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'My boss said, 'If we want your input, we will ask for it. Period.' Am I petty for complying?'

'My boss said, 'If we want your input, we will ask for it. Period.' Am I petty for complying?'

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"If we want your input, we will ask for it. Period."

A few months ago, a new business investor at work came on board as a manager, and he has been an absolute hard-ass. He is cracking down on anything he considers to be a waste of time, and he is unforgiving. After a week of "watching us work", he and the other managers held a company-wide meeting to "iron out some wrinkles" in the company that he observed since he started.

It wasn't an open dialogue though, in fact that's one of the things he wanted to wrinkle out, it was essentially just 20min of "it's our way or the highway, deal with it". The line "If we want your input, we will ask for it. Period." really stuck with me though, and it was made abundantly clear afterwards that it was directed at me.

The company has had a big problem recently with employee turnover, and I was in the position to know why, since I interact with everyone through my role. Essentially, people are quitting because the work they were doing wasn't what they signed up to do. The phrase "if I knew this is what I would be doing, I wouldn't have accepted the job" was a common sentiment.

They accepted the job under the impression that they would be serving customers, answering emails and phone calls, general customer service stuff, but instead they spend about 90% of their time in a hot warehouse packing online orders over and over again.

I shared that with management. I let them know what the people leaving were saying, in case they wanted to take that into account moving forward. They just thanked me and I left, but the new manager hated that so much that he decided to make a meeting about giving them unsolicited advice.

They spoke with me privately afterwards and referred back to when I told them about what the quitting employees said, and they told me that the way they interpreted that was that I was implying that they were being deceitful when hiring people. I told them no, I don't think that at all, I was just relaying what those people were saying about how they felt.

They didn't care. They doubled down and said again "if we want your input, we will ask for it. Period". That's how I knew it was directed at me. I asked them for clarification, like what constitutes advice or input, and the new boss said "unless you are asking us a question about the work you're supposed to be doing, we don't want to hear it.

We don't want your opinion on how you think we should handle situations, we don't want your ideas on how you think the business can be better run, and we don't want gossip about what other people are saying about us, just focus on your job."

Fine then, I'll roll with that, no problem. I've worked for them for years and they always appreciated my ideas, opinions and input until that point, but hey, if they don't want my input anymore, that's their choice and I'll respect that.

I knew it was just the new boss saying that stuff since this sort of attitude with them only started when he did, but the others either agreed with him or were too intimidated to disagree. Either way, whatever, I'll comply with their request.

Since then, the problem hasn't been fixed. We've had two more people come and go, both of them because "they didn't sign up for this". Shocker.

A third one started about five weeks ago, and he has taken his frustration in a different direction. I've overheard him complaining over and over again to other people about how he didn't sign on to stand around in a hot warehouse for hours packing online orders, but instead of quitting like everyone else, he just got angrier and angrier.

And then he hulked out...I was upstairs at my desk when I started to hear smashing. I went down to the warehouse to see what was going on, and this guy was taking customer's packages and smashing them out of frustration. A few others in the warehouse gathered and just watched in amusement. It was like something out of a cartoon.

The new boss heard the commotion and came down. Long story short, the guy was fired and I was asked if I knew why he flipped out.

I said "I don't know what happened exactly to cause him to flip out, but I know that for weeks he's been complaining about not signing up to work in a hot warehouse for hours. Maybe he just reached a tipping point about it, not sure"

And he said "well why didn't you tell us?" So, of course, I said "because last time I told you that employees were complaining about that, you accused me of implying that you were being deceitful when hiring them. Then you told me to stop gossiping"

He had to eat crow a bit on that, which was just so f&^%^&g delicious to witness, but I was also reprimanded for taking the request "too literally" and he accused me of being "petty".

Whatever though, I don't care, because I had to adjust the stock levels for the goods that had to be replaced and they lost about $10,000 in the rampage. Some of the items that were smashed worth $2000 each. Learning that made the whole thing worthwhile. Perhaps enjoying that does make me petty...

Here's what people had to say to OP:

The fact that soo many people have used that phrase means the company is actually being deceitful in its hiring practices.

OP

It's certainly misleading. I went through the exact same thing when I started, except I didn't complain or quit, but I do remember thinking "that's not what they described in the interview". They made it seem like it will be a little bit of everything. They mentioned there'd be some picking/packing, but they certainly made it seem like that wouldn't be the main thing.

My theory is they know that people don't like to pick and pack online orders in a hot warehouse, so they omit the fact that that is the majority of the work, in order to trick them into accepting the job. But it's a bad plan if true, because people would quickly figure it out.

When was the last time an inventory audit was conducted? Disgruntled employees poorly supervised with expensive merchandise have a tendency to supplement their wages.

OP

Shhhh

Manager: "You took the request to literally and you're being petty."

OP: "If I wanted your input, I'd ask for it. Period."

OP

Dammit, that would have been perfect.

What is funny here, is there are ways you could be "too literally" or "Petty" here. But this was literally the exact scenario you got reprimanded for the first time. It couldn't be any more similar.

Not my clowns, not my circus.

Update:

Someone I work with found this post and sent me the link. He said "dude, this sounds like what happened to us". Poor guy is freaking out right now.

Sources: Reddit
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