Call center employee avoids being blamed by their manager, Derek, after carefully documenting their manager's conflicting requests and creating a paper trail

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  Manager said to document everything. So I did.

  
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  via Getty Images For Unsplash+

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• Well, to amend that earlier statement that "nobody" has ever regretted having a paper trail. I'm sure there are a fair number of people in positions of power and authority who severely regret putting things they knew were wrong in writing or having them recorded.

  And that is sort of the whole point: having a paper trail serves as a suitable way to thwart someone who isn't playing by the rules but is really good at pretending they are.

  See, for most of us honest, hardworking folk, the original statement holds true. Chances are, we're trying to do things right, so having a continued paper trail showing that is never going to be a bad thing. It might seem unnecessary and even boring in the moment and you often won't need that paper trail to refer back to, but when things go sideways you'll be glad you have it.

  Whether you're trying to do the right thing or not, when things go wrong, everybody loves to point a finger. And the reality of the situation and whether you were doing the right thing, won't matter a lick when someone can just say otherwise and noone can disproove it.

  This call center employee worked under a manager who insisted that workers should be documenting everything, using this as a weapon against staff anytime something wasn't documented. They would also give conflicting verbal instructions that would frequently trip staff up, who would follow them but then have nothing to back themselves and be penalized for following those instructions. As a result, this employee began confirming all instructions given via email. When a major issue popped up, the manager denied responsibility, but the employee was able to produce a detailed email trail proving otherwise.

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  via Getty Images For Unsplash+

  _{The image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}

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  This response from another user offered another good experience that deals with this issue

  
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