Update: '[I] woke the CEO up at midnight': Night shift worker calls 200 tech support clients in the middle of the night after boss tells them he 'doesn't want excuses'

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Dec 4, 2023 3:00 PM EST

You want phone calls? You got phone calls. That's totally fine by this overnight worker, since they usually barely call anyone during their shift anyway. 

As an employee, you may see the CEO of your company just a few times. Often, you'll be introduced to the CEO when you first start at the job, so it's important to make a good impression. After all, depending on your position and the size of the company, you may just never see them again after that. Most of us just don't work one-on-one with CEOs, so those few encounters are definitely how the CEO will remember you. 

This person made an impression on the CEO that they'll never forget, by giving them a phone call in the late hours of the night. I wonder if the CEO remembers this fondly now---it's probably pretty funny to everyone involved in hindsight. 

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  • Getting phone calls in the middle of the night is never ideal. No one wants to be woken from a deep slumber by a screeching ringtone! At least these days, if you get a random spam call in the middle of the night, you can keep your phone on silent and enjoy your peaceful night's sleep. 

    Keep scrolling to read u/brycen64's story. After that, read up on this story about a newlywed who patiently tried to get along with her new in-laws, only to hear them dissing her on Christmas. 

  • 01
    Cheezburger Image 9845449216
    via Osama Saeed on Unsplash
  • 02
    Woke up the CEO at midnight because manager told me to. He wasn't happy.
    via u/brycen64
  • 03
    I was working IT for Safeway Corporate. Throughout the day employees can submit for tech support by either calling the number or sending an email. As we were mostly a call center, the emails. (called web tickets) would back up as everyone was busy on the phone. They would nominate a few agents to jump off the phones and call out on these emails we got. The average person would do 20-40 by the end of their shift.
    via u/brycen64
  • 04
    I got assigned to a special group assisting other tech specialist with telephony engineering issues (phones don't work). We needed someone to work the night shift to help the night guys. I gladly volunteered. We got maybe 3 calls a night and that was for
    via u/brycen64
  • 05
    general tech support. I helped with maybe 1 thing a week. My manager asked why I wasn't very busy at night, I told him all stores are closed except those in Hawaii and we just don't have the same volume of calls. He tells me he wants to see me work web tickets at night.
    via u/brycen64
  • 06
    I work a few web tickets from 10-11 when I show up and a few more from 5-6 but don't have much success as night and morning stock crews want to put product on the shelves, not reboot a printer that is probably already working just fine.
    via u/brycen64
  • 07
    My manager calls me in and is saying that everyone works significantly more web tickets than I do and he wants to see my numbers go up. I explain to him that the majority of the tickets are for stores that are closed or for our corporate office in California where execs are sleeping. He says he doesn't
    via u/brycen64
  • 08
    want excuses. So that night I call all 200 tickets, it isn't difficult and doesn't take long because no one answers and I leave the typical voicemail explaining why I called and to please give us a call back.
    via u/brycen64
  • 09
    The next morning my manager calls me in furious, apparently high level corporate execs called my manager personally wanting to know why they were getting woken up in the middle of the night by tech support. My manager asks "Did you call these people just to
    via u/brycen64
  • 10
    prove a point?" ... I could have said many things "just following orders sir", "Just doing my job", "What did you expect?", "do you know how dumb you look?", instead I simply replied "yup" His reply: "Well played"
    via u/brycen64
  • 11
    He no longer expected me to do web tickets at night. Adding an update post below :)
    via u/brycen64
  • 12
    brycen64 OP• 4 yr. ago Update/Edit for all those asking:His "well played" came with a smile that said "I understand we are playing a game, and now it is my move"
    via u/brycen64
  • 13
    Ed seemed like a really cool manager for a while, He would swap D&D stories with me, he would joke around and seemed like my kind of boss, someone who could be light hearted and serious enough to get stuff done. That's my style, I am a hard worker and top performer who likes to crack jokes to co workers but build rapport with customers.
    via u/brycen64
  • 14
    before the story above I had asked Ed to place me on a special project as my numbers were through the roof and I wanted a challenge to break up the day. Boy was I in luck, that day upper management asked if they could downsize the Telephony Engineers and break down what they do into a script for employees to
    via u/brycen64
  • 15
    follow. He added me to this initiative as 3-4 telephony engineers were fired. Everyone over there wanted the project to fail, because if we succeeded we would justify letting them go. After a few weeks of this the head of all IT (My Bosses' bosses' boss) was walking around asking how the merger was going.
    via u/brycen64
  • 16
    Everyone was singing praises and false lies about our progress. Truth is we were I was the only one doomed. who told him "It is not working and it's going to fail, but if you give me 30 minutes of your time in a meeting I can tell you exactly how to fix this". Luckily for me this guy
    via u/brycen64
  • 17
    worked his way to the top and understood that lowly people like me could have valuable input. In the meeting I explained that those in the department wanted us to fail because it justified firing them and we just cant boil engineering degrees into scripts.
    via u/brycen64
  • 18
    My solution was simple, give me unrestricted access to speak with each engineer separately. I will ask them every scenario on the books and off the books to fix anything telephone related. I will create scripts for all the basic troubleshooting and develop a procedure to transfer complex issues to a smaller team of engineers we can keep on board instead of letting them all go. He loved it.
    via u/brycen64
  • 19
    He placed me in charge of the project and gave me everything I asked for. During this time I was solely dedicated to the project and Ed would ask me to do Regular Service Desk stuff, I would politely decline and let him know the project deadline was approaching and the big boss is expecting things of me. It didn't sit well with Ed that I was slipping out of his grasp. When the telephony
    via u/brycen64
  • 20
    team moved me to nights I was even more out of Ed's grasp, if he wanted to meet with me he had to come in early. This is when the web ticket story starts. After the web ticket story (see above) Ed decided he would swap me out with another employee. I had finished all my policy writing and script typing. So the big boss was no longer watching over me. Ed informed me he was immediately swapping me
    via u/brycen64
  • 21
    with another employee in his words "you're going to go sit back at your desk and take calls like a regular employee" seems like a normal sentence but he added an inflection as if I thought I was better than everyone else. I called a meeting with his boss to explain that we just weren't seeing eye to eye (there's more to the story but there is not time, Ed and I butted heads on a lot of
    via u/brycen64
  • 22
    things). His boss sympathized with me and told me not to worry, the position I temporarily held was going to me solidified in 30 minutes to make it where I no longer worked under Ed, but worked under his bosses boss. I immediately let her know that I was taken off that position and it was handed to a new guy. Her face sunk, "what? I didn't know about this". because the switch taking place was tied to a position, not a person, it made it where
    via u/brycen64
  • 23
    the new guy got the new role. Because of big corporations there was nothing to do gears were turning and they could not easily rewind. I didn't mind too much, I went back to doing my Job and getting top numbers. Ed wanted me to grind out calls all day, but his leads (authority below him but above me) saw that everyone did 19 web tickets a day, I would do anywhere from 40-90. So they would ask me to work on web tickets full time. Ed demanded
    via u/brycen64
  • 24
    I stop doing this and take calls. I shrug "sure thing boss", hours later the leads ask "Why aren't you doing web tickets, the queue looks awful!" I told them Ed wants me taking calls. I have never seen so many leads walk over to Ed's desk and demand he put me back on web tickets. Ed came back over "hey.... uh... we're going to need you to jump back on web tickets". I replied "sure thing boss".
    via u/brycen64
  • 25
    these are just the highlights, in reality every day was an antagonistic fight between myself and Ed. I just wanted to do my job, and I was the best at it (according to all numbers). My friends at work were all top performers as well and we formed a bit of a bond even meeting after work for cookouts, going to each- others parties etc. But Ed had it out for us. I loved working for Safeway, I took pride in what I did and I loved seeing those high numbers, but working with Ed was petty and
    via u/brycen64
  • 26
    infuriating, he would call me to his desk for not reason at all, fish for a reason to write me up, luckily I new our business and policies better than him and would explain and highlight written facts for him to interpret. He would dismiss me back to my desk, and now I was worked up and frustrated and all I wanted to do was sit down and do my job. He began to do this will all my friends.
    via u/brycen64
  • 27
    The last straw was I had found religion and told my boss I needed Sundays off for church. (I was going to be a Sunday school teacher at my church). He said no, I filled out a religious accommodation form to HR, something they offer for employees like myself. The form was in the final stages of being approved until Ed came out of nowhere and said "I've changed my mind, you can have Sundays off". He switched my shift
    via u/brycen64
  • 28
    which made my religious accommodation form invalid. after 1 week, he held a mandatory shift bid and suddenly I didn't have Sundays off again. So I put in my two weeks. He asked me "So you're going to quit because God is more important to you than this job?" I said "Absolutely". A mass exodus kicked off and all of his top employees started to find new jobs. As his department was bleeding he walked up to my friend Mario, who still works there and
    via u/brycen64
  • 29
    asked "Why are so many people leaving?" Mario replied "We don't want to play games Ed, we just want to do our jobs" Ed asked "how many more people are leaving?" Mario replied "I can't tell you, but if I was going to show you the number on my fingers I would need both hands". Ed gulped "Is there anything I can do to make you stay, do you want anything a coffee or soda?" Mario stated calmly "Just leave me alone and let me do my job". I heard from then on Ed sat quietly at his desk and let employee
    via u/brycen64
  • 30
    I would go on to be a manager and work directly under VPs and CEOs, so I was doing just fine.
    via u/brycen64

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boss midnight workplace-stories phones jobs manager job malicious compliance bosses work malicious-compliance-reddit ceo workplace night tickets calling malicious compliance reddit
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