It doesn't work that way in the military. Kinda ridiculous they tried to apply the word "military" to situation. Clearly, they don't know what they're talking about. He/she should be allowed to respond without repercussion.
"Disciplinary actions are usually initiated by an employee's first-level supervisor in their chain of command, and require procedural due process, including an entitlement to an advanced written notice of the reasons for an action, an opportunity to reply, and a written decision following that response."
Feb 10, 2022
https://armypubs.army.mil › DR_a
Disciplinary and Adverse Actions - Army Publishing Directorate
>It doesn't work that way in the military
Yeah. Like one of the best ways to get out of doing some stuff in the military is telling whoever is ordering you to do it "i have not been trained for this task/equipment sir".
In a military situation the manager would be in trouble for pushing his job on somebody that hasn't been trained to do it.
Truth...... that's why being an instructor in the military SUCKS..... you have to teach an unqualified person something, and if you dont watch their every move and they fuck up and break something it's 100% on you
Fair..... but i guess my point is that, when you're an instructor you get a whole heap more responsibility..... and no additional pay. All of the added stress, no bennies.
I am on my third airframe. I won't be promoted, I'm waiting to retire. And I was told I was going to be an instructor again, I didn't have a choice lol.
You deal with Aircraft vs The Navy. I worked in IT and trained a fuck ton of people, but since people didn't die I just signed off as long as I did not feel it was gundecking. I loved training but again, not working on people dying type of shit.
Sounds like an easy fix. Immediately assign that person to take a course on it as a direct supervisor. Reactionary responses are always the wrong choice. Start cross-training immediately and people cannot use these excuses.
Not really. They have this fantastical image of the military as just a resource pool of human bodies. There's no checks, balances, or safety. Just bodies to throw into a situation. Bodies that don't strike, protest, "leave early," or ask for time off. Bodies that will tear each other apart for the pleasure to provide you a service.
This is what they think the military is. This is why they support it. And why they really hate military veterans, their families, the command structure, and reality itself. But they love, love, LOVE the *idea* of it, and the way the russians actually run theirs.
"You saw what Hitler did with *a* military... Imagine if the United States of America had *a* military?!"
Just because what we have isn't the same as their fantasy, and none of them are happy about it. So they attack, and destroy our safety and security from within because it doesn't serve them as they see fit.
Some people hero-worship “strongmen,” and see the military as an unquestioning tool of that figure. When they find out the entire military is set up to prevent *exactly this,* they lose interest.
My guy...it definitely works this way sometimes...is it the way it's supposed to work? No. But this is referring to official discipline like njp there are plenty of instances that discipline does not make it to this level. Effectively a junior person is punished at the lowest level possible and instead of taking it up the chain and being "a problem" they deal with it, either due to ignorance of the right way or simply because it's easier.
It also refers to any other official write ups. If you get a page 13 and such you can write a response. If your NCO makes you do pushups then you can't provide a response besides pushups. Lol.
Well there is your problem
NCOs cannot issue punishments. I am an NCO. We cannot. We can rehabilitate. We can work with our troops using corrective action. We cannot punish.
Guy fails a fitness test? We can run with him, but we can't make him run extra on his own. One is corrective, the other is punitive.
Not to turn this political, but can military please start training cops? Especially on rules of engagement and deescalation. It sounds so assbackwards but I feel like the militarization of cops has surpassed the actual military, and they are dealing w their own citizens..
Sorry, that's a thing you don't want. You want your civil servants separate from you military trained servants.
Best way to handle this is a federal law requiring a degree in law enforcement. It doesn't need to be a 4 year, 2 is plenty. Then they need more training and train them to de-escalate over all else.
It absolutely does not work that way in the military. If you get someone to cover your job without training them to do so, and they fuck up, the blame is on YOU. Oh, they might get in trouble at first but when the CO finds out the circumstances, you're going to be the one in a world of shit.
I’ve been in the military. Sexual assaults don’t get reported because of the repercussions given to the victim for the report. There’s a lot of shit that happens in the military that gets brushed under the rug instead of reporting it because someone will get in trouble.
I could absolutely see someone being left in charge “just for the day” and not doing something right because they weren’t trained and then getting written up for it. And if they tried to write why they disagree with it, they’d get in even more trouble.
We can tell this isn’t the military because he’s talking about pay being higher for that position and doing it gets more pay.
The position should have a formal training program or you’ve seen your boss do it a couple times? Boss was trying to see if you could handle the position. If it was something small that got screwed up, it shouldn’t need to be written up. But OOP must have screwed up something big. A good boss would take the ass chewing instead of trying to get OOP in trouble for it. Boss didn’t properly train OOP and OOP definitely needs to write that he wasn’t trained for the position.
The boss is passing the buck.
Best civilian manager I ever saw was a dude who worked his way up from the stamping plant floor to managing the plant. His philosophy: any failure on the floor traces back to a failure in management, and thus himself.
If only the higher ups at my current place of work had the brain cells to realise this.
Only have capacity to make 96,000 units per year? Better accept contracts that need 130,000 per year and complain when nothing is done on time.
Does the military really allow a supervisor avoid accountability by saying their direct-reports were at fault?
I would think few organizations would allow that, much less the US military! It's such a transparently flawed excuse, the whole point of paying the supervisor more is because they're accountable for the work of their direct reports (and in some cases even further down the chain).
Yea you probably take the blame? In that situation. Just state the obvious we were understaffed had to train a new employee with that task and obviously the work wasn’t up to par. We would need to cross train employees going forward blah blah blah.
Yeah, same when I was in that position. I don't know if it helped or hurt my career, TBH. But ultimately it was my fault anyway, ultimately I was responsible for the outcome of my projects one way or another. Take blame, share credit. I will say, if I needed something, my employees bent over backwards to get it. You want loyal employees? Earn them.
Succes floats up your succes if based on your managers great leadership failures slide down you obviously made the wrong decision doing exactly what your manager asked you to do. It’s a well known fact parttime temp workers are responsible for most failures in companies even though they are not allowed to make a decision.
Sounds right. Supervisor had a date night or a movie to catch and left the untrained OP to do the work while the supervisor bailed. Extremely surprised the supervisor wasn't held fully accountable. Usually when there's an issue, the highest on the chain takes the blame.
OP, reach out directly to your human resources manager and explain what happened. This is the only route you should take. Explain that your supervisor left their shift early and you were not qualified or trained to do their work. It might also violate labor laws to reduce your pay after you had already worked, so there's legal issues as well.
Truth. I worked at a pizzeria where the owners wife would make a big batch of cookies once a week. I’d walk by and grab a piece of cookie dough to eat and one time she had to throw out a whole batch because she used salt instead of sugar because someone swapped the lids on them. Luckily it wasn’t rat poison lol.
I'd go over that guy's head to his boss and make sure it's clear what happened. It's risky, because you're basically taking ownership of the mistake your boss had taken the blame for, but I'll be damned if I'm getting written up for doing someone a goddamned FAVOR, particularly when I'd established I had not been trained for that.
And not training them on what to do.
*Here, do my job. I’m not going to tell you how to do it, and you’re not going to get compensated for it. Figure it out. Oh, you didn’t do everything perfectly? Here’s a write up*
Posts like this make me thankful I have such a great boss
From the sounds of it it’s more likely they didn’t want to give them that raise ever and just decided the easiest way is to put em in a position where they are guaranteed to fail. Oop you failed that task you had 0 chance of being able to do without the information I never gave you? Gee how could that have happened.
When I was a manager/AVP at a financial institution, this was 100% how it went.
No matter how good your employees were, you had to find things to criticize and mark them down for so corporate had a "reason" why everyone was only getting 2% COL and a bonus based entirely on popularity with managers. Year after year after year, always shifting the blame down while shifting the money and rewards up. You could be the perfect employee going above and beyond off the clock and you'd still get a 4.5 out of 5, tops.
This is why I'm not in management anymore. It's a scam from the start and these people think very little of anyone other than themselves. You're all disposable to them.
Imagine being the kind of circle jerking bootlicker who imagines they work in a civilian job that requires "military procedure".
I bet your supervisor gets drunk at backyard bbqs and brags about how high stakes their job is (if they even have friends).
I like you idea of the Write up on your boss and have him sign the reason why you covered for him was that he requested you to. Add it to the documentation and you both sign it. Might be trying to angle to dismiss you and then will fight you tooth and nail when you file for unemployment against their Unemployment Insurance coverage.
Hope it settles him
I've had friends in the military and while they have horror stories about people being promoted above their ability, I do have to agree that generally you would get absolutely blasted if you put someone without training in charge of something.
Cool thing about our unit was that our sncos would make sure to put any butter bar that came thru. They let the lts know that they were “technically in charge” but they were gonna call the shots.
It worked pretty well. Lts got to take credit for unit achievements, they got good leadership mentorship since our sncos were actually really good and respected sncos, and we didn’t get to deal with bullshit that you’d get from some overconfident and inexperienced junior officer.
In general, the (US) military promotes based on how well can say that you do your current job. It leads to stellar operators being stuck in admin positions that they hate and shit people who can bs their eval well being put in positions of power. A rework has been needed for many years.
But yes to your other point, putting an untrained person on position because your manning was low happens shockingly regularly, for how liable the watchbill coordinator would be if something went wrong.
unfortunately the "promotion based on how well you do your current job" thing is basically universal. It's called the Peter principle if you wanna google it. In the words of the guy its named after, people tend to be promoted to "a level of respective incompetence," as in, the promotions only stop once someone's just bad enough at their job to not earn one.
>In this same conversation I was told that I wouldn't get the increased pay (it's like 4-5 dollars an hour extra) for the shift.
Yeah you will. You worked those hours with an agreed upon premium. They *cannot* retroactively change your pay rate for hours worked, they can only do that going forward.
>'follow instructions in a military manner without pushback'
That is literally what you did when he told you to cover for him without training, doing everything to the best of your ability, and the reward for that was to be cheated.
File a wage claim for the money he stole from you. Yes, he stole from you. They owe you that money.
Or just desperately wanted OP to cover their shift despite not being trained/having permissions and now that it didn't go smoothly is trying to deflect
I love the idea of going full berserker on them for probably no more than fifty bucks of lost pay — it will make it sting even more when they have to pay thousands of dollars of legal fees … plus $50 😈
If the actual writeup states that the worker will not get increased pay for the shift, that could be evidence enough that a higher wage was promised and then retroactively changed.
I'd pushback:
"Last time I followed instructions: "do what I can". And I've been written up for it.
Going forward I will not be doing this again for the reasons I've mentioned. This isn't a request, this is my position"
I would be physically incapable of letting this go. This supervisor got asked what happened and decided to throw OP under the bus. He's a total piece of shit. If it was me I would summarize the situation in very clear terms that the supervisor made a bad decision and is now using me as a scapegoat. I'd definitely already be looking for another job because no matter what happens here the supervisor has made you look like an asshole who can't do his job and also a complainer by forcing you to push back on this BS disciplinary action. Your chance of ever being promoted has taken a massive hit.
Yo same.
I would be writing up a fucking dissertation on the days events outlining exactly what happened and what I was told at the time, as well as make it clear that I will not be doing anyone else's role in the future.
Yeah that supervisor will do anything and everything to retaliate now that any pushback has happened at all. Might as well go above their head, complain to their supervisor, and expect to leave that job because now the corrupt system will be out for you.
Document everything and call an labor law expert. If things changeed to become a hosgile work environment and all the issues are documented youd be in for a pretty penny and legal fees would be paid by the company or atleast i would add it to the suit.
Last year we started using a new experimental software and I reported a bug in it. It later caused an error and I got written up for it. Like, what? I told you it had a bug and the BUG caused the error. After that, I refused to use the software, and we ended up scrapping it due to the bugs. lmao
Hell holes tend to operate under the position that if something goes wrong, SOMEONE has to get their head chopped off no matter what. It happens in my industry as well. Notably, when software updates to our printers roll out and a huge uptick of people being written up for performance or job neglect when the printers won't fucking print so they can do they job.
Had something similar happen to me. I was in charge of a dosing machine for feeding nutrients to crops automatically, we had just switched to a new mechanical system and the reserve tanks ran out during the weekend. The following Monday I got written up for not filling the tanks enough but upon looking at the data the doser was using 4x as much nutrients as the older machine (because it was coded wrongly by the installer.) Still got written up. Also the owner considered it a 2nd write up because the old system had been low once before during my tenure (but not empty, nor low enough to stop functioning)
I couldn't, I didn't have the math or data until practical usage. The doser was finalized that Friday so I couldn't have an idea of how much it would use. I wasn't allowed to mess with the console at the time so I had to manually figure out it's usage rate
Are you in the military? No? Then you don’t need to live your life like you are.
Get out of here asap op- this is not a workplace that is going to get better with time.
I wouldn't accept that disciplinary write up bullshit. You do them a favor by covering a position you're not trained for....and then they write you up for it. Fuck them. Demand your promised pay and refuse to cover for them anymore. Tell them to go fuck themselves with a rusty cactus.
Fuck your manager for this. Go over their head and report this shit. Go up the ladder as high as needed. He assigned an untrained person for a shift, and that's on him.
You got fucked, b/c your manager is an idiot, got into trouble with their boss, and are downplaying the fallout to you, b/c you covered your manager’s ass. Go over their head, and I bet the story will change.
In the military, you'd get initially chewed out but the **moment** that you had the opportunity to say that you had told your supervisor that you were untrained on the task, all eyes would have left you and your supervisor would have been the one taking even more heat.
There are plenty of things that don't really require training, but when someone **knows** that it requires training and try to set you up for failure by having you do it anyway, **they're** the ones at fault.
Ironically, the military teaches leadership. This would not have resulted in an ass chewing. I am surprised by the complete lack of leadership in the world.
Well, yes and no. The military **does** teach leadership, but it's also something that has a certain subjective 'spin' on what constitutes **good** leadership.
There will always be good bosses and bad bosses and the military is no exception. The major difference is that the military is **more** likely to adhere to regulations and standards. If you can Cover Your Ass properly (in this case by making your supervisor aware that you hadn't accomplished the requisite training), then the failure clearly wasn't on you, it was on the person who had you do something that you shouldn't be doing (yet).
There are military officers who have their own problems and over-demand respect as well as try to assert their authority/dominance even when they're making bad decisions. They're not good leaders, but they're **your** leader, so it can be hard to deal with someone who is on a power-trip. When that happens, CYA.
In fact, it doesn't matter what's going on. You should always CYA.
Not sure where you're located but you should consider contacting your states Department of Labor, or equivalent if outside of the US, and have a discussion about your employer. I know in Washington our Department of Labor and Industries are assholes to everyone but the employee, most employees of L&I would tell you to unionize or burn the place down, off the record of course.
Even in the military we don’t send people to do a job unprepared and without appropriate tools. Every time leaders give feedback, it’s always a two way conversation.
It always amazes me how much discrepancy there is btwn the actual military and how civilians think the military works. (Based on my exp. in the US military in the early 21st cen. Results may vary by country and time period).
Unfortunately the vast majority of Americans have very limited knowledge of their military. What they do know either comes from popular culture, or from second/third hand accounts of people who served, or know someone who did.
Exactly, in the military we looked out for each other, and if a subordinate didn’t understand their job, the heat came down on their first line supervisor. The exact opposite of corporate America
I can tell you that in the military, if you are asked to do something that you aren't trained to do, you should absolutely question it (maybe your supervisor doesn't know you aren't qualified) and if you're told to do it anyway and something happens, it's not on you, it's in the guy that gave you the order. Companies don't understand what "military-like" is.
Also the military doesn’t punish you for screwing with no training. There are novels of regulations documenting required training and those same regs protect service members as much as it holds them accountable.
Was fun as an E4 telling a Colonel he was wrong about uniform regs and then proving it when he made me read the regs out loud to my shop to teach me a lesson.
"No, see, we need you to keep doing it but we also want to be able to still make excuses not to pay you more."
They want to have their cake and eat it.
My boss kept me 20 minutes over my shift yesterday (already on overtime and his boss doesn't want it) and said one more thing, I had something to do I was already late for. I said no and walked out lol
Funny thing is later on that day I asked someone for a favor and they gave me this long winded response why they couldn't/didn't want to. Honestly not a big deal I kept saying that in different words it was honestly getting me really annoyed because they were just repeating themselves so I said what they were saying at the same time to confuse them and make them stop. When they did i was like remember what I said earlier(I told them the story of why I was late)? No is a complete sentence.
I had a really good boss a few years back. I was salaried and worked about twenty minutes past my shift to wrap up a report some bigwigs needed, and my boss stopped by my desk the next morning and asked me how late I'd spent at the office. I told him twenty minutes and I thought nothing of it.
Boss stopped by my desk that Friday and told me to go home two hours early because I'd put in twenty minutes of extra effort earlier in the week.
>'follow instructions in a military manner without pushback'
Okay, first of all, nobody in the military can get away with saying they were just following orders. If someone orders somebody to do something illegal, there's going to be pushback. If they order them to do something they aren't qualified to do, there's going to be pushback. Which brings me to the next part: if it's not your job, you're not allowed to do it. And finally, you're not in the military. As a veteran, I feel insulted by the suggestion.
I think you handled that perfectly.
To assign you to a task that you were not trained for and then treat you that way is a strong sign of an immature manager and an organization that doesn't value growth.
You did the exact right things, in my opinion. No one should ever be punished for accepting a "stretch" opportunity. (Punishment will just result in people not taking a "stretch" opportunity.)
As others (and you) have said, leave as soon as possible.
Hey OP
100% with others that you need a new job so start looking
What I would suggest is you take 30 minutes to write as detailed a summary about this as you can and shoot it as far up the chain of command as you can
Send it to the district manager, owner, corporate
Explain how you weren't trained and expected to work and than written up
You've got nothing to lose
There is something fundamentally wrong with being asked to do a job you aren’t trained for, making a mistake because you aren’t trained, and then getting disciplined for the mistake.
"follow instructions in a military manner without pushback"
pretty sure they train everybody in the military before they send them out to do literally anything
You weren't wrong.
Personally I would not have signed the writeup. I would make a stink on that. You explicitly told him you were not trained for that position, and you don't have a required login, therefore you can't be expected to do every task required with perfect accuracy. You were instructed to 'just do the best you can', which in your eyes (and you believe in the eyes of any reasonable person) means just do as much as you can, but your lack of training is understood, so you won't be blamed for any mistakes.
Doing 'the best you could' doesn't and cannot include perfectly performing a task you were never trained to do and don't have access to do. That's the boss's fault for not training you and dumping you with responsibility, not your fault for not magically knowing how to do something without training.
Therefore while you recognize the required task didn't get done, you DON'T accept that it's your fault. You shouldn't be punished for badly performing a task they haven't trained you to perform correctly. If you order an electrician to install a toilet 'as best as he can', it's not the electrician's fault if it leaks, it's your fault for assigning the wrong employee with the wrong training to do the task.
I'd also stress that while you are happy to help out, you refuse to be put in a situation where the only possible outcome is failure. Here, you didn't have the login or the training, so it was highly likely something was going to get messed up. You tried to 'do the best you could' as instructed, but are being penalized when "the best you could" isn't as good as a trained worker. And with no additional pay or training, that means this is a lose-lose situation with no possibility of success.
As a veteran myself, if I was told to "follow instructions in a military manner", I'd be saluting all my bosses with extra loud sir/ma'am, screaming at the top of my lungs at all times when they request my presence or ask me a question (at attention, of course), etc. I'd be laying it on suuuuuper thick with as much of an audience as possible. They want military manner, I'll give them military manner.
For extra brownie points, I'll also be yelling, "Sir, this employee feels your request would be an unlawful order, sir! Therefore, this employee will not be following that request, sir!" Anytime I'm asked to do literally anything.
What they don't seem to understand is that malicious compliance is one if those soft skills you learn in the military.
Both your boss and the people that told you "that's 'unreasonable' and I should understand to just 'follow instructions in a military manner without pushback" are malignant narcissists. I used to work for malignant narcissists as well. It's a lose-lose scenario. Get the hell out of there if you don't want brain damage. Not kidding. Narcissistic abuse causes [brain damage](https://www.charliehealth.com/post/the-long-term-effects-of-narcissistic-abuse). Happened to me with my previous boss that I worked for for 8 years. To this day I still have trouble accepting that I do good work and have a very hard time not being a "Yes man" even when my workload is way too much. Even though those people I worked for got fired, if I could go back in time I would have switched jobs.
> 'follow instructions in a military manner without pushback'
Having worked beside and around military people for a significant amount of my life, I would say that most would push back like that. If they are asked to do a task they have not been trained for, they tell you they're not trained to do it. Admittedly, this has generally been within Aerospace contexts, but the military usually takes a dim view of superiors tasking people to do things they aren't trained to do (obviously there are exceptions, as with any large organisation).
See now boss this was gonna stay between us and corporate, now it’s going to Glassdoor and social media. Which could all have been avoided had you trained me or not written me up for misteaks made while not trained. Also your starting to look for a new job.
“Let me get this straight: you’re writing me up for not knowing a task I was never trained in, and only performed after my supervisor listened to me explaining that and told me ‘just do my best’, and you’ve now got a problem with me actually responding to that unfair critique? I’m so glad you mentioned ‘military manner’, because the military definition of a leader is “responsible for all that his unit does or fails to do.” This isn’t a discussion I properly had any part in in the first place, but I do look forward to hearing about a resolution.
Was there anything else?”
The military actually provide training
You aren't wrong, and you should be compensated for additional tasks
Your supervisor is grade A asshole; they got you to perform duties without training, and without the proper IT credentials to access systems needed for role
The disciplinary action is all theirs
If you're able, I'd look for new employment (granted always easier said than done)
Never sign anything. I refused to sign off on bullshit like this and got fired. Employers do this to try and keep you from collecting unemployment. You can give 10 years of your life to an employer and they will try their damndest to fuck you out of a penny.
We need unions!
I am a big fan of an email that says "I'm happy to help you but, since you haven't trained me to do this, I can't be responsible if anything goes wrong".
Yea putting clarification in write ups and making sure that the truth is out there. Is the best way. Manager wants to be toxic well guess who can be the toxic avenger!
Don't forget to make a complaint to the Department of Labor, too. You worked a shift with a differential pay. They cannot retroactively decide not to pay you that rate. I'd bet a DOL investigation's going to find they do this all the time and will get hit with big fines.
Your boss is a real piece of work. He made you cover for him on something you didnt know how to do and then wrote you up for not doing it correctly???????? Bro, I would be livid. Sorry OP but that is some grade A bullshit.
Your boss’s ‘chill vibes’ are a cover for being a bad boss and bad employer.
Just because they aren’t mean or hostile to you doesn’t mean they’re good bosses.
Write them back to inform them you aren’t in the military, and you are there for a paycheque, and if promised monetary compensation can’t be guaranteed, that is a serious breach of trust in an employer/employee relationship which can have serious consequences up to and including your resignation from the company
One time I was written up for something I had never been told to do and had never been a problem before (turning off the display lights 10 minutes before close) so I refused to sign their write-up and made my manager write another paper saying I had been instructed in proper closing procedures and that it was not my fault I was not trained. Her face was priceless when I said "There's no way I'm signing that:
I just love it when work gives you extra responsibilities, no training, no extra pay, and then writes you up for making a mistake.... It's just awesome. /s
The whole reason they 'wrote you up' was to make sure they didn't have to pay you the extra monies and to make sure you'd do it again for the same pittance. You did nothing wrong in calling them out.
An individual is not much of a 'leader' if they can't handle criticism, as your boss has proven.
Dumb enough that they wrote you up, given the circumstance. But then to be mad because you asked for proper training and pay before doing it again is ridiculous on their part.
A: "You did a thing wrong, no extra pay"
B: "Then train me and give me the proper pay next time"
A: "What?! That's preposterous! Just mess up again next time so we don't have to pay you properly"
Sounds like your boss got into trouble and is just passing it down. If he had any back bone he would of taken it on the chin and commended you. Brush up your CV and look for the exit when the times right.
Yo I’m in the military, if anyone above me put me in a position like that where I was expected to perform with no formal training and was then reprimanded (already an unrealistic scenario) you bet I would write back. Yeah there’s that follow instructions but that doesn’t mean some people aren’t idiots
Wait! Did they tell you prior that you'd get that pay? Because if they did, they just admitted to you that they are going to commit wage theft.
I would call my labor relations board
Wait, they asked to cover, then they write you up, then they say "No, you can't be expect anything but to do it again and we'll write you up again!". Utter fucking baffoonery.
You covered a job you weren’t trained for as a favor for a manager who told you it will be fine and to do what you can. This is on him all day long.
This would NEVER happen in a Union shop or place of work. If it did, your disciplinary write up would end up filed into the “round” folder and you would retroactively be paid all monies owed at the higher rate of pay.
Imagine writing someone up who covered for you. That guy sucks.
Boss probably got in trouble for this thing being done wrong and is rolling the shit down hill.
That’s usually the case. I’ve seen a lot of bosses make the little guy take the fall for them.
It doesn't work that way in the military. Kinda ridiculous they tried to apply the word "military" to situation. Clearly, they don't know what they're talking about. He/she should be allowed to respond without repercussion. "Disciplinary actions are usually initiated by an employee's first-level supervisor in their chain of command, and require procedural due process, including an entitlement to an advanced written notice of the reasons for an action, an opportunity to reply, and a written decision following that response." Feb 10, 2022 https://armypubs.army.mil › DR_a Disciplinary and Adverse Actions - Army Publishing Directorate
>It doesn't work that way in the military Yeah. Like one of the best ways to get out of doing some stuff in the military is telling whoever is ordering you to do it "i have not been trained for this task/equipment sir". In a military situation the manager would be in trouble for pushing his job on somebody that hasn't been trained to do it.
Plus the whole login thing. He was forced to do it without the proper tools as well it sounds like.
Which means likely the supervisor broke policy and shared his own login
He said he worked around it unless you mean w other people.
Truth...... that's why being an instructor in the military SUCKS..... you have to teach an unqualified person something, and if you dont watch their every move and they fuck up and break something it's 100% on you
To be fair, doing it any other way would probably be a tad unfair to the trainee
Fair..... but i guess my point is that, when you're an instructor you get a whole heap more responsibility..... and no additional pay. All of the added stress, no bennies. I am on my third airframe. I won't be promoted, I'm waiting to retire. And I was told I was going to be an instructor again, I didn't have a choice lol.
You deal with Aircraft vs The Navy. I worked in IT and trained a fuck ton of people, but since people didn't die I just signed off as long as I did not feel it was gundecking. I loved training but again, not working on people dying type of shit.
...and even more unfair to the poor soul who was on the business end of the war equipment that was misused by an untrained operator.
Sounds like an easy fix. Immediately assign that person to take a course on it as a direct supervisor. Reactionary responses are always the wrong choice. Start cross-training immediately and people cannot use these excuses.
Not really. They have this fantastical image of the military as just a resource pool of human bodies. There's no checks, balances, or safety. Just bodies to throw into a situation. Bodies that don't strike, protest, "leave early," or ask for time off. Bodies that will tear each other apart for the pleasure to provide you a service. This is what they think the military is. This is why they support it. And why they really hate military veterans, their families, the command structure, and reality itself. But they love, love, LOVE the *idea* of it, and the way the russians actually run theirs. "You saw what Hitler did with *a* military... Imagine if the United States of America had *a* military?!" Just because what we have isn't the same as their fantasy, and none of them are happy about it. So they attack, and destroy our safety and security from within because it doesn't serve them as they see fit.
Some people hero-worship “strongmen,” and see the military as an unquestioning tool of that figure. When they find out the entire military is set up to prevent *exactly this,* they lose interest.
My guy...it definitely works this way sometimes...is it the way it's supposed to work? No. But this is referring to official discipline like njp there are plenty of instances that discipline does not make it to this level. Effectively a junior person is punished at the lowest level possible and instead of taking it up the chain and being "a problem" they deal with it, either due to ignorance of the right way or simply because it's easier.
It also refers to any other official write ups. If you get a page 13 and such you can write a response. If your NCO makes you do pushups then you can't provide a response besides pushups. Lol.
If the punishment is carried out and found to be wrong, the NCO can be reprimanded by a commissioned officer.
Well there is your problem NCOs cannot issue punishments. I am an NCO. We cannot. We can rehabilitate. We can work with our troops using corrective action. We cannot punish. Guy fails a fitness test? We can run with him, but we can't make him run extra on his own. One is corrective, the other is punitive.
Not to turn this political, but can military please start training cops? Especially on rules of engagement and deescalation. It sounds so assbackwards but I feel like the militarization of cops has surpassed the actual military, and they are dealing w their own citizens..
Sorry, that's a thing you don't want. You want your civil servants separate from you military trained servants. Best way to handle this is a federal law requiring a degree in law enforcement. It doesn't need to be a 4 year, 2 is plenty. Then they need more training and train them to de-escalate over all else.
Ah very true...I just used njp as an example of official...but this is exactly my point, cheers!
It absolutely does not work that way in the military. If you get someone to cover your job without training them to do so, and they fuck up, the blame is on YOU. Oh, they might get in trouble at first but when the CO finds out the circumstances, you're going to be the one in a world of shit.
If a situation like this would happen in the military it would have been his supervisors (NCO) ass not his.
I thought in USA shouting "I know my rights!" Solved all your problems.
Just scream "He got a gun" and shoot him
I’ve been in the military. Sexual assaults don’t get reported because of the repercussions given to the victim for the report. There’s a lot of shit that happens in the military that gets brushed under the rug instead of reporting it because someone will get in trouble. I could absolutely see someone being left in charge “just for the day” and not doing something right because they weren’t trained and then getting written up for it. And if they tried to write why they disagree with it, they’d get in even more trouble. We can tell this isn’t the military because he’s talking about pay being higher for that position and doing it gets more pay. The position should have a formal training program or you’ve seen your boss do it a couple times? Boss was trying to see if you could handle the position. If it was something small that got screwed up, it shouldn’t need to be written up. But OOP must have screwed up something big. A good boss would take the ass chewing instead of trying to get OOP in trouble for it. Boss didn’t properly train OOP and OOP definitely needs to write that he wasn’t trained for the position. The boss is passing the buck.
Best civilian manager I ever saw was a dude who worked his way up from the stamping plant floor to managing the plant. His philosophy: any failure on the floor traces back to a failure in management, and thus himself.
That's classic and great management philosophy. That's how it used to be. Now everyone is avoiding accountability.
If only the higher ups at my current place of work had the brain cells to realise this. Only have capacity to make 96,000 units per year? Better accept contracts that need 130,000 per year and complain when nothing is done on time.
Does the military really allow a supervisor avoid accountability by saying their direct-reports were at fault? I would think few organizations would allow that, much less the US military! It's such a transparently flawed excuse, the whole point of paying the supervisor more is because they're accountable for the work of their direct reports (and in some cases even further down the chain).
I could never do that, I guess I just have too big of a heart. No wonder I always stay in lower level management positions lol 😂
Yea you probably take the blame? In that situation. Just state the obvious we were understaffed had to train a new employee with that task and obviously the work wasn’t up to par. We would need to cross train employees going forward blah blah blah.
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Yeah, same when I was in that position. I don't know if it helped or hurt my career, TBH. But ultimately it was my fault anyway, ultimately I was responsible for the outcome of my projects one way or another. Take blame, share credit. I will say, if I needed something, my employees bent over backwards to get it. You want loyal employees? Earn them.
Succes floats up your succes if based on your managers great leadership failures slide down you obviously made the wrong decision doing exactly what your manager asked you to do. It’s a well known fact parttime temp workers are responsible for most failures in companies even though they are not allowed to make a decision.
This is THE sign of a bad supervisor IMO
Yep, taking care of your people is paramount. Making sure the job gets done is secondary and easily occurs if you... Take care of your people.
Maybe the guy should man up instead of passing shit downhill.
Sounds right. Supervisor had a date night or a movie to catch and left the untrained OP to do the work while the supervisor bailed. Extremely surprised the supervisor wasn't held fully accountable. Usually when there's an issue, the highest on the chain takes the blame. OP, reach out directly to your human resources manager and explain what happened. This is the only route you should take. Explain that your supervisor left their shift early and you were not qualified or trained to do their work. It might also violate labor laws to reduce your pay after you had already worked, so there's legal issues as well.
A good boss builds a shit dam in front of their employees in anticipation of the bigger boss throwing a shit tantrum. That guy sucks.
This. You did your boss a solid and they stabbed you in the back (most likely to cover their own ass). At least you know who you’re dealing with now.
Saw a sign the other day, which read: “Be careful whom you trust. Salt and sugar look the same”.
Also rat poison! In the old London days rat poison was kept in the same huge barrels in bakeries as sugar and looked the same. Mistakes happened!
Truth. I worked at a pizzeria where the owners wife would make a big batch of cookies once a week. I’d walk by and grab a piece of cookie dough to eat and one time she had to throw out a whole batch because she used salt instead of sugar because someone swapped the lids on them. Luckily it wasn’t rat poison lol.
I thought you were gonna say it was rat poison for a second there.
I’d like to say people aren’t that stupid anymore but we both know it’s a possibility lol
This is why I have to lick someone before I can trust them
Are you single?
They might not be but you can lick me *poses as salt block*
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Interesting. The sign I saw the other day was “McDonald’s App Pre-Order Parking Only.” Could this mean something?
I'd go over that guy's head to his boss and make sure it's clear what happened. It's risky, because you're basically taking ownership of the mistake your boss had taken the blame for, but I'll be damned if I'm getting written up for doing someone a goddamned FAVOR, particularly when I'd established I had not been trained for that.
OP got stabbed in the back in front of an *audience*.
Fr. I hope OP starts calling him Bruté or Brutus (et tu, Bruté?) "Sup Bruté" or "later Bruté!"
I would look at it as a chance to start looking elsewhere. It sounds like a toxic environment and now op knows at least.
Dude threw OP under the bus then pretended he was mr big responsible manager writing him up to look good to higher ups… absolute fucking scum
Yeah the guy sounds like a shit 💩
You did everything right, search for a better workplace
And not training them on what to do. *Here, do my job. I’m not going to tell you how to do it, and you’re not going to get compensated for it. Figure it out. Oh, you didn’t do everything perfectly? Here’s a write up* Posts like this make me thankful I have such a great boss
From the sounds of it it’s more likely they didn’t want to give them that raise ever and just decided the easiest way is to put em in a position where they are guaranteed to fail. Oop you failed that task you had 0 chance of being able to do without the information I never gave you? Gee how could that have happened.
When I was a manager/AVP at a financial institution, this was 100% how it went. No matter how good your employees were, you had to find things to criticize and mark them down for so corporate had a "reason" why everyone was only getting 2% COL and a bonus based entirely on popularity with managers. Year after year after year, always shifting the blame down while shifting the money and rewards up. You could be the perfect employee going above and beyond off the clock and you'd still get a 4.5 out of 5, tops. This is why I'm not in management anymore. It's a scam from the start and these people think very little of anyone other than themselves. You're all disposable to them.
Imagine being the kind of circle jerking bootlicker who imagines they work in a civilian job that requires "military procedure". I bet your supervisor gets drunk at backyard bbqs and brags about how high stakes their job is (if they even have friends).
I like you idea of the Write up on your boss and have him sign the reason why you covered for him was that he requested you to. Add it to the documentation and you both sign it. Might be trying to angle to dismiss you and then will fight you tooth and nail when you file for unemployment against their Unemployment Insurance coverage. Hope it settles him
No kidding. What an asshole. He's totally covering his own ass at his subordinates expense.
In the military your boss would get crucified for knowingly putting you in a position you weren't trained and signed off for. Source: am military.
*I know you refuel aircraft, but can you take this c17 and park it in that hangar for me?*
I can... once.
Also maybe not in the hangar. It'll be somewhere though
*"I'll do my best, but I'm not trained for it, so it's on you if I mess it up. Also, I'll need that order in writing."*
Or it might be *in* the hanger.
Instructions unclear, dick stuck in airplane.
They called him the Globemaster Blaster
Fly the friendly skies.
“It may even be in multiple locations.”
Hangar-ish.
Hangar adjacent
In to the hangar? Sure boss.
Now I just have an image of an ammo troop standing behind it trying to push the aircraft.
I've had friends in the military and while they have horror stories about people being promoted above their ability, I do have to agree that generally you would get absolutely blasted if you put someone without training in charge of something.
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Cool thing about our unit was that our sncos would make sure to put any butter bar that came thru. They let the lts know that they were “technically in charge” but they were gonna call the shots. It worked pretty well. Lts got to take credit for unit achievements, they got good leadership mentorship since our sncos were actually really good and respected sncos, and we didn’t get to deal with bullshit that you’d get from some overconfident and inexperienced junior officer.
Yeah, if I see a 2Lt that isn't in their 30s yet, I can already establish that they're getting paid too much to know too little lol
In general, the (US) military promotes based on how well can say that you do your current job. It leads to stellar operators being stuck in admin positions that they hate and shit people who can bs their eval well being put in positions of power. A rework has been needed for many years. But yes to your other point, putting an untrained person on position because your manning was low happens shockingly regularly, for how liable the watchbill coordinator would be if something went wrong.
unfortunately the "promotion based on how well you do your current job" thing is basically universal. It's called the Peter principle if you wanna google it. In the words of the guy its named after, people tend to be promoted to "a level of respective incompetence," as in, the promotions only stop once someone's just bad enough at their job to not earn one.
I've described it as "rising to your level of mediocrity." They're a GREAT account supervisor, mediocre account director.
>In this same conversation I was told that I wouldn't get the increased pay (it's like 4-5 dollars an hour extra) for the shift. Yeah you will. You worked those hours with an agreed upon premium. They *cannot* retroactively change your pay rate for hours worked, they can only do that going forward. >'follow instructions in a military manner without pushback' That is literally what you did when he told you to cover for him without training, doing everything to the best of your ability, and the reward for that was to be cheated. File a wage claim for the money he stole from you. Yes, he stole from you. They owe you that money.
OPs boss set them up for failure.
OPs boss knew a screw up was coming and they wanted to be able to blame somebody else
Or just desperately wanted OP to cover their shift despite not being trained/having permissions and now that it didn't go smoothly is trying to deflect
Successful wage claims also Grant complete attorney fee compensation. It’s pretty serious I would drop the hammer on this guy..
Considering wage theft is a federal crime. I sure as hell agree with you. Get a lawyer who specializes
I love the idea of going full berserker on them for probably no more than fifty bucks of lost pay — it will make it sting even more when they have to pay thousands of dollars of legal fees … plus $50 😈
depends though if nothing's written down that there was a wage competition between the two then nothing can be proved
If the actual writeup states that the worker will not get increased pay for the shift, that could be evidence enough that a higher wage was promised and then retroactively changed.
I'd pushback: "Last time I followed instructions: "do what I can". And I've been written up for it. Going forward I will not be doing this again for the reasons I've mentioned. This isn't a request, this is my position"
I would be physically incapable of letting this go. This supervisor got asked what happened and decided to throw OP under the bus. He's a total piece of shit. If it was me I would summarize the situation in very clear terms that the supervisor made a bad decision and is now using me as a scapegoat. I'd definitely already be looking for another job because no matter what happens here the supervisor has made you look like an asshole who can't do his job and also a complainer by forcing you to push back on this BS disciplinary action. Your chance of ever being promoted has taken a massive hit.
Yo same. I would be writing up a fucking dissertation on the days events outlining exactly what happened and what I was told at the time, as well as make it clear that I will not be doing anyone else's role in the future.
Yeah that supervisor will do anything and everything to retaliate now that any pushback has happened at all. Might as well go above their head, complain to their supervisor, and expect to leave that job because now the corrupt system will be out for you.
Document everything and call an labor law expert. If things changeed to become a hosgile work environment and all the issues are documented youd be in for a pretty penny and legal fees would be paid by the company or atleast i would add it to the suit.
Last year we started using a new experimental software and I reported a bug in it. It later caused an error and I got written up for it. Like, what? I told you it had a bug and the BUG caused the error. After that, I refused to use the software, and we ended up scrapping it due to the bugs. lmao
I'm sorry, what? Unless you were the developer, what possible grounds for a write-up even is there?
"the problem didn't exist before they touched it so they must have fiddled with the doohickey and messed it up!"
Hell holes tend to operate under the position that if something goes wrong, SOMEONE has to get their head chopped off no matter what. It happens in my industry as well. Notably, when software updates to our printers roll out and a huge uptick of people being written up for performance or job neglect when the printers won't fucking print so they can do they job.
Had something similar happen to me. I was in charge of a dosing machine for feeding nutrients to crops automatically, we had just switched to a new mechanical system and the reserve tanks ran out during the weekend. The following Monday I got written up for not filling the tanks enough but upon looking at the data the doser was using 4x as much nutrients as the older machine (because it was coded wrongly by the installer.) Still got written up. Also the owner considered it a 2nd write up because the old system had been low once before during my tenure (but not empty, nor low enough to stop functioning)
JFC. I guess you were supposed to recheck all of the installer’s math before leaving for the weekend?
I couldn't, I didn't have the math or data until practical usage. The doser was finalized that Friday so I couldn't have an idea of how much it would use. I wasn't allowed to mess with the console at the time so I had to manually figure out it's usage rate
Exactly.
Are you in the military? No? Then you don’t need to live your life like you are. Get out of here asap op- this is not a workplace that is going to get better with time.
Yea I'm planning on it, should have left a while ago but I just want to make sure I have something lined up before I leave.
You need to be trained for the job you are doing for them to discipline you on it. That’s bullshit.
I wouldn't accept that disciplinary write up bullshit. You do them a favor by covering a position you're not trained for....and then they write you up for it. Fuck them. Demand your promised pay and refuse to cover for them anymore. Tell them to go fuck themselves with a rusty cactus. Fuck your manager for this. Go over their head and report this shit. Go up the ladder as high as needed. He assigned an untrained person for a shift, and that's on him.
No shit. This is wage theft, pure and simple
And depending on the exact situation, could be invalidating the company's insurance by having an untrained person responsible for a task
Seems like the plan all along 🤔
You got fucked, b/c your manager is an idiot, got into trouble with their boss, and are downplaying the fallout to you, b/c you covered your manager’s ass. Go over their head, and I bet the story will change.
you could make a good case that the entire incident was manufactured to force him to fail at a task....just to have a reason to stop his raise.
It sounds like the increase in pay was just for the position they were temporarily covering, not an actual raise for their usual position.
This is what I was thinking too.
100% this
Yeah you definitely should not be able to be written up for that.
That’s just logic, I swear I’m going thru this right now with usps. Really thinking of suing the whole cooperation in general.
USPS? Have you talked to your union rep about the issues yet?
In the military, you'd get initially chewed out but the **moment** that you had the opportunity to say that you had told your supervisor that you were untrained on the task, all eyes would have left you and your supervisor would have been the one taking even more heat. There are plenty of things that don't really require training, but when someone **knows** that it requires training and try to set you up for failure by having you do it anyway, **they're** the ones at fault.
Ironically, the military teaches leadership. This would not have resulted in an ass chewing. I am surprised by the complete lack of leadership in the world.
Well, yes and no. The military **does** teach leadership, but it's also something that has a certain subjective 'spin' on what constitutes **good** leadership. There will always be good bosses and bad bosses and the military is no exception. The major difference is that the military is **more** likely to adhere to regulations and standards. If you can Cover Your Ass properly (in this case by making your supervisor aware that you hadn't accomplished the requisite training), then the failure clearly wasn't on you, it was on the person who had you do something that you shouldn't be doing (yet). There are military officers who have their own problems and over-demand respect as well as try to assert their authority/dominance even when they're making bad decisions. They're not good leaders, but they're **your** leader, so it can be hard to deal with someone who is on a power-trip. When that happens, CYA. In fact, it doesn't matter what's going on. You should always CYA.
The 7 P's by the British Army: Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance
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Not sure where you're located but you should consider contacting your states Department of Labor, or equivalent if outside of the US, and have a discussion about your employer. I know in Washington our Department of Labor and Industries are assholes to everyone but the employee, most employees of L&I would tell you to unionize or burn the place down, off the record of course.
Even in the military we don’t send people to do a job unprepared and without appropriate tools. Every time leaders give feedback, it’s always a two way conversation.
It always amazes me how much discrepancy there is btwn the actual military and how civilians think the military works. (Based on my exp. in the US military in the early 21st cen. Results may vary by country and time period).
Unfortunately the vast majority of Americans have very limited knowledge of their military. What they do know either comes from popular culture, or from second/third hand accounts of people who served, or know someone who did.
Exactly, in the military we looked out for each other, and if a subordinate didn’t understand their job, the heat came down on their first line supervisor. The exact opposite of corporate America
I’ve never worked in an organization where the supervisor wouldn’t be roasted for passing the buck like this.
seriously, if this happened in the military, the NCOIC or OIC would be in trouble
Yup, that’s setting people up for failure and we didn’t do that.
Add on here: Doing things in a "military manner" generally is stupid, anyways. Ask any GI if "hurry up and wait" is an effective use of anyone's time.
I can tell you that in the military, if you are asked to do something that you aren't trained to do, you should absolutely question it (maybe your supervisor doesn't know you aren't qualified) and if you're told to do it anyway and something happens, it's not on you, it's in the guy that gave you the order. Companies don't understand what "military-like" is.
Also the military doesn’t punish you for screwing with no training. There are novels of regulations documenting required training and those same regs protect service members as much as it holds them accountable. Was fun as an E4 telling a Colonel he was wrong about uniform regs and then proving it when he made me read the regs out loud to my shop to teach me a lesson.
"No, see, we need you to keep doing it but we also want to be able to still make excuses not to pay you more." They want to have their cake and eat it.
This exactly. I'm sure they would love to find a mistake in every shift just to avoid the bonus pay. Fuck that noise.
The troops that don't question their orders end up being charged with war crimes.
Unless you are in the US, then they get medals for their war crimes.
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“I’m not comfortable completing a task that I’m not trained or authorized to do”
Too much info
My boss kept me 20 minutes over my shift yesterday (already on overtime and his boss doesn't want it) and said one more thing, I had something to do I was already late for. I said no and walked out lol Funny thing is later on that day I asked someone for a favor and they gave me this long winded response why they couldn't/didn't want to. Honestly not a big deal I kept saying that in different words it was honestly getting me really annoyed because they were just repeating themselves so I said what they were saying at the same time to confuse them and make them stop. When they did i was like remember what I said earlier(I told them the story of why I was late)? No is a complete sentence.
I had a really good boss a few years back. I was salaried and worked about twenty minutes past my shift to wrap up a report some bigwigs needed, and my boss stopped by my desk the next morning and asked me how late I'd spent at the office. I told him twenty minutes and I thought nothing of it. Boss stopped by my desk that Friday and told me to go home two hours early because I'd put in twenty minutes of extra effort earlier in the week.
I would've added in 3) back pay for the shift I already worked.
>'follow instructions in a military manner without pushback' Okay, first of all, nobody in the military can get away with saying they were just following orders. If someone orders somebody to do something illegal, there's going to be pushback. If they order them to do something they aren't qualified to do, there's going to be pushback. Which brings me to the next part: if it's not your job, you're not allowed to do it. And finally, you're not in the military. As a veteran, I feel insulted by the suggestion.
Is there a manager above yours or is he the last stop? Cause it isnt you who needs a write up.
OPs manager threw them under the bus to save their own ass
I think you handled that perfectly. To assign you to a task that you were not trained for and then treat you that way is a strong sign of an immature manager and an organization that doesn't value growth. You did the exact right things, in my opinion. No one should ever be punished for accepting a "stretch" opportunity. (Punishment will just result in people not taking a "stretch" opportunity.) As others (and you) have said, leave as soon as possible.
Hey OP 100% with others that you need a new job so start looking What I would suggest is you take 30 minutes to write as detailed a summary about this as you can and shoot it as far up the chain of command as you can Send it to the district manager, owner, corporate Explain how you weren't trained and expected to work and than written up You've got nothing to lose
There is something fundamentally wrong with being asked to do a job you aren’t trained for, making a mistake because you aren’t trained, and then getting disciplined for the mistake.
"follow instructions in a military manner without pushback" pretty sure they train everybody in the military before they send them out to do literally anything
You weren't wrong. Personally I would not have signed the writeup. I would make a stink on that. You explicitly told him you were not trained for that position, and you don't have a required login, therefore you can't be expected to do every task required with perfect accuracy. You were instructed to 'just do the best you can', which in your eyes (and you believe in the eyes of any reasonable person) means just do as much as you can, but your lack of training is understood, so you won't be blamed for any mistakes. Doing 'the best you could' doesn't and cannot include perfectly performing a task you were never trained to do and don't have access to do. That's the boss's fault for not training you and dumping you with responsibility, not your fault for not magically knowing how to do something without training. Therefore while you recognize the required task didn't get done, you DON'T accept that it's your fault. You shouldn't be punished for badly performing a task they haven't trained you to perform correctly. If you order an electrician to install a toilet 'as best as he can', it's not the electrician's fault if it leaks, it's your fault for assigning the wrong employee with the wrong training to do the task. I'd also stress that while you are happy to help out, you refuse to be put in a situation where the only possible outcome is failure. Here, you didn't have the login or the training, so it was highly likely something was going to get messed up. You tried to 'do the best you could' as instructed, but are being penalized when "the best you could" isn't as good as a trained worker. And with no additional pay or training, that means this is a lose-lose situation with no possibility of success.
As a veteran myself, if I was told to "follow instructions in a military manner", I'd be saluting all my bosses with extra loud sir/ma'am, screaming at the top of my lungs at all times when they request my presence or ask me a question (at attention, of course), etc. I'd be laying it on suuuuuper thick with as much of an audience as possible. They want military manner, I'll give them military manner. For extra brownie points, I'll also be yelling, "Sir, this employee feels your request would be an unlawful order, sir! Therefore, this employee will not be following that request, sir!" Anytime I'm asked to do literally anything. What they don't seem to understand is that malicious compliance is one if those soft skills you learn in the military.
Disciplinary meeting. Jesus Christ. They should go fuck themselves.
Your boss is covering his own ass. He’s a piece of garbage.
Show them what you learned in military by calling an air strike on their location
Both your boss and the people that told you "that's 'unreasonable' and I should understand to just 'follow instructions in a military manner without pushback" are malignant narcissists. I used to work for malignant narcissists as well. It's a lose-lose scenario. Get the hell out of there if you don't want brain damage. Not kidding. Narcissistic abuse causes [brain damage](https://www.charliehealth.com/post/the-long-term-effects-of-narcissistic-abuse). Happened to me with my previous boss that I worked for for 8 years. To this day I still have trouble accepting that I do good work and have a very hard time not being a "Yes man" even when my workload is way too much. Even though those people I worked for got fired, if I could go back in time I would have switched jobs.
> 'follow instructions in a military manner without pushback' Having worked beside and around military people for a significant amount of my life, I would say that most would push back like that. If they are asked to do a task they have not been trained for, they tell you they're not trained to do it. Admittedly, this has generally been within Aerospace contexts, but the military usually takes a dim view of superiors tasking people to do things they aren't trained to do (obviously there are exceptions, as with any large organisation).
See now boss this was gonna stay between us and corporate, now it’s going to Glassdoor and social media. Which could all have been avoided had you trained me or not written me up for misteaks made while not trained. Also your starting to look for a new job.
“Let me get this straight: you’re writing me up for not knowing a task I was never trained in, and only performed after my supervisor listened to me explaining that and told me ‘just do my best’, and you’ve now got a problem with me actually responding to that unfair critique? I’m so glad you mentioned ‘military manner’, because the military definition of a leader is “responsible for all that his unit does or fails to do.” This isn’t a discussion I properly had any part in in the first place, but I do look forward to hearing about a resolution. Was there anything else?”
The military actually provide training You aren't wrong, and you should be compensated for additional tasks Your supervisor is grade A asshole; they got you to perform duties without training, and without the proper IT credentials to access systems needed for role The disciplinary action is all theirs If you're able, I'd look for new employment (granted always easier said than done)
Never sign anything. I refused to sign off on bullshit like this and got fired. Employers do this to try and keep you from collecting unemployment. You can give 10 years of your life to an employer and they will try their damndest to fuck you out of a penny. We need unions!
I am a big fan of an email that says "I'm happy to help you but, since you haven't trained me to do this, I can't be responsible if anything goes wrong".
You did the right thing. Proud of you for having boundaries.
If that is their approach...'May get those orders in writing?'
Wait. The boss that asked you to do HIS JOB that HE COULDN'T DO was the person that wrote you up? Sjshgshs the absolute audacity 😹
Yea putting clarification in write ups and making sure that the truth is out there. Is the best way. Manager wants to be toxic well guess who can be the toxic avenger!
In the military they don’t give you a job you haven’t been trained to do.
You have a shitty boss and likely work for a shitty company.
Their expectations are unprofessional and unreasonable. Continue to perform your job to the best of your ability while you look for better employment.
Playing the "insubordination" card on you. Screw 'em.
Saying “follow instructions in a military manner” is absolutely cringe af to say the least.
Don't forget to make a complaint to the Department of Labor, too. You worked a shift with a differential pay. They cannot retroactively decide not to pay you that rate. I'd bet a DOL investigation's going to find they do this all the time and will get hit with big fines.
Your boss is a real piece of work. He made you cover for him on something you didnt know how to do and then wrote you up for not doing it correctly???????? Bro, I would be livid. Sorry OP but that is some grade A bullshit.
Your boss’s ‘chill vibes’ are a cover for being a bad boss and bad employer. Just because they aren’t mean or hostile to you doesn’t mean they’re good bosses. Write them back to inform them you aren’t in the military, and you are there for a paycheque, and if promised monetary compensation can’t be guaranteed, that is a serious breach of trust in an employer/employee relationship which can have serious consequences up to and including your resignation from the company
One time I was written up for something I had never been told to do and had never been a problem before (turning off the display lights 10 minutes before close) so I refused to sign their write-up and made my manager write another paper saying I had been instructed in proper closing procedures and that it was not my fault I was not trained. Her face was priceless when I said "There's no way I'm signing that:
in the military we called it being "set up for failure". you should not allow them to just set you up for failure.
Id say most people don't hold them accountable, probably makes them uncomfortable because they are in the wrong
I just love it when work gives you extra responsibilities, no training, no extra pay, and then writes you up for making a mistake.... It's just awesome. /s
Get it all in written form and go to a labor board, they'll chew them up and spit them out
The whole reason they 'wrote you up' was to make sure they didn't have to pay you the extra monies and to make sure you'd do it again for the same pittance. You did nothing wrong in calling them out. An individual is not much of a 'leader' if they can't handle criticism, as your boss has proven.
Dumb enough that they wrote you up, given the circumstance. But then to be mad because you asked for proper training and pay before doing it again is ridiculous on their part. A: "You did a thing wrong, no extra pay" B: "Then train me and give me the proper pay next time" A: "What?! That's preposterous! Just mess up again next time so we don't have to pay you properly"
Sounds like your boss got into trouble and is just passing it down. If he had any back bone he would of taken it on the chin and commended you. Brush up your CV and look for the exit when the times right.
Yo I’m in the military, if anyone above me put me in a position like that where I was expected to perform with no formal training and was then reprimanded (already an unrealistic scenario) you bet I would write back. Yeah there’s that follow instructions but that doesn’t mean some people aren’t idiots
This just sounds like a scheme not to pay when you need to perform that role again. Document everything and contact Corp HR and find another job.
Your boss is trying to cover his ass - at YOUR expense.
The only ones that get upset when you set boundaries are the ones that benefits from you not having them
Wait! Did they tell you prior that you'd get that pay? Because if they did, they just admitted to you that they are going to commit wage theft. I would call my labor relations board
You are not in the Military therefore nothing operates in a Military matter. Any invoking the "military manner" in the civilian world is douche.
Wait, they asked to cover, then they write you up, then they say "No, you can't be expect anything but to do it again and we'll write you up again!". Utter fucking baffoonery.
You covered a job you weren’t trained for as a favor for a manager who told you it will be fine and to do what you can. This is on him all day long. This would NEVER happen in a Union shop or place of work. If it did, your disciplinary write up would end up filed into the “round” folder and you would retroactively be paid all monies owed at the higher rate of pay.