Employee tells coworkers to stop telling him how to do his job, gets caught breaking the rules by the boss: 'We had 10 trucks to unload'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Apr 23, 2025 5:00 PM EDT

Safety rules are there for a reason, but some workers refuse to believe something until they see proof of it. If you're doing a physical task and it seems like there are all these irritating rules in place, I know it can be frustrating. It's easy to think you know better, and to just start doing things your own way. But with safety regulations, there's almost always a dark back story to go along with it. Someone was harmed by doing the exact same thing as you, and a rule was made to keep it from happening again. 

You'd think an older worker would know this just from lived experience alone… but not everyone is that bright. At least his coworkers didn't have to deal with him for long before the boss caught on. No one should ever have to work in an unsafe environment, and rules are there to try and keep everyone safe, not just the people who feel like abiding by them. 

Up next, read about the mother of 2 tween girls who demanded an airline passenger move to a middle seat: "This is about needing to sit next to my kids." 

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  • 01
    Asso les Ogres ier Aunas sine PIE
    via Ayrus Hill on Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 02
    "Don't Tell Me How To Do My Job" "OK Then" Recently, I was reminded of this story from a couple of years ago. As mentioned in a previous story on a different sub, I work for a company that gets hired to do the grunt work at large concerts. Basically, we set the gig up in the morning then tear it back down at night.
    via u/rslashcallousheart
  • 03
    Two things you need to know first that are relevant to this story; Firstly this is a job that has the potential to be inherently dangerous. You're working with very heavy equipment, and sometimes at a decent height off the ground, so there is always the possibility that you'll either fall off of something and do some damage, or something will fall on you and do some damage. To give you an example, one load-in we were working, one of the trucks was packed from top to bottom, side to side and fron
    via u/rslashcallousheart
  • 04
    case off the truck, one of my co- workers lost his balance, and fell off the ramp. Luckily, I was standing in the perfect place to catch him and cushion his fall. If I hadn't have been there, he'd have fallen just over five feet and landed flat on his back on solid concrete, which could have done serious damage to his back. So, as you can imagine, health and safety is quite a big deal to our boss. We're required to wear a hard hat and steel toe-capped boots when we're working, and when we first
    via u/rslashcallousheart
  • 05
    Secondly, we start every shift by unloading trucks. Depending on the size of the show we're working, we have anywhere from five to thirty trucks to unload. Generally, we'll start unloading the trucks, and bit by bit, some of us will be called to start assembling some freshly unloaded staging or rigging.
    via u/rslashcallousheart
  • 06
    This story involves a gentleman we'll call Kevin. Kevin's an older guy, maybe in his early sixties, and started working for the company at the same time I did, although he worked similar jobs when he was my age, in the late 70's and early 60's. Kevin's a perfectly affable guy, and it's always entertaining hearing about his experiences from working back in the day.
    via u/rslashcallousheart
  • 07
    However, Kevin is a little bit lax when it comes to health and safety. He's compliant to most of our guidelines, but some things he's a little bit less compliant with. The one thing he does that annoys everyone is sending down flight- cases without checking that someone is on the ramp to take the case from him. A little bit of flight-case etiquette; when you send a small-ish flight-case down a ramp (one that one person can wheel along the floor to its destination), you make sure there's one pers
    via u/rslashcallousheart
  • 08
    light enough that one person can wheel one across the floor solo, but they're heavy enough that it's gonna hurt if a runaway one hits your leg. Kevin doesn't do this with the smaller cases, and this annoys everyone else. We've told him several times, but it goes in one ear and out the other.
    via u/rslashcallousheart
  • 09
    One particular show, we had ten trucks to unload, and by the time we were on truck number nine, everyone else bar myself, Kevin and a few others had been allocated a job setting up a part of the show. The last truck was late, it had broken down en route to the venue. After we were finished with truck number nine, we were allowed to take a smoke break while we waited for the last truck to arrive. We confronted Kevin outside, and he told us; "Stop telling me how to do my job. I know what I'm doing
    via u/rslashcallousheart
  • 10
    So we all nodded, and went to smoke our ciga ttes. The final truck arrived not long after, and we went to go and gut it. We opened the trailer doors, put the ramp in place and Kevin and another co-worker got on the truck and started unload the cases. Our boss, John, walked over to our truck, and one of us said; "Hey John, would you mind helping us unload, we're a man down?"
    via u/rslashcallousheart
  • 11
    John obliged, and walked up to the ramp to get the first case. Just as he stepped foot on the ramp, Kevin launched his first middle. John caught the case, then told Kevin to go with him for a chat. I jumped on the truck and took Kevin's place. We gutted the truck in about twenty minutes, then we were delegated to setting up the drum risers for the stage that we'd just unloaded. Kevin came back to join us, and we heard later that John had given Kevin a warning, and if he was ever caught breaking
    via u/rslashcallousheart
  • 12
    Parceljockey As an ex local crew I support that talking to. Runaway cases are no joke. Things have changed for sure, whilst still being the same. No steel toed boots, flak jackets nor helmets back in my times. Still idiots on the ramp though.
    via u/rslashcallousheart
  • 13
    les GRE Assoles Ogres Aunas DAY DE ald Ле
    via A J. on Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 14
    ConcreteState Yay stagehand work! Local crew? Once with cirque du soleil they pushed a chair-sized case out and said "4 person case." Weird! But they said 4 so we did 4. It was the trapeze counterweights and weighed about 700 kg.
    via u/rslashcallousheart
  • 15
    Cyc68 I used to work with a d like that. No matter how you explained things he just did everything his own way. I still have a dodgy hip from having to jump off the ramp on to sloping wet concrete because he decided to start pushing a case up the ramp while I was coming down. The big issue is he was the boss so there was no fixing the problem. So back to the freelance life for me.
    via u/rslashcallousheart
  • 16

    This dude went multiple shifts with this behavior before he was halted

    jbuckets44 Was John not notified before this or did he choose not to then observe to confirm said allegations? rslashcallousheart OP. This was our joint third shift, and the first time we'd seen Kevin actually on the truck, rather than at the side of the ramp, so the first time we saw this behaviour.
    via u/rslashcallousheart
  • 17
    WingsofSky Reminds me of moronic idiots who are too lazy to handle boxes right. Then it messes up the boxes going thru machines at work.
    via u/rslashcallousheart

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boss workplace-stories jobs job malicious compliance bosses work coworkers malicious-compliance-reddit workplace malicious compliance reddit
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