New boss demands new meeting first thing in the morning, stalls production: 'The warehouse workers will be doing nothing...'

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Feb 9, 2024 7:00 AM EST

People, and particularly the woefully ignorant, generally only listen to what you tell them if it costs them something in some way, particularly if it's your boss and the thing being costed is their own money. Thankfully, there's nothing to teach common sense quite like the wasted money of a stalled production line with a bunch of workers standing around waiting to be told what to do by their boss who is stuck in a pointless morning stand-up meeting.

In this story posted to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance by Redditor u/Markbmann, we see exactly why the above is generally a good idea — when a new manager at OP's girlfriend's work came in and instituted a first-thing morning meeting, her concerns that it wouldn't allow her to get the day's tasks started to keep other employees productive on time weren't heard. Sure enough, the first early morning meeting showed exactly why she had this concern — everyone else at the company working on the lines was waiting on her.

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    * DISHWASHER 8049226000 DISHWASHER 8049226000 DISHWASHER 8049226000 SHE 604 2600
    via Remy Gieling
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    r/MaliciousCompliance r/ Everyone else wants the meeting first thing in the morning? Okay! Marcbmann M So, this story is being stolen from my girlfriend. She works at a company that provides warehousing, product prep, and direct to consumer services to other companies. She works in their office dealing directly with several key accounts, but also has a few lines that she manages. The lines are responsible for prepping and building shipments. The line workers will gather in the morning and wait f
    via Marcbmann
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    assignments, as well as any direct to consumer orders, from my girlfriend. This detail is important. The other office workers help manage some accounts, but do not manage the lines or direct to consumer orders, nor do they know how to. She comes into work one day and finds out they have a new director, and he wants to start organizing, streamlining, etc. Ya know, the things the new important person does to make it look like he's giving it his all. His first order of business is to have a mandato
    via Marcbmann
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    8am with everyone in the office that "will take no longer than 15 minutes". My girlfriend requests that the meeting starts at 9am instead, as the warehouse workers will be doing nothing but waiting around for their assignments otherwise. The director, probably not wanting to look like he's playing favorites on his first day, puts this to a vote, and *surprise* the other people want to start first thing in the morning, as they have nothing else to do at that time. So my girlfriend says "Okay, if
    via Marcbmann
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    Next day, the meeting begins as soon as everyone arrives, and as they gather and the director begins talking, they hear the various lines start calling my girlfriend's name over the radio in the distance. Five minutes go by, and now people begin wandering into the office. Ten minutes and a small group forms. Fifteen minutes, and people are coming and going patiently waiting for her, as she is ferociously tapping her pen on a clipboard. At this point the director pipes up with a less than sincere
    via Marcbmann
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    you look rather anxious, so if you have someplace to be, you can go if we're keeping you." She responds with a candid and rushed "thank you so much." and runs away to take care of her lines and process consumer orders. The new director, after this conversation, spoke with the owner of the company. To his credit, the director later that day sought out my girlfriend and recapped what she missed at this meeting, which ultimately ran for over 45 minutes. He also explained that the owner of the compa
    via Marcbmann
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    SmokeAbeer Wait till the meetings about how the meetings are going. That's my favorite. 3.5K ↓ Reply ↑ Share ...
    via Marcbmann
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    bigsbriggs Sounds like the manager made an honest mistake and corrected it promptly with no ill will. Kudo's to him. Your gf played it well too. ↑ 675 + Reply ↑ Share
    via Marcbmann
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    Billiam201 I have had 7 meetings just to set up 1 meeting. First we had to set the date of the meeting, so we had a meeting for that. Then we had to set the time, so we had a meeting for that. We had a third meeting just to decide who should be at the meeting.
    via Marcbmann
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    We had another meeting about the date and time because some dates worked better for some people, and now that there were some people who were cut out in the third meeting, we could move it to a day that people liked better. We had a meeting to determine if there would be a pre-meeting-meeting, and whether or not that meeting would have lunch.
    via Marcbmann
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    We had an "agenda and battle plan meeting" to determine what would be discussed, and who would be allowed to speak at the meeting. We had the pre-meeting-meeting (2 hours before the meeting, so people could get lunch afterwards) to "iron out the details" of what would be said, and how we would say it, at the meeting. Then we finally had the meeting.
    via Marcbmann
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    Despite the Project Director's multiple meetings, he had never actually covered the subject matter, and he looked like in front of our funding partners, because he was bad at his job. 4649 Reply ↑ Share ...
    via Marcbmann

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