My friend worked at a tech company that, despite doing all of its work online, didn’t really see the point in having one of those newfangled share drives to store documents in. (In 2023!) So, for some reason, a lot of things wound up in his personal Google Drive. SOPs, contracts, etc.

He quit. He was kind enough to tell them they needed to get the information from his Drive, as it was 100% his. They delayed and delayed. He wound up keeping the information for two years.

He frequently reached out to different people to remind them they needed to get the documents off his Drive. These were still being used by the employees there.

Finally, he said, “Look, next Friday I’m wiping it. It’s on you guys to get your docs before then.”

They said no worries, they would get everything they need.

Monday, he had a flurry of emails asking where the documents were. He hasn’t responded.

Working in a low-paying job at a restaurant that is part of a nationwide chain is a job most people don’t expect to have forever or to be just fun. Having said that, the first job I ever had, back in the 2000’s, was quite okay when I started there.

Then a new manager took over. I wouldn’t go as far as saying he was a stereotypical inept boss from Hell, but he certainly was not a genius either. Or very charming and tactful.

Within the first few months, he did not renew quite a few contracts. His predecessor could be tough to work with now and then, but this guy seemed to base his decisions a lot more on who had the guts to talk back and such. Most of them might not have gotten permanent contracts, but with how the law worked back then, plenty of people who could have easily worked there a few more years were suddenly gone. 

Morale got lower, and meanwhile the more experienced employees started finishing college and moving on to new fields. Within a year, we were a complete mess, and people started to leave because they got fed up with how people had been treated or how they were carrying far too much on their shoulders, while the manager only got angrier and nastier because of the stress.

On the level of his tact, well, there is this particular anecdote. A coworker in her forties is in her final month after the manager decided not to renew her contract. I won’t really know about how good she was, but as can be expected, she did not like the decision. 

To be fair, she was grossly insulted. On this particular day, the coworker in question is standing behind the till. [Manager] walks up with a bunch of flyers.

Manager: “If you see anyone with ambitions…”

The flyers he put on her counter were recruitment flyers. He actually expected her to hand out these flyers to customers in the hope of getting new applicants.

Those flyers mysteriously all ended up in the trash can. I wonder why.

Intentionally withholding some context from this, but this sequence of events at a previous role is the perfect example of how my experience as a whole was.

Operations is discovered to have not performed a procedure written by my predecessors decades before me. That same day:

Director: “Is this a non-compliance event?”

This would require self-reporting to a government agency in a specified time frame.

Me: “It’s possible that we violated [State Law] as I see the notes in the missed procedure that we do this for compliance. I don’t have any other documentation around why that is the case.”

Director: “YOU need to know this. YOU are responsible for understanding our permits and regulatory requirements. Get an answer ASAP.”

Me: “Will do.”

I understood the permits and requirements perfectly fine, just not this random procedure written with no documentation on reasoning. Cut to two days later, after tracking down documents dating back twenty years before my time.

Me: “I found documents which explain why that procedure was in place for Y regulation.”

I explain the document.

Me: “Not meeting Y regulation triggers a permit violation under condition X, which is a catch-all condition written expressly for instances such as the missed procedure.”

Director: “No. We’re not reporting that. You shouldn’t be wasting your time on this.”

I pushed back by asking if we should run it by the guy who would go to jail should it be determined we hid a violation or at least get Legal’s input. When my director said no, I made my manager aware of the situation.

Result: an HR meeting where I was told that all my work has to be done physically inside the facilities. A few months later, my director chewed me out for not being responsive when I was not onsite.

I already had one job offer with two more on the way when they let me go on a Monday for “lack of improvement.”

I recently got promoted, which involved me moving from where I originally worked to literally the other side of the country. (Think California to Florida.)

That said, I still keep in touch with my old team members through Microsoft Teams and have yet to be removed from that site’s official work-related chat. Thanks to this, I have been watching what is essentially the whole site imploding on itself thanks to a single new Operations Manager.

A few months ago, the site lost its original Operations Manager to the freedom that is retirement. They replaced him with a woman we’ll call Nancy. Nancy’s first order of business was to get people promoted to put more agents on the higher-tier calls. This would be great if it wasn’t for the absolutely insane way she did it.

She first takes the highest-performing agents and tells them they’ve been promoted. She then tells them that their new training, which will last a total of three days, will begin the very next day.

When asked how this will work out, she informs all of these agents that their schedules (which until now have been pretty much set in stone) will change and that they will now all be required to work Saturdays. Starting that very Saturday, which was two days away.

She does not inform them of the pay increase; she does not hear them out on whether they can work with the schedule change or not, and she does not consult their team managers first.

Pretty much everyone was upset. Almost all of them (professionally) declined the promotion, and they were told it was a choice they were able to make, but Nancy was “Disappointed and didn’t understand why.”

I find out that my old team manager had been fired; the team I was a part of had ALL been written up on final notice for insubordination due to, yes, declining that promotion, and pretty much the whole site is seeking other avenues of employment.

Good job, Nancy.

Later, I was given the actual write-up that my old team members were given. It reads as follows (identifying information redacted).

Write Up: You were identified as [Redacted] agents scheduled to move to [Redacted] line of business and attend training. You refused and did not attend training. Not only is your behavior an act of insubordination, which is in violation of company policy, but placed the company relationship at risk with the client who instructed this business need. Additionally, your insubordinate actions caused the company to schedule an additional training session to cover your slot. Any further incident of this nature will result in serious disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment.

In November 2017, our company eliminated a department because the volume of the product they handled had drastically decreased, and natural attrition wasn’t decreasing enough, as we had very low turnover. The powers that be decided we no longer needed the department in a high-cost-of-living location and were moving it to Middle America, where we already had a small version of the same department and wouldn’t need to hire that many to make up for our department’s shutdown.

As such, everyone in the department was given the opportunity to interview for other positions in our company or to take paid time off to interview at other companies. Our company also hired a consultant to assist with updating resumes, give mock interviews, and even provide referrals. The date for the “layoff” was 4/1/2018, which gave everyone five months to move on. People who were unable to find another position or chose to retire were given one week’s salary for every year they were here, with a minimum of two weeks. They would also pay for COBRA during that same amount of time. (Note: You had to stay until the last day to qualify for this; if you left before, you were not eligible for the payout. Yes, some people double-dipped having a position that started after that date, but not many.)

Now to back up, this department is a call center. These are phone agents. I’m not saying that they are at the bottom of the totem pole and should be treated differently, but these are no-experience-needed positions as long as you can read/write and use basic PC skills. So, for the company to take such care while we were in an “at-will” state was far beyond what is normal.

Enter Bob. Bob had been with the company as a front-line phone agent for fifteen years. They had zero desire to move up or move to another position in the company. Which is fine; he was in his 60s and wanted an easy job that never changed, which, for the most part, this position was.

Every week, I would check in with everyone on my team to make sure they were doing okay, and if I could help them get time off to interview, etc. Every week, Bob said he was good and didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Our team meetings, which took place monthly during this time, focused mainly on how everyone was doing and whether they had gotten another job; for those who had, we would congratulate them.

On the Friday before the closure, I made sure to say bye to Bob as he worked Monday – Friday and would not be there on the last day, which was a Saturday. I told him that he was one of my favorite employees and always reminded me of the grandpa in Up, as he looked so tough but was really very sweet. I sent him over to HR so they could give him his final paperwork and sign anything if needed.

Of the hundred agents on the last day, only fifteen remained. Everyone thought they would be on the phones that last Saturday, but the company threw a small party with catered food, gave out some gift cards, and let the agents take home their PC Monitors if they wanted them, since they were all going to be recycled.

I happened to get another position in the company, as I was in the same boat as everyone else. During all of this, I didn’t clean out my supervisor’s “Cube” because I was trying to help everyone else. I get in early on Monday so I can take everything down and pack what I was going to take to my new office (with real walls!).

As I’m packing up my stuff, I hear someone nearby, which is odd as the entire room should be silent. I get up and try to find out who is here with me, and I see Bob sitting at his desk and taking calls. I waited for the call to end, logged him out, and asked what he was doing here. He said that he was working and asked what I wanted. Confused, I stated that I said good-bye to him Friday and asked what happened when he went to HR.

He said that he didn’t go. I asked him why, and he said he didn’t understand the joke, so he didn’t participate like everyone else. Even more confused, I asked him what he was talking about. He said the April Fools’ joke.

I’m dumbfounded at this point and asked if he could elaborate. He said the joke about the call center shutting down on April 1st. That it was all a joke, and that people will be so upset when they figure it out. Still not fully understanding, I said that the call center is shut down. That everyone has moved on to other positions or took the payout, as he did. He repeated that he still doesn’t understand the joke, but he needed to get back on the phones as there were calls in the queue.

Now, this is where the company made a mistake. For some reason, his access wasn’t turned off on Friday, and they still had access to everything, including calls routing to him, as we still had calls, but those were now being answered by the forty people in our other call center.

Not wanting to cause further issues, I went back to my desk, called HR, and let them know what was going on. HR made me repeat everything to them as they didn’t understand what was going on. During all of this, I saw the CEO enter the room with several other C-Suite executives, who were going to gut it and turn it into a showroom for clients. I decided to go over to the CEO and let them know what was going on with Bob and that HR was on their way.

The CEO asked how long Bob had been here, and I told him fifteen years. This was the only position he had ever held in the company. They were a retired postal worker and liked having an easy job to come into each day. The CEO and I went over to Bob and had him log out after his call. The CEO shook his hand and introduced him to the other executives. While he’s doing this, I spoke with IT to disable all of their access.

The CEO includes Bob in the tour and shows them the mock-ups for how the room is going to be transformed. By the time I’m done packing up my desk, the CEO has walked Bob out to his car, accompanied by HR, who had him sign the final paperwork. The CEO comes back over to me and laughs at the “April Fools” joke they have been doing for the last five months. He says he felt bad for Bob but thinks he will be okay, as his wife wanted him to retire years ago, and he has nine grandchildren that he doesn’t get to see much.

A memo went out to everyone in management shortly after all of this stating that, going forward, no employee will be let go on April 1st. In addition, we were instructed to hold off on terminations on other dates, including two weeks before Christmas and Thanksgiving week. Since then, every April 1st, the CEO and I exchange memes of people thinking an actual event is a joke.