'I had cost him his job': Worker earns $4000 in overtime after manager orders them to change date format on important files

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Dec 9, 2023 5:00 PM EST

One manager was left reeling after realizing their demands were wreaking havoc. For that dude, it was way too late to change what he'd already messed up. 

Having a good work flow is all about knowing what to prioritize. Like if you know your boss starts their morning with a coffee and an email you send a recap email from the day before, you wouldn't start the day by calling clients and ignoring your boss. As much as we dislike thinking about it, our bosses do have important jobs (sometimes), and as an employee, it's your duty to help out. That even extends to the times you know your boss is making a dumb mistake. 

We all make silly mistakes; it's just part of being human. As a manager, though, you have to own your decisions… even the worst of your choices. Watching a bad boss be humbled through their own life lessons is so delicious, as u/Rhowryn knows firsthand. In a story shared to r/MaliciousCompliance, the employee writes that their boss had a problem with the way they were dating their files, and requested the employee make them look like "regular dates." The OP really went above and beyond with that request, so much so that the company lost a staggering amount of money and productivity. 

Scroll through this satisfying story below, then read about the moments these people realized their friend actually hated them, like one person who wrote, "She let me walk around with my wig lifting, on my birthday." 

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  • 01
    Don't mess with data date formats. M I see a ton of M/D/Y dates in Ontario businesses, since the amount of trade with the USA makes adopting their standard more convenient. My personal little protest is writing dates on forms as 13 Aug 2017, so there's no confusion on month, and dating files with YY-MM-DD.
    via u/Rhowryn
  • 02
    I once had an employer take issue with that file naming convention, and he ordered me to change it to MM-DD-YY. These are files that our sales and service people needed constantly, and need in chronological order.
    via u/Rhowryn
  • 03
    Idiot Manager: "Change these dates to look like regular dates." Me: "They sort better this way though, and the sales and service people need-" Idiot Manager: "IDGAF, CHANGE IT NOW." Me: -.-"Yes sir."
    via u/Rhowryn
  • 04
    The change forced me to work overtime, which I recorded as time worked (and was not exempt from OT), and productivity in all other departments decreased by at least 50%. The manager gave me notice (fired me), because those orders had cost his budget an extra $4000 of OT while changing decades of dates to a stupid date format, and seriously hampered the other two departments.
    via u/Rhowryn
  • 05
    During my last week, I took all of the emails we had exchanged (mostly about how changing the date format would be a bad idea) and all records of the work I had done, and sent them to the heads of the other departments, the CFO, COO, aand CEO. Just to let them know about the new date format and cascade to their teams, of course, since I wouldn't be around anymore. Cue a flurry of miffed conversation between all of those executives.
    via u/Rhowryn
  • 06
    About a week after I had left, I got a call from a very angry former manager about how I had cost him his job. Hung up on him. A couple of hours later, got a call from the COO, who conferenced in the other department heads, and they offered me that manager's job (after I fixed the dates back). We settled on a 10% raise on that manager's salary, and another $5,000 to fix the dates.
    via u/Rhowryn
  • 07
    The CFO and COO greeted me upon returning, and asked how long the dates would take. I asked them to wait a moment, and ran a script that I had written the night prior that would change all the dates back in under an hour. I was lucky that they weren't upset, and understood exactly what I had done. Especially since I pointed out that I didn't need to hire someone else to do my old job, and we saved an entire salary by combining the two jobs.
    via u/Rhowryn
  • 08
    TL;DR: Idiot manager switches date formats, loses job, I get paid just under ten grand to do a bunch of busywork and run a script to reverse that busywork, plus his job and raise. Bonus points for saving the company (well, my department) money overall.
    via u/Rhowryn
  • 09
    Edit: As an addendum, we were not the IT department and so the manager did not understand what programming was or that the change could be automated.
    via u/Rhowryn
  • 10
    SwimmingJohn I'm a YYYYMMDD fan, myself. Makes it real easy to sort things electronically as the tail end changes most often followed by the middle. 1.9k Reply Share Rhowryn OP Apologies, the files we used actually were dated with the full year, with the dashes for clarity, i.e. YYYY- MM-DD. The zeroes on single digits were mandatory as well. 2016- 05-03, etc.
    via u/SwimmingJohn
  • 11
    cgimusic I was once told by a financial institution that they couldn't accept my cheque because it was dated YYYY-MM-DD. They demanded it be re-done as DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY. Genius. Accept two ambiguous date formats over one where it's completely clear what you mean.
    via u/cgimusic
  • 12
    wdjm About a week after I had left, I got a call from a very angry former manager about how I had cost him his job. Why is it that these kinds of people never realize that they cost themselves the job? 154 Reply Share Rhowryn OP As someone who has met many managers, some good, some bad: Narcissism.
    via u/wdjm
  • 13
    hak_ka The change forced me to work overtime a script that I had written the night prior that would change all the dates back in under an hour
    via u/hak_ka
  • 14
    eirelav09 God bless you, dude. Livin the dream for all of us.
    via u/eirelav09
  • 15
    beardedsavant Not sure i believe this story, there is a . Canadian. 71 ↓ Reply Share Rhowryn OP Idiot manager was actually from Florida, which is why he wanted his stupid MM- DD-YYYY format. Also, Canadians aren't actually that nice, we just have more English-style retraint. If you want nice people, Texas is where its at.
    via u/beardedsavant

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