When The New Boss Is On A Power Strip

Where I work there is a semi-strict dress code that needs to be adhered to so that we look presentable when going to customer’s houses. The minor details are more or less negotiable depending on who’s our manager that day. We have a normal manager we see almost daily, but if he’s off or it’s a weekend someone else subs in.

It’s a Saturday and our regular manager is off so the duty manager for the day happens to be “Mr. Hard-a**” whom no one likes. He has made it his life goal to make all the techs miserable.

When we walk in the door, we have to pass through the manager’s office to get to our meeting area. My coworker walks in the door that was to the manager’s office with everything looking right on his uniform but his shirt untucked.

Mr. Hard-a**: “Your shirt should be tucked in.”

Coworker: “Absolutely, and I will do that when I set my gear down and go to the bathroom.”

Mr. Hard-a**: “No, you need to show up for work ready to work. Not show up and get ready on ‘my time.'”

Coworker: “Okay, let me set my stuff down and I’ll go right to the bathroom and tuck it in for you.”

Mr. Hard-a**: “No. You’re going to tuck it in right now before you walk another step into my building.”

Coworker: “Right now?”

Mr. Hard-a**: “Right now!”

So, my coworker does as instructed, unbuttons his pants and pulls them all the way down to his ankles, and proceeds to smooth out his shirt and then reach all the way down and pull his pants all the way back up and re-buttons them.

He does this whole thing not next to the boss’s desk but within line of sight of the door coming in and the door to the meeting room so there are people who trickle into work behind him who are walking through this entire ordeal.

From there he immediately walked outside and called the HR hotline and told them his manager on duty just forced him to undo his pants and semi-strip in front of him in his personal office and wouldn’t allow him to go to the bathroom to tuck his shirt in, and that he felt weird and uncomfortable to be around Mr. Hard-a** and didn’t know if he had any ulterior motives.

None of us are privy to what exactly happened from that phone call on, but we do know that he got “laterally moved” from being a tech manager to the safety team where he was no longer in charge of any subordinates.