‘Sure thing, boss!’: Newly-hired toxic manager fires dedicated employee for only completing tasks within his job description, entire department ‘collapses’ as a result

Author image for Lana DeGaetano
Lana DeGaetano • "Show me to me please."
Dec 6, 2024 10:00 AM EST

As an employee, one of your biggest fears might be getting assigned a new direct boss after working with one you highly respected—especially when this boss respects you, too. Finding a boss who listens to you and appreciates all of the work you do cultivates a work environment where you can deliver your best results and keep the company running smoothly in every other regard.

When your favorite higher-up gets booted from the picture and another entitled know-it-all attempts to run things (despite not knowing how,) it's in your best interest to lay low, keep doing what you're doing, and hope you can stay under the radar. The employee in this next story tried to do so but ended up writing his own work eulogy instead. 

After doing tasks outside of his job description for years, his new boss told him to knock it off. The employee complies but is soon let go because he isn't doing enough. Seems like they just needed an excuse to oust the one employee that kept their company afloat—which was a terrible, terrible idea. Scroll to read.

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    "Things took an even worse nosedive."
    via Unsplash+ (Getty Images)

    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

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    Terrible manager collapses an entire department
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    I worked in an accounting department at a small business. My boss, Gary, was great and gave us lots of autonomy to get everything done. It was a small business, and over the years, as is common in small businesses, I
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    picked up a number of duties that weren't strictly in my job description but were pretty important. We also had a number of processes that were not well documented, but we
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    were understaffed and not able to make any real changes. Things overall were pretty good, though, and our work flowed well and everyone was happy. Not everyone, though: Gary's boss, Carl,
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    recently had taken over as president of the company and wanted to slash costs. Gary was one of the highest paid employees, and Carl tried to get him to take a pay cut or a cut in hours.
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    When Gary refused, Carl fired him and shortly replaced him with Matt, who was much less experienced and much less qualified. Around this time, I used my leverage with Carl to
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    get a solid raise. I knew Carl would be looking to replace me soon like he did Gary, but I was too essential to lose without Gary there either. I figured I had about 6 months, which lined up
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    with about when I was planning to move out of state anyway. So, knowing that when I did leave, my coworkers would be stuck picking up the slack of my job, particularly all the
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    ancillary stuff I had picked up that was not documented at all, I started writing a detailed manual for my own job when I had time here and there. I didn't really care for Matt or Carl, but I
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    figured it would save my coworkers a lot of stress. Matt was a poor accountant and a worse manager. He was an awful micromanager with no concept of the "bigger picture." Pretty quickly,
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    he noticed that I was spending time doing all these other duties not in my JD. He told me I was only to work on projects he assigned me directly. I tried to point out all the things that would not get.
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    done if I didn't do that. He was having none of it and told me not to worry about it, as it wasn't my job. Sure thing, boss! I stopped doing anything except what he told me to
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    do. And the department started falling apart: customer emails went unanswered, software stopped working with no one to support it, files weren't organized, etc. I normally took care of
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    these and a hundred other things, but Matt was pretty clear I'm not to do any of it. I also stopped working on my manual. After a few months of this, but sooner than I
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    expected, I was laid off by Carl and Matt for "budgetary" reasons. (Of course, they listed my job on indeed that same day, for a laughably low salary.) I was given no warning, just sat down for
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    a meeting with the two and walked out the door. Matt didn't allow me to take anything from my desk, access my computer, or say my goodbyes to my coworkers. He was also
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    very clear I was not to retain any company documents or information. Sure thing, boss! So I left, and I heard from coworkers still there that over the next few weeks,
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    things took an even worse nosedive. They weren't able to fill my job, and nobody could cover most of my actual job duties or any of my ancillary duties. By this point, vendors weren't
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    being paid, and payroll wasn't going out on time. And then I got the call: Matt found the file I had left in a conspicuous spot on the network drive: JOB MANUAL AND PROCESSES.zip. It was encrypted. What's in it?
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    Oh, just a draft of all my job duties and everything I was responsible for that I worked on during downtime. Why was it even encrypted? Well, it had a bunch of confidential data and
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    passwords in it, boss! What's the password? Sorry boss, I don't know. I didn't retain it after leaving. But it's in my files! In reality, since it wasn't finished, the manual wasn't going to be some
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    panacea for all the company's problems, but I had padded it with a lot of images, so I imagine the file size was pretty attractive. And the password was indeed in my files. If Matt cared to look, he'd find an
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    unlabeled sticky note with a nondescript string of letters and numbers in a random folder in one of my 2 dozen filing cabinets. As an epilogue: about three months after I talked to Matt, Carl fired
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    him after discovering what a disaster the department had become. My coworkers both left around the same time for better opportunities. Carl's still been unable to fill any of these jobs (after almost 18 months), so the entire accounting
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    department is staffed by contractors and consultants, who I am. sure are costing the company a fortune. I hear the board is looking for a change in company presidents.
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