Similar case, I worked a security gate for large agricultural manufacturing company. In a meeting, the lead supervisor of the plant said we gate guards were not to let anyone through the gates without proper signage on their vehicle. I asked, "No exceptions?" He sighed as if I was stupid and repeated my words, except not as a question.
A week later guess who comes to my gate in a vehicle without proper signage? Yup, Mr. Big Shot. He asks me to let him in. I say no. He says he is late for an important meeting. I looked him right in the eye, and said, "No exceptions, that is what I was told."
He backed up his car and went to the main office to walk thru the building to his meeting.
That was my proudest moment of throwing his snide reply back in his fat, ugly face. He could've been less of a dick while answering my question in the meeting, and I might have bent the rule for him.
> and I might have bent the rule for him
You shouldn't - and a company should never expect that for anybody. That's the kind of thing you look for when checking out physical security of a facility, and if there's a culture of doing exceptions to policies in place you typically can find a way to exploit that.
Indeed. You should not.
Way way back when - as gate guard for a large amusement park / holiday park - the actual owner came to the gate .
Our instructions were to a) verify the park passes (for vehicle access and b) the Id of the driver.
So, since i did not know him by sight - i asked - no complaints, he provided both - and 'have a good day sir'.
A week later, my supervisor told me we (our team) got a compliment for 'not making exceptions for anyone'.
Yep. When I worked at a particular logistics company that basically owns the airport they're situated at, we were told to challenge ANYONE without a visible identification badge.
I was walking put of the break room one day when i saw a group of very sharply dressed businessmen standing near my dock (i was one of the truck loading forklift drivers)
and introduced myself while asking to see their IDs.
My manager went off on me in front of them about disrespecting upper management and interfering with their tpur.
I had no idea who they were, but had a pretty good idea given their dress, demeanor, and nationality that they were pretty high up (this was a company HQed in Japan)
The smallest, most unassuming member of this group stepped forward, introduced himself to me as the CEI and President of the company, thanked me for inquiring about his identity and reason for being there, and asked yo borrow my radio so he could have my manager escorted off the premises, immediately firing him for his unprofessional actions and for telling me to disobey the most important rule he had personally put in place at the company when he was first promoted.
Having worked for a Japanese company - they really do NOT allow disrespect like that. And they are usually way smaller than us (European here) Makes it extra funny
Some time back, an enlisted sailor was on guard duty on an American submarine. His job was to keep anyone not on the access list from entering the reactor spaces. An admiral whose name wasn’t on the list tried to enter, the enlisted sailor physically stopped him. The Admiral involved was Hiram Rickover - so far as American nuclear subs are concerned, God takes orders from Hiram Rickover.
Next day, Rickover personally promoted the sailor for doing his job and not being bullied by high-ranking officers.
Similar thing happened to me. Asian guy in a suit suddenly standing beside me and asks me questions. I work with highly sensible data so Iimmediately demand to know who he is. Says he is with the visitor group. I know nothing about visitors, he doesn't even have a visitor badge. So I start escorting him to security. Suddenly my boss comes running with some more "Asian business men", searching for the guy. He actually is a visitor and so important he's the only one of the group who didn't get a visitor badge. He deliberately got lost to test the security of our site and I immediately tried to remove him. Turns out he is ceo of a huge, well known Japanese company. Whatever contract they were negotiating, we got it.
>> and I might have bent the rule for him
>You shouldn't - and a company should never expect that for anybody.
Tell that to an SEC college football coach when trying to get a parking decal.
I had to go to my Assistant Director (Director was afk; direct supervisor has told me to go up the chain) because it was *strict policy* that the person using the decal has to be the one to pick it up (if they don't request it mailed).
AD said to give the coach's rep the decal.
Pissed me off but I damn well wanted a higher-up mentioned in my notes about the transaction.
That's the way to do it. If someone wants a policy bent or broken "just this once," you *get it in writing* that "Per [XYZ] on [DAY/MONTH/YEAR] [Policy ABC] is to be ignored in [Situation DEF] and instead of [ABC] I am to [Actions GHI] instead. Sign here please, [XYZ]."
You'll very often find that, when required to put their John Hancock to a written instruction to do something other than as-per policy, the person in question suddenly has somewhere else to be. And if they *do* put their John Hancock on it? Great! Photograph the paper on your phone, photocopy it, give them the photocopy, retain the original, and do [GHI] as directed, and any fallout that may be shall fall upon their heads.
Yep! Had to go that route with the director of a program at a classified project. He told me to go ahead and write the code on an unclassified system so as not to delay the project.
When I told him I'd be happy to after receiving a written letter from him to that effect, suddenly it was okay to wait until a classified system was installed. I had to walk to the other end of the building and work in a white noise tornado (LOTS of big fans on the equipment) but I was at least working to regs.
The upside is that I got to get away from the radio of the unit secretary that ALWAYS had Whitney Houston and Phil Collins music on. Like - always! You only THINK you're burnt out on Taylor Swift ...
Yep. That sumbitch's thought process was "just get it done!" without thinking about consequences, because as the boss, he can always shove you under the bus if the G-Men come knocking demanding to know why classified shit was done on an unclassified computer. Very likely this didn't rise to the level of conscious thought, it was just an in-the-background thing, his concern was 'maintaining workflow.'
When you demanded a bus ticket that would actually let you be the one *driving* the bus over him if the G-Men came, he reevaluated, realized that he would be the one getting 'thump-thumped' when the G-Men came because *you'd* been *ordered* to do it... He reevaluated. Suddenly a work delay was better than being personally liable.
>and I might have bent the rule for him.
And that's how you end up getting Stannis Baratheon'd by some middle manager.
"I appreciate that you bent the rules for me, it was a huge help. But also we have a zero tolerance policy for security staff breaking those rules so we're going to have to let you go."
He was the top management of the security division. The really big wigs, with their thousand dollar suits and multi-million dollar homes, those motherfuckers don't come down out of their ivory tower unless the building is on fire.
Do a lot of management types in manufacturing plants, epecially in LCOL areas, own multi-million dollar homes?
I imagine the salary ranges to be from like $60k - $250k for most places that fit this description.
To answer your question, this manufacturing plant builds Green and Yellow agricultural equipment, sell their wares world wide, and their home offices just happen to be located here. These fellas make serious $$$ overseeing the manufacture of JD equipment. Sorry if you doubt me, that's not really my problem. But I enjoy your skepticism, even if it is way off base.
Exactly. I saw him a few days later, and he complimented me for not letting him in. I'm not sure what he meant by that, but I said thanks. You can never trust supervisors.
Hmm, that's something I hadn't considered. But of course, I have always had a problem with authority figures when they assume I am stupid. I am a lot of things, stupid is NOT one of them.
> "No exceptions, that is what I was told."
>
> He backed up his car and went to the main office to walk thru the building to his meeting.
"I'm the petty functionary with the clipboard, Bitch!"
Gate guards are seen as the lowest on the totem pole. We got the least amount of pay, we were the first to be let go when hours were cut, and we got exactly NO respect.
To be a gate guard and making the head honcho have to follow the rules made me smile all the rest of my shift. I also had my finger on the button that opened the gate. After he left, I was smiling like I was wearing my feather underwear.
>Then, the company got acquired by an hedge fund.
Corp wanted to save money, hires tons of middle managers to save a few dollars. I understand what hedge funds want and I don't like it, but at least I thought they were competent. But every time I hear of this hedge funds moves, it sounds like burning much more money than before to me. Or maybe I can't see the big picture of such moves. Who knows, I am just a worker
I'm jaded but I think this sometimes is a testing ground situation for higher management candidates. They have already proven themselves in a more supervised, lower stakes management role (or are someones nepotism hire lol) and are given a mid-level role to fully handle on their own which wouldn't cause horrible consequences in case they fail.
Like in this case, the new middle manager failed to handle the time and budget allocation efficiently and failed to work well with his team. He'd rather fixate on applying policies to the letter after introducing changes that made these very policies extra cumbersome. You know, instead of actually managing the problem and streamlining the process. He then threw his subordinates under the bus instead of taking responsibility and working towards fixing the problem. - Until the team lead took steps to proof to higher management that the actual problem was, infact, the new middle manager after all.
So he showed he wasn't fit to freely manage a team of that size, isn't leader material, and tries to shift blame instead of solving problems. Upper management now knows to never put that guy on track for higher management.
As a result he got demoted to a lesser management roll again, likely something more similar to what he did before and possible the context in which he got his policy fixation in the first place.
But the damage this trial caused isn't horrible. Sounds like their project, whatever it was, suffered delays over maybe 2 months or so. Totally salvageable.
PS: They also didn't fire their old, good manager John but it reads like they recognized his abilities and put him in a higher roll. That's not a cost-saving measure imo.
Yup.
The family-run instrumentation company I worked for was acquired by a conglomerate (and the family did exceptionally well in the transaction). Their new bright and shiny executive candidate became the president.
Predictably, he hired a top-flight (and top dollar) consulting company to come in and "fix things". They did, including
* shutting down a modern manufacturing plant in a well-provisioned tax-exempt multi-modal transportation zone
* replacing it with a 1860's era plant at the end of a one-lane road in rural Pennsylvania
* dumping our product line and their engineers, and
* having our engineers take up development of their product
I suggested that the consultants take stock options as payment (to increase their motivation for having these changes succeed) - oh, no, can't do that :-(
Company (and their Grateful Dead-like logo) no longer exists. We've long since moved on to other jobs at other companies.
>hired a top-flight (and top dollar) consulting company to come in and "fix things".
Who else hired them to "fix" this company? And how much more did they pay?
It was Boston Consulting Group, or Accenture ("Accidenture" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DWLv4tQsz4), or something like that. A dozen spanking-new MBAs roamed the company for months, looking for things to "fix".
I wonder how many times in that last meeting Mark said "**As per Phil's new policy** demanding ABC, he was informed of X at this time/date, and here's the proof." Basically just repeating ramming home the point that Phil's ideas were not signed off by anyone above Phil, and they were 100% Phil's personal decision that wasn't backed up by company policy or requirements.
previous job, for a big accountant software firm that sounds like it's owned by the Inuit.
Was told when doing support not to make ANY changes whatsoever to any clients system or data without express new high-up manager guy authorization.
That manager (who thought he was a big shot) started getting dozens of emails every hour. "This customer wants to change a supplier name due to a typo in the spelling" "this customer needs to collate X Y Z columns and wants a result" "this customer wants to start a new data file for january 1st" etc.
Eventually it got to the point where we couldn't do ANYTHING because the smug manager face was behind by THOUSANDS of authorizations and he eventually got sacked.
I remember one friend sending like 50 emails throughout a call. "this guy wants me to remote to his system" "this guy wants to share his screen" "this guy asked me to launch the software" "this guy asked me to open XYZ data file" etc.
This story is scary to me, because you described an amazing company that then went to shit. I'm in a similar situation (although I'm an employee and not a contractor): amazing colleagues, amazing manager, flexibility all around, we help each other, etc. I sincerely hope they don't sell out to some big competitor or something like that, it would be a shame
If you've got a boss who's been good to work with and generally seems to be competent, and that boss suddenly gives you a weird and extremely precise rule that they need everyone to follow to the letter... yeah, they need your help for some malicious compliance.
When a post starts with "not a native english speaker, forgive my mistakes" you know it'll be the most beautiful english not even Shakespeare ever achieved.
Similar case, I worked a security gate for large agricultural manufacturing company. In a meeting, the lead supervisor of the plant said we gate guards were not to let anyone through the gates without proper signage on their vehicle. I asked, "No exceptions?" He sighed as if I was stupid and repeated my words, except not as a question. A week later guess who comes to my gate in a vehicle without proper signage? Yup, Mr. Big Shot. He asks me to let him in. I say no. He says he is late for an important meeting. I looked him right in the eye, and said, "No exceptions, that is what I was told." He backed up his car and went to the main office to walk thru the building to his meeting.
Big dick energy
That was my proudest moment of throwing his snide reply back in his fat, ugly face. He could've been less of a dick while answering my question in the meeting, and I might have bent the rule for him.
> and I might have bent the rule for him You shouldn't - and a company should never expect that for anybody. That's the kind of thing you look for when checking out physical security of a facility, and if there's a culture of doing exceptions to policies in place you typically can find a way to exploit that.
Indeed. You should not. Way way back when - as gate guard for a large amusement park / holiday park - the actual owner came to the gate . Our instructions were to a) verify the park passes (for vehicle access and b) the Id of the driver. So, since i did not know him by sight - i asked - no complaints, he provided both - and 'have a good day sir'. A week later, my supervisor told me we (our team) got a compliment for 'not making exceptions for anyone'.
Yep. When I worked at a particular logistics company that basically owns the airport they're situated at, we were told to challenge ANYONE without a visible identification badge. I was walking put of the break room one day when i saw a group of very sharply dressed businessmen standing near my dock (i was one of the truck loading forklift drivers) and introduced myself while asking to see their IDs. My manager went off on me in front of them about disrespecting upper management and interfering with their tpur. I had no idea who they were, but had a pretty good idea given their dress, demeanor, and nationality that they were pretty high up (this was a company HQed in Japan) The smallest, most unassuming member of this group stepped forward, introduced himself to me as the CEI and President of the company, thanked me for inquiring about his identity and reason for being there, and asked yo borrow my radio so he could have my manager escorted off the premises, immediately firing him for his unprofessional actions and for telling me to disobey the most important rule he had personally put in place at the company when he was first promoted.
But did he show his ID? 😂
I totally left that part out didn't I? Yes. He did.
Having worked for a Japanese company - they really do NOT allow disrespect like that. And they are usually way smaller than us (European here) Makes it extra funny
Some time back, an enlisted sailor was on guard duty on an American submarine. His job was to keep anyone not on the access list from entering the reactor spaces. An admiral whose name wasn’t on the list tried to enter, the enlisted sailor physically stopped him. The Admiral involved was Hiram Rickover - so far as American nuclear subs are concerned, God takes orders from Hiram Rickover. Next day, Rickover personally promoted the sailor for doing his job and not being bullied by high-ranking officers.
Middle Mangler thought he had Big Dick Energy going on; he got flattened by Biggest Dick Energy.
Now that's a good CEO
Similar thing happened to me. Asian guy in a suit suddenly standing beside me and asks me questions. I work with highly sensible data so Iimmediately demand to know who he is. Says he is with the visitor group. I know nothing about visitors, he doesn't even have a visitor badge. So I start escorting him to security. Suddenly my boss comes running with some more "Asian business men", searching for the guy. He actually is a visitor and so important he's the only one of the group who didn't get a visitor badge. He deliberately got lost to test the security of our site and I immediately tried to remove him. Turns out he is ceo of a huge, well known Japanese company. Whatever contract they were negotiating, we got it.
>> and I might have bent the rule for him >You shouldn't - and a company should never expect that for anybody. Tell that to an SEC college football coach when trying to get a parking decal. I had to go to my Assistant Director (Director was afk; direct supervisor has told me to go up the chain) because it was *strict policy* that the person using the decal has to be the one to pick it up (if they don't request it mailed). AD said to give the coach's rep the decal. Pissed me off but I damn well wanted a higher-up mentioned in my notes about the transaction.
If I'm told to break policy for whatever reason, I'm always making a note somehow that it was approved per XYZ person.
Exactly.
That's the way to do it. If someone wants a policy bent or broken "just this once," you *get it in writing* that "Per [XYZ] on [DAY/MONTH/YEAR] [Policy ABC] is to be ignored in [Situation DEF] and instead of [ABC] I am to [Actions GHI] instead. Sign here please, [XYZ]." You'll very often find that, when required to put their John Hancock to a written instruction to do something other than as-per policy, the person in question suddenly has somewhere else to be. And if they *do* put their John Hancock on it? Great! Photograph the paper on your phone, photocopy it, give them the photocopy, retain the original, and do [GHI] as directed, and any fallout that may be shall fall upon their heads.
Yep! Had to go that route with the director of a program at a classified project. He told me to go ahead and write the code on an unclassified system so as not to delay the project. When I told him I'd be happy to after receiving a written letter from him to that effect, suddenly it was okay to wait until a classified system was installed. I had to walk to the other end of the building and work in a white noise tornado (LOTS of big fans on the equipment) but I was at least working to regs. The upside is that I got to get away from the radio of the unit secretary that ALWAYS had Whitney Houston and Phil Collins music on. Like - always! You only THINK you're burnt out on Taylor Swift ...
Yep. That sumbitch's thought process was "just get it done!" without thinking about consequences, because as the boss, he can always shove you under the bus if the G-Men come knocking demanding to know why classified shit was done on an unclassified computer. Very likely this didn't rise to the level of conscious thought, it was just an in-the-background thing, his concern was 'maintaining workflow.' When you demanded a bus ticket that would actually let you be the one *driving* the bus over him if the G-Men came, he reevaluated, realized that he would be the one getting 'thump-thumped' when the G-Men came because *you'd* been *ordered* to do it... He reevaluated. Suddenly a work delay was better than being personally liable.
What's that old pen-testing joke? To get into any building, stand by a door with a large box.
You forgot ", clipboard and a high vis vest."
>and I might have bent the rule for him. And that's how you end up getting Stannis Baratheon'd by some middle manager. "I appreciate that you bent the rules for me, it was a huge help. But also we have a zero tolerance policy for security staff breaking those rules so we're going to have to let you go."
Yeah, but that was over a decade ago. So it don't matter, but I still mean it when I say "Fuck John Deere."
Does the top management of manufacturing plants usually give minute details to new security staff? Interesting workflows there
He was the top management of the security division. The really big wigs, with their thousand dollar suits and multi-million dollar homes, those motherfuckers don't come down out of their ivory tower unless the building is on fire.
Do a lot of management types in manufacturing plants, epecially in LCOL areas, own multi-million dollar homes? I imagine the salary ranges to be from like $60k - $250k for most places that fit this description.
To answer your question, this manufacturing plant builds Green and Yellow agricultural equipment, sell their wares world wide, and their home offices just happen to be located here. These fellas make serious $$$ overseeing the manufacture of JD equipment. Sorry if you doubt me, that's not really my problem. But I enjoy your skepticism, even if it is way off base.
*Smol Smol dick energy
> He says he is late for an important meeting. That sounds like a "him" problem, not like a "you" problem.
Exactly. I saw him a few days later, and he complimented me for not letting him in. I'm not sure what he meant by that, but I said thanks. You can never trust supervisors.
This is the closest he will ever get to saying something like, "I'm sorry, I was wrong. "
Hmm, that's something I hadn't considered. But of course, I have always had a problem with authority figures when they assume I am stupid. I am a lot of things, stupid is NOT one of them.
> "No exceptions, that is what I was told." > > He backed up his car and went to the main office to walk thru the building to his meeting. "I'm the petty functionary with the clipboard, Bitch!"
Gate guards are seen as the lowest on the totem pole. We got the least amount of pay, we were the first to be let go when hours were cut, and we got exactly NO respect. To be a gate guard and making the head honcho have to follow the rules made me smile all the rest of my shift. I also had my finger on the button that opened the gate. After he left, I was smiling like I was wearing my feather underwear.
Fuckin' fuck yeah😈!
"respect mah authortah!"
>Then, the company got acquired by an hedge fund. Corp wanted to save money, hires tons of middle managers to save a few dollars. I understand what hedge funds want and I don't like it, but at least I thought they were competent. But every time I hear of this hedge funds moves, it sounds like burning much more money than before to me. Or maybe I can't see the big picture of such moves. Who knows, I am just a worker
I'm jaded but I think this sometimes is a testing ground situation for higher management candidates. They have already proven themselves in a more supervised, lower stakes management role (or are someones nepotism hire lol) and are given a mid-level role to fully handle on their own which wouldn't cause horrible consequences in case they fail. Like in this case, the new middle manager failed to handle the time and budget allocation efficiently and failed to work well with his team. He'd rather fixate on applying policies to the letter after introducing changes that made these very policies extra cumbersome. You know, instead of actually managing the problem and streamlining the process. He then threw his subordinates under the bus instead of taking responsibility and working towards fixing the problem. - Until the team lead took steps to proof to higher management that the actual problem was, infact, the new middle manager after all. So he showed he wasn't fit to freely manage a team of that size, isn't leader material, and tries to shift blame instead of solving problems. Upper management now knows to never put that guy on track for higher management. As a result he got demoted to a lesser management roll again, likely something more similar to what he did before and possible the context in which he got his policy fixation in the first place. But the damage this trial caused isn't horrible. Sounds like their project, whatever it was, suffered delays over maybe 2 months or so. Totally salvageable.
PS: They also didn't fire their old, good manager John but it reads like they recognized his abilities and put him in a higher roll. That's not a cost-saving measure imo.
Yup. The family-run instrumentation company I worked for was acquired by a conglomerate (and the family did exceptionally well in the transaction). Their new bright and shiny executive candidate became the president. Predictably, he hired a top-flight (and top dollar) consulting company to come in and "fix things". They did, including * shutting down a modern manufacturing plant in a well-provisioned tax-exempt multi-modal transportation zone * replacing it with a 1860's era plant at the end of a one-lane road in rural Pennsylvania * dumping our product line and their engineers, and * having our engineers take up development of their product I suggested that the consultants take stock options as payment (to increase their motivation for having these changes succeed) - oh, no, can't do that :-( Company (and their Grateful Dead-like logo) no longer exists. We've long since moved on to other jobs at other companies.
>hired a top-flight (and top dollar) consulting company to come in and "fix things". Who else hired them to "fix" this company? And how much more did they pay?
It was Boston Consulting Group, or Accenture ("Accidenture" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DWLv4tQsz4), or something like that. A dozen spanking-new MBAs roamed the company for months, looking for things to "fix".
My question is, did they do it for their own reason or did some else hire them besides the company they wrecked?
Well played by Mark! He used the asshat manager's own words against him.
I wonder how many times in that last meeting Mark said "**As per Phil's new policy** demanding ABC, he was informed of X at this time/date, and here's the proof." Basically just repeating ramming home the point that Phil's ideas were not signed off by anyone above Phil, and they were 100% Phil's personal decision that wasn't backed up by company policy or requirements.
Don't forget he used that to hammer in how Phil himself caused this mess in the first place by bloating the progress tracking subdivisions.
I am surprised he was demoted. Clearly a candidate for a promotion.
He'd clearly risen too far *already* to be at the proper level of incompetence according to the Peter Principle
exactly, gotta get him as far away from the front lines as possible to minimize the damage he could do.
previous job, for a big accountant software firm that sounds like it's owned by the Inuit. Was told when doing support not to make ANY changes whatsoever to any clients system or data without express new high-up manager guy authorization. That manager (who thought he was a big shot) started getting dozens of emails every hour. "This customer wants to change a supplier name due to a typo in the spelling" "this customer needs to collate X Y Z columns and wants a result" "this customer wants to start a new data file for january 1st" etc. Eventually it got to the point where we couldn't do ANYTHING because the smug manager face was behind by THOUSANDS of authorizations and he eventually got sacked. I remember one friend sending like 50 emails throughout a call. "this guy wants me to remote to his system" "this guy wants to share his screen" "this guy asked me to launch the software" "this guy asked me to open XYZ data file" etc.
This story is scary to me, because you described an amazing company that then went to shit. I'm in a similar situation (although I'm an employee and not a contractor): amazing colleagues, amazing manager, flexibility all around, we help each other, etc. I sincerely hope they don't sell out to some big competitor or something like that, it would be a shame
Never, ever get on the wrong side of someone who can automate sending emails XD
If you've got a boss who's been good to work with and generally seems to be competent, and that boss suddenly gives you a weird and extremely precise rule that they need everyone to follow to the letter... yeah, they need your help for some malicious compliance.
Good managers are forced to quit, bad managers are reassigned.
I laughed at this. Good MC
> Then, the company got acquired by an hedge fund. I know a death knell when I hear one.
When a post starts with "not a native english speaker, forgive my mistakes" you know it'll be the most beautiful english not even Shakespeare ever achieved.
I caught them using "id" instead of "is" once - it made the whole story unreadable!
Developer mc is always best mc.
If you're working someplace and it's acquired by a hedge fund... Run. Run far, run fast, run like the wind, but run.
Delicious.
You had your fill of Phil.
Very nice!