Manager insists all personal phone calls be directed to them in an effort to stop employees needing their phones at work, predictably backfires: 'No phones allowed at work, tell them to call me directly!'

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Sep 1, 2024 10:00 AM EDT

There is just a certain degree of oversight that doesn't need to occur in any situation. Sure, you might like to keep a tight lid on operations and your staff, but you can guarantee there are certain things that you don't need—and probably don't want—to know. At any rate, there reaches a point in your career where enough is going on underneath your level of authority where requiring any one thing to pass across your desk will result in an amount of work that you can't possibly keep up with. You're going to need to learn how to let things go or suffer the consequences.

Of course, the only way to learn some lessons is the hard way, which is how this manager had to learn when they demanded that all personal phone calls their staff received instead be directed to them as if their staff were grade school students getting their parent's calls directed to the front office or something. Staff complied by ensuring that each and every personal call was directed to the manager's phone, ensuring that it seldom stopped ringing in an eventuality that surprised no one.