[We put it] right between two of the bases in the baseball field': Engineer told to blindly obey boss's orders, obliges, obstructing client's baseball infield

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Aug 22, 2023 12:00 PM EDT

There are those managers out there who think that they know everything, refusing to listen to anything their workers tell them to advise the decision-making process and blindly following the corporate narrative or their own uninformed decisions to their downfall and folly. Workers placed in these situations might try to fix the mistakes of their superiors, repeatedly shielding their bosses from any blowback or repercussions for these decisions and even reinforcing their incorrect perception that their way is the right way. After extended periods of doing this with no thanks—and even reprimand—the workers will reach the point where they're no longer prepared to put in the effort to cover their bosses' behinds. Meaning the next time a decision is forced through, the results will be catastrophic. 

Even if you know nothing about baseball, it's probably easy for you to picture why having a utility box installed directly in the middle of the field—especially right between second and third base—is a bad idea. It's not hard to imagine why such a thing happening might be a little disruptive to the use of the field and the flow of the game. It's the kind of thing you would just deal with when playing backyard baseball as a kid, accepting that any inconveniently placed tree or obstacle was just a part of the game at hand. However, while baseball fields and stadiums have always naturally varied, with unique outfield dimensions and quirks, when playing an organized game on a proper field, these variations should be limited, with the infield especially being one of the most constant aspects of the game. 

So, when a group of engineers that you hired come along and stick a utility box between second and third base, you might not be all that pleased about your field's new infield feature. 

Of course, this all came about when this engineer grew tired of his boss repeatedly refusing to listen to his more well-informed reason, insisting instead that the engineer blindly follow whatever order he was given. So, the engineer did exactly what his boss told them to, giving the client this disastrous result.

See the engineer's account of events, originally shared with Reddit, below—along with reactions from the original thread where it was posted.

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  • 01
    Grass
    via G Visuals
  • 02
    Font - Posted by u/Recoilless Rifle I'm not allowed to make decisions? OK! LOC I'm a civil engineer, and I work in the geotechnical field. Basically, when someone wants to build a building, railroad, bridge, etc, they hire us to do an investigation of the soil/bedrock beneath the site and give them recommendations on foundation and/or subgrade design. At this time, I was working for a (very) small engineering company, and we always subcontracted out the drilling part of the investigation (this r
    via u/RecoillessRifle
  • 03
    Font - My boss was notorious for being a PITA to these drilling subcontractors, always making them do extra stuff for no reason. These contractors typically work on a dayrate; that is, they charge X dollars per day, regardless if they work full 8 hours or not. In boss's mind, if they weren't working for a full 8 hours, he wasn't getting his money's worth. On one of my first drilling jobs, I incurred boss's wrath for daring to let the drilling crew leave after 7.5 hours on a hot day. My boss was
    via u/RecoillessRifle
  • 04
    Font - Fast forward almost a year later, and we are doing a drilling job in an athletic field that is proposed to be used as the site for a new school. I arrive and meet the drillers the first day, and as planned we drill a 60' deep hole and take samples. It's important to note two things: the field was at the top of a 50' plus high hill, and the location of the hole (drilled vertically into the ground) was between the bases of a baseball field. Because of the first factor, the groundwater level
    via u/RecoillessRifle
  • 05
    Font - It's also important to note that in addition to their dayrate, the drilling contractors charge us for materials, and a well is charged per foot; the price was about $25 per foot. I call my boss after we finish this hole and tell him the groundwater is 60' down and suggest a well would be prohibitively expensive. He insists we install a 30' deep well that we all know will be dry, which translates to about $1,000 between the well and its "road box" cover. I also suggest we pick a different
    via u/RecoillessRifle
  • 06
    Font - About 3 weeks later, we get an angry email from our client asking why there's an object between two of the bases in the baseball field. Boss couldn't get mad at me because he had told me to place it exactly there, after all. So we now have to remove this road box, which is essentially a ~6″ steel tube with a cap, cemented into the ground. We don't have the tools for this, so my boss tries to strongarm the drilling contractor into removing it for free; they of course refuse and say "we jus
    via u/RecoillessRifle
  • 07
    Font - $1,000) for essentially 10 minutes of work to chisel out and remove the road box and fill in the top of the hole, plus 2 hours of pay and mileage for me to return to the site, shoot the shit with the contractors for a bit, take a photo of the completed job, and leave. He had to eat all of this instead of billing it to our client.
    via u/RecoillessRifle
  • 08
    Font - I wish I could say he learned something from the ordeal, but I certainly felt justified, and he was less overbearing after this happened. I now work for a much larger company that runs their own drill rigs, and we no longer have stupid stuff like this happen.
    via u/RecoillessRifle
  • 09
    Font - PoliteCanadian2 Boss had never made it to third base and wanted to make sure nobody else did. Reply Share 374 Some-Region-5668 Lmfao! 0 35 Superb_Raccoon Reply Share Who's on third? 13 Reply Share
    via u/RecoillessRifle
  • 10
    Font - Nitemiche. A baseball field on the top of a hill? Was the boss truly made aware that it was between bases? 48 Reply Share
    via u/RecoillessRifle
  • 11
    Font - Recoilless Rifle OP It was kind of weird, the field was flat obviously, but right off the edge it sloped really steeply down 50+ feet. Perhaps it's not a hill per se, as it was just on one side it sloped down really steeply, but this was enough to push the water table way down. Hill was the best word I could think of. I tried to explain the situation to him, but he didn't want to hear it. 69 ↓ Reply Share
    via u/RecoillessRifle
  • 12
    Font - kjbtetrick I work in environmental consulting at an engineering firm that also does a lot of geotechnical work. My old supervisor micromanaged my department to within an inch of our sanity. At least til he was strong armed into another department and proverbially sat on regarding his management style. In short chefs kiss beautifully done. 20 Reply Share
    via u/RecoillessRifle
  • 13
    Font - Former__Computer Got to love the 'i know best' attitude. I'm a drainage engineer, and i spent three hours watching a client try to bodge a repair because he didn't want to relay the pipe and he knew he could fix it. Guess what we're doing Monday? 10 Reply Share Recoilless Rifle OP Funnily enough, on the bridge replacement project I'm on now, they got
    via u/RecoillessRifle
  • 14
    Font - flooded a few weeks ago because the existing storm sewer just dropped all the water into the construction area when they got a thunderstorm, ending with 4' of flooding. Their solution was to cut off and cap the storm sewer, but the next time we got bad rain (yesterday) the storm sewer instead overflowed (now having no outlet) and started shooting water out of the nearest catch basin, still ending up in the construction site and flooding it again. 6 Reply Share
    via u/RecoillessRifle
  • 15
    Font - LickMyLingonberries Oh that's hilarious. I work in a very similar field (environmental/contaminant hydrogeologist) and I know exactly what you're talking about. Since the project was based on top of a hill why were you guys even considering the water table to be an issue? Seeing as it's like 90% chance of being below the hill, just logging the soil and where it goes wet should've been enough to rule out any engineering issues. Watertable isn't going to fluctuate more than a couple meters
    via u/RecoillessRifle
  • 16
    Font - Still-Butterscotch33 Also an engineer. Bet your manager has never been a site engineer. It's really obvious when dealing with people who are inflexible in their plans. I would recommend if something like this comes up again, take pictures and email them to the person with a detailed description of the problem and ask for written confirmation of what they want to happen. Covers yourself in the future. 9 Reply Share ●●●
    via u/RecoillessRifle

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boss manager malicious compliance malicious-compliance-reddit engineering baseball Horrible Bosses engineer
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