What could be worse than an incompetent boss? Perhaps only one thing - an incompetent boss-tyrant. If a good boss makes the company better, and a simply incompetent one at least does no harm, then an incompetent tyrant always only makes things worse.
If such a boss is not identified in time, then the company they manage is very easy to find - just look at the last lines of the stock listings. The thing is that such leaders, without understanding all the details, climb into work processes, and often cause significant financial damage to the organization.
A similar situation happened to the author of a popular Reddit thread, which has already gained over 14.7K upvotes and over 600 various comments. The bosses also wanted to intervene here without considering all the nuances - and their plan immediately backfired. However, let's talk about everything in order.
More info: Reddit
The Original Poster used to take extra lunch breaks just to cut his overtime
Image credits: Jorge Franganillo (not the actual image)
So, the Original Poster had been working as a third shift team lead for a company for several years, and had consistently taken extra unpaid time on top of his lunch breaks. The fact is that in this way, the OP just cut his overtime - but the management had no clue about this!
Image credits: u/mattchica20
One day the supervisor told the team they'd have to work on schedule, with no long lunches
And so, during one of the work meetings, the supervisor demanded that all team members work strictly according to the schedule - and that the OP never took extra breaks either.
Image credits: u/mattchica20
The OP just complied maliciously as he knew he would get a bigger paycheck due to these demands
The team lead asked an innocent question: "Well, does that mean since I show up on time every day, I get to go home on time every day?" The boss didn't like that question since he just got through telling the team at the beginning of the night how everything needed to be done before they left.
Image credits: u/mattchica20
The team worked for a whole month precisely according to the schedule as the boss told them
However, the OP knew that not taking extra breaks would only give him extra money, so he just maliciously complied. As a result, the team worked for a whole month precisely according to the schedule, without any extra breaks, in strict accordance with the supervisor's requirements.
Image credits: RBerteig (not the actual image)
Image credits: u/mattchica20
It turned out the OP had his biggest paycheck in this position
And when it came time to get paid, it turned out that the OP's paycheck was the biggest he'd ever seen since he took his position. Supervisors also looked at the payroll and realized that something wasn't right here! As a result, the team leader was officially encouraged to return to his long lunch practice despite the fact that he'd just innocently asked, what about the previous ban?
Image credits: u/mattchica20
Supervisors seemed to understand what they'd done, so asked the OP to return to long lunches
As the OP himself says, this time he was deliberately sent home early as he simply completed the day's work plan. The executives, apparently, only now realized that he was doing them a "favor" all this time by cutting his overtime with these long lunches.
Image credits: u/mattchica20
Image credits: Andy Tyler (not the actual image)
People in the comments told a lot of similar stories
Redditors immediately brought up several of their own similar stories from a wide variety of companies and industries. It turns out that such self-righteous managers could be found at almost every management level. According to some commenters, supervisors just need to schedule work time better.
A funny story also happened to one of the commenters, whose boss also required employees to work overtime. As a result, right on Wednesday evening, all the staff said goodbye to him until Monday, explaining that they had already worked 40 working hours per week in just three days.
As you can see, the success of a company actually depends very much on the personal qualities of any manager. That is why soft skills trainings are held so often in many companies. We, in turn, are already waiting for your comments and, of course, similar stories. Maybe you can even take some extra lunch time to tell us your own story...