gotta love power tripping bosses getting their comuppances
Not clear any comuppance was delivered but it’s nice to hope!
This is my Granddad's story from the late 60 to early 70s in England, and to note, he was very poorly when he told this to me, so this is the story that I managed to hear, so there's bits missing and not a lot of specifics, so all of this is what I gathered
Back when my grandad was younger, he used to work in a factory making engines for cars, and despite being a hard worker, he was always disrespected and under appreciated, and he felt it more so with his boss, and despite this boss holding very littler power over a very little area of the factory, this boss would constantly yell and exert his power over everyone.
This story starts when the company buys this machine from Germany, and what I could gather from my Granddad, this machine was like a computerised machine before computers were really a thing, so instead of one computer doing all of these complex calculations, you have pegs and wires that you have to physically move to work this machine, but he didn'tsay what the machine did. Now obviously this was complex so the company sent a small group of workers to Germany to be taught how the machine worked over three months, and a group of Germans would come to England to build the machine. My granddad wasn't one of the people who went to Germany, so he stayed, but instead, he watched the Germans install the machine, and despite the language barrier, my grandad understood how it worked and how to fix it, pretty much everything he would have learnt if he went to Germany with the other workers.
After some time, my grandad got married to my grandma, and realising he needed a house, he went to the bank to talk about mortgages, but the only issue is that he gets £22 a week when he needs £44 a week to get a mortgage, so he asked his boss, who promptly said no. Laster on in the week, my grandad spoke to a mate of his who is now living in France, and the friend said "I recently lost my drivers licence so I can't work for my company anymore, but they need someone to do deliveries for £48 a week between England and France."
The next day, my grandad went up to his boss and asked "Sir, who do I give this two week notice into?" And the boss, playing a powerplay leans over my grandad, puffing smoke into his face from his pipe, and says in a low voice "You hand that to me, you understand, I'm the boss here, I'm the most important." And my grandad handed it over to him.
Over the course of the two weeks, it was normal, until the last day when the manager came over and said "Mike, I heared you're leaving today, is that true?" And my grandad said "Yes, boss asked me to give him my two week notice" and the manager went white, asking my grandad if the boss told anyone, listing anyone who had the same or more power then the boss did, even asking if the owner knew, and my grandad said no each time, with a bigger smile each time, and after everyone else on the factory went up to him asking the exact same questions, he couldn't hide his excitement.
You see, what everyone failed to notice is that while the workers who went to Germany, they where in a country known for big beers and pretty women, so they learnt absolutely nothing in those three months, and anything they did learn was quickly forgotten when they learnt my grandad knew how to work and fix the machine, so because of my grandad leaving, he effectively left with the knowledge as he can't teach anyone else in his last two weeks (and that's if everyone else knew he was leaving in those two weeks).
And the ending happened two months later when my grandad got a call from someone back at the company asked if he wanted his old job back, and my grandad calmly replied "No, I do not want my old job back, as I'd effectively be going back in life, especially back to a job that doesn't pay me well or treat me well." And for anyone wondering what happened with the machine, it ran well in those two months, but someone swapped the wires for the motors, as there was two motors, they put the wires into the wrong ones, and that's why they called my grandad, as they effectively lost thousands for the machine, the installation of the machine and flying all the workers to Germany to basically just go on a bender. As for the boss and everyone involved, my grandad never bothered learning what happened to them, but I'd like to imagine there was a fallout and the fires of hell rained down, but this company was one of the more expensive car companies, so in all honesty, it could have been a minor set back.
gotta love power tripping bosses getting their comuppances
Not clear any comuppance was delivered but it’s nice to hope!
And we wonder why employers dont even want us to use the word “union” while at work.
In Sweden your boss looks at you with bewilderment when you tell them you're not in one and recommend a few.
Thanks for sharing - this was a fun story to read
I hope the manager and the trainees who went to Germany are fired but I don't think they were.
Well the could put them on a PIP. Of course they’re probably 100 yo now, but they need to learn!
I worked for a U.S. OEM machine tool company. We sold a bunch of very expensive machines to a large customer that got a state grant to pay for training. For a few months, every week, a different group of workers would come to our facility for a week's training. They treated their trip as a paid vacation, getting hammered every night, sleeping all morning in class because of hangovers. The trainers couldn't do or say anything and had to give the "trainees" a certificate of completion whether they deserved it or not. What a joke. I support unions 100%, but they were the type of members that give unions a bad rep.
This is written so vague and drawn-out it could be AI.
I don't think so. AI would explain give exact quotes from every single person, and describe every single feeling that every person in the story had at any time This just reads like a normal story to me, i enjoyed it
I got so confused in parts I wondered if English was really their first language
No, we had a maitenance guy for 20 plus years who knew how to fix the old equipment because the owners were too cheap to upgrade. As long as it kept working, they didn't care. He retired and within a month most of the equipment failed because no one understood simple repairs. They always called the maintenance guy. His knowledge was vast and institutional. And it was gone.
"Mmmm, this person said this happened nearly 5-6 decades ago and was told to him by his sick grandad... this must be AI!" Is this your thought process?
No chance. There is so much repetition (use of the word machine 5 times in one sentence), superfluous stuff (grandad married grandma) and inconsistencies (Granddad vs grandad) you are trying to find something that is not there.
I remember reading almost exact same thing on reddit few years ago. This is probably a repost.
Great story, I like it. But I’m not sure there’s any malicious compliance…. Boss said no to salary increase, grand dad looked for and took another job.
Grandad knew he was the only one with the knowledge to fix that machine and the boss wouldn't tell anyone he was leaving
Still happens to this day. One chap puts in his four weeks notice to retire. Top boss asks him to give him more time to sort replacement and for him to get trained, he agrees but when his four weeks are up and no advert has been posted he spoke to HR who agreed he had given notice so he was free. Left a massive void in the knowledge base still felt to this day.
I once gave about a months notice. They took it, and then continued business as usual with no urgency. They hired a temp for my last week to do knowledge transfer with. Needless to say it wasn't the most efficient handoff. The kicker though is they let the temp go probably two weeks after I left.
At my first job, I gave my boss a full month's notice. At the end of the month, he hasn't found anyone to replace me, and he doesn't know how my job is done. He finally finds a replacement two months after I leave, and pays me consultant rates to train them. That boss was friendly enough, he just had zero organizational skills.
We have a guy that's retiring next summer, and I keep saying if the company had any sense, they'd pay him to sit down and write a book or three. I feel like a lot of companies really undervalue tribal knowledge / tacit knowledge.
I feel like I have read this story before. Have you posted this before??
No, the first time I heared it was the other day. Although this is like a lot of other stories on here where the best worker leaves after being under appreciated and then the company is screwed
Dude i was thinking the same thing while reading it. I exactly remember almost same thing before but maybe last year or so.
How do you drive from france to england 🤨
You have to swim... joking, you can take a ferry or even take the euro star (in all honesty, I don't think the euro star was made when this story was set, but I'm pretty sure there were tunnels under the english channel that you can drive through)
You can just take your car on the ferry, it's not a big deal
Ferry. Calais to Dover. Takes a few hours overall but it carries even big trucks.
My dad was an engineer and had to deal with bosses like this from time to time. They didn't last. At a plant in South Africa, the main boss was a fawning little shit who knew bugger all about engineering, how he got the job I don't know but when the owner of the very large international firm came to visit he spent about two minutes talking to the boss then asked my dad to show him round. Apparently the bosses face was beautiful to behold. Without saying anything the Owner had basically just told him he wasn't worth his time. My dad showed him round, introduced him to all the workers and pushed for better pay/conditions (apartheid times). That's how my Dad met Sir David Brown.
I'm not going to lie, I had to look up who David Brown is, and looking at who he was, I bet that boss aged 10 years on the spot
Too weak notice
Is this a joke or did I say "Too weak notice"?
[removed]
So many commas and no periods. My eyes
Yeah, sorry. Short version, English teacher was no good
Good story!!
The owner let me go because I was the highest paid technical staff. I went to a competitor and all my certifications they needed for their medallion status went as well. (I also let the manufacturer know I no longer worked for that company so they were removed immediately) Owner had to shut his business down less than 2 years later. Owner didn't think the certifications mattered much.
A company I worked for sold our segment to another company. When the new company took over they laid off everyone with the tribal knowledge to keep the operation running. Then they wondered why it didn't work...lol. They had hired a new manager a few weeks before laying everyone off and the poor guy was losing his mind asking how he's supposed to keep it going when they laid off all the folk who kept it running. Lol...Best karma I've ever seen.
Definitely still happens. Ten years or so ago I was involved in the relocation and refurbishment of a small but important piece of machinery at a factory with a military contract. The thing worked well but it was old and foreign. I never did find out if the company that originally built it was still in business, but we'd made heavy modifications to it in the last few decades so it's not clear if they'd have been much good for support at that point anyway. Over the course of two years or so I unraveled all of its weird quirks and undocumented features and limitations. I tried repeatedly to codify them as official documentation but it was always refused for some technical or semantic reason that basically boiled down to the people that maintained the system didn't want to bother with new specs. After a series of events shook up the staff they tried to force me into someone's recently position that was effectively a demotion and I decided to give notice instead. On one of my last days they asked me to get specs for the machine approved but I told them how I'd tried and how many weeks I'd been stuck waiting for approvals that never came so I'd given up and thrown away a lot of my old notes in the process of leaving. I got calls from various people - managers, engineers, senior staff - for six months after leaving that job asking about all the tiny little things I'd tried to tell them. I didn't return a single one.
Two weeks of notice, and if a boss gives me a bunch of problems, I'm out that day.
It was British Leyland wasn't it.
Sounds like it was an early CNC machine.
uh, Why didn't they get the Germans back to fix the machine?
My grandad left so he never knew exactly what happened, they could have gotten the Germans back to fix it and teach everyone again, or just scrapped the machine all together, but I only have the information handed to me sadly.
remind me of story about some sort of tanker ship I'm not sure if this particular engineer had been laid off just retired but essentially no one could figure out how to get these engine running again and they had to pay him big-time (in advance) to return as a consultant He walked in with the his wrench, banged it a few times in just the right places - it started up again. They wanted their fee back, but were unsuccessful because he fulfillex his contractual obligations.
My grandfather had a very similar experience to yours, sent from 60s England to Germany to learn how to work an intricate metal lathe known to the family only as *Der Machinen*. He was the only one who properly learned how it worked, and used that knowledge and experience to get a good job in the colonies.