?”

We started down-stacking and carrying cases of this expensive spring water into what I thought would be the kitchen or pantry.

Nope. We went straight through the house to the back deck. Oh. Okay, he was going to have a party? You would think so. But no.

He had us set the water down. I went back to get another dolly of packaged water. The assistant and some other household staff are already at work, uncapping individual bottles and dumping them out.

“Where?” you might ask. He was filling his hot tub with [Bottled Spring Water].

I told my boss about this, and he didn’t even bat an eye. It wasn’t even among the top ten contenders for weird things rich people did.

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I work as a QA (Quality Assurance) at a factory that processed potatoes. When something goes wrong in the factory that’s directly tied to quality, such as bad coloring or defects, I as a QA lead have to write a report. These reports are very detailed and extremely time-consuming. When something goes wrong that isn’t directly tied to quality but affects it, such as a machine breaking or foreign material getting in the machines, the lead in charge of the machines is supposed to write the report.

Somehow, all of the reports end up being written by me even though I have my own time-consuming job to do. I have been fighting to not do others’ reports for months, and my boss has told me to remind other leads when a report is needed.

One day, I’m doing my reports plus my data analysis duties, and I hear over the radio that a refrigerator unit has gone out and all the product is coming out as boiled mush instead of frozen, so I call refrigeration.

Me: “You need to do a report on this. I’ll send out an email counting how many pallets of product we lost.”

I send the email and continue on with my day.

Two weeks later, my boss calls me into her office.

Boss: “Why didn’t you write a report on the incident with [refrigerator unit]?”

Me: “You told me to remind the other leads to do it and not write their reports.”

Boss: “If you have time to send an email, you have time to write a report.”

Then, she makes me sign a write-up for failure to do my duties (which I do placidly because she has written up everyone else in my department and has been looking for something to write me up for, so I decide to let her have it and get it out of the way).

A couple of months later, the exact same thing happens. All I do is tell refrigeration over the radio to write a report. I do nothing else, knowing that refrigeration won’t write it. Because there is no report or helpful emails, the product is almost shipped out two months later, but it is caught by one of my QAs, who mentions the incident to [Boss].

[Boss] calls me to her office.

Boss: “This incident is going to cost the company millions in storage fees for the time it was already stored, disposal fees, lost product, and a fine from [Retail Chain] for not meeting our contract. Why didn’t you email me about this?”

Me: “I didn’t have the time, but I did tell refrigeration to write a report.”

She couldn’t write me up for it because I had emails from her telling me how to handle these situations.

A group of us are sent to a remote site for some niche industrial work. We were supposed to be on a rotation where we didn’t work more than three weeks at a time, but the “other” shift never arrived. We were spurred on by promises of bonuses and overtime, but after working over ninety days straight of thirteen-hour shifts and living in a crappy motel a forty-five-minute drive from the worksite, something was going to snap.

Another employee lost focus at the wrong time when he was supposed to wait for a hand signal and didn’t. I fractured my orbital socket in the accident that followed.

It was a close call and could have been a lot worse. I’m glad I “saw it coming” and had time to at least try and get out of the way.

I got sent away after a night in the ER while the rest of that crew continued to work.

After spending two days at home the boss calls.

Boss: “I need you in Alaska.”

Me: “What?”

Boss: “Is it a bad line? I said I need you in Alaska.”

Me: “You’re not going to ask me how I am feeling? Or even apologize?”

Boss: “You’re fine, I read the report. Why would I apologize? I wasn’t even there?”

Me: “Seriously?”

Boss: “Okay so you’re going to Alaska in two days. Your flight is already booked.”

Me: “The h*** I am!”

I quit right on the spot and went straight back to sleep. Best sleep I had in years. I had a new job lined up as soon as I recovered.

This is a long time ago (over thirty years) so there will be some condensing of time and paraphrasing. Early in my career, I worked on a factory floor. We worked a basic assembly line, and it was loud, hot, and not too comfortable, but hey, it’s a factory so it was what it was. What we made in the factory wasn’t important, but there were legal requirements for the parts to be of a certain quality.

Management sat upstairs in their air-conditioned offices and would occasionally rattle out arbitrary work targets to make shareholders happy, without any consultation with factory floor staff to see if the target was feasible, or in some cases, possible. 

I see the factory floor manager coming down from the office with an angry look on his face.

Floor Manager: “Okay, so we have to get 2000 units complete by the end of the month. They have shareholders visiting end of the month and they want to show off.”

Me: “What! That’s impossible!”

Floor Manager: “You think I didn’t say that? But they said 2000 or there would be “consequences.””

Me: “If everyone pulls doubles, we might be able to just make that, but barely.”

Floor Manager: “I also explained that, but they said no overtime would be permitted.”

Me: “Then where are we supposed to just pull all those extra units from? Our a**es?”

Floor Manager: “Well they said if we didn’t do 2000 there would be consequences, but I said if we did deliver 2000, there would also be consequences.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Floor Manager: “I said they could have the units fast, well-made, or cheap, but they can only have two of the three. They’ve gone for fast and cheap.”

Me: “So…”

Floor Manager: “So quality control is out of the window, boys!”

Me: “I hope you got that in writing!”

Floor Manager: *Holds up a piece of signed paper, smiling evilly.* “Yup!”

For the rest of the month, we worked tirelessly to meet the impossible deadline. By the skin of our teeth, we made the quota, but our product was far, faaaaar below the standard required by the law, let alone our own internal quality control.

At the shareholder visit at the end of the month, the management team was proudly boasting about the efficiency of the factory and bigging up the numbers. What they hadn’t intended was that our Floor Manager had used his networking to indicate to a quality inspector what might be going on. The surprise inspection was spectacularly timed to coincide with the shareholder visit.

It was a bloodbath.

Every single one of our units failed the inspection, and this was stated louder and louder with each example. The management was left babbling in front of both the shareholders and the inspectors until they decided they needed a scapegoat.

Management: “[Floor Manager], do you have an explanation for this shoddy workmanship?”

Floor Manager: “I sure do! Remember that work order that you signed at the beginning of the month saying you don’t care about the impact on quality as long as we got 2000 units finished by the end of the month without overtime?”

Management: “Well, of course, we didn’t mean to sacrifice quality by such a degree!”

Floor Manager: “Well here is that very work order stating otherwise, with your signature. Please share this with the shareholders and the inspector for your required explanation.”

Management, shareholders, and the inspector were left in the corner hashing out the details and the “consequences.” I am talking with the floor manager.

Me: “That was a bit much.”

Floor Manager: “I told them there would be consequences.”

Me: “Yes, but did you have to laminate the work order?”

Floor Manager: “That’s me holding back. I almost had it framed!”

By the next month, the entire management team was gone. Heads were rolling and there were legal consequences. Within the year the Floor Manager was in the proper management circle, and we never sacrificed quality to appease distant shareholders ever again.

This story is part of our Even-More-Highest-Voted-Stories-Of-2023-(so far!) roundup!

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I play the part of weld engineer for one of my jobs, as well as filling in as a welder, and have been doing this for better than thirty years. I was on a secured job site over the New Year’s holiday for an emergency repair, and as getting off-site to grab a meal is hard, I dropped half of my fridge into a cooler before leaving the house.

When a meal break came up, I grabbed a skillet-sized scrap of steel, clamped it to a work stand, gave it a quick cleaning with a grinder, and set up a torch under it. My crew was looking at me like the fool that I am, but when I pulled a half-pack of ham and three eggs out of my cooler and dropped them on the “skillet”, they perked up.

A few minutes later, I had a great breakfast, and my crew learned something about resourcefulness.