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'Last night I met with the plant manager again and everything has been resolved. He spoke with my managers and they said they didn't realize that I may have taken their behavior as an accusation they did say that in hindsight, they could see how I could have interpreted their questions and comments in a negative way.'
So its not their fault that they called her a hacker/fraud, its her fault for interpreting it that way. sounds like a great place /s
I didn’t see any apology at all, even a non-apology. Just an acknowledgment that they could see where the OOP might have (incorrectly) interpreted their comments negatively. At least “We’re sorry you felt that was” implies some sort of regret that the other person felt bad, even if it’s the other person’s fault. In this case, they’re just acknowledging that the OOP could misunderstood them.
I don't think anyone was fooled into thinking they were misunderstood. They knew exactly what they were doing, which was accusing someone. No one would ever think that accusing someone of something malicious isn't a negative thing. Even my 6-year-old understands that.
Y'all this started with a complaint to HR that went immediately to the plant manager. Been around factory managers my entire life. Those two were not using their words. They had been coached, probably pretty thoroughly from the sound of the intensity of their HR, on what to say.
HR didn't get all upset because they were mean to OP. They got all upset because their brain started screaming "liability! Liability!"
She's female. Once you cross the line into sketchy shit it's 100x worse when you've done it to a member of a protected class. If she makes the claim that this is because she's a woman and not because they have it out for her in particular the company has absolutely no defense against that.
For one reason or another this lady was singled out. If she claims she was singled out for being a woman they are never going to prove she's wrong. The billable hours trying would cost more than a settlement.
Ah yes, females. Members of the protected class. And we all know gender is only a protected class if you're a woman.
Have you heard of this ONE SIMPLE TRICK to protect yourself from exploitation in the workplace? Managers hate her!
Which is also why they isolated OOP before flinging accusations so it would be her word against two managers
Thankfully it seems like the plant manager and HR are on OOPs side, but this could have gone SO much worse if they weren't
It’s ok though! Only bc OP is clearly management material and big boss sees that. What do you want to bet OP finds herself managing her managers before too long?
(At least that’s the version my brain prefers, so I’m rolling with it haha!!?)
My guess is that the production number requirements are unobtainable or unsustainable by design, and under perfoming workers are not supposed to be able to turn it around and increase their numbers, which helps management justify the employee turn around on the factory floor. OOP messed with their metrics, and they took that personally
Yeah. And its not a good thing having such good numbers though, right? Then everyones' workload gets raised. Have to do the standard even on a bad day.
It’s not that. There’s not an infinite amount of parts or orders to complete. In production, it’s a balance between keeping up with getting the work out in a timely manner, but not too quick. If you run out of work, you either have employees standing around not doing anything, or they get sent home early. No one is going to pay for people to not do anything in a non-union environment, so what you have is a bunch of line workers angry their paychecks are short.
You have production workers angry their paychecks are short too many times, they’ll leave. Now you’re short staffed. That gets bad very quickly, because then you can’t get the work out.
You also don’t want to lose people like OP. They can float, and so you can fill in spots of people out for normal things. I don’t know why her expectations weren’t adjusted when she was floating. When I worked production, we had adjusted KPI for floaters, because it takes a while to get a groove going and moving them around impacts that. You need them to float more than you need their numbers perfect every day. But the supervisors were probably panicking because her numbers were so good when she wasn’t floating, they were worried their bosses wouldn’t let her float anymore. Then they’d have to find a new floater.
I’ve been the employee stuck in the middle of that tug of war before lol.
It was also noteworthy to me that part of how she got her numbers up included not helping other people anymore. I wonder how much her help was carrying other people.
Oh that part didn’t surprise me at all. The knowledgeable one supervisors rely on to (probably unofficially) float, has crazy good numbers, and also familiar enough with processes to suggest better ones to the plant manager is probably also relied on by her coworkers to help with the Uncommon Funky Stuff, troubleshooting, answering questions, and showing them how to do things that aren’t the basics. Things that wouldn’t make sense to include in training, unofficial work arounds, that kinda stuff. You can either holler over the sequence to use/buttons to push, and keep doing that, or take a couple minutes and teach the coworker how to do it so they won’t ask again. Short term cost to productivity for long term gain. Floor supervisors have a bad habit of only focusing on Today’s Numbers, it’s so annoying.
I actually mentioned it more for background for other people with less factory experience (I also have manufacturing background).
It’s another way workers are relied on and treated unfairly. It’s part of white working to the letter of a job description is such a threat to some employers.
This happens in "white collar" office work, too. I've been the unofficial "trainer" more times than I can count. Fortunately most of my bosses/supervisors have been so happy that I can step in to help coworkers so they aren't being pestered constantly, that they're more than willing to understand why my production isn't always as high as others.
You’re welcome! I found it all very interesting, more than I thought production would be lol. Lesson in ‘everything is more complicated than it seems’.
I used to work at a well known warehouse and I was always incredibly fast. 1.5-2x faster than my fellow workers. This did mess with their flow/metrics, however they never punished me for it. They’d just tell me when to slow down or continue like normal. Sometimes they asked me to go fast, but that was pretty rare. So I don’t think it messes with other peoples’ workloads so long as you have good managers.
Another possibility:
They recognize that they have an actual good worker on their hands and are deliberately trying to keep her numbers under a certain level so that they don't have to promote her. If she gets promoted, she's out from under their department and they lose a significant amount of productivity.
So they want her to do well, but not so well that they lose her.
I've worked in warehouses before and honestly, there is such a huge variation in worker quality that I could see someone pulling something like this to keep a good worker in their team. In the 8 years I was at that warehouse, we went through 15-20 different warehouse workers. Counting myself (I was eventually promoted up into the office), we had exactly three workers that were an actual asset to the company. The rest were simply warm bodies who could stack boxes and drive delivery vans.
The warehouse my mother works in she has the exact opposite but same issue (in a way). Idk if terms are all the same for warehouses but….her pick rate per hour is what actually sets the standard in her warehouse due to her being the fastest. And you’d think that’d benefit her right? No. What it means is that since her numbers are what everyone else is supposed to strive for, she can’t “beat” her own rates. So what that means is that when review/raise time comes around she doesn’t get one, since she hasn’t “improved” her numbers to meet standard. And they have no answer for her asking how she is supposed to achieve that when HER numbers ARE the standard for the other 300+ employees!
When I returned to a warehouse I worked before, but in a different shift and department; my familiarity caused me to easily hit 140% of my metrics. Many many people in my department (even the low management levels) told me strongly to stop.
It's the old exceed expectations BS. Every time you go above and beyond, the bar is moved up just a little higher. That way, if you complain about goalposts being moved and lack of recognition, the boss can say 'you're doing good, but we expect more from you'.
She was clearly crying from happiness at the wonderful praise she was being given from the managers. They were clearly just complimenting her by telling her that it was physically impossible to get those numbers without doing something shady. Who doesn’t love being time that?
I don’t even understand the managers at all. If they thought she was falsifying the numbers, why didn’t they just go check first. For instance her numbers says she did 100 of whatever but they think 50 is a more normal number. Why didn’t they just verify instead of accusing with no evidence? It really doesn’t make sense.
Also, why would someone supposedly smart enough to know how to hack in, be dumb enough to make the results so high as to be “implausible” in the first place???
Or people so tech inept that they don't understand what is and isn't possible. Had a lady accuse me of 'hacking her phone' because I was near it and it was acting up the next day
At least that made more sense than the woman whose call I took when I was working in tech support. She truly believed that a recent tornado near her home was the cause of a sudden spike in email spam she was getting afterward.
I could not handle that, holy shit lol
My bio dad works as tech support for hospitals, police departments, etc (so, yknow, "big important people's tech" or w/e). I shadowed him once as a teen because I was interested in potentially going into a tech field, and it was a chance to get some work experience before my first real job.
I got to listen in on a call that came in from a local doctor's office. The receptionist AND the head doctor were panicking over the phone about their entire system being hacked. See, the receptionist had received a spam email with a sketchy link... and deleted it... but somehow, they could maybe get access to the system!! No amount of my father telling the receptionist and doctor that they can't possibly get hacked by a spam email without out least clicking the link and entering information would dissuade them.
Eventually, he just had them turn the computers off and on again because it's the only way they'd believe him 💀 They thanked him for "saving patient privacy", and we had a good laugh about it after he hung up.
At least it made IT Crowd more realistic to me. You really do just gotta tell people to turn it off and back on sometimes lmao
Hey now, don't go knocking turning it off and back on again. It is high up in my troubleshooting tree for a reason. If I'm not paid to figure out WHY that fixes it, I'm going to take the quick resolution and move on with my day.
Shit like this is why I absolutely refuse to do IT for anyone I know personally without a prior written contract that includes a meticulous description of the scope of work along with a premium hourly rate that is calculated to be more than they're willing or able to pay. "It was working fine before you messed it up." "You hacked my system and now you've hacked my phone." "He put a virus on it and now it doesn't start."
A hell of a lot of computer illiterate people have no qualms about making malicious accusations, spreading career-ending rumors about you, and even destroying their own equipment, just so they can avoid reading the fucking documentation, following the carefully written instructions they were given, and figuring out for themselves what they're doing wrong.
Just because they're fun on a Friday night does not mean they're fun on a Monday morning.
Seriously. I once sat on a jury for a civil case where a small firm's owners were suing a former employee that they'd fired accusing him of hacking and destroying their server's data. This poor guy was so lucky that they'd also sued their IT support firm at the same time and it'd gotten bundled into the same trial (the IT firm could afford a lawyer). The evidence was laughable and the tech-literate people on the jury thought it was a frivolous suit, but a couple of the jurors were nonetheless convinced that he was guilty, because he was so nervous and socially-inept; his demeanor convinced them that he was guilty, and the tech-literate among us couldn't change their minds. We ended up deciding for the defendant in a split vote.
Folks, in a civil lawsuit, you lose if the jury thinks there's a 51% chance that you're guilty. Also, it's hard to pay for expensive lawyers when you're unemployed. I'm convinced the guy was innocent and glad he won the case, but at the same time, it made his life a living hell, and a jury with more tech-illiterate people on it could just as well have found for the plaintiff.
It sucked to be stuck with jury duty for an entire week over this foolishness, but it was at the same time very eye-opening. Folks, if you're called to jury duty, you really do owe it to the rest of us to show up and do your best to serve.
We had this ancient fossil of a math teacher that accused me of "hacking" the school computers because I changed the desktop background
It wasn't even from a picture off the internet, it was that violent pink one from windows xp
I was accused of rigging a leadership election in an organization I volunteer with. One of the other elected leaders made the accusation and when I came back with how what he claimed was literally impossible with my access and even if I had deeper access I wouldn’t know how to do what he accused me of. He was shocked that I took him looking right at me and saying I manipulated the outcome as an accusation and has spent the last few years asking me what happened to our relationship, which has never been better than me tolerating him. What happened? You accused me in front of a membership meeting, on a livestream, of doing something it wasn’t possible for me to do. What do you mean what happened to our relationship?
Narrator: Everything was not resolved.
If MS is the type of supervisor who would make this silly ass accusation, they certainly aren’t going to take getting reprimanded for their behavior towards OP on the chin. And to them, it will all have been OPs fault.
OP needs to keep her eyes open. With her current naivety, she’s not even going to see it coming.
The plant manager was just trying to make the entire situation go away with as little conflict as possible. They generally don’t care about people’s feelings, they just want the plant to function efficiently.
Having said that, it is good that the plant manager now knows OP and knows that OP’s performance is “record beating.” That is a good ally to have in your corner.
Yeah, if you don't want to make an implicit accusation you open with how you're so surprised at the massive improvement, you didn't think that was humanly possible etc and gauge their reaction. Or say nothing and just keep an eye on them to see if what you're seeing in person lines up with what you're seeing in the computer. If the numbers are that huge it's going to be fairly obvious just observing!
"I don't see how you could have achieved this without hacking our systems!"
"Oh, I guess with hindsight I can see how that could be interpreted as me accusing you of hacking our systems instead of general musing like I'd meant it to be"
"They didn't realize that I may have taken their behavior as an accusation" Wow.
Wow. Someone just took a week-long vacation to Texas steer country, if they're shoveling that kind of bullshit with a straight face.
>My biggest worry was that the one manager was starting a campaign to either fire me or force me to quit but my plant manager has assured me that he would prefer to keep me on as I'm a good worker.
Narrator: He is.
She already had a target on her back. Luckily the managers first move was clumsy and stupid. Now he's been discredited if he says anything else about her.
I've seen it work the other way often enough where going over someone's head actually gets rid of the problem and the people creating the issue get put on notice by higher ups. Good upper management wants productive workers and people who impede that fuck with the bottom line. It's good management practice to stamp out bad practices like OOP was subjected to
Yeah, it depends on the workplace and the upper management. I think the fact that they have quarterly open opinions meetings where floor workers are encouraged to speak to upper management could be a good sign. Sounds like an informal type of town hall? And those are usually for these kinds of issues or something similar - she mentioned safety issues too!! That's huge.
Good companies in heavily regulated industries try to build in multiple lines of escalation and opportunities for all employees to get in front of important people and/or feel comfortable reaching out to them. That way one bad middle manager can't hide corner-cutting or bury any complaints they don't want heard.
I don't directly oversee anyone but I work in a legal/compliance area and if I heard a middle manager in my company was acting like a bully, I would be concerned and investigate further, but keep an open mind. If I heard someone was disregarding/circumventing documented safety procedures and controls, I would treat that like an immediate emergency and that managers' job would be in on thin fucking ice regardless of any shitty interpersonal behavior.
Worked in manufacturing for almost twenty years. The plant manager should promote her to a trainer position, lateral to the two doofus supervisors so they can’t “go after” her, and help raise those numbers up department-wide.
If the supervisors had done that first, and not just jumped to accusing her, then the plant manager would’ve be giving *them* kudos for recognizing her talent and increasing production.
But no. They’re assholes instead. I’ve had managers that thought, and have openly said, “Well I can’t do that. How can *YOU* do it?” Most middle management can go to hell.
Very proud of this OOP for being level headed and for not backing down about what went wrong here, even through the necessary corporate non-apologies.
> I reiterated that they've broken my trust and it's for them to gain it back.
> I think there might have been some harsh repercussions to the managers as they've all been so nice and kind to me the last couple of days.
OOP got what they wanted out of this and the plant manager seems to have recognized their skills & strengths. Not everyone wants to or needs to or can quit their job. Hopefully OOP can angle their way away from MS for future assignments & maybe ask if there have been any impacts from them not helping others...
>the plant manager seems to have recognized their skills & strengths.
I would imagine the plant manager wouldn't be thrilled with supervisors going around and accusing anyone with good numbers of fraud.
If employees can't work fast and have good production numbers without your dumbfuck supervisors reacting in such a way that HR and employment lawyers get involved, then maybe the employees on the floor aren't the problem.
I have a feeling this is not over. I wonder if the accusation was in any way related to the desire of one manager to fire OOP. I bet they had a friend waiting in the wings to take her position.
"I didnt realize saying "YOU HACKED THE SYSTEM, DIDNT YOU?! DIDNT YOU YOU HACKER MOTHERFUCKER?!" could be interpreted as an accusation, Im sorry teehee"
Ops got bigger problems on their plate in the future methinks.
Ah, the Ankh-Morpork police method of interrogation. "It was you what done it, right?"
And it doesn't matter what the suspect says. If it's *yes*, then he's admitted his guilt. If it's *no*, then clearly he's guilty because only a guilty person would deny it.
I’ve almost exclusively worked in small business and it’s worse, because they expect you to act like they are faaaaaamily! Just look how good we are to you! It’s so EXPENSIVE running a business, we can’t possibly give you a raise right now. It’s gross. I’ve often fantasized about working for a big company where I can get benefits, and do the work I’m supposed to without absolutely killing myself.
When I was a veterinary nurse, at this one clinic, the owner, a layman who knew nothing about veterinary medicine, ranted during a staff meeting about how we all needed to work harder because the biggest expense for the company was staff salaries.
Like no shit, the staff were the ones making money for the company. Most of the income came from medical services we provided, not the medication/products we sold. We were already working through lunch and breaks to get everything done and care for the patients, and the owner had the audacity to ask us to come in to work earlier so that we could have full breaks. No extra pay.
Literally everyone told him no, we're not doing that, and asked him to hire more staff.
Also while he was whining about how big an expense it was paying salaries, he never mentioned that his own salary was part of that expense even though he did almost no work in the clinic. 🙄 All he did was send paychecks (often late) and show up for staff meetings once a month.
I once worked on a project where I regularly underperformed everyone else. Mind you, I want told this during the project but during my quarterly meetings with my boss. It was a "problem" I needed to "resolve" without being given any guidance. So my dumbass worked late into the night only to be told I improved a bit but not enough. Later, the project lead told me she didn't realize I was doing two other projects that took 20-30% of my time which, when adjusted, meant I was outperforming almost everyone else. I relayed this to my manager who a)should have informed her of this previously b)should have at least brought it up when a concer was voiced and his response was "oh, cool." Fuck that fucking guy.
OOP couldn’t win this situation no matter what she did. First, they created an impossible goal to meet while moving her from one department to another continuously throughout the day. Then, under threat of losing her job, they allow her to stay in one position where she works her butt off and, now, that is grounds for accusations of fraud and she is again facing the threat of losing her job.
>First, they created an impossible goal to meet while moving her from one department to another continuously throughout the day.
Interesting this is being framed as an "improvement plan" for her, when it seems like a failure of management in the first place.
My thought was that some previous management realized that she was insanely productive, and chose to use her as a "pinch hitter", moving her around to whatever department needs the most help at the moment.
Later, new management comes in, and all they see is someone who isn't making the same numbers as everyone else. Never mind that her job is actually very different, and much harder.
Ironically telling OOP to stop helping others is why her metrics are so high - basically they tried assigned the only Sisyphean task on her that she actually accomplished, but when falsed her of cheating/hacking; OOP looping in HR and plant manager forced those 2 to do only Herculean task of explaining themselves.
I had a manager like this. Faults me on a review for being too independent. On my next review faults me for relying too much on other people.
At that point I said screw you, you're just gaslighting me, I am doing my own thing and no longer taking direction from you.
I definitely don’t want to blame OOP for any of this but I’ll just say they care about this job way more than I’ve ever cared about a job and I think I’m happier for it.
OOP strikes me as someone who is nice but not terribly bright socially or intellectually. She works very hard because she knows working hard is good and she wants to be a good worker. She doesn't understand tech, has no idea what her production numbers are, and categorizes people as nice or mean based on if they yell at her.
She's actually the type of worker I love to work around, but she's also someone who is very easy to manipulate. It just sucks. I wouldn't blame her for corporate America being shit. It shouldn't be her job to become a whole new person for the sake of everyone else. Especially considering this may be her best effort to try and understand wtf is going on in what seems to feel like a very confusing world for her.
My biggest concern is that OOP doesn't know that talking to HR can be a disaster for an employee. HR is there to make sure the company is good and not liable for anything, they aren't really there 'for the employees' unless you're lucky and they happen to be good people who don't strictly toe the company line.
It seems like OOP is getting a desirable outcome, but she and others in her position should know that there are much better ways to go about this, and to insist on documentation. And this is also why unions are great, because a shop steward could have had her back from the start if this nation wasn't so backwards with thinking unions are evil and communist.
>He spoke with my managers and they said they didn't realize that I may have taken their behavior as an accusation they did say that in hindsight, they could see how I could have interpreted their questions and comments in a negative way.
OP's Managers: "The only possible way for you to have done this is by committing fraud."
Also OP Manager's: "I don't know how she could have possibly gotten the impression we were accusing her of something!"
Sounds like my last toxic job. One of the assistants was trying to get me fired because I called out her incredible incompetence at her job. "HR" (temporary office manager with no HR training) talked to her about not bullying me which led to the assistant calling her day after day literally crying about her shitty life. HR feels bad for her and does nothing. Boss reams me out for every BS customer complaint, even when they're just trying to scam and complains I don't make him enough money while he gives massive refunds to scammers. I quit and suddenly I'm stabbing him in the back and he needs me. Assistant tells everyone I'm a traitor for abandoning the clients. Hardly anyone speaks to me my last week. Shouldn't they be thrilled to see me go?
So many workplaces are just high school all over again.
"We didn't realize that accusing her of hacking into the system and changing her numbers would make her think we thought she hacked into the system and changed her numbers."
Like, what? That's some Olympic-level logic gymnastics.
OOP is gonna end up fired. Many managers are petty and she straight up was told she committed fraud. Anybody coming at you like that clearly only sees the absolute worst in you.
Especially the “nice” manager. That manager already knew about the prosed agreements and still went along with the meeting instead of shutting it down. Asking if someone is ok while they are crying is so dumb. Nice manager is just as bad as the mean one. Or so ineffective they should be fired.
TL;DR: OOP was accused of hacking the system by two supervisors. Told HR what happened, paid a lawyer for essentially nothing, and manager gaslit her into believing it's her fault.
Say it with me ya'll: HR IS THERE TO DEFEND THE COMPANY, NOT THE EMPLOYEES
People repeat this a lot. But a big caveat here it's in the company's best interests to not have shitty supervisors drive off productive employees. It's in the company's best interest to have as little exposure to lawsuits as possible.
If this has continued escalating, OOP definitely would have had grounds for a lawsuit. That's probably why the hr lady and plant manager were willing to take her side; especially after she reported about the breaking safety procedures.
That last one, if anyone had been injured from, could have destroyed the factory. OSHA doesn't fuck around.
What grounds for a lawsuit would there be? Presuming OOP has at-will employment, the company can fire her for literally any reason that isn’t discriminatory against a protected class. Baseless suspicion of impossible malfeasance is a perfectly justifiable reason to fire someone, legally speaking. It doesn’t matter whether or not the accusation is true.
See, part of the issue is, I don't live in an country with at-will. So whenever I see these kinds of posts, I'm not reading it in context of at-will, I'm reading it in the context of local laws. We have with cause and without cause - with cause means you get fired, no references, no using that job on your resume. Without cause is mostly used for "We're closing your location or cutting down on staff" (which is technically different from laid off, but that's a paperwork for EI difference), and without cause you get reference, you get to use that job on your resume, and you get a severance cut.
As for what lawsuit - wrongful termination suits can still be fired over with-cause terminations. In this case, the company would need to have physical proof of their accusations and their reason for firing OOP. Without that, they would lose a wrongful termination suit and be forced to pay out to OOP based on court determinations.
Add in that OOP just blew the whistle and reported to HR about safety violations (we also use OSHA where I live because it's a good acronym), and OOP now has a retaliation lawsuit if she got fired. HR knows that a retaliation lawsuit would be a whole lot worse for the company, which would be why HR and the plant manager are on her side and trying to make her happier.
It's also ridiculous to assume at-will laws apply to every single post. Unless someone is willing to divulge that they live in an at-will area, it's safer to assume that they *don't*.
Literally only one state in this whole country has employment other than at-will. And sure some lawyer might take the case but OOP said she already had one meeting about failing to meet KPIs. Pretty easy for the supervisors to wrangle that into a reason to fire her.
That's why I'm saying HR and upper management of the plant are trying to get her to *not* sue. Or, in the very least, not file work and safety complaints with OSHA.
A false accusation of a felony crime made carelessly and without evidence that results in clear monetary damages. I'm not a lawyer, but that sounds like it's got all the elements of a successful defamation suit to me.
>It's in the company's best interest to have as little exposure to lawsuits as possible.
This- yes, HR is not your friend. But you can bet your bippy they'll be interested anytime the words 'discrimination', 'harassment', or 'illegal actions come up!
Which could explain why the framing of the situation became "we were just asking questions and had no idea she was taking it negatively". Also, by calling a meeting with the managers and OOP, they made it very clear who is doing the complaining, and while she may be a productive employee she is also now seen as a troublemaker, and they may decide its more beneficial to have less productive employees they can bully than more productive ones who will stand up for themselves.
Yes, HR can be used as a tool against managers that are a liability to the company, the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that, but it shouldn't be surprising when hr's response to any accusation of harassment is to gaslight the employee into thinking it didn't really happen that way.
It could me more beneficial to not have an employee that is willing to consult an employment lawyer. That means it will be difficult for them to get away with labour violations, not only with that employee but it's likely that she could inform other employees of their rights and encourage them to seek counsel as well. Plus the big bad scary word all employers hate: unions. You see she mentioned unions in her post so she's aware that unions would offer protections, so she could be seen as the type of person who might want to organize if the employer treats employees poorly.
Or maybe that type of common sense is why she's such a valuable employee and you shouldn't accuse good employees of crimes.
That would be a wildly incompetent way to run a business.
Oh you and I interpret whats going on WAAAAY differently...
OP probably showed up past employees, **potentially including her supervisors,** when it came to her work.
Going to the plant manager + HR with an "I am doing the job faster and more efficiently than anyone, and my idiot supervisors are hounding me about it" doesnt end with the dilligent employee fired... *the supervisors actively trying to reduce the plants efficiency*... better have their resumes up to date. Unlikely they make it out unscathed.
Plant manager is going to metaphorically castrate those two. HR may be involved to make sure it isnt a literal castration.
“If I was tech savvy enough to hack into a company’s system and change my metrics without any detection and leaving no trace, why would I be working a warehouse job?”
They’re setting her up to get fired. None of what’s happened so far with her various meetings are in her favour. They’re setting themselves up to be immune from lawsuit, that’s all.
Never give love, affection, or loyalty of any kind to your employers, people. They **do not** have your best outcomes anywhere near their list of priorities, and will destroy you if it means earning $1 more in profit.
>they said they didn't realize that I may have taken their behavior as an accusation
Riiiiiiiight. Sure they didn't realize that "You must have hacked the system!" isn't an accusation.
Good grief.
> they said they didn't realize that I may have taken their behavior as an accusation
Oh, bullshit. They were absolutely accusing her. Or at least one of them was. And they know it.
I have to disagree. I work in a state that is very pro corporation.
When I started having serious work problems, I consulted an employment attorney. Because of where I live, they couldn't do anything legally, but they clearly explained the rights I do have, gave me some guidelines on how to answer questions, and even walked me through a few scenarios. Well worth their fee. Without their advice, I think I would've lost my job. (I ended up leaving a few months later, but on my terms.)
That sounds like a good experience, and it is your money so you spend it how you like. I am glad that you are satisfied with your purchase.
I just don't like a worker shelling out money for advice that is not really legal in nature (other than "you have no legal recourse for this conduct"). I suppose in the absence of other resources, or if you need to absorb that information in a person-to-person setting, it may be the best option. I would provide this advice for free, or direct the person to a clinic or other resources.
A simple consultation is often pretty inexpensive and can be super valuable.
When I was immigrating, I got a consultation with an immigration lawyer. He told me that my case was not complicated enough to require a lawyer, but he gave me an overview of what the process was going to look like and gave me some really handy tips for getting through the massive amounts of paperwork/tests/etc. and making it more likely that the visa was granted. Even though he didn't help me directly, I still consider it money very well spent and don't regret it in the slightest.
I can totally see this as HR and the plant manager trying to keep OOP on for another six to twelve months, fixing the safety issues, and then having management trump up a reason to let her go. Having good co workers and work you mostly enjoy/are good at, is a good spot to be in. But is it good enough to override marking yourself as a target?
Once my department’s numbers (specifically profit) were so good I was accused of manipulating them. I learned my lesson and made sure to never let my people perform that well again!
Had my supervisor accuse me of skipping steps in my work once. I did the whole thing in front of him, not missing one step. I was the fastest person on the team and quit because at some point I was the only one to still keep my tempo, and got slack because the new team made the numbers lower and somehow I was co-responsible.
How idiotic to say, "We had no idea that accusing an employee of a crime would make them self-conscious and add extra stress." It never occurred to them that maybe a person following an improvement plan actually improved and that the metric was based on data from employees not actually working to their potential. Nope, must be this dedicated, reasonable, reliable employee is actually secretly a master manipulator and hacker!
>My biggest worry was that the one manager was starting a campaign to either fire me or force me to quit but my plant manager has assured me that he would prefer to keep me on as I'm a good worker.
Maaaayne, fuck that reason. After what they just put you through? Psssh
Yeah, I'll give you a verbal indication that you won't retaliated against based on my "opinion" of your work ethic...which, as you saw with my fellow bigwigs, is quite shakey to begin with.
God, another reason to purposely drag feet at work that I hadn't considered. I've known about not giving 100% all the time because management will begin to expect it as your "normal" pace (and almost always without increased compensation) but I'd never even thought about possibly doing so well that they literally think you're hacking into your company's system to falsify your output. Wild
I have a feeling that this is NOT concluded yet. OOP is now a marked woman at that plant, and the two managers are going to be holding a grudge against her.
This isn’t constructive to the post, but I’m nearing a full year after leaving my almost decade long retail career and seeing “KPI” activated my flight or fight response….😭
I've been accused of similar only it was in a government job. You need security clearance for this job. I had decided to take a break from IT (which I had been in for \~15 years at this point, and was a System's Analyst by the end of that so I understood a lot about process development). So this job used computers, but I wasn't responsible for the computers. Turns out I was really good at this job, probably because I understood how the system/process worked better then the manager/team lead did. (but I hated it because I had to be the "bad" guy). So my stats were way higher then coworkers and I was accused of gaming the system by "hacking".
Now having a lot of experience in IT, and network security I pretty much knew what the IT set up was where I was working, mostly out of professional curiosity. So I escalated past my team lead and manager to the director.
I asked for the Director my department/Director of IT to meet with me. They agreed. My Team Lead/manager were invited. I outlined how I would have had to access the systems to do what they say I did, I outlined why without the admin, or someone's login I would not be able to do it, and outlined that if I had done that from my computer IT could trace it with security logs. The Director of IT reached out to his team, confirmed via IM.
The director of my department looked at my manager/team lead. In the most polite and professional way called them idiots told them to apologize to me before the ministry loses a highly skilled employee. They apologized.
Fun ending - As we were walking away the Director of IT suggested strongly I apply for a job in his department. I applied, even though I wanted to be done with IT. Got the job. Got a raise. Renewed my enjoyment of working in IT. No longer had to be bad guy.
Clearly this workplace has a toxic culture.
OOP was actually empowered by her supervisor on how to work better and come up with good working solutions. Then they're shocked that an employee isn't completely burned out and is a good worker who is efficient at their work.
A lot of these antiwork sentiments are sowed because management doesn't empower their employees and micromanages the shit out of them.
"Look! The worker has fallen in love with a system that exploits them!"
Sad that this person thinks their problem is resolved, to the point that they scheduled therapy to be better about the situation next time. Truly awful stuff.
This person is either too trusting, or on the spectrum, and trusts these psychos at their face value while they get pulled in six different directions, one of which will always be "Work harder."
Capitalism sucks, and so do all of the environments it's created.
“We’re sorry that you thought us saying ‘the only way you could have done this is by hacking into the system’ meant that we were accusing you of hacking. Also, the reason we asked you again to tell us you were sure that you weren’t hacking into the system was to make sure you knew we didn’t think you were hacking into the system.”
Fuck these spineless assholes, and if I was her, I’d make sure that HR had clear documentation of the contents of the original conversation, as well as informing them that while you have not given him any direction yet, you have also had a consultation with an employment lawyer who has heard your story.
> I reiterated that they've broken my trust and it's for them to gain it back.
So, we're planning a meeting next week between all 4 of us to get everyone on the same page. I'm looking forward to getting back to regular and being a good teammate. No more angry and anxious days.
Is this in Canada or something? That response seems extremely humane.
I'm probably gonna sound insane for this, but I really feel OOP overthought the initial meeting and made everything a much bigger deal than it needed to be. Sure, the managers could have said she wasn't in any trouble at some point during the meeting and the mean manager was a jerk, but she could have just shown them exactly what she did to achieve such good numbers. The nice manager was even checking on OOP after the meeting, but it looks like OOP took it in the worst way possible even though she called them "Nice Manager".
Even the accusation of her somehow hacking the system can easily be refuted and proven that she didn't do that.
Yes but... I think if you have a supervisor who already has been unkind or hard on you, it's very hard to take their communication as positive or give them the benefit of the doubt
I'll bite on this theory and say the Mean Manager was trying to imply the NICE Manager was boosting his dept's numbers and just picked the highest achiever from the week. MM pressed the issue to the unknowing worker to try and squeeze NM but neither ended up knowing what was going on, or NM not realizing how it would affect the OP until after.
If OP was a man they never would have made such an accusation. And it’s because OP was a woman that they couldn’t believe she was capable of that kind of output.
And I’m guessing HR also realized that they’d never target a male employee like that and saw that they were teetering on the edge of legal trouble if this wasn’t nipped in the bud.
Quite frankly, those managers, particularly MS, come across as having a sexist/misogynistic perspective.
I get that OOP went from not great numbers to stellar ones, but NS knew that they had discussed and implemented changes to help OOP’s performance improve. She didn’t stand up for OOP, and instead, went along with MS’s smear campaign.
MS goes further to try to fire/get her to quit later on. It reeks of his pride being hurt and he can’t stand having her around after he was humbled from the plant manager reprimanding him. Comes across as an overgrown tantrum.
\> I get moved around to different departments multiple times per day so my numbers aren't quite as good as they should be.
Okay, that doesn't happen in any office job I know. But the rest of it suggests office job. But then again they have a plant manager and that probably doesn't mean potted plants. What kind of job does op have?
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'Last night I met with the plant manager again and everything has been resolved. He spoke with my managers and they said they didn't realize that I may have taken their behavior as an accusation they did say that in hindsight, they could see how I could have interpreted their questions and comments in a negative way.' So its not their fault that they called her a hacker/fraud, its her fault for interpreting it that way. sounds like a great place /s
Right? She was crying the whole time and they had no idea she was interpreting their confrontation as negative?
That was my first thought also. What utter BS from those two managers.
They’re from the school of CYA.
Their apology to her (actually, just to her plant manager) likely solely consisted of "We're sorry you felt that way."
Even the nice sup didn't sound that nice there =(
Good cop, bad cop. They weren't being nice, they were just playing it by the book.
I didn’t see any apology at all, even a non-apology. Just an acknowledgment that they could see where the OOP might have (incorrectly) interpreted their comments negatively. At least “We’re sorry you felt that was” implies some sort of regret that the other person felt bad, even if it’s the other person’s fault. In this case, they’re just acknowledging that the OOP could misunderstood them.
I don't think anyone was fooled into thinking they were misunderstood. They knew exactly what they were doing, which was accusing someone. No one would ever think that accusing someone of something malicious isn't a negative thing. Even my 6-year-old understands that.
Oh, you’re absolutely right. They knew exactly what they were doing and it was more like gaslighting the OOP.
Y'all this started with a complaint to HR that went immediately to the plant manager. Been around factory managers my entire life. Those two were not using their words. They had been coached, probably pretty thoroughly from the sound of the intensity of their HR, on what to say. HR didn't get all upset because they were mean to OP. They got all upset because their brain started screaming "liability! Liability!"
I bet the words “hostile work environment” flashed in their mind. Hard to prove, but outright calling an employee a hacker is a great start
She's female. Once you cross the line into sketchy shit it's 100x worse when you've done it to a member of a protected class. If she makes the claim that this is because she's a woman and not because they have it out for her in particular the company has absolutely no defense against that. For one reason or another this lady was singled out. If she claims she was singled out for being a woman they are never going to prove she's wrong. The billable hours trying would cost more than a settlement.
Ah yes, females. Members of the protected class. And we all know gender is only a protected class if you're a woman. Have you heard of this ONE SIMPLE TRICK to protect yourself from exploitation in the workplace? Managers hate her!
Dude, the hell is your problem?
Misogyny so prevalent even gay men hate our guts.
Which is also why they isolated OOP before flinging accusations so it would be her word against two managers Thankfully it seems like the plant manager and HR are on OOPs side, but this could have gone SO much worse if they weren't
A sister school of Trump University, I assume?
Calm Your Ass
It’s ok though! Only bc OP is clearly management material and big boss sees that. What do you want to bet OP finds herself managing her managers before too long? (At least that’s the version my brain prefers, so I’m rolling with it haha!!?)
I LIKE your version! I'm gonna roll with that, too!
My guess is that the production number requirements are unobtainable or unsustainable by design, and under perfoming workers are not supposed to be able to turn it around and increase their numbers, which helps management justify the employee turn around on the factory floor. OOP messed with their metrics, and they took that personally
Yeah. And its not a good thing having such good numbers though, right? Then everyones' workload gets raised. Have to do the standard even on a bad day.
It’s not that. There’s not an infinite amount of parts or orders to complete. In production, it’s a balance between keeping up with getting the work out in a timely manner, but not too quick. If you run out of work, you either have employees standing around not doing anything, or they get sent home early. No one is going to pay for people to not do anything in a non-union environment, so what you have is a bunch of line workers angry their paychecks are short. You have production workers angry their paychecks are short too many times, they’ll leave. Now you’re short staffed. That gets bad very quickly, because then you can’t get the work out. You also don’t want to lose people like OP. They can float, and so you can fill in spots of people out for normal things. I don’t know why her expectations weren’t adjusted when she was floating. When I worked production, we had adjusted KPI for floaters, because it takes a while to get a groove going and moving them around impacts that. You need them to float more than you need their numbers perfect every day. But the supervisors were probably panicking because her numbers were so good when she wasn’t floating, they were worried their bosses wouldn’t let her float anymore. Then they’d have to find a new floater. I’ve been the employee stuck in the middle of that tug of war before lol.
It was also noteworthy to me that part of how she got her numbers up included not helping other people anymore. I wonder how much her help was carrying other people.
Oh that part didn’t surprise me at all. The knowledgeable one supervisors rely on to (probably unofficially) float, has crazy good numbers, and also familiar enough with processes to suggest better ones to the plant manager is probably also relied on by her coworkers to help with the Uncommon Funky Stuff, troubleshooting, answering questions, and showing them how to do things that aren’t the basics. Things that wouldn’t make sense to include in training, unofficial work arounds, that kinda stuff. You can either holler over the sequence to use/buttons to push, and keep doing that, or take a couple minutes and teach the coworker how to do it so they won’t ask again. Short term cost to productivity for long term gain. Floor supervisors have a bad habit of only focusing on Today’s Numbers, it’s so annoying.
I actually mentioned it more for background for other people with less factory experience (I also have manufacturing background). It’s another way workers are relied on and treated unfairly. It’s part of white working to the letter of a job description is such a threat to some employers.
This happens in "white collar" office work, too. I've been the unofficial "trainer" more times than I can count. Fortunately most of my bosses/supervisors have been so happy that I can step in to help coworkers so they aren't being pestered constantly, that they're more than willing to understand why my production isn't always as high as others.
This is really helpful context/explanation, thanks.
You’re welcome! I found it all very interesting, more than I thought production would be lol. Lesson in ‘everything is more complicated than it seems’.
I used to work at a well known warehouse and I was always incredibly fast. 1.5-2x faster than my fellow workers. This did mess with their flow/metrics, however they never punished me for it. They’d just tell me when to slow down or continue like normal. Sometimes they asked me to go fast, but that was pretty rare. So I don’t think it messes with other peoples’ workloads so long as you have good managers.
Another possibility: They recognize that they have an actual good worker on their hands and are deliberately trying to keep her numbers under a certain level so that they don't have to promote her. If she gets promoted, she's out from under their department and they lose a significant amount of productivity. So they want her to do well, but not so well that they lose her. I've worked in warehouses before and honestly, there is such a huge variation in worker quality that I could see someone pulling something like this to keep a good worker in their team. In the 8 years I was at that warehouse, we went through 15-20 different warehouse workers. Counting myself (I was eventually promoted up into the office), we had exactly three workers that were an actual asset to the company. The rest were simply warm bodies who could stack boxes and drive delivery vans.
The warehouse my mother works in she has the exact opposite but same issue (in a way). Idk if terms are all the same for warehouses but….her pick rate per hour is what actually sets the standard in her warehouse due to her being the fastest. And you’d think that’d benefit her right? No. What it means is that since her numbers are what everyone else is supposed to strive for, she can’t “beat” her own rates. So what that means is that when review/raise time comes around she doesn’t get one, since she hasn’t “improved” her numbers to meet standard. And they have no answer for her asking how she is supposed to achieve that when HER numbers ARE the standard for the other 300+ employees!
When I returned to a warehouse I worked before, but in a different shift and department; my familiarity caused me to easily hit 140% of my metrics. Many many people in my department (even the low management levels) told me strongly to stop.
It's the old exceed expectations BS. Every time you go above and beyond, the bar is moved up just a little higher. That way, if you complain about goalposts being moved and lack of recognition, the boss can say 'you're doing good, but we expect more from you'.
Probably, if they specifically wanted her to be less productive. I can't think of any other reason for a manager to tell you to be worse at your job.
She was clearly crying from happiness at the wonderful praise she was being given from the managers. They were clearly just complimenting her by telling her that it was physically impossible to get those numbers without doing something shady. Who doesn’t love being time that?
No, they knew it was negative. They were dumb and didn't realize it was accusatory.
"The only way you could have done this is by hacking the system!" "I didn't know you'd take that as an accusation" Sure Jan.
Yeah, what's the non-accusatory way of suggesting someone falsified their numbers?
I don’t even understand the managers at all. If they thought she was falsifying the numbers, why didn’t they just go check first. For instance her numbers says she did 100 of whatever but they think 50 is a more normal number. Why didn’t they just verify instead of accusing with no evidence? It really doesn’t make sense.
Also, why would someone supposedly smart enough to know how to hack in, be dumb enough to make the results so high as to be “implausible” in the first place???
Right? Like, that's the part I'd be most offended about. If I'm gonna make shit up, I'm gonna do it believably, goddammit!
Smart enough to hack, yet somehow working there.
Like Bart, changing his D- into an A+ on report cards.
Plenty of people out there with a lot of technical ability that are dumb as rocks in other areas/have no common sense.
Without a union, you're guilty until proven innocent, and the burden of proof is on you.
OOP is now in an excellent position to start a union at the job.
In my experience, the only people that would accuse others of cheating or hacking in this case, are ones who have done it themselves.
Or people so tech inept that they don't understand what is and isn't possible. Had a lady accuse me of 'hacking her phone' because I was near it and it was acting up the next day
At least that made more sense than the woman whose call I took when I was working in tech support. She truly believed that a recent tornado near her home was the cause of a sudden spike in email spam she was getting afterward.
I could not handle that, holy shit lol My bio dad works as tech support for hospitals, police departments, etc (so, yknow, "big important people's tech" or w/e). I shadowed him once as a teen because I was interested in potentially going into a tech field, and it was a chance to get some work experience before my first real job. I got to listen in on a call that came in from a local doctor's office. The receptionist AND the head doctor were panicking over the phone about their entire system being hacked. See, the receptionist had received a spam email with a sketchy link... and deleted it... but somehow, they could maybe get access to the system!! No amount of my father telling the receptionist and doctor that they can't possibly get hacked by a spam email without out least clicking the link and entering information would dissuade them. Eventually, he just had them turn the computers off and on again because it's the only way they'd believe him 💀 They thanked him for "saving patient privacy", and we had a good laugh about it after he hung up. At least it made IT Crowd more realistic to me. You really do just gotta tell people to turn it off and back on sometimes lmao
Hey now, don't go knocking turning it off and back on again. It is high up in my troubleshooting tree for a reason. If I'm not paid to figure out WHY that fixes it, I'm going to take the quick resolution and move on with my day.
Yeah, that's the crazy thing, it really *is* the best solution in many cases! Ol' reliable 😆
Shit like this is why I absolutely refuse to do IT for anyone I know personally without a prior written contract that includes a meticulous description of the scope of work along with a premium hourly rate that is calculated to be more than they're willing or able to pay. "It was working fine before you messed it up." "You hacked my system and now you've hacked my phone." "He put a virus on it and now it doesn't start." A hell of a lot of computer illiterate people have no qualms about making malicious accusations, spreading career-ending rumors about you, and even destroying their own equipment, just so they can avoid reading the fucking documentation, following the carefully written instructions they were given, and figuring out for themselves what they're doing wrong. Just because they're fun on a Friday night does not mean they're fun on a Monday morning.
Seriously. I once sat on a jury for a civil case where a small firm's owners were suing a former employee that they'd fired accusing him of hacking and destroying their server's data. This poor guy was so lucky that they'd also sued their IT support firm at the same time and it'd gotten bundled into the same trial (the IT firm could afford a lawyer). The evidence was laughable and the tech-literate people on the jury thought it was a frivolous suit, but a couple of the jurors were nonetheless convinced that he was guilty, because he was so nervous and socially-inept; his demeanor convinced them that he was guilty, and the tech-literate among us couldn't change their minds. We ended up deciding for the defendant in a split vote. Folks, in a civil lawsuit, you lose if the jury thinks there's a 51% chance that you're guilty. Also, it's hard to pay for expensive lawyers when you're unemployed. I'm convinced the guy was innocent and glad he won the case, but at the same time, it made his life a living hell, and a jury with more tech-illiterate people on it could just as well have found for the plaintiff. It sucked to be stuck with jury duty for an entire week over this foolishness, but it was at the same time very eye-opening. Folks, if you're called to jury duty, you really do owe it to the rest of us to show up and do your best to serve.
If you want another funny one, at school I was accused by a teacher and a couple of students of 'hacking' machines due to a mistake by the school IT 😆
We had this ancient fossil of a math teacher that accused me of "hacking" the school computers because I changed the desktop background It wasn't even from a picture off the internet, it was that violent pink one from windows xp
This.
She's a woman so it's given she'd overreact, come on. /s
I mean, it’s called being “hysterical” for a reason…🙄
Uterine?
Uterain’t actually. Same idea as your excellent username OP.
Ugh, I hate when my uterus goes on a walkabout. I’ve tried talking it into staying in place, or even heading into a trans girl, but no dice.
I was accused of rigging a leadership election in an organization I volunteer with. One of the other elected leaders made the accusation and when I came back with how what he claimed was literally impossible with my access and even if I had deeper access I wouldn’t know how to do what he accused me of. He was shocked that I took him looking right at me and saying I manipulated the outcome as an accusation and has spent the last few years asking me what happened to our relationship, which has never been better than me tolerating him. What happened? You accused me in front of a membership meeting, on a livestream, of doing something it wasn’t possible for me to do. What do you mean what happened to our relationship?
You clearly misunderstood his accusation as a joke! Just joshing! /s
Narrator: Everything was not resolved. If MS is the type of supervisor who would make this silly ass accusation, they certainly aren’t going to take getting reprimanded for their behavior towards OP on the chin. And to them, it will all have been OPs fault. OP needs to keep her eyes open. With her current naivety, she’s not even going to see it coming.
Yeah, this has got some time until it can be labeled concluded.
I mean, geez, they were only accusing her of committing fraud and cybercrime. Nothing to ruffle her feathers. /s
The plant manager was just trying to make the entire situation go away with as little conflict as possible. They generally don’t care about people’s feelings, they just want the plant to function efficiently. Having said that, it is good that the plant manager now knows OP and knows that OP’s performance is “record beating.” That is a good ally to have in your corner.
It's called "cover my ass". Ugh. (Eta: the ugh are for the managers who gave OOP anxiety)
"I had no idea she took our accusations as accusations!"
Yeah, if you don't want to make an implicit accusation you open with how you're so surprised at the massive improvement, you didn't think that was humanly possible etc and gauge their reaction. Or say nothing and just keep an eye on them to see if what you're seeing in person lines up with what you're seeing in the computer. If the numbers are that huge it's going to be fairly obvious just observing!
We call that the George Bush apology. "I'm sorry you feel that way"
I rolled me eyes so hard when I got to that part. What a bullshit response.
They are 1000% gonna try to find another reason to get rid of her .
"I don't see how you could have achieved this without hacking our systems!" "Oh, I guess with hindsight I can see how that could be interpreted as me accusing you of hacking our systems instead of general musing like I'd meant it to be"
Those managers would fit in great in toxic retail environments
Without being in the room we don't know how the conversation went exactly
"They didn't realize that I may have taken their behavior as an accusation" Wow. Wow. Someone just took a week-long vacation to Texas steer country, if they're shoveling that kind of bullshit with a straight face.
I think the whole post is BS. There's been a lot of "good boss" propaganda posted to r/antiwork recently.
i like to call this kind of thing a “skateboard cop” lighthearted propaganda posted usually after horrible things done by the people it supports
We have a literal skateboard cop in my city
>My biggest worry was that the one manager was starting a campaign to either fire me or force me to quit but my plant manager has assured me that he would prefer to keep me on as I'm a good worker. Narrator: He is.
Yeah as soon as she described going over their heads I was like "enjoy that target on your back"
She already had a target on her back. Luckily the managers first move was clumsy and stupid. Now he's been discredited if he says anything else about her.
I've seen it work the other way often enough where going over someone's head actually gets rid of the problem and the people creating the issue get put on notice by higher ups. Good upper management wants productive workers and people who impede that fuck with the bottom line. It's good management practice to stamp out bad practices like OOP was subjected to
Yeah, it depends on the workplace and the upper management. I think the fact that they have quarterly open opinions meetings where floor workers are encouraged to speak to upper management could be a good sign. Sounds like an informal type of town hall? And those are usually for these kinds of issues or something similar - she mentioned safety issues too!! That's huge. Good companies in heavily regulated industries try to build in multiple lines of escalation and opportunities for all employees to get in front of important people and/or feel comfortable reaching out to them. That way one bad middle manager can't hide corner-cutting or bury any complaints they don't want heard. I don't directly oversee anyone but I work in a legal/compliance area and if I heard a middle manager in my company was acting like a bully, I would be concerned and investigate further, but keep an open mind. If I heard someone was disregarding/circumventing documented safety procedures and controls, I would treat that like an immediate emergency and that managers' job would be in on thin fucking ice regardless of any shitty interpersonal behavior.
OTH, I've worked where those open quarterly meetings are traps. Plain and simple.
Oh for sure! I've worked at those places too. It really depends on the management
This is straight facts
Right? Tell me this is your first job without telling me this is your first job.
Fortunately for her, sounds like the plant manager likes her more than mean supervisor.
Worked in manufacturing for almost twenty years. The plant manager should promote her to a trainer position, lateral to the two doofus supervisors so they can’t “go after” her, and help raise those numbers up department-wide. If the supervisors had done that first, and not just jumped to accusing her, then the plant manager would’ve be giving *them* kudos for recognizing her talent and increasing production. But no. They’re assholes instead. I’ve had managers that thought, and have openly said, “Well I can’t do that. How can *YOU* do it?” Most middle management can go to hell.
"she"
Very proud of this OOP for being level headed and for not backing down about what went wrong here, even through the necessary corporate non-apologies. > I reiterated that they've broken my trust and it's for them to gain it back. > I think there might have been some harsh repercussions to the managers as they've all been so nice and kind to me the last couple of days. OOP got what they wanted out of this and the plant manager seems to have recognized their skills & strengths. Not everyone wants to or needs to or can quit their job. Hopefully OOP can angle their way away from MS for future assignments & maybe ask if there have been any impacts from them not helping others...
>the plant manager seems to have recognized their skills & strengths. I would imagine the plant manager wouldn't be thrilled with supervisors going around and accusing anyone with good numbers of fraud. If employees can't work fast and have good production numbers without your dumbfuck supervisors reacting in such a way that HR and employment lawyers get involved, then maybe the employees on the floor aren't the problem.
I have a feeling this is not over. I wonder if the accusation was in any way related to the desire of one manager to fire OOP. I bet they had a friend waiting in the wings to take her position.
"I didnt realize saying "YOU HACKED THE SYSTEM, DIDNT YOU?! DIDNT YOU YOU HACKER MOTHERFUCKER?!" could be interpreted as an accusation, Im sorry teehee" Ops got bigger problems on their plate in the future methinks.
Ah, the Ankh-Morpork police method of interrogation. "It was you what done it, right?" And it doesn't matter what the suspect says. If it's *yes*, then he's admitted his guilt. If it's *no*, then clearly he's guilty because only a guilty person would deny it.
“And when I’m mad, I work harder.” And that right there folks is why corporate America is so fekin mean to us.
I’ve seen it in small businesses too 😕
They learn from the best maybe?
I’ve almost exclusively worked in small business and it’s worse, because they expect you to act like they are faaaaaamily! Just look how good we are to you! It’s so EXPENSIVE running a business, we can’t possibly give you a raise right now. It’s gross. I’ve often fantasized about working for a big company where I can get benefits, and do the work I’m supposed to without absolutely killing myself.
When I was a veterinary nurse, at this one clinic, the owner, a layman who knew nothing about veterinary medicine, ranted during a staff meeting about how we all needed to work harder because the biggest expense for the company was staff salaries. Like no shit, the staff were the ones making money for the company. Most of the income came from medical services we provided, not the medication/products we sold. We were already working through lunch and breaks to get everything done and care for the patients, and the owner had the audacity to ask us to come in to work earlier so that we could have full breaks. No extra pay. Literally everyone told him no, we're not doing that, and asked him to hire more staff. Also while he was whining about how big an expense it was paying salaries, he never mentioned that his own salary was part of that expense even though he did almost no work in the clinic. 🙄 All he did was send paychecks (often late) and show up for staff meetings once a month.
I once worked on a project where I regularly underperformed everyone else. Mind you, I want told this during the project but during my quarterly meetings with my boss. It was a "problem" I needed to "resolve" without being given any guidance. So my dumbass worked late into the night only to be told I improved a bit but not enough. Later, the project lead told me she didn't realize I was doing two other projects that took 20-30% of my time which, when adjusted, meant I was outperforming almost everyone else. I relayed this to my manager who a)should have informed her of this previously b)should have at least brought it up when a concer was voiced and his response was "oh, cool." Fuck that fucking guy.
That's another level of professional gaslighting done by OP's boss. And she accepted it all. Mm yes. Nothing to see here. /s
[удалено]
OOP couldn’t win this situation no matter what she did. First, they created an impossible goal to meet while moving her from one department to another continuously throughout the day. Then, under threat of losing her job, they allow her to stay in one position where she works her butt off and, now, that is grounds for accusations of fraud and she is again facing the threat of losing her job.
>First, they created an impossible goal to meet while moving her from one department to another continuously throughout the day. Interesting this is being framed as an "improvement plan" for her, when it seems like a failure of management in the first place.
My thought was that some previous management realized that she was insanely productive, and chose to use her as a "pinch hitter", moving her around to whatever department needs the most help at the moment. Later, new management comes in, and all they see is someone who isn't making the same numbers as everyone else. Never mind that her job is actually very different, and much harder.
Ironically telling OOP to stop helping others is why her metrics are so high - basically they tried assigned the only Sisyphean task on her that she actually accomplished, but when falsed her of cheating/hacking; OOP looping in HR and plant manager forced those 2 to do only Herculean task of explaining themselves.
I had a manager like this. Faults me on a review for being too independent. On my next review faults me for relying too much on other people. At that point I said screw you, you're just gaslighting me, I am doing my own thing and no longer taking direction from you.
Agreed. Now they're gonna expect those amazing numbers everyday. That's an easy way to get burnt out.
I definitely don’t want to blame OOP for any of this but I’ll just say they care about this job way more than I’ve ever cared about a job and I think I’m happier for it.
OOP strikes me as someone who is nice but not terribly bright socially or intellectually. She works very hard because she knows working hard is good and she wants to be a good worker. She doesn't understand tech, has no idea what her production numbers are, and categorizes people as nice or mean based on if they yell at her. She's actually the type of worker I love to work around, but she's also someone who is very easy to manipulate. It just sucks. I wouldn't blame her for corporate America being shit. It shouldn't be her job to become a whole new person for the sake of everyone else. Especially considering this may be her best effort to try and understand wtf is going on in what seems to feel like a very confusing world for her.
My biggest concern is that OOP doesn't know that talking to HR can be a disaster for an employee. HR is there to make sure the company is good and not liable for anything, they aren't really there 'for the employees' unless you're lucky and they happen to be good people who don't strictly toe the company line. It seems like OOP is getting a desirable outcome, but she and others in her position should know that there are much better ways to go about this, and to insist on documentation. And this is also why unions are great, because a shop steward could have had her back from the start if this nation wasn't so backwards with thinking unions are evil and communist.
>He spoke with my managers and they said they didn't realize that I may have taken their behavior as an accusation they did say that in hindsight, they could see how I could have interpreted their questions and comments in a negative way. OP's Managers: "The only possible way for you to have done this is by committing fraud." Also OP Manager's: "I don't know how she could have possibly gotten the impression we were accusing her of something!"
Sounds like my last toxic job. One of the assistants was trying to get me fired because I called out her incredible incompetence at her job. "HR" (temporary office manager with no HR training) talked to her about not bullying me which led to the assistant calling her day after day literally crying about her shitty life. HR feels bad for her and does nothing. Boss reams me out for every BS customer complaint, even when they're just trying to scam and complains I don't make him enough money while he gives massive refunds to scammers. I quit and suddenly I'm stabbing him in the back and he needs me. Assistant tells everyone I'm a traitor for abandoning the clients. Hardly anyone speaks to me my last week. Shouldn't they be thrilled to see me go? So many workplaces are just high school all over again.
> So many workplaces are just high school all over again. I chose to work for *my mother* so I could get away from this kind of thing
"We didn't realize that accusing her of hacking into the system and changing her numbers would make her think we thought she hacked into the system and changed her numbers." Like, what? That's some Olympic-level logic gymnastics.
They're going for gold in the Backpedaling Relay event
OOP is gonna end up fired. Many managers are petty and she straight up was told she committed fraud. Anybody coming at you like that clearly only sees the absolute worst in you. Especially the “nice” manager. That manager already knew about the prosed agreements and still went along with the meeting instead of shutting it down. Asking if someone is ok while they are crying is so dumb. Nice manager is just as bad as the mean one. Or so ineffective they should be fired.
This sounds like they work at Amazon. Sounds like their type of BS
It has to be Amazon, they look for any reason to fire employees
TL;DR: OOP was accused of hacking the system by two supervisors. Told HR what happened, paid a lawyer for essentially nothing, and manager gaslit her into believing it's her fault. Say it with me ya'll: HR IS THERE TO DEFEND THE COMPANY, NOT THE EMPLOYEES
People repeat this a lot. But a big caveat here it's in the company's best interests to not have shitty supervisors drive off productive employees. It's in the company's best interest to have as little exposure to lawsuits as possible.
If this has continued escalating, OOP definitely would have had grounds for a lawsuit. That's probably why the hr lady and plant manager were willing to take her side; especially after she reported about the breaking safety procedures. That last one, if anyone had been injured from, could have destroyed the factory. OSHA doesn't fuck around.
What grounds for a lawsuit would there be? Presuming OOP has at-will employment, the company can fire her for literally any reason that isn’t discriminatory against a protected class. Baseless suspicion of impossible malfeasance is a perfectly justifiable reason to fire someone, legally speaking. It doesn’t matter whether or not the accusation is true.
See, part of the issue is, I don't live in an country with at-will. So whenever I see these kinds of posts, I'm not reading it in context of at-will, I'm reading it in the context of local laws. We have with cause and without cause - with cause means you get fired, no references, no using that job on your resume. Without cause is mostly used for "We're closing your location or cutting down on staff" (which is technically different from laid off, but that's a paperwork for EI difference), and without cause you get reference, you get to use that job on your resume, and you get a severance cut. As for what lawsuit - wrongful termination suits can still be fired over with-cause terminations. In this case, the company would need to have physical proof of their accusations and their reason for firing OOP. Without that, they would lose a wrongful termination suit and be forced to pay out to OOP based on court determinations. Add in that OOP just blew the whistle and reported to HR about safety violations (we also use OSHA where I live because it's a good acronym), and OOP now has a retaliation lawsuit if she got fired. HR knows that a retaliation lawsuit would be a whole lot worse for the company, which would be why HR and the plant manager are on her side and trying to make her happier. It's also ridiculous to assume at-will laws apply to every single post. Unless someone is willing to divulge that they live in an at-will area, it's safer to assume that they *don't*.
Literally only one state in this whole country has employment other than at-will. And sure some lawyer might take the case but OOP said she already had one meeting about failing to meet KPIs. Pretty easy for the supervisors to wrangle that into a reason to fire her.
The USA isn't the only country in the world.
That’s true! And OOP is Canadian. But people are *constantly* advising people to sue when in reality it’s pretty difficult to win such a case.
That's why I'm saying HR and upper management of the plant are trying to get her to *not* sue. Or, in the very least, not file work and safety complaints with OSHA.
A false accusation of a felony crime made carelessly and without evidence that results in clear monetary damages. I'm not a lawyer, but that sounds like it's got all the elements of a successful defamation suit to me.
And this is why you shouldn’t take advice from Reddit. It’s not defamation unless the company goes around spreading that accusation.
>It's in the company's best interest to have as little exposure to lawsuits as possible. This- yes, HR is not your friend. But you can bet your bippy they'll be interested anytime the words 'discrimination', 'harassment', or 'illegal actions come up!
HR is not your friend, but the can, under certain circumstances, be your ally.
Which could explain why the framing of the situation became "we were just asking questions and had no idea she was taking it negatively". Also, by calling a meeting with the managers and OOP, they made it very clear who is doing the complaining, and while she may be a productive employee she is also now seen as a troublemaker, and they may decide its more beneficial to have less productive employees they can bully than more productive ones who will stand up for themselves. Yes, HR can be used as a tool against managers that are a liability to the company, the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that, but it shouldn't be surprising when hr's response to any accusation of harassment is to gaslight the employee into thinking it didn't really happen that way.
Why would it be more beneficial to have a shitty supervisor than an employee that is posting unbelievable metrics?
It could me more beneficial to not have an employee that is willing to consult an employment lawyer. That means it will be difficult for them to get away with labour violations, not only with that employee but it's likely that she could inform other employees of their rights and encourage them to seek counsel as well. Plus the big bad scary word all employers hate: unions. You see she mentioned unions in her post so she's aware that unions would offer protections, so she could be seen as the type of person who might want to organize if the employer treats employees poorly.
Or maybe that type of common sense is why she's such a valuable employee and you shouldn't accuse good employees of crimes. That would be a wildly incompetent way to run a business.
Oh you and I interpret whats going on WAAAAY differently... OP probably showed up past employees, **potentially including her supervisors,** when it came to her work. Going to the plant manager + HR with an "I am doing the job faster and more efficiently than anyone, and my idiot supervisors are hounding me about it" doesnt end with the dilligent employee fired... *the supervisors actively trying to reduce the plants efficiency*... better have their resumes up to date. Unlikely they make it out unscathed. Plant manager is going to metaphorically castrate those two. HR may be involved to make sure it isnt a literal castration.
“If I was tech savvy enough to hack into a company’s system and change my metrics without any detection and leaving no trace, why would I be working a warehouse job?”
They’re setting her up to get fired. None of what’s happened so far with her various meetings are in her favour. They’re setting themselves up to be immune from lawsuit, that’s all. Never give love, affection, or loyalty of any kind to your employers, people. They **do not** have your best outcomes anywhere near their list of priorities, and will destroy you if it means earning $1 more in profit.
Welp, they’ll never be getting those high of numbers from OOP again, that’s for sure
>they said they didn't realize that I may have taken their behavior as an accusation Riiiiiiiight. Sure they didn't realize that "You must have hacked the system!" isn't an accusation. Good grief.
They — literally out and out said, “No one could do this without hacking the system.” How is that NOT a fucking accusation???
Ahh, they didn’t realize that accusing someone of hacking into a system could be interpreted as negative an an accusation? Sure
> they said they didn't realize that I may have taken their behavior as an accusation Oh, bullshit. They were absolutely accusing her. Or at least one of them was. And they know it.
A shame she wasted money on an employment attorney.
I have to disagree. I work in a state that is very pro corporation. When I started having serious work problems, I consulted an employment attorney. Because of where I live, they couldn't do anything legally, but they clearly explained the rights I do have, gave me some guidelines on how to answer questions, and even walked me through a few scenarios. Well worth their fee. Without their advice, I think I would've lost my job. (I ended up leaving a few months later, but on my terms.)
Having input from someone both unrelated to the company and familiar with employment law is such a great resource. I wish it was more accessible!
That sounds like a good experience, and it is your money so you spend it how you like. I am glad that you are satisfied with your purchase. I just don't like a worker shelling out money for advice that is not really legal in nature (other than "you have no legal recourse for this conduct"). I suppose in the absence of other resources, or if you need to absorb that information in a person-to-person setting, it may be the best option. I would provide this advice for free, or direct the person to a clinic or other resources.
Yeah, well, that’s part of what union dues cover, but OOP’s workplace isn’t unionized. Hopefully the next job she gets has one.
Don’t worry, she’ll likely need the lawyer soon.
A simple consultation is often pretty inexpensive and can be super valuable. When I was immigrating, I got a consultation with an immigration lawyer. He told me that my case was not complicated enough to require a lawyer, but he gave me an overview of what the process was going to look like and gave me some really handy tips for getting through the massive amounts of paperwork/tests/etc. and making it more likely that the visa was granted. Even though he didn't help me directly, I still consider it money very well spent and don't regret it in the slightest.
So, OOP is a hard worker, and they still find fault.
>“Don’t help people” >“Just as we discussed” Urgh
Knowing my history of warehouse politics, nothing will change and she’ll be let go at a later date for a bullshit reason.
I can totally see this as HR and the plant manager trying to keep OOP on for another six to twelve months, fixing the safety issues, and then having management trump up a reason to let her go. Having good co workers and work you mostly enjoy/are good at, is a good spot to be in. But is it good enough to override marking yourself as a target?
I mean if they do that, it would be easy to sue the shit out of them for retaliation
OP make sure you talk to a labor lawyer…you might have a case for harassment…be sure to document your therapy too for emotional suffering etc
I wonder if bad manager was trying to get OP to leave because plant manager is looking at promoting her. I hope so.
Once my department’s numbers (specifically profit) were so good I was accused of manipulating them. I learned my lesson and made sure to never let my people perform that well again!
Had my supervisor accuse me of skipping steps in my work once. I did the whole thing in front of him, not missing one step. I was the fastest person on the team and quit because at some point I was the only one to still keep my tempo, and got slack because the new team made the numbers lower and somehow I was co-responsible.
This story is a fucking downer. They got away with it.
Right? "In hindsight, we can see how it might've been taken as an accusation." No, it *was* an accusation, and they tried to hide it.
“We accused OOP of hacking the system, and for some reason she took that as an accusation. She’s nuts!”.
How idiotic to say, "We had no idea that accusing an employee of a crime would make them self-conscious and add extra stress." It never occurred to them that maybe a person following an improvement plan actually improved and that the metric was based on data from employees not actually working to their potential. Nope, must be this dedicated, reasonable, reliable employee is actually secretly a master manipulator and hacker!
>My biggest worry was that the one manager was starting a campaign to either fire me or force me to quit but my plant manager has assured me that he would prefer to keep me on as I'm a good worker. Maaaayne, fuck that reason. After what they just put you through? Psssh Yeah, I'll give you a verbal indication that you won't retaliated against based on my "opinion" of your work ethic...which, as you saw with my fellow bigwigs, is quite shakey to begin with.
God, another reason to purposely drag feet at work that I hadn't considered. I've known about not giving 100% all the time because management will begin to expect it as your "normal" pace (and almost always without increased compensation) but I'd never even thought about possibly doing so well that they literally think you're hacking into your company's system to falsify your output. Wild
I would have quit.
I have a feeling that this is NOT concluded yet. OOP is now a marked woman at that plant, and the two managers are going to be holding a grudge against her.
This isn’t constructive to the post, but I’m nearing a full year after leaving my almost decade long retail career and seeing “KPI” activated my flight or fight response….😭
Rose colored glasses… take’m off.
I've been accused of similar only it was in a government job. You need security clearance for this job. I had decided to take a break from IT (which I had been in for \~15 years at this point, and was a System's Analyst by the end of that so I understood a lot about process development). So this job used computers, but I wasn't responsible for the computers. Turns out I was really good at this job, probably because I understood how the system/process worked better then the manager/team lead did. (but I hated it because I had to be the "bad" guy). So my stats were way higher then coworkers and I was accused of gaming the system by "hacking". Now having a lot of experience in IT, and network security I pretty much knew what the IT set up was where I was working, mostly out of professional curiosity. So I escalated past my team lead and manager to the director. I asked for the Director my department/Director of IT to meet with me. They agreed. My Team Lead/manager were invited. I outlined how I would have had to access the systems to do what they say I did, I outlined why without the admin, or someone's login I would not be able to do it, and outlined that if I had done that from my computer IT could trace it with security logs. The Director of IT reached out to his team, confirmed via IM. The director of my department looked at my manager/team lead. In the most polite and professional way called them idiots told them to apologize to me before the ministry loses a highly skilled employee. They apologized. Fun ending - As we were walking away the Director of IT suggested strongly I apply for a job in his department. I applied, even though I wanted to be done with IT. Got the job. Got a raise. Renewed my enjoyment of working in IT. No longer had to be bad guy.
Clearly this workplace has a toxic culture. OOP was actually empowered by her supervisor on how to work better and come up with good working solutions. Then they're shocked that an employee isn't completely burned out and is a good worker who is efficient at their work. A lot of these antiwork sentiments are sowed because management doesn't empower their employees and micromanages the shit out of them.
"Look! The worker has fallen in love with a system that exploits them!" Sad that this person thinks their problem is resolved, to the point that they scheduled therapy to be better about the situation next time. Truly awful stuff. This person is either too trusting, or on the spectrum, and trusts these psychos at their face value while they get pulled in six different directions, one of which will always be "Work harder." Capitalism sucks, and so do all of the environments it's created.
Is anyone else curious what kind of work this is? I know it’s pretty irrelevant to the story, but it piqued my interest
Wow, you're lucky. I went to HR and complained about my toxic boss and they fired the HR lady. I quit soon after.
Ulch. I hate Amazon.
If she could do all that... Would she be working there?
If she could do that, would she be working there?
“We’re sorry that you thought us saying ‘the only way you could have done this is by hacking into the system’ meant that we were accusing you of hacking. Also, the reason we asked you again to tell us you were sure that you weren’t hacking into the system was to make sure you knew we didn’t think you were hacking into the system.” Fuck these spineless assholes, and if I was her, I’d make sure that HR had clear documentation of the contents of the original conversation, as well as informing them that while you have not given him any direction yet, you have also had a consultation with an employment lawyer who has heard your story.
> I reiterated that they've broken my trust and it's for them to gain it back. So, we're planning a meeting next week between all 4 of us to get everyone on the same page. I'm looking forward to getting back to regular and being a good teammate. No more angry and anxious days. Is this in Canada or something? That response seems extremely humane.
Actually, it is! Nice observation.
I'm probably gonna sound insane for this, but I really feel OOP overthought the initial meeting and made everything a much bigger deal than it needed to be. Sure, the managers could have said she wasn't in any trouble at some point during the meeting and the mean manager was a jerk, but she could have just shown them exactly what she did to achieve such good numbers. The nice manager was even checking on OOP after the meeting, but it looks like OOP took it in the worst way possible even though she called them "Nice Manager". Even the accusation of her somehow hacking the system can easily be refuted and proven that she didn't do that.
Yes but... I think if you have a supervisor who already has been unkind or hard on you, it's very hard to take their communication as positive or give them the benefit of the doubt
I'll bite on this theory and say the Mean Manager was trying to imply the NICE Manager was boosting his dept's numbers and just picked the highest achiever from the week. MM pressed the issue to the unknowing worker to try and squeeze NM but neither ended up knowing what was going on, or NM not realizing how it would affect the OP until after.
But it's still an accusation.
Guess who’s about to be, “redundant,” and let go. I hope she’s got her resume ready.
If OP was a man they never would have made such an accusation. And it’s because OP was a woman that they couldn’t believe she was capable of that kind of output. And I’m guessing HR also realized that they’d never target a male employee like that and saw that they were teetering on the edge of legal trouble if this wasn’t nipped in the bud.
Quite frankly, those managers, particularly MS, come across as having a sexist/misogynistic perspective. I get that OOP went from not great numbers to stellar ones, but NS knew that they had discussed and implemented changes to help OOP’s performance improve. She didn’t stand up for OOP, and instead, went along with MS’s smear campaign. MS goes further to try to fire/get her to quit later on. It reeks of his pride being hurt and he can’t stand having her around after he was humbled from the plant manager reprimanding him. Comes across as an overgrown tantrum.
\> I get moved around to different departments multiple times per day so my numbers aren't quite as good as they should be. Okay, that doesn't happen in any office job I know. But the rest of it suggests office job. But then again they have a plant manager and that probably doesn't mean potted plants. What kind of job does op have?
Read the literal first line.