'Let the place burn': Warehouse worker refuses to fix a malfunctioning machine after his protocol-obsessed supervisor forbids employees from touching equipment outside of their job description; machine bursts into flames

Advertisement
  • Cheezburger Image 10535709184
  • Advertisement
  • They said "don't touch it unless it's your job." So I didn't. And it caught fire. S I work in a warehouse, and a while back we got a new supervisor who was all about "following protocol." His big thing was that no one should touch anything unless it was their exact job to do it. One
  • morning I noticed one of the older machines starting to smoke. I've worked with it before and I knew what was happening, but I remembered the rule. So I let the supervisor know. He barely looked up and said, "Don't touch it unless it's your job." Alright then. I went
  • back to packing. Ten minutes later, the thing actually caught fire. We had a clear out the whole floor. Maintenance took their sweet time showing up. The machine was toast. Production was shut down for the rest of the day. They quietly dropped the "don't touch anything" rule after that. I just did what I was told.
  • Advertisement
  • Cheezburger Image 10535709696
  • tris_majestis ⚫ I'm less worried about the don't touch it rule and more concerned that you told a supervisor that a machine was smoking, and he didn't bother to investigate it. I'd be making it very clear to anyone and everyone that you raised an immediate safety concern and he ignored you.
  • jdlech I once had a supervisor that, if you didn't have at least 2 witnesses watching you report it, he would have claimed you did not report it. In fact, he would have claimed you deliberately did not report it and just watched it burn. He would throw you under the bus just to protect his own and his policy.
  • Advertisement
  • Why didn't one witness suffice? Because he would have claimed it was you and your friend trying to make him look bad to his supervisors. He would try to get you both fired.
  • I didn't waste much time there once I realized what kind of person this supervisor was. He already had a high turnover rate because this was his favorite tactic for covering his
  • Cheezburger Image 10535710464
  • Advertisement
  • Arrasor ⚫ Just because they drop the rule doesn't mean you should now touch shes not part of your job, especially about to break/broken sh_s. If sh stay broken or break after you touch it, it gonna be on you for unauthorized handling of equipment. Don't turn their problem into your problem.
  • atombomb1945. Had a boss like this. Suddenly he's very upset that I'm taking tickets and working so many issues. He decided I wasn't the management he was looking for and promoted someone in my team to my position. He was very straight with me that I was not allowed to work
  • tickets without the new supervisors approval. So I let tickets sit. Tickets that were literally time sensitive and needed resolved immediately would sit in the queue for hours or even days. I didn't touch them. Just sat back and let the place burn.
  • Advertisement
  • RigorousMortality ⚫ Told a coworker, a maintenance person, that something they were working on smelled smokey. They laughed it off, even though I told them I was serious. It didn't catch fire but they did inform me that I
  • was correct as a panel started to smoke later. Dude wasn't stupid either, but a lot of people are smart in a small amount of areas and just as dumb in everything else. Some people only think of fire when they see fire.

Tags

Scroll Down For The Next Article