'Jackie was in some serious, serious s***': Suspended employee refuses to take steward's advice, gets herself fired

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Jan 24, 2023 8:00 AM EST

It seems like Jackie fully got herself in this mess. This union shop steward attempted to help her after she was put on administrative leave, but it didn't take very long for the steward to regret spending time on this delusional employee.

 

This thread, which was posted to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit by u/slice_of_pi, is one of those rare examples of a workplace story in which the culprit really wasn't the system or a horrible manager. Instead, the culprit was the employee herself, who abused union resources and, as the steward would uncover, had broken so many rules it became impossible to even count them. On top of that, by the time there was a real dismissal hearing, Jackie refused to take the steward's advice and insisted on leading the meeting herself. Well, you can just imagine how that went. Keep scrolling below for this epic saga and for some of the best comments. For more, here's another tale of workplace malicious compliance!

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  • 01
    Font - No, you don't understand. I REALLY wouldn't do that, if I were you.... XL OC TL:DR - Employee is certain she knows better, is wrong, and FAFO. Warning - pretty long. Sorry. As I talked about the last time I posted in here, I work in a union shop, and I've been a shop steward for most of my 25+ year career. In that time, I've seen some s both figurative and literal, and every single time I've ever been unwary enough about how fate works to utter the words, "Now I've seen everything," the u
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  • 02
    Font - Stewards, despite the general perception of us, aren't there to defend employees who are accused of misconduct - we're there to defend the collective bargaining agreement, meaning if you've well and truly f yourself and your future with the agency we both work for, my role is primarily helping you determine which of your options for leaving you're going to exercise. I've been at this rodeo for a long time, and management and I generally have a pretty good understanding of how things are g
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  • 03
    Font - Enter Jackie. Jackie was one of those unbelievably toxic peaked-in- high-school-cheerleader types, with just enough understanding of what our employer does, how it's required to behave within federal guidelines, and what its obligations are when you utter certain mystical phrases like "I need an accomodation," or "discrimination based on a protected class." To be clear, those things are not just law, they're also morally right to be concerned about, and so my employer actually bends over
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  • 04
    Font - The point at which I got involved was at the tail-end of over a year's worth of actions by Jackie, in which it rapidly became apparent that her manager was, in fact, an excellent candidate for canonization. I got referred to her when one of my other union friends contacted me and said, "Hey, Jackie so & so just got put on administrative leave, and it's total BS, can you help?" I get referrals like this a lot both because I've been around forever, and because I have a pretty good track rec
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  • 05
    Font - This immediately sent up a whole host of red flags - for one thing, I know the senior HR guy that is the HR analyst's boss who's involved, having been down the road of difficult-situation-but-this-is-what- we-can-do negotiation with him many, many times over the years. I don't always agree with him, but he's fair, and usually we can come to some sort of middle ground - at any rate, he would never suspend someone out of the blue without a really, really good reason. She knows what she's do
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  • 06
    Font - • Don't tell me, or our employer, things that aren't true. Especially if you think it'll make you look bad if you don't. • Don't talk to your coworkers. Don't talk to your friends about this, particularly because you live in a town of under 2000 people, everyone knows everything about everyone else. • Do not talk with management, or HR, without me present. Period.
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  • 07
    Font - • When they do start asking questions, keep answers simple, to the point, short, and do not give lengthy explanations - tell them what they want to know and otherwise shut the up. • I have been here and done this many times. I know this process very well. I can't tell you what they're going to do, but I can tell you what I think they're going to do, and I'm usually either right or pretty close to being right. I have been surprised.
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  • 08
    Font - Nearly three weeks went by of radio silence from the Agency, other than a bland sort of "We want to talk with Jackie about utilization of work assignments, tasks and equipment," email that tells you almost nothing while still being literally true. Finally, it was go-time for a meeting, and I did something I haven't done in a really long time - I physically drove to Jackie's worksite instead of attending virtually, over an hour and a half each way. What the the weather was nice. We met ahe
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  • 09
    Font - During the meeting, it was almost immediately obvious to me from the questions they started asking that Jackie was in serious, serious S Not, like, written warning, or pay reduction....no, they were going to go for termination, and she was probably going to be very lucky if they decided not to refer it to the DA for criminal prosecution. An abbreviated summary, of just the high points: • Jackie had hundreds of confidential documents and electronic files in her personal posession, many of
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  • 10
    Font - • Jackie had logged overtime without permission. A lot. And, on one memorable date, when she was vacationing in Europe with her family at the time - she said she'd called in to attend a meeting, but didn't have an answer why that meeting had apparently been 11 1/2 hours long and nobody remembered her attending by phone. • Jackie had audio-recordings of disabled and elderly people with whom she was working, that she had taken without their consent or knowledge. A lot of them.
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  • 11
    Font - • Jackie's overall work product and system activity reliably showed that she was logging in at the start of her day (from home), and she worked some in the afternoon...but there were hours and hours of time when her computer was idle. She explained this as participating in union activity, which I knew was BS, because... • Jackie is not a steward. Jackie has no idea what the collective bargaining agreement actually says about much of anything beyond "stewards can do whatever they want, and
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  • 12
    Font - There's more. There's so, so much more, but in the interests of brevity, I will summarize the next four months of my dealing with this woman by pointing back to the cardinal rules I gave her, and simply say...she broke every single one of them. A lot. When it finally got to the dismissal hearing that comes before the "you're fired, GTFO" letter, she told me going in that she wanted to run things, because she had some stuff she wanted to cover that she thought I probably wouldn't be a) com
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  • 13
    Font - Me: "I really don't think that's a good idea. I've done a lot of these, you should let me handle it." Jackie: "No. I know what I'm doing, and I talked with my attorney about this a lot. You can't stop me." Me: "You're right. I can't. But this isn't going to go the way you think it will." Jackie: "I know I'm right. They can't do this to me." Me: "This isn't a good idea...but okay. It's your show."
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  • 14
    Font - In we went, and sat down. The senior HR guy I mentioned earlier was there, and he gave me a funny look when I sat back, laptop closed, and said nothing - dismissal meetings are actually our meeting, and we get to run them from start to finish - they're there to listen. She started talking...and I have to give them credit, they took notes, listened to the things she said, and kept straight faces the entire time. It went exactly as I figured it would - just the things they'd asked her about
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  • 15
    Font - That afternoon, I got the union copy of her dismissal notice. Generally, they are open to at least discussing the option of the worker resigning, and giving them a neutral reference going forward, but that wasn't in the cards. The last I had heard of Jackie, the Department of Justice was involved with her and her husband, and I'm reasonably confident that it didn't go well for her either. I do know that she will never work for the government again, as the letter was pretty explicit about
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  • 16
    Rectangle - +3.19 hr. ago CoderJoe1 S "What was that Jackie? Oh, you need more rope, sure, here ya go."
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  • 17
    Font - slice_of_pi OP +1. 16 hr. ago Giving rope to fools sometimes pays off. Of course, sometimes they also try to rope you in with them...Jackie actually at one point sent me (for "my records", like I f wanted, needed, or was even interested in a brief glance at) some of the material she'd accumulated, and which it was illegal to possess without a valid business purpose. I had a lengthy conversation with union Legal on that one, followed by a, "Hypothetically, if this were to happen, how would
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  • 18
    Font - angelmakr9 18 hr. ago I'm also a Steward and if I had a dollar for the number of times an employee lied to my face I could retire today. It's very disheartening and totally unnecessary because it just makes the employee look like a dirty bag when management shows me the documented truth. Good job fighting the good fight for the ungrateful employees that think they know more than you!!
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  • 19
    Font - throwaway86753109123 19 hr. ago . I feel like you need a hefty reward, like 3 weeks of paid vacation to your dream destination, for putting up with Jackie. Honestly impressed you managed to stick it out with her undermining you every step of the way. I would have stopped doing more than the bare minimum for her after the second meeting. Thank the gods that stupid isn't contagious.
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antiwork employee fired job malicious compliance human resources reddit thread Reddit
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