Economy & LaborNOV 25, 2022

Employees Are Told Their Meeting With The CEO Counts As Lunch, So All 60 Of Them Maliciously Comply

137

Decision-making is an essential business skill that drives organizational performance. In fact, a survey of more than 750 companies by management consulting firm Bain found a 95 percent correlation between decision-making effectiveness and financial results. (Their data also showed companies that excel at making and executing decisions generate returns nearly six percent higher than those of their competitors.)

However, not every manager is capable of figuring out what is best for the company. Like the one in charge of Reddit user Zorggalacticus and their colleagues. Recently, the whole team had to go to a meeting with the CEO, but the manager said it will count as everyone's lunch break. Not to be outdone, the workers devised a plan on how to inform the boss without actually saying anything. Continue scrolling to read about it in Zorggalacticus's post on the subreddit 'Malicious Compliance.'

This manager told the employees that their meeting with the CEO will count as their lunch break

Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)

So all 60 of them came up with a way to let the boss know about it without actually saying anything

Image credits: Yan Krukov (not the actual photo)

Image credits: zorggalacticus

We managed to get in touch with Zorggalacticus and they were kind enough to provide us with a bit more context.
"I have been with this company for 11 years. Much longer than he's been a supervisor," the Redditor told Bored Panda about their manager.

"I've liked it so far. The pay is good for our area, and the work isn't rocket science. Our HR department is awesome and usually backs up their employees, which isn't usually the case in a lot of companies."

Which the company can be proud of. After all, happy workers are 13% more productive, so keeping them content is in their best interest too.

However, Zorggalacticus said that their manager is "entirely incompetent".

"He takes the simplest things and needlessly complicates them with no real benefit at all. Most of his ideas fail miserably, but he's constantly rolling out new ones to the point that when I go on vacation, I pretty much have to relearn whole segments of my job. Getting yelled at for doing things we've always done, but he changed the rule last week and didn't tell anybody," the Redditor explained.

This is really toxic for a variety of reasons and has negative effects beyond the workplace. According to the State of the American Manager report, "Having a bad manager is often a one-two punch: Employees feel miserable while at work, and that misery follows them home, compounding their stress and putting their well-being in peril."

Zorggalacticus's company likely makes a significant investment in benefits programs aimed at employee retention and lowered healthcare costs.

In fact, US businesses spend hundreds of millions of dollars in this area, but the actions of a poor manager negate the positive effects the benefit programs might have.

When employee health suffers, the company suffers. Unhappy, unhealthy employees affect:

Absenteeism;
Performance;
Customer ratings;
Quality;
Profit.

The original poster (OP) provided more details on what happened in the comments

"I don't think there was any way [our manager] could've pulled this off," Zorggalacticus said looking back at the plan to convert their lunch break into a meeting. "He was the only supervisor out of 17 departments that even attempted it, so he would've stuck out like a sore thumb anyway. He was an office clerk in another department who applied for a supervisor spot in our department and it's pretty obvious to most people other than him that he's in way over his head."

"Just this last week, he flubbed up again," the Redditor added. "He waited to drop the orders until the second half of the day. Had us running around helping other departments. Then expected us to do 8 hours' worth of work in 4 hours. As long as we meet our production requirements, he can't do anything about it, so guess who got four hours of overtime in 1 day?"

A 2018 Udemy study found that nearly half of employees surveyed had quit because of a bad manager, and almost two-thirds believed their manager lacked proper managerial training. I think it's about time their company starts keeping a close eye on this guy.